Measuring Grammatical Complexity.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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Introduction / Frederick J. Newmeyer and Laurel B. Preston -- Major contributions from formal linguistics to the complexity debate / John A. Hawkins -- Sign languages, creoles, and the development of predication / David Gil -- What you can say without syntax: a hierarchy of grammatical complexity / Ray Jackendoff and Eva Wittenberg -- Degrees of complexity in syntax: a view from evolution / Ljiljana Progovac -- Complexity in comparative syntax: the view from modern parametric theory / Theresa Biberauer, Ian Roberts, Michelle Sheehan, and Anders Holmberg -- The complexity of narrow syntax: minimalism, representational economy, and simplest merge / Andreas Trotzke and Jan-Wouter Zwart -- Constructions, complexity, and word order variation / Peter W. Culicover -- Complexity trade-offs: a case study / Kaius Sinnemaki -- The importance of exhaustive description in measuring linguistic complexity: the case of English try and pseudocoordination / Daniel Ross -- Cross-linguistic comparison of complexity measures in phonological systems / Steven Moran and Damian Blasi -- The measurement of semantic complexity: how to get by if your language lacks generalized quantifiers / Lisa Matthewson -- Computational complexity in the brain / Cristiano Chesi and Andrea Moro -- Looking for a 'gold standard' to measure language complexity: what psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics can (and cannot) offer to formal linguistics / Lise Menn and Cecily Jill Duffield.

This book examines the question of whether languages can differ in grammatical complexity and, if so, how relative complexity differences might be measured. Chapters approach the question from the point of view of formal grammatical theory, psycholinguistics, and neurolinguistics, and take phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics into account.

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