ArticlePloS one2024
Linguistic correlates of societal variation: A quantitative analysis.
Article in PloS one, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Swearing as a catalyst of technological development.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Contact and complexity in English varieties: The influence of speaker numbers on syntheticity and grammaticity.PloS one · 2026Article
- Assessing the Role of Socio-Demographic Triggers on Kolmogorov-Based Complexity in Spoken English Varieties.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- The cognitive science of language diversity: achievements and challenges.Cognitive processing · 2025Review
- How (and why) languages became more complex as we evolved more prosocial: the human self-domestication view.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Editorial: The adaptive value of languages: non-linguistic causes of language diversity, volume II.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Societies of strangers do not speak less complex languages.Science advances · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
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Abstract
Traditionally, many researchers have supported a uniformitarian view whereby all languages are of roughly equal complexity, facilitated by internal trade-offs between complexity at different levels, such as morphology and syntax. The extent to which the speakers' societies influence the trade-offs has not been well studied. In this paper, we focus on morphology and syntax, and report significant correlations between specific linguistic and societal features, in particular those relating to exoteric (open) vs. esoteric (close-knit) society types, characterizable in terms of population size, mobility, communication across distances, etc. We conduct an exhaustive quantitative analysis drawing upon WALS, D-Place, Ethnologue and Glottolog, finding some support for our hypothesis that languages spoken by exoteric societies tend towards more complex syntaxes, while languages spoken by esoteric societies tend towards more complex morphologies.
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Registered trials
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