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<p>Joseph (and others),</p>
<p>My work on this subject over the last decade or so has been
strictly bottom-up and inductive. I did not embark on it in order
to support some kind of hypothesis relating complexity in the
grammatical and socio-political domains. My interests were
originally purely descriptive/typological; my goals were to
measure the degree to which thematic roles were grammaticalized in
different languages (the description), and to try and relate this
to other linguistic features (the typology). It was only when I
was well into the project that I noticed — to my surprise — that
the degree of grammaticalization of thematic roles, representing
one aspect of grammatical complexity, seems to correlate with
"language size", big languages exhibiting greater
grammaticalization than smaller ones. One of my focuses since
that realization was to try and define exactly what the factors
were that made a language "big" or "small". At first I went with
population size, which worked kind of okay. But then I wondered
whether the relevant factors may be more qualitative than
quantitative — which took me to Palauan: "small" in population
size, but "big" as a language of a nation state. The results of
the experiment pointed clearly towards the latter hypothesis,
namely that Palauan worked like a "big" language, i.e. it was
being a national language that counted, not simply the number of
speakers. I am still working on trying to come up with the best
definition of socio-political complexity, which will be one
satisfying the following two criteria (a) it provides the best fit
with the experimental results, i.e. the best predictions with
respect to the degree of grammaticalization of thematic roles, and
(b) it provides a plausible basis for an causal account for why
the correlation should exist. So far, a combination of national /
minority language and (within the latter) "greater social
hierarchy" are the best I've been able to come up with. But if
you can suggest a criterion other than "greater social hierarchy"
that does a better job, I'll happily consider it.</p>
<p>With regard to your second point, I am certainly not making
claims about "wholesale" or global grammatical complexity; I am
only talking about complexity with respect to one particular
grammatical feature, albeit a pretty central one, namely
complexity of thematic role assignment, as manifest in the extent
to which different languages allow for varying degrees of
specification / underspecification of distinctions such as
agent/patient, core/oblique, and so forth. This is why I do not
consider my results as being in contradiction to those of
Trudgill, Dahl, McWhorter, who argue — convincingly, to my mind —
for an inverse correlation between language size and complexity in
other, quite different grammatical domains.</p>
<p>David<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 02/10/2018 09:18, Joseph Brooks
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CALTG=9FQP4e7S4RdDoNzuuKSmDSDhQXXrwvuPfwmJRZqnoffBA@mail.gmail.com">
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<div dir="ltr">Hi David, Martin, and others,
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I don't quite understand why those four criteria are
enough to get us to something we would want to describe in
terms of sociopolitical <i>complexity.</i> In particular I
wonder about assuming that 'greater social hierarchy'
necessarily means 'greater social complexity'... Thinking
for ex of societal structures and institutions in many
acephalous, minimally hierarchical societies in New Guinea
(which btw are not also not necessarily hunter-gatherer
societies, but also include subsistence agriculturalists for
instance). You have things like the men's house, the clan
system and its relationship to land tenure rights, exchange
relations, kinship, ancestral codes of laws, among other
things. So I am wondering what the grounds would be for not
taking those things into account, where sociopolitical
complexity is concerned.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Separately I am having a hard time seeing how languages
can be considered, in a wholesale sense, as being at
intermediate vs advanced stages of complexity. It makes
sense to me that particular structures and areas of grammar
would tend to be more or less complex, in a way that
corresponds to certain social factors (small pop size,
social hierarchies, presence/absence of the written medium,
etc), but not whole languages. Perhaps it's only the latter
idea, and not the former, that was intended?</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Cheers,</div>
<div>Joseph</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
David Gil
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
Email: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:gil@shh.mpg.de">gil@shh.mpg.de</a>
Office Phone (Germany): +49-3641686834
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816
</pre>
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