The waterbed Theory of Complexity

The natural tendency in human language is to keep overall complexity about equivalent, both from one language to the next, and over time as a language changes.Like a waterbed, if you push down the complexity in one part of the language, it increases complexity elsewhere. language with a rich systems of sounds (phonology) might compensate with a simpler syntax. A language with a limited sound system might have a complex way of building words from smaller pieces (morphology). No language is complex in every way, as that would be unusable. Likewise, no language is completelhy simple, as too few distinctions would render it useless. Conservation of complexity!! , my friend.