Are all languages equally grammatically complex?

Guest   Tue Oct 30, 2007 6:00 pm GMT
<<Maybe it's just because English is my native language, but I've always found word order way easier than inflections.>>>

In themselves I don't think cases and inflections should necessarily be any more complicated than word order and prepositions. However I think there is a major difference and that is that morphology leaves open the possibility of many irregularities in a way word order and prepositional usage don't.
furrykef   Tue Oct 30, 2007 6:34 pm GMT
<< Nearly all languages have some kind of clefting or focussing construction that brings one part of the sentence to the front to emphasize it, eg. "It's him that ate my homework," as opposed to "He ate my homework.". Lojban speakers would likely feel the need for an analogous construction (not to mention the substrate influence from their L2 Lojban-speaking parents), but would soon find that the roles played by different words were ambiguous once the order was changed. >>

Lojban allows clefting, too. The way it's done is by using cmavo (function words) that mean things like "switch the first and the second argument". So even exceptions to the syntax are expressed consistently in terms of the syntax, in a regular and predictable manner.

Anyway, I guess your argument boils down to the idea that "complexity" is largely meaningless or, at the least, not useful. So rather than saying "all languages are equally complex", it's better to say "Complexity is difficult to define and not a useful measure"?

- Kef
furrykef   Tue Oct 30, 2007 8:00 pm GMT
Heh, I don't even understand why somebody would use that argument. I view complexity as a bad thing. Complexity does not equal expressiveness. Complexity can be fascinating and fun, as it is for me in learning Japanese, but it can't make a language better in and of itself.

- Kef
Rodrigo   Tue Oct 30, 2007 9:35 pm GMT
I agree that a language with a fixed strucuture wouldn't last for long. We usually change word order for sonority, rhythm or rhyme and sooner or later a language spoken by humans with feelings will break from fixed structures. Personally I feel limited when writing creative pieces in English because either I do not know them or there are less complex structures. I love using structures different from SVO and opening millions of commas. Using simple structures make languages easy but BORING, I read a book which always used sentences like "She missed her family. They were far away. She was lonely" I almost fell asleep! And we also make languages harder on purpose, to avoid others understanding secrets e.g. cockney, euphemisms, similes etc.
K. T.   Tue Oct 30, 2007 10:49 pm GMT
"greg, you do know I just skip your posts, right?"

Eventually, I imagine that you'll be able to read his posts. Just ask him to write you in Spanish. I'm pretty sure he can handle it.
Guest   Tue Oct 30, 2007 10:56 pm GMT
Greg's Spanish is pretty bad, I prefer he to write in French.
K. T.   Tue Oct 30, 2007 11:11 pm GMT
Really? I didn't know. I just read that he could manage to do so in one thread. He didn't actually write in Spanish. Oh well, I tried to help foster understanding here, but...
furrykef   Wed Oct 31, 2007 12:19 am GMT
<< I read a book which always used sentences like "She missed her family. They were far away. She was lonely" I almost fell asleep! >>

I have a Spanish book like that called Easy Spanish Reader. It is indeed easy to read, but I can't STAND reading it because the writing is so horribly dull. Making things easy to read does not have to mean making them boring. Here is the height of dramatic tension in the book, in a section that discusses the end of Montezuma:

"El pueblo azteca estaba tan enfurecido por la cobardía de su emperador que le tiró piedras. Una de estas piedras le dio al emperador en la frente y causó una herida grave. Algunos días después, Cortés mató al pobre emperador."

Question: Who wants to read that garbage? It reads like a history textbook! I doubt even historians like reading history textbooks. There could have been dramatic tension. We could have seen it from Montezuma's point of view. We could have wondered what was going to happen to Montezuma. Was he going to make it? But no. All that dramatic potential was wasted.

<< I just read that he could manage to do so in one thread. He didn't actually write in Spanish. >>

If I recall, I once wrote to greg in Spanish in the hopes that he couldn't read it. He responded back in Spanish.

- Kef
K. T.   Wed Oct 31, 2007 12:42 am GMT
Just use Spanish with him.
Guest   Wed Oct 31, 2007 1:20 am GMT
<<Greg's Spanish is pretty bad, I prefer he to write in French. >>

His Spanish is a whole heck of a lot better than mine. I personally find reading his occasional Spanish posts easier than reading his French posts. The big problem comes when he posts in German, which brings us back on topic for this thread -- the relaive complexity of languages:

Sometimes they say that German is "English on steroids", in terms of complexity. With all its irregularity and morphological complexity, surely it must be more complex overall than English (except for spelling, I suppose, but then a messy writing system isn't supposed to count towards the complexity of a language). What aras of English are complex enough to offset the irregularities in German?
Herbist   Wed Oct 31, 2007 8:50 am GMT
Herbist
<<<Polish is by far more complex than French - I think also that there are languages simpler than others.... >>>
Guest
<<<herbist it depends on your mother tongue but for instance French verbs are much harder than the polish ones. >>>>
greg
<<<.... le français oral est morphologiquement plus "simple" que l'anglais parlé. >>

I agree with greg that oral French is simpler than oral English. Compared to the even more complex Polish, oral French verbs are very simple, comparable to Spanish. Polish verbs are inflected according to gender as well as person and number. I think this is a big plus for French in many ways to be simple and analytic. It is still a mystery why modern languages like French, Spanish or English tend to be simpler than the more archaic and complex languages like Polish, Russian, Greek, German or Latin.
furrykef   Wed Oct 31, 2007 10:04 am GMT
<< I agree with greg that oral French is simpler than oral English. >>

Is it? I imagine all that elision and liaison would be difficult to learn unless it's reflected in the writing system (which it thankfully is).

- Kef
Guest   Wed Oct 31, 2007 10:52 am GMT
I'm not French but I have to say that even if oral french is easier than the other romance languages (it has fewer noun and verb declensions) it's harder than English. Take a look at the past tense I, you, he/she we you they took = je/tu/il/ elles prenè nous prenions vous preniez English has just one form French has three different forms and this occurs in all tenses and moods. Probably oral plurals are harder in English than in French
olaszinho   Wed Oct 31, 2007 11:02 am GMT
"I doubt even historians like reading history textbooks. There could have been dramatic tension. We could have seen it from"

History is one of my favourite subjects.. I lover reading history textbooks even in spanish Why not??! As you can notice tastes differ
Guest   Wed Oct 31, 2007 1:10 pm GMT
>>I agree with greg that oral French is simpler than oral English. Compared to the even more complex Polish, oral French verbs are very simple, comparable to Spanish<<

So does that mean that the French only really learn the grammar of their language once they learn to write? And I assume at one time the inflections must have been more clearly pronounced?