AUTHOR=McElvenny James TITLE=Language Complexity in Historical Perspective: The Enduring Tropes of Natural Growth and Abnormal Contact JOURNAL=Frontiers in Communication VOLUME=6 YEAR=2021 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/communication/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2021.621712 DOI=10.3389/fcomm.2021.621712 ISSN=2297-900X ABSTRACT=

Focusing on the work of John McWhorter and, to a lesser extent, Peter Trudgill, this paper critically examines some common themes in language complexity research from the perspective of intellectual history. The present-day conception that increase in language complexity is somehow a “natural” process which is disturbed under the “abnormal” circumstances of language contact is shown to be a recapitulation of essentially Romantic ideas that go back to the beginnings of disciplinary linguistics. A similar genealogy is demonstrated for the related notion that grammatical complexity is a kind of “ornament” on language, surplus to the needs of “basic communication.” The paper closes by examining the implications of these ideas for linguistic scholarship.