Complexity trade-offs and equi-complexity in natural languages: a meta-analysis

Abstract

In linguistics, there is little consensus on how to define, measure, and compare complexity across languages. We propose to take the diversity of viewpoints as a given, and to capture the complexity of a language by a vector of measurements, rather than a single value. We then assess the statistical support for two controversial hypotheses: the trade-off hypothesis and the equi-complexity hypothesis. We furnish meta-analyses of 28 complexity metrics applied to texts written in overall 80 typologically diverse languages. The trade-off hypothesis is partially supported, in the sense that around one third of the significant correlations between measures are negative. The equi-complexity hypothesis, on the other hand, is largely confirmed. While we find evidence for complexity differences in the domains of morphology and syntax, the overall complexity vectors of languages turn out virtually indistinguishable.