Two researchers investigated over 2,000 of the world’s languages to examine the relationship between morphological characteristics such as the number of declensions and verb endings and the number of speakers and size of the location where the language is spoken.
The study revealed that as languages grew in influence in terms of the number of speakers and geographical range, they tended to decrease in morphological complexity. In other words, “languages simplify as they spread.” Widely adopted languages such as Mandarin Chinese and English are relatively simple – from a morphological standpoint – in comparison to more isolated languages such as those of the indigenous peoples of South America.
Researchers hypothesized that certain languages grew more complex over time 1) to aid children in learning and understanding the language or 2) to improve efficiency and clarity of verbal expression.
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