Complexity in the history of language study

Abstract

AbstractThis article examines the history of two examples from American Indian languages as an illustration of the ways in which the ambivalent and controversial nature of linguistic complexity has shaped the attitudes to "exotic" languages. In particular, I trace the life cycles of the Cherokee verbs for washing and the Eskimo words for snow from an unbiased origin in the works of John Pickering (1777-1846) and Franz Boas (1858-1942) to ideologically oriented uses as evidence for claims advanced within late 19th century anthropological racism and 20th century cultural relativism, respectively. The history of these examples illustrates the instrumental treatment of linguistic data in secondary references in linguistics and the social sciences as well as contradictory interpretations of complexity, as shown by the overemphasis on lexical overabundance and the disregard for morphological complexity of the languages in question. More generally, I show that the notion of complexity has been a key aspect of discussions concerning such issues as cross-linguistic differences in linguistic structure, evaluations of languages regarded as "exotic" or "primitive" as well as the assumed cognitive, cultural and social correlates of linguistic structure.