Part of
Language Complexity: Typology, contact, changeEdited by Matti Miestamo, Kaius Sinnemäki and Fred Karlsson
[Studies in Language Companion Series 94] 2008
► pp. 43–65
Edited by Matti Miestamo, Kaius Sinnemäki and Fred Karlsson
[Studies in Language Companion Series 94] 2008
► pp. 43–65
Complexity trade-offs between the subsystems of language
Starting from a view on language as a combinatorial and hierarchically organized system we assumed that a high syllable complexity would favour a high number of syllable types, which in turn would favour a high number of monosyllables. Relevant cross-linguistic correlations based on Menzerath’s (1954) data on monosyllables in eight Indo-European languages turned out to be statistically significant. A further attempt was made to conceptualize “semantic complexity” and to relate it to complexity in phonology, word formation, and word order. In English, for instance, the tendency to phonological complexity and monosyllabism is associated with a tendency to homonymy and polysemy, to rigid word order and idiomatic speech. The results are explained by complexity trade-offs between rather than within the subsystems of language.
Cited by
Cited by 28 other publications
Adsett, Connie R. & Yannick Marchand
2010. Syllabic Complexity: A Computational Evaluation of Nine European Languages. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics 17:4 ► pp. 269 ff. 
Bentz, Christian, Ximena Gutierrez-Vasques, Olga Sozinova & Tanja Samardžić
2022. Complexity trade-offs and equi-complexity in natural languages: a meta-analysis. Linguistics Vanguard 0:0
Borleffs, Elisabeth, Ben A. M. Maassen, Heikki Lyytinen & Frans Zwarts
2017. Measuring orthographic transparency and morphological-syllabic complexity in alphabetic orthographies: a narrative review. Reading and Writing 30:8 ► pp. 1617 ff.
2019. Cracking the Code: The Impact of Orthographic Transparency and Morphological-Syllabic Complexity on Reading and Developmental Dyslexia. Frontiers in Psychology 9
Budelmann, Felix & Pauline LeVen
2014. Timotheus’ Poetics of Blending: A Cognitive Approach to the Language of the New Music. Classical Philology 109:3 ► pp. 191 ff.
Corral, Silvia, Marta Ferrero & Edurne Goikoetxea
2009. LEXIN: A lexical database from Spanish kindergarten and first-grade readers. Behavior Research Methods 41:4 ► pp. 1009 ff.
Cuza, Alejandro, Lauren Miller, Rocio Pérez Tattam & Mariluz Ortiz Vergara
2019. Structure complexity effects in child heritage Spanish: The case of the Spanish personala. International Journal of Bilingualism 23:6 ► pp. 1333 ff.
De Clercq, Bastien & Alex Housen
2017. A Cross-Linguistic Perspective on Syntactic Complexity in L2 Development: Syntactic Elaboration and Diversity. The Modern Language Journal 101:2 ► pp. 315 ff.
2019. The development of morphological complexity: A cross-linguistic study of L2 French and English. Second Language Research 35:1 ► pp. 71 ff.
Do-Hurinville, Danh Thành
2014. Complexité dans une langue isolante : exemple du vietnamien. Nouvelles perspectives en sciences sociales 9:1 ► pp. 239 ff.
Easterday, Shelece, Matthew Stave, Marc Allassonnière-Tang & Frank Seifart
2021. Syllable Complexity and Morphological Synthesis: A Well-Motivated Positive Complexity Correlation Across Subdomains. Frontiers in Psychology 12
Elias, Alexander
2020. Chapter 6. Are the Central Flores languages really typologically unusual?. In Austronesian Undressed [Typological Studies in Language, 129], ► pp. 287 ff.
Farwaneh, Samira
2021. Diglossia, Variation, and Structural Complexity. In The Cambridge Handbook of Arabic Linguistics, ► pp. 155 ff.
Fenk-Oczlon, Gertraud & Jürgen Pilz
2021. Linguistic Complexity: Relationships Between Phoneme Inventory Size, Syllable Complexity, Word and Clause Length, and Population Size. Frontiers in Communication 6
Foltz, Anouschka
2022. Chapter 3. Beyond the English passive. In Syntactic Priming in Language Acquisition [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 31], ► pp. 35 ff.
Forker, Diana
2021. Complexity and Its Relation to Variation. Frontiers in Communication 6
GIBSON, TODD A., CONNIE SUMMERS, ELIZABETH D. PEÑA, LISA M. BEDORE, RONALD B. GILLAM & THOMAS M. BOHMAN
2015. The role of phonological structure and experience in bilingual children's nonword repetition performance. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 18:3 ► pp. 551 ff.
Housen, Alex, Bastien De Clercq, Folkert Kuiken & Ineke Vedder
2019. Multiple approaches to complexity in second language research. Second Language Research 35:1 ► pp. 3 ff.
Jiang, Xinlei & Yue Jiang
2022. Menzerath-Altmann Law in Consecutive and Simultaneous Interpreting: Insights into Varied Cognitive Processes and Load. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics 29:4 ► pp. 541 ff.
Jiang, Yue & Ruimin Ma
2022. Does Menzerath–Altmann Law Hold True for Translational Language: Evidence from Translated English Literary Texts. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics 29:1 ► pp. 37 ff.
Levshina, Natalia
2020. Efficient trade-offs as explanations in functional linguistics: some problems and an alternative proposal. Revista da ABRALIN ► pp. 1 ff.
2021. Cross-Linguistic Trade-Offs and Causal Relationships Between Cues to Grammatical Subject and Object, and the Problem of Efficiency-Related Explanations. Frontiers in Psychology 12
Karin Ryding & David Wilmsen
2021. The Cambridge Handbook of Arabic Linguistics,
Schaden, Gerhard & Cédric Patin
2018. Semiotic systems with duality of patterning and the issue of cultural replicators. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 40:1
Shcherbakova, Olena, Volker Gast, Damián E. Blasi, Hedvig Skirgård, Russell D. Gray & Simon J. Greenhill
2022. A quantitative global test of the complexity trade-off hypothesis: the case of nominal and verbal grammatical marking. Linguistics Vanguard 0:0
Soares, Ana Paula, José Carlos Medeiros, Alberto Simões, João Machado, Ana Costa, Álvaro Iriarte, José João de Almeida, Ana P. Pinheiro & Montserrat Comesaña
2014. ESCOLEX: A grade-level lexical database from European Portuguese elementary to middle school textbooks. Behavior Research Methods 46:1 ► pp. 240 ff.
Solovyev, Valery Dmitrievich, Marina Ivanovna Solnyshkina & Danielle S. McNamara
2022. Computational linguistics and discourse complexology: Paradigms and research methods. Russian Journal of Linguistics 26:2 ► pp. 275 ff.
Tamaredo, Iván
2018. Pronoun omission in high-contact varieties of English. English World-Wide. A Journal of Varieties of English 39:1 ► pp. 85 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 18 march 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.