Assessing the Role of Socio-Demographic Triggers on Kolmogorov-Based Complexity in Spoken English Varieties

This paper assesses the role of socio-demographic triggers on Kolmogorov-based complexity in spoken English varieties. It thus contributes to the ongoing debate on contact and complexity in the sociolinguistic typological research community. Currently, evidence on whether socio-demographic triggers, in particular the proportion of non-native speakers and the number of native speakers which are common proxies for language contact, influence morphosyntactic complexity of languages is controversial and inconclusive. In order to illuminate the issue from an English-varieties perspective, I use regression analysis to test several socio-demographic triggers in a corpus database of spoken English varieties. Language complexity here is operationalised in terms of Kolmogorov-based morphological and syntactic complexity. The results only partially support the idea that socio-demographic triggers influence morphosyntactic complexity in English varieties, i.e. speaker-related triggers turn out to be negative but non-significant. Yet, net migration rate shows a positive significant effect on morphological complexity which needs to be seen in the context of English as a commodity and unequal access to English. I thus argue that socioeconomic triggers are better predictors for complexity than demographic speaker numbers. In sum, the paper opens up new horizons for research on language complexity.