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Zusatztext Interesting and provocative. Informationen zum Autor Geoffrey Sampson is Professor of Natural Language Computing at the University of Sussex. He has held positions at SOAS and LSE and at the universities of Oxford, Lancaster, and Leeds, where he was Professor of Linguistics from 1985-1990. His recent books include Empirical Linguistics and The 'Language Instinct' Debate (Continuum 2001 and 2005), and Love Songs of Early China (Shaun Tyas, 2006). David Gil is Scientific Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. He has held positions at UCLA, the University of Tel Aviv, and at the National University of Singapore. He is co-editor of The World Atlas of Language Structure (OUP, 2005) and author of numerous articles in journals such as Linguistic Inquiry and Linguistics. Peter Trudgill is Professor Emeritus of English Linguistics at the University of Fribourg. He previously held chairs at the Universities of Lausanne, Essex, and Reading. He is also Adjunct Professor at La Trobe University, Adjunct Professor at Agder University, and Honorary Professor at the University of East Anglia. His books include Dialects in Contact (Blackwell, 1986), Sociolinguistics (fourth edition, Penguin 2000), and New-dialect formation: on the inevitability of colonial Englishes (Edinburgh, 2004). Klappentext 0 Zusammenfassung This fascinating book challenges the idea that languages are equally complex. Eighteen scholars look at evidence from a wide range of times and places. They consider the links between linguistic structure and change and social complexity. Their conclusions challenge conventional ideas about the nature of language and contemporary theory. Inhaltsverzeichnis 1: Geoffrey Sampson: A Linguistic Axiom Challenged 2: David Gil: How Much grammar Does it Take to Sail a Boat? 3: Walter Bisang: On the Evolution of Complexity - Sometimes Less is More in East and Mainland Southeast Asia 4: Ã?sten Dahl: Testing the Assumption of Complexity Invariance: The Case of Elfdalian and Swedish 5: Benedikt Szmrecsanyi and Bernd Kortmann: Between Simplification and Complexification: Non-standard Varieties of English Around the World 6: Matti Miestamo: Implicational Hierarchies and Grammatical Complexity 7: Peter Trudgill: Sociolinguistic Typology and Complexification 8: Johanna Nichols: Linguistic Complexity: A Comprehensive Definition and Survey 9: Kaius Sinnemÿki: Complexity in Core Argument Marking and Population Size 10: John McWhorter: Oh noo!: A Bewilderingly Multifunctional Saramaccan Word Teaches us How a Creole Language Develops Complexity 11: Utz Maas: Orality Versus Literacy as a Dimension of Complexity 12: Ngoni Chipere: Individual Differences in Processing complex Grammatical Structures 13: Fred Karlsson: Origin and Maintenance of Clausal Embedding Complexity 14: Ljiljana Progovac: Layering of Grammar: Vestiges of Protosyntax in Present-day Languages 15: Geoffrey Sampson: An Interview With Dan Everett 16: EugÃ(c)nie Stapert: Universals in Language or Cognition? Evidence from English Languae Acquisition and from Pirahã 17: Guy Deutscher: "Overall Complexity" - a Wild Goose Chase? 18: John A. Hawkins: An Efficiency Theory of Complexity and Related Phenomena 19: The Editors: Envoi References Index ...
