Morphological complexity

[Kuchigakatai]

Minor nitpick: wouldn’t this count as morphosyntax, rather than as either of morphology or syntax?

Oh, maybe; I thought that morphosyntax was a subset of syntax (or maybe a partly overlapping set). My terminology may be coming from traditional grammar. Anyways, my point is that, in English you have a rule "the subject precedes the verb and the object follows it," and in Greek you have a rule "the subject is in the nominative and the object is in the accusative," and these rules seem equivalently complex. (This is what I meant by syntax.)

Chomsky talks at length about the syntax involved in case selection while calling it "syntax", so I'd say "syntax" does cover anything in morphosyntax, but I wonder about the opposite. My understanding of that term is that it is a union of anything in the morphology and syntax sets (morphology ∪ syntax, or a "full outer join" in SQL terms), not an intersection of the parts where both are involved (morphology ∩ syntax, or an "inner join" in SQL terms), so I'd say your (aporaporimos) use was correct. But maybe some or many linguists insist in the narrower definition (with an intersection).

Actually, I think I'm right now: the ever-famous Describing Morphosyntax is about both morphology and syntax!

[Whimemsz]

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[Richard W]

Another example: I would argue that the Mandarin system of numerals is simpler than that of English. Mandarin has unique terms for numerals 1 - 10; then 11 - 19 are formed by concatenation "ten one," "ten two," etc; 20 - 29 are "two ten," "two ten one," and so on all the way up to 100, which has another unique term. English, on the other hand, has irregular terms "eleven" and "twelve," then 13 - 19 are formed somewhat irregularly with a suffix, and there's another suffix for multiples of ten 20 - 90, which sounds confusingly similar to the other suffix. French, I'm told, is worse. But these numeral systems all solve the same problem, namely expressing cardinal numbers. There's a difference in complexity of expression that doesn't correspond to a difference in complexity of what's being expressed.

In terms of human thought, I think you're wrong. I think in a very real way, 237 is more complicated than 200 and more complicated than 300. And quite possibly, 'thirteen hundred' is a simpler concept then 'one thousand three hundred', even though we're know the same thing, It's how one thinks about them that matters.

[zompist]

Another example: I would argue that the Mandarin system of numerals is simpler than that of English. Mandarin has unique terms for numerals 1 - 10; then 11 - 19 are formed by concatenation "ten one," "ten two," etc; 20 - 29 are "two ten," "two ten one," and so on all the way up to 100, which has another unique term. English, on the other hand, has irregular terms "eleven" and "twelve," then 13 - 19 are formed somewhat irregularly with a suffix, and there's another suffix for multiples of ten 20 - 90, which sounds confusingly similar to the other suffix.

This is a little unfair, I think. English and Mandarin both use concatenation for 13-99; English just has some phonological simplification going on. Also, Mandarin has two words for '2', and it does have special words for 廿 20, 丗 30, 卌 40. Plus alternative ways of counting like the Heavenly Stems (though of course English has that sort of thing too).

(Despite all that, it's fair to say that Mandarin numerals are more systematic.)

Edit: thinking about this over dinner: of course, we also have a few ways of saying 2 (pair, couple, both), and two words for 12. And just to count things Mandarin throws in an enormous complication, the measure words.

Now, Quechua has a pretty simple number system. (None of the irregularities above, IIRC.)

[Kuchigakatai]

For the record, Ojibwe can't really be described as any of those. It would most accurately be described as basically verb-initial but with new information/indefinites or highly contrastive or topical NPs generally fronted before the verb. (And further rules governing the order of proximates vs. obviatives in direct or inverse clauses, though cases in which two NPs occur in the same clause are extremely rare -- but still, V_[dir]-obv-prox and V_[inv]-prox-obv orders seem to be ungrammatical or questionable.) These tendencies are pan-Algonquian.

So... it has the basic order VS/VO, with possible SV/OV to topicalize or give focus to S/O. (Sure, talking about S/O is Bad when dealing with direct-inverse languages, but still, maybe for the sake of typology we could change "S/O" to "X" for the accompanying core argument here.)

Those syntax topics in your post sound pretty interesting (constrained obliques, constrained subclause marking, weird morphemes that mark things in-between core arguments and applicatives), but maybe I should read more about Ojibwe or similar before asking questions... I sometimes shock conlangers by telling them things about Mandarin grammar (especially those who have never dealt with any highly analytic language like those of East and Southeast Asia), even though to me as a Mandarin learner they seem "basic", or even "obvious" in an isolang. Heck, I remember being fascinated when you told me about the raising of complement subjects to main clause objects in Ojibwe a few weeks ago, incidentally.

[Whimemsz]

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[Kuchigakatai]

Did anyone see what Whimsz posted above this post?

[bradrn]

Did anyone see what Whimsz posted above this post?

Quite a few of his posts seem to have disappeared like that. I wonder why?

[Kuchigakatai]

He quit the forum. ...

[bradrn]

Quite a few of his posts seem to have disappeared like that. I wonder why?

He quit the forum. …

Really‽ I hadn’t seen anything about that. Where did you see this?

[Whimemsz]

I didn't say anything for a reason, and I never told anyone whether I was "quitting the forum", so I would appreciate if people did not put words into my mouth OR try to divine my thinking, and would just leave well enough alone. Thanks. [There's no need to reply to this post either.]

[Kuchigakatai]

I didn't say anything for a reason, and I never told anyone whether I was "quitting the forum", so I would appreciate if people did not put words into my mouth OR try to divine my thinking, and would just leave well enough alone. Thanks. [There's no need to reply to this post either.]

Hmm... okay.

[Kuchigakatai]

Quite a number of tribal languages seem genuinely a lot more morphologically complex than any of those six languages though ...

What a clever post this is and how vast is your reading.

I haven't much to add except to applaud you.

No. It was just a statement of a vague non-confident belief (later I called it a "leaning"), and not a good one at that. The discussion usefully focused on what is complexity at all (Frislander's objection against only focusing on semantics and syntax when homophones are a complexity of their own was particularly interesting for me). Nothing worth applauding. I didn't even cite the paper on Inuktitut parliamentary records I mentioned, as I couldn't (and can't) be bothered to find it again.

I only read the first post to this thread. I didn't read any of the others except that I read the most recent one by Whimmy McWhammy.

'Tis a shame.