Are all languages equally grammatically complex?

There's this theory that all languages have equally complex grammar. Of course, that doesn't mean that all grammars are equally easy to learn, because it's easier to learn grammars that are similar that of a language you already speak. So we're talking about complexity of grammar in itself, not from the perspective of any particular other language.

For instance, Josh Lalonde has argued that a loss of morphological complexity will result in more syntactic complexity. For example, if you lose the case endings of Latin, you have to use more prepositions and the rules of word order become more complicated, which is exactly what happened when Latin became the Romance languages.

But I don't think I agree that a loss of morphological complexity always means an increase of syntactic or other complexity. Here's why not: let's imagine English lost its case distinctions for personal pronouns. "I" becomes "me"; "he" becomes "him"; "she" becomes "her"; "we" becomes "us". Possessives are formed by simply adding 's as with other nouns. We just simplified English, but where's the added complexity?

I went to the store. -> Me went to the store.
I gave my ball to him. -> Me gave me's ball to him.
He gave his ball to me. -> Him gave him's ball to me.
He gave me his ball. -> Him gave me him's ball.

And so on. These are all readily comprehensible without changing word order or adding any prepositions! I think there will be very few sentences where any further changes are required, and it would not be difficult to recognize when such changes would be necessary. Nor would the need to make the change, or what the change should be, be unpredictable or unintuitive. All you have to do is look at the sentence and determine if it is ambiguous, and figure out what to do about it, which is a natural process.

So I don't completely buy into the idea that all grammars are equally complex... however, it's still worth considering that the complexity levels among languages may be more similar than might be first apparent.

Thoughts?

- Kef

I agree, German still uses some cases but word order ist still complex and it has just as many prepositions as English.

But we could definitely make the syntax simpler by adding some inflections. Suppose that we add pronouns right after the first vowel in verbs, and prepend possessive pronouns to their nouns. In addition, mark direct/indirect objects with 'o/'i endings, and add prepositions to the end of nouns. The sentences become:

Me went to the store. -> wement store'to.
Me gave me's ball to him. -> gameve me'ball'o him'i.
Him gave him's ball to me. -> gahimve him'ball'o me'i.
Him gave me him's ball. -> gahimve me'i him'ball'o.

In reality, the inflected words could appear in any order, so the syntax is greatly simplified for these simple sentences.

Those examples don't really resemble English, even though it's formed from English words, which I think obscures the issue. Moreover, just because a language permits any word order doesn't mean that it really is that flexible. For instance, Japanese is definitely an SOV language on the whole even though everything but the verb can technically be placed in any order since it has exactly those sorts of suffixes. (Indeed, by pure coincidence, the sound to mark a direct object is "o"!) If you place them randomly, your speech will be grammatically correct according to the rules, but it will be unnatural, which is still a failure. Moreover, when the words are placed in an unconventional order, the brain has to do more work to interpret them correctly. It may be easy, but it's still more work. For instance, in Star Wars, Yoda speaks English with an OSV syntax, and he's easy to understand because his syntax is consistent enough, but I think he's still a bit harder to understand than everyone else.

- Kef

Certain particles are sometimes left on in casual Japanese, as well, and in that case you have to use SOV order... Also, you have to be careful with the word order even if you use the proper particles because particle usage can sometimes be ambiguous. For instance, が [ga] can mark the object of a verb in potential form (可能形) or the from meaning "to want to ~" (連用形+たい). It can also be ambiguous in other situations, especially with 嫌い (hate) and 好き (like).

For example:

誰が魚が嫌いなの？ Who hates fish?
彼が魚が嫌いなんだ。　He hates fish.

The second sentence is probably a bit unnatural because it repeats 魚 (fish), but it's a good example of how particles still don't make the word order entirely free.

Josh, can you give us some exemples on that?

Is Esperanto as difficult as Polish or French?
I think it's much easier than the other two
so, there are languages simpler than others....
I know Esperanto is an artificial language but it doesn't matter...........

