Assessing linguistic complexity

Abstract

The question of "linguistic complexity" is interesting and fruitful.Unfortunately, the intuitive meaning of "complexity" is not amenable to formal analysis. This paper discusses some proposed definitions and shows how complexity can be assessed in various frameworks.The results show that, as expected, languages are all about equally "complex," but further that languages can and do differ reliably in their morphological and syntactic complexities along an intuitive continuum.I focus not only on the mathematical aspects of complexitgy, but on the psychological ones. Any claim about "complexity" is inherently 1 about process, including an implicit description of the underlying cognitive machinery. By comparing different measures, one may better understand on human language processing and similarly, understanding psycholinguistics may drive better measures.

The Entropy of Words—Learnability and Expressivity across More than 1000 Languages

“…For example, several recent studies engage in establishing information-theoretic and corpus-based methods for linguistic typology, i.e., classifying and comparing languages according to their information encoding potential [10,[12][13][14][15][16], and how this potential evolves over time [17][18][19]. Similar methods have been applied to compare and distinguish non-linguistic sequences from written language [20,21], though it is controversial whether this helps with more fine-grained distinctions between symbolic systems and written language [22,23].…”

Wortschatz: Theorie, Empirie, Dokumentation

“…Da die Gewichtungen der einzelnen Parameter sowie auch deren Zusammenführung zu einem Gesamtwert sich aus explorativ-experimentellen Studien abgeleitet haben, lässt sich für die Berechnung keine mathematische Formel angeben, höchstens eine pseudoformale Umschreibung des zuvor Gesagten: Where the surface structures (morphology and syntax) of English and German contrast, English regularly exhibits greater ‚distance' between form and meaning in specifiable ways. (Hawkins 1986: 6) 1 Zu Kompressionsstudien siehe auch Juola (2008), zu Komplexitätsausgleichen z. B.…”

The Entropy of Words—Learnability and Expressivity across More Than 1000 Languages

“…For example, several recent studies engage in establishing information-theoretic and corpus-based methods for linguistic typology, i.e. classifying and comparing languages according to their information encoding potential [10,[12][13][14][15][16], and how this potential evolves over time [17][18][19]. Similar methods have been applied to compare and distinguish non-linguistic sequences from written 2 of 34 language [20,21], though it is controversial whether this helps with more fine-grained distinctions between symbolic systems and written language [22,23].…”