A quantitative global test of the complexity trade-off hypothesis: the case of nominal and verbal grammatical marking

Abstract Nouns and verbs are known to differ in the types of grammatical information they encode. What is less well relationship between verbal nominal coding within across languages. The equi-complexity hypothesis holds that all languages equally complex overall, which entails trade-offs different domains. From a diachronic point view, this implies loss gain domains can be expected balance each other out. In study, we test what extent such inverse coevolution observed sample 244 languages, using data from comprehensive cross-linguistic database (Grambank) applying computational phylogenetic modelling control for genealogical relatedness. We find evidence coevolutionary relationships specific features on global scale, but not overall degrees Instead, these amounts positively correlated Sino-Tibetan inversely Indo-European Our findings indicate accretion words lineage-specific.