Defining complexity: Historical reconstruction and Nyulnyulan subordination

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dc.citation.journalTitleRice Working Papers in Linguistics
dc.citation.volumeNumber1
dc.contributor.authorBowern, Claire
dc.contributor.orgLinguistics Department
dc.date.accessioned2009-02-11T22:40:05Z
dc.date.available2009-02-11T22:40:05Z
dc.date.issued2009-02-11
dc.description.abstractI use data from subordination strategies in Nyulnyulan languages (Non-Pama-Nyungan, Northern Australia) in order to investigate various alternative means of defining and quantifying 'complexity'. While Edmonds (1999) defines 48 distinct types of complexity (concentrating on social and natural sciences), in this paper I concentrate on three facets of complexity: descriptive complexity, ontological complexity, and parsimony in reconstruction. While historical linguists tend to maximise parsimony, in Nyulnyulan languages the minimization of one aspect of complexity necessarily adds complication elsewhere, and it therefore serves as an appropriate case study of the interdependencies between ontology, syntactic modelling, and language change.
dc.identifier.citationBowern, Claire. "Defining complexity: Historical reconstruction and Nyulnyulan subordination." <i>Rice Working Papers in Linguistics,</i> 1, (2009) Rice University: <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/1911/21848">https://hdl.handle.net/1911/21848</a>.
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1911/21848
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisherRice University
dc.rightsThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/
dc.subject.keywordlinguistics
dc.subject.keywordlanguage
dc.subject.keywordcomplexity
dc.subject.keywordsubordination
dc.subject.keywordNyulnyulan
dc.subject.keyworddiachrony
dc.subject.keywordlanguage change
dc.titleDefining complexity: Historical reconstruction and Nyulnyulan subordination
dc.typeJournal article
dc.type.dcmiText
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