A quantitative global test of the complexity trade-off hypothesis: the case of nominal and verbal grammatical marking
Linguistics Vanguard • Vol/Iss. 9(s1) • Walter de Gruyter GmbH • • Published In • Pages: 155-167 •
By Shcherbakova, Olena, Gast, Volker, Blasi, Damian E., Skirgård, Hedvig, Gray, Russell D. , Greenhill, Simon J.
Hypothesis
There is a trade-off of complexity between nominal and verbal domains across languages in a global scale.
Note
Instead, there are lineage-specific results. Austroneasian languages show no relationship and Sino-Tibetan languages show a positive correlation (r = 0.5). Nonetheless, Indo-European languages show an inversely correlation in one of the phylogenies (r = −0.58), meaning that there might be a trade-off between nominal and verbal domains.
| Test Name | Support | Significance | Coefficient | Tail |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bayesian correlation | Not supported | 95% HPD | r = 0.09 | UNKNOWN |
| Variable Name | Variable Type | OCM Term(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Nominal metric | Association | Grammar |
| Verbal metric | Association | Grammar |