Exuberant Complexity: The Interplay of Morphology, Syntax, and Prosody in Central Alaskan Yup'ik

Abstract

Written varieties of many languages show greater syntactic complexity than their spoken counterparts. The difference is not surprising: writers have more time to create elaborate structures than speakers, who must produce speech in a steady stream. As documentation grows of the effects of language contact in the Americas, it is becoming ever clearer that exposure to languages with strong literary traditions has often had a significant impact on syntactic structure. Complexity is, however, not always due to literacy or contact with literacy. Here it is shown that though contact can indeed result in copied markers or replicated categories, it is not a precondition for the development of complexity.

Keywords

• morphology
• prosody
• morphosyntax
• clause-combining
• Yup'ik