COMPLEXITY IN ISOLATING LANGUAGES

SOME CHALLENGES

UMBERTO ANSALDO & NADINE OTTING THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG

UANSALDO@GMAIL.COM

OUTLINE 1.  Diversity 2.  Complexity and isolating languages 3.  Methodological issues

MESSAGE ①  Understanding diversity is crucial to appreciate the

nature of human languages ②  A complexity approach asks fundamental questions

about the nature of HL ③  Mapping where different different grammatical operations

are processed in the brain leads to a better understanding of diversity and complexity

DOMAIN OF INQUIRY I: THE LANGUAGE FACULTY Before: Language as innate, specifically human set of hard-wired operations (Chomsky) Later: Language as a non-specific, learned set of skills based on general cognitive operations (Tomasello)

No critical period

No limited input

Now: Merge

Now: No language universals (Evans & Levinson 2009 BBS)

Now: Language affects brain patterns (Tan et al. 2008 PNAS)

SO… Chomsky is right Chomsky is wrong

Language many languages

Diversity??? Diversity!!!

DOMAIN OF INQUIRY II: LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY Monogenesis: all modern human languages derive from one and the same ‘dialect’ à Monogenesis is important because it links to the evolution of modern humans à  How does linguistic diversity come about?

OUT OF AFRICA

THE ROLE OF COMPLEXITY Evolution of human language: monogenesis or parallel evolution? If monogenesis: must all human languages be of equal complexity? If they are not, what does it mean?

1-Sapiens 2-Neanderthal 3-Early hominids

WHAT IS COMPLEXITY?

Complexity

consisting of many interrelated

parts

(absolute) complexity

being difficult to understand

difficulty/relative

complexity

“In general, complexity may be characterized as the number and variety of elements and the elaborateness of their interrelational structure.”

Sinnemäki (2011: 16) “[T]he conventional wisdom holds that all languages are of equal overall complexity; yet at the same time, most linguists seem to believe that the notion of overall complexity is somehow incoherent or ill-defined. However, these two views are clearly mutually contradictory: if you do not have an explicit and well-defined metric of complexity, you cannot go around saying that all languages must be of equal complexity[…].”

(Gil 2008: 130)

NOR can you go around saying that they are not!

LANGUAGES OF VARYING COMPLEXITY? If modern human languages vary in overall degrees of complexity:

> ecological factors? > evolutionary layers?

> parallel evolution?

THE MORPHOLOGICAL CYCLE

Isolating

Agglutinative Fusional

ISOLATING (ANALYTIC) LANGUAGES Analytic languages: 1.  Lack of overt bound grammatical marking 2.  No obligatory morphology

à  Surface simplicity

à  Hidden complexity?

Tonal typology?

Tone and intonation Distributed processing

Affects processing (Xu et al. 2006, HBM)

THE ISOLATING PROTOLANGUAGE HYPOTHESIS Morphology as consequence of language use: Affixal morphology < agglutination of free words Morphophonemic alternations < morphologization of regular phonological processes.

Crucial question:

Does history recapitulate evolution?

Is morphology unnecessary?

AN ISOLATING PROTOLANGUAGE

Ø  Grammaticalization (Meillet, Heine) Ø  Naked UG (Bickerton) Ø  Early human language as isolating (and monocategorial)

(Gil, Fitch) Ø  Morphological evolution as a sign of maturity (Dahl)

PROBLEMS WITH MORPHOLOGY

²  Classic position: Morphology is difficult to acquire for adults

²  Associated hypothesis: Morphology facilitates acquisition for children

²  ALSO

²  Joseph & Janda 1988: Grammar is morphocentric – the brain prefers morphological analysis

²  BUT

²  Morphology can be semantically redundant (AGR, Tense) (Ansaldo 2009)

²  Morphology can be acoustically elusive (Ansaldo 2009)

ABOUT SEMANTIC COMPLEXITY §  Follow the suggestion of hidden complexity (Bisang) §  Is there a trade-off between grammatical overt marking

and semantic simplicity? §  Ansaldo et al. 2015 compare finite and small clauses in

Mandarin Chinese §  Suggest a higher and more distributed activation in

processing of Mandarin small clauses

NEURAL BASIS FOR PROCESSING HIDDEN COMPLEXITY AS INDEXED BY SMALL AND FINITE CLAUSES IN MANDARIN CHINESE (J OF NEUROLINGUISTCS)

A number of brain regions such as the left middle temporal gyrus, medial frontal gyrus, inferior and superior frontal gyrus, fusiform gyrus, and inferiorparietal lobule were found to subserve the processing of sentences with both finite clause taking verbs and small clause-taking verbs. Crucially, the smallclause-taking verbs elicited greater activation for small clause-taking verbs in regions including left nucleus caudate (x=-20, y=14, z=16), left middle temporal gyrus (BA21, x=-40, y=-40,z=0), right supramarginal gyrus (BA40; x=45, y=-48, z=34), cingulate gyrus (BA 32; x=13, y=16, z=38), thalamus, and SMA (x=10, y=35, z=40).

A- SC vs bl B- FC vs bl C- SC vs FC

METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGES 1.  Intra-language comparison: processing of what look

identical structures but require different interpretative frames

2.  Inter-language comparison: processing of overtly different, i.e. non-comparable features, e.g.: 1.  Tone vs. intonation 2.  AGR vs. ‘zero’ 3.  Tense vs. Aspect

REFLECTIONS •  We need to know more about how and where non-overt

grammatical categories are processed •  We need to develop accepted materials to compare

processing of semantic categories cross-linguistically •  It is too early to talk about anything but local complexity

•  But it seems worth talking about complexity