Complessità versus semplessità. Un approccio sistemico per l'interpretazione della variazione sincronica dei dialetti

This paper aims to show how the theory of complexity, which Linguistics has borrowed from the hard sciences as an explanatory and/or descriptive category, can form a useful model for interpreting the synchronic variation of dialect through an perspective. The paper will apply the pattern of linguistic complexity to the interpretation of some evolutionary trends underway in the north-eastern varieties of Sicilian, exploiting, in particular, the Performance-Grammar Correspondence Hypothesis of Hawkins (2003), a psycholinguistic model of complexity that relates language-system (Grammar) and speakers (Performance). The analysis focuses on four morphosyntactic phenomena which, within the framework of a general tendency towards the loss of particular traits in favor of (pan)Sicilian ones, show a different degree of permeability to change; data, coming from my previous inquiries, show in percentage terms their degree of vitality with respect to competition from Sicilian types. The interpretation of different permeability to innovation will proceed through the contrastive analysis of the complexity level of each phenomenon within the respective systems and will highlight how, from a diasystemic perspective - even when processes of convergence towards a prestigious variety are underway - speakers, faced with structurally equivalent or even more complex alternative constructions, tend to keep the local forms, being more inclined to accept less complex structures, which minimize forms and domains of application of syntactic relations. In other words, the processes of linguistic variation do not appear to be guided by generic simplification mechanisms, but rather by the tendency to create conditions of simplexity, meaning “the combination of simplicity and complexity within the context of a dynamic relationship between means and ends” (Compain 2003, p. 129).