Polish is by far more complex than French - I think also that there are languages simpler than others....

<<Polish is by far more complex than French - I think also that there are languages simpler than others.... >>

Anyone have any idea what the "most complex" language of them all is?

How does Lithuanian compare to Polish in complexity? How complex is Basque? Are there any non-artificial languages simpler than English?

>> How does Lithuanian compare to Polish in complexity? How complex is Basque? Are there any non-artificial languages simpler than English?

Then you may raise the example of Chinese, which is now hardly inflectional. But people still consider Chinese difficult, because of its high dependence on word order.

Being hardly inflectional might mean all those irregularities and exceptions owing to declensions would be non-existent, but that doesn't make a language easier - considering that "complex" or "difficult" is so often related to practical learning.

Maybe it's just because English is my native language, but I've always found word order way easier than inflections.

herbist it depends on your mother tongue but for instance French verbs are much harder than the polish ones.

Josh, you're right, the trouble is that it's difficult to define "complexity". However, I do think that my example is suggestive. An even better example would have been English without irregular verbs. That clearly simplifies the grammar a lot, and doesn't hurt a thing. (I still remember one time as a child when I said "I buyed it!") Just because differences in complexity are difficult to quantify, however, doesn't mean that they don't exist. Also, language acquisition rate in children can be misleading, because there are so many aspects to learning a language that it's also difficult to measure that. Moreover, once children start to understand how language works, their grammar will improve in leaps and bounds all at once. Complexity might simply be no barrier to the child at that stage because the real breakthrough is in realizing how language works. Once the child realizes the puzzle is there, the big pieces fall into place very quickly.

<< I know Esperanto is an artificial language but it doesn't matter........... >>

Actually, in this case it does. Being an artificial language, it didn't have to go through the process of evolution, so it is not subjected to the same laws that natural languages tend to follow.

For a more extreme example, Lojban's grammar and semantics are not similar to any natural language spoken on Earth, but they're still extremely simple, more so than Esperanto, even. (That's why I want to learn Lojban!) Lojban basically puts all of its grammar into word order, but it does it in a way that is simple and consistent. For instance, take the verb "klama". Earlier I mistranslated it as "walk", but it actually means "go" or "come". It's defined as "x1 comes/goes to destination x2 from origin x3 via route x4 using means/vehicle x5". x1 is the subject, and x2 through x5 are the next five words (any of which can and often are omitted). Using Lojban grammar with English words, an example would be something like, "I klama your-house my-house Main-Street my-car", which means "I came to your house from my house via Main Street in my car." This, plus the usage of cmavo (function words), is all there is to Lojban grammar, and unlike with natural languages, it's a simple matter to prove or disprove that a sentence is grammatically correct, even without the help of other speakers of the language. It may take a little while to get used to the system, but what I hear from other Lojbanists is that it all falls in place very quickly because the syntax rules are consistent. Yet this caseless, preposition-less style of grammar just doesn't occur in natural languages as far as I know.

- Kef

furrykef : « There's this theory that all languages have equally complex grammar. »

Déjà il faudrait bien distinguer la grammaire écrite de la grammaire orale — la morphologie en particulier.

Exemple :

français (1) → /ildÃs/ = /ildɑ̃s/ → <il dance>
français (2) → /ildÃs/ = /ildɑ̃s/ → <ils dancent>

anglais (1) → /hi:dA:nsIz/ = /hiːdɑːnsɪz/ → <he dances>
anglais (2) → /DeI_^dA:ns/ = /ðeɪ̯dɑːns/ → <they dance>

Sur ce point très particulier, le français oral est morphologiquement plus "simple" que l'anglais parlé.

<< For instance, take the verb "klama". Earlier I mistranslated it as "walk", but it actually means "go" or "come". >>

I failed to realize that was in a different thread where I made the mistake. Forget it; it doesn't matter.

greg, you do know I just skip your posts, right?

- Kef