Part of
Language Complexity: Typology, contact, changeEdited by Matti Miestamo, Kaius Sinnemäki and Fred Karlsson
[Studies in Language Companion Series 94] 2008
► pp. 109–131
Edited by Matti Miestamo, Kaius Sinnemäki and Fred Karlsson
[Studies in Language Companion Series 94] 2008
► pp. 109–131
How complex are isolating languages?
How complex are isolating languages? The Compensation Hypothesis suggests that isolating languages make up for simpler morphology with greater complexity in other domains, such as syntax and semantics. This paper provides detailed argumentation against the Compensation Hypothesis. A cross-linguistic experiment measuring the complexity of compositional semantics shows that isolating languages rely more heavily on simple Associational Semantics, in which the interpretation of a combined expression is maximally vague or underdifferentiated, anything having to do with the interpretations of the constituent parts. In addition, it is argued that such vagueness is not necessarily resolved via recourse to context and a more complex pragmatics. Thus, it is concluded that isolating languages may indeed be of greater overall simplicity that their non-isolating counterparts.
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2023. Exploring the complexity of natural languages: A fuzzy evaluative perspective on Greenberg universals. AIMS Mathematics 9:1 ► pp. 2181 ff.
Do-Hurinville, Danh Thành
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Do-Hurinville, Danh-Thành & Huy-Linh Dao
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Do-Hurinville, Danh-Thành & Huy-Linh Dao
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Gil, David
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Gil, David
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Gil, David
2021. Tense–aspect–mood marking, language-family size and the evolution of predication. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 376:1824
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2019. How Grammar Introduces Asymmetry Into Cognitive Structures: Compositional Semantics, Metaphors, and Schematological Hybrids. Frontiers in Psychology 10
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2021. Metaphors: the evolutionary journey from bidirectionality to unidirectionality. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 376:1824
Jantunen, Tommi
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Kilarski, Marcin & Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk
Polinsky, Maria
2023. Experimental syntax and linguistic fieldwork. In The Oxford Handbook of Experimental Syntax, ► pp. 97 ff.
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2019. Dialect Typology: Recent Advances. In Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, ► pp. 1 ff.
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2022. Computational linguistics and discourse complexology: Paradigms and research methods. Russian Journal of Linguistics 26:2 ► pp. 275 ff.
Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt & Melanie Röthlisberger
2019. World Englishes from the Perspective of Dialect Typology. In The Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes, ► pp. 534 ff.
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