The Monastic Rules of Visigothic Iberia - eTheses Repository ...

cycle, or rather whether languages can be attributed lifespans or periods of gestation. In
essence, are some languages more „mature‟ than others? This is a fiendish debate, often
reliant upon principles of perceived grammatical complexity, on which work still continues
(see Dahl 2004; Miestamo, Sinnemaki & Karlsson 2008: 7-9). It also begs the issue of what
constitutes complexity? A comparatively simple morphological system does not necessarily
mean that the language might not have additional complexities elsewhere where others do
not. For example, the verbal system in Mandarin is extremely transparent when compared to
Indo-European languages because it has no morphological tenses. It does, however, have a
complicated tonal system that is absent in Indo-European.
Kusters (2003b: 5-6), in a study concerning the social impetus behind historical
language change, offered an interesting analogy. He suggested that languages be likened to
forests; whilst one forest might be ancient and a mixture of breeds of trees and flowers, dense
and thick, the other might be planted artificially with uniform and spacious lines of the same
breed of tree. At first sight, the former might appear to be the most complex, but both would
contain similar amounts of biodiversity. Whilst some animals might prefer the dense
vegetation of the former, others will prefer the latter. Indeed, many who function better in
the former might find it difficult to survive in the latter.
As such, “complexity is not a simple predicate attributable to language but a relation
between two entities: a language and someone who evaluates a language” (2003b: 6). The
first issue with linking the decline of Rome with the decline of its language, then, is that
different cultures. A pidgin normally has an unnaturally limited grammar and vocabulary, depending
on the demands of its use; see Winford (2003:268-314).
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