How complex are isolating languages?

Gil, David

doi:10.1075/slcs.94.08gil

Part of

Language Complexity: Typology, contact, change
Edited by Matti Miestamo, Kaius Sinnemäki and Fred Karlsson
[Studies in Language Companion Series 94] 2008
► pp. 109–131

How complex are isolating languages?

David Gil

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.

Published online: 6 February 2008

https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.94.08gil

Cited by

Cited by 15 other publications

Bacelar Valente, Mario

2022. Do All Languages Share the Same Conceptual Structure?. Cognitive Semantics 8:2 ► pp. 159 ff.

Do-Hurinville, Danh Thành

2014. Complexité dans une langue isolante : exemple du vietnamien. Nouvelles perspectives en sciences sociales 9:1 ► pp. 239 ff.

Gil, David

2012. Where does predication come from?. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 57:2 ► pp. 303 ff.

2020. Chapter 1. What does it mean to be an isolating language?. In Austronesian Undressed [Typological Studies in Language, 129], ► pp. 9 ff.

2021. Tense–aspect–mood marking, language-family size and the evolution of predication. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 376:1824

2023. Bare and Constructional Compositionality. International Journal of Primatology

Gil, David & Yeshayahu Shen

2019. How Grammar Introduces Asymmetry Into Cognitive Structures: Compositional Semantics, Metaphors, and Schematological Hybrids. Frontiers in Psychology 10

2021. Metaphors: the evolutionary journey from bidirectionality to unidirectionality. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 376:1824

Jantunen, Tommi

2013. Ellipsis in Finnish Sign Language. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 36:3 ► pp. 303 ff.

Kilarski, Marcin & Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk

2012. On extremes in linguistic complexity. Historiographia Linguistica 39:2-3 ► pp. 279 ff.

Röthlisberger, Melanie & Benedikt Szmrecsanyi

2019. Dialect Typology: Recent Advances. In Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, ► pp. 1 ff.

2020. Dialect Typology: Recent Advances. In Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, ► pp. 131 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.

Szmrecsanyi, Benedikt & Melanie Röthlisberger

2019. World Englishes from the Perspective of Dialect Typology. In The Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes, ► pp. 534 ff.

[no author supplied]

2021. A History of the Study of the Indigenous Languages of North America [Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, 129],

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.