complexity (n.)

The general sense of this term is found in LINGUISTICS, with reference to both the FORMAL internal structuring of linguistic UNITS and the psychological difficulty in using or learning them. The factors which contribute to the notion of complexity are a major topic in PSYCHOLINGUISTICS, in studies of both adult COMPREHENSION and PRODUCTION, and of child language ACQUISITION. A central theme is the nature of the interaction between levels of difficulty in cognitive and linguistic STRUCTURES, and especially the way this affects the order of emergence of language patterns in children. However, it has not yet proved feasible to establish independent measures of complexity defined in purely linguistic terms, such as the number of TRANSFORMATIONS in a SENTENCE DERIVATION, or the number of FEATURES in the specification of a linguistic unit, largely because of controversy over the nature of the linguistic measures used, and the interference stemming from other psychological factors, such as the language user’s attention and motivation.

Several restricted senses of complex are also used (mostly contrasting with the term ‘simple’), e.g. ‘complex SENTENCE’ (in two senses: either a sentence consisting of more than one CLAUSE, or one consisting of a main clause and at least one SUBORDINATE clause), ‘complex PREPOSITION’ (a preposition consisting of more than one word), ‘complex word’ (one containing a free MORPHEME and at least one bound morpheme), ‘complex tone’ (an INTONATIONAL NUCLEUS with two distinct PITCH movements), ‘complex stop’ (a PLOSIVE with two points of ARTICULATION), ‘complex nucleus’ (a SYLLABIC peak with two distinct VOWEL qualities), ‘complex SEGMENT’ (a segment with two or more simultaneous oral tract CONSTRICTIONS, in some models of FEATURE theory), and so on. In GENERATIVE GRAMMAR, a ‘complex NP’ is a NOUN PHRASE with a clause as a COMPLEMENT (e.g. the assumption that the engine is working) or ADJUNCT (e.g. the assumption that he made). The ‘complex NP constraint’ in classical transformational grammar states that no element can be extracted out of a complex NP (e.g. *Who did you make the assumption that he liked?) – in other words, such constructions are syntactic ISLANDS.

اخر الاخبار

اخبار العتبة العباسية المقدسة

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المجمع العلمي يقيم الدورة الــ 20 في تعليم أحكام التلاوة لطلبة العلوم الدينية

المزيد

الآخبار الصحية

العلاج بالماء البارد.. باحثون يكشفون فوائده الصحية

من دون صالة رياضية.. عادة بسيطة لتحسين الصحة وخسارة الوزن

لصحة القلب وتفادي السرطان.. استهلك هذا النوع من الطعام

دراسة تحذر من خطر شرب القهوة في أكواب البلاستيك

المزيد

الآخبار التكنلوجية

إنجاز طبي تاريخي.. جراحة قلب بلا شق في الصدر

اليابان.. مراحيض توفر فحص للحالة الصحية عبر "تحليل البراز" !

اختراق واسع لمنصة "إنستغرام".. ونشر بيانات على "الدارك ويب"

علماء يحذرون: هكذا سيفنى كوكب الأرض

المزيد

مواضيع ذات صلة

Morphological aspect

Constituent structure

A typology of word structure

Analyzing position classes

Representing word structure

Different kinds of morphemes

Morphemes Definition of “morpheme”

Analyzing word structure

Mirror in nominal morphology

Appendix 2: Hapax legomena from the Cobuild corpus

Appendix 1: 20th century neologisms from the OED

Morphological Productivity Structural Constraints in English Derivation Conclusion