The Architecture of Equilibrium:
Complexity Trade-offs and the Equi-complexity Hypothesis
Lei Lei
The complexity trade-off hypothesis suggests that difficulty in one linguistic domain, such as word-level morphology, is often counterbalanced by simplicity in another, such as sentence-level syntax. The concept is rooted in the equi-complexity hypothesis, which posits that all human languages maintain a comparable level of total complexity despite their diversity. The principle is significant for understanding how languages are shaped by cognitive constraints and the demands of efficient communication. In this keynote, I will review the current state of research in this field and present our team’s recent findings, which offer new insights into how these trade-offs manifest across diverse language families.
