New Perspectives on the Complexity of Net. Language: A Phonological Analysis of Morphologically Complex Words

Abstract

             Linguistic complexity is one of the currently most hotly debated notions in linguistics. The importance of a language to its users has overtime, motivated linguists and researchers to study and analyze its patterns and structures. A morphological and phonological analysis is crucial for the analysis and understanding of the patterns and structures of a language. Morphologically, English permits the appropriate extension of existing words to serve new purposes by the addition of prefixes and suffixes. As far as the internet' texts under analysis are concerned, common suffixes include:  s, ed, ing, ly, and tion. The suffixes s, es, ed, and ing account for almost two-thirds of the words in the internet texts under analysis. The morphological analysis shows that an English word permits up to four morphemes at the end of a word, whereas the use of a prefix is rare. This process creates unlimited number of complex words. Such complexity depends on the number of components (morphemes) that can be added. Increasing the number of these components contributes to lengthening the word to which they are attached, which creates a complexity in pronunciation, reading, spelling and even parsing as part of the morphological analysis.