This fascinating book challenges the idea that languages are equally complex. Eighteen scholars look at evidence from a wide range of times and places. They consider the links between linguistic structure and change and social complexity. Their conclusions challenge conventional ideas about the nature of language and contemporary theory.

1. A Linguistic Axiom Challenged, Geoffrey Sampson 2. How Much grammar Does it Take to Sail a Boat?, David Gil 3. On the Evolution of Complexity - Sometimes Less is More in East and Mainland Southeast Asia, Walter Bisang 4. Testing the Assumption of Complexity Invariance: The Case of Elfdalian and Swedish, Osten Dahl 5. Between Simplification and Complexification: Non-standard Varieties of English Around the World, Benedikt Szmrecsanyi and Bernd Kortmann 6. Implicational Hierarchies and Grammatical Complexity, Matti Miestamo 7. Sociolinguistic Typology and Complexification, Peter Trudgill 8. Linguistic Complexity: A Comprehensive Definition and Survey, Johanna Nichols 9. Complexity in Core Argument Marking and Population Size, Kaius Sinnemaki 10. Oh noo!: A Bewilderingly Multifunctional Saramaccan Word Teaches us How a Creole Language Develops Complexity, John McWhorter 11. Orality Versus Literacy as a Dimension of Complexity, Utz Maas 12. Individual Differences in Processing complex Grammatical Structures, Ngoni Chipere 13. Origin and Maintenance of Clausal Embedding Complexity, Fred Karlsson 14. Layering of Grammar: Vestiges of Protosyntax in Present-day Languages, Ljiljana Progovac 15. An Interview With Dan Everett, Geoffrey Sampson 16. Universals in Language or Cognition? Evidence from English Languae Acquisition and from Piraha, Eugenie Stapert 17. "Overall Complexity" - a Wild Goose Chase?, Guy Deutscher 18. An Efficiency Theory of Complexity and Related Phenomena, John A. Hawkins 19. Envoi, The Editors References Index