Abstract
Abstract A widely accepted presupposition among linguists is that language structure has nothing to do with its geographical or sociocultural setting (e.g. Kaye 1989: 48).1 However, this claim has not been supported by empirical evidence. On the contrary, there seems to be a growing body of evidence indicating a relationship between, for example, structural complexity of language and its geographical or sociocultural setting. Nichols (1992), for one, has argued that morphological complexity varies geographically. Perkins (1992) has argued that grammatical complexity of deictic categories correlates negatively with cultural complexity. Sociolinguistic aspects of the speech community have also been suggested as causing complexity variation (Nettle 1999; Kusters 2003; Trudgill 1996b, 2004a, b). This chapter develops the ideas of Johanna Nichols (in Chapter 8 above and other recent writing) by studying whether a specific morphosyntactic area, core argument marking, shows complexity varying with speech community size.
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