This book presents a challenge to the widely-held assumption that human languages are both similar and constant in their degree of complexity. For a hundred yea

Complexity of grammatical structure has become a center of interest in recent typological and dialectological research. The contributions of the present volume

This book is about dynamical, social-interactional aspects of the emergence of complexity in language, explained by linguists, cognitivists, and modelers.

Linguistic complexity is one of the currently most hotly debated notions in linguistics. The essays in this volume reflect the intricacies of thinking about the

"A work of enormous breadth, likely to pleasantly surprise both general readers and experts."—New York Times Book Review This revolutionary book provides fres