Complex Processes in New Languages
Published on 17. December 2009
Book
Hardback
409 pages
978-90-272-5257-9 (ISBN)
Description
In recent years, there has been a new interest in evaluating 'complex' structures in languages. The implications of such studies are varied, e.g., the distinction between supposedly more complex and less complex languages, how complexity relates to human knowledge of language, and the role of the reduction or increase of complexity in language change and creolization. This book focuses on the latter issue, but the conclusions presented here hold of typological 'complexity' in general. The chapters in this book show that the notion of complexity as conceived of in linguistics mainly centres on the outer manifestations of language (e.g., numbers of affixes). This exercise is useful in establishing the patterning of languages in terms of their degrees of analyticity or synthesis, but it fails to address the properties of the inner rules of these grammars, and how these relate to the computational system that governs the human language capacity. Put simply, issues of complexity should not be equated with the complexity observed in surface patterns of grammars alone.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Amsterdam
Netherlands
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 245 mm
Width: 164 mm
Weight
895 gr
ISBN-13
978-90-272-5257-9 (9789027252579)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Enoch O. Aboh | Norval Smith
Complex Processes in New Languages
E-Book
12/2009
1st Edition
John Benjamins Publishing Company
€130.99
Available for download
Persons
Content
1. Acknowledgments; 2. Simplicity, simplification, complexity and complexification: Where have the interfaces gone? (by Aboh, Enoch O.); 3. Part I. Morpho-phonology; 4. Initial vowel agglutination in the Gulf of Guinea creoles (by Hagemeijer, Tjerk); 5. Simplification of a complex part of grammar or not?: What happened to KiKoongo nouns in Saramaccan? (by Smith, Norval); 6. Reducing phonological complexity and grammatical opaqueness: Old Tibetan as a lingua franca and the development of the modern Tibetan varieties (by Zeisler, Bettina); 7. Part II. Verbal morphology; 8. Verb allomorphy and the syntax of phases (by Veenstra, Tonjes); 9. The invisible hand in creole genesis: Reanalysis in the formation of Berbice Dutch (by Kouwenberg, Silvia); 10. Complexification or regularization of paradigms: The case of prepositional verbs in Solomon Islands Pijin (by Jourdan, Christine); 11. Part III. Nominals; 12. The Mauritian Creole determiner system: A historical overview (by Guillemin, Diana); 13. Demonstratives in Afrikaans and Cape Dutch Pidgin: A first attempt (by Besten, Hans den); 14. Part IV. The selection of features in complex morphology; 15. Contact, complexification and change in Mindanao Chabacano structure (by Grant, Anthony P.); 16. Morphosyntactic finiteness as increased complexity in a mixed negation system (by Slomanson, Peter); 17. Contact language formation in evolutionary terms (by Ansaldo, Umberto); 18. Part V. Evaluating simplification and complexification; 19. Economy, innovation and degrees of complexity in creole formation (by Baptista, Marlyse); 20. Competition and selection: That's all! (by Aboh, Enoch O.); 21. Complexity and the age of languages (by Ansaldo, Umberto); 22. Part VI. Postscript; 23. Restructuring, hybridization, and complexity in language evolution (by Mufwene, Salikoko S.); 24. Language index; 25. Subject index