Have you ever wondered why English seems so simple compared to some other languages, particularly those notious for complex grammar like Russian or German? Have you wondered whether there was any reason why the local languages are so complex and filled with intricate grammar?
May I interest you in a very fresh awesome paper from PLoS ONE:
Language Structure Is Partly Determined by Social Structure Lupyan & Dale 2010 (open access; that is, no VPN required. Also, do support Open Access whenever possible! =D Publically-funded research must be made accessible to the public!)
They examined 2236(!) languages and looked for correlation between their morphological complexity and the ‘linguistic niche’ — whether the language is spoken over a vast area mostly by strangers, or used within a small tightly-knit community. The majority of the world’s languages are ‘esoteric’ (smaller population, fewer neighbouring languages, smaller area; eg. Tatar, Piraha, Ju|’hoan, Nuu-chah-nulth), contrary to what is most obvious to us, ie the ‘exoteric’ languages like English or Swahili. One would expect that the use of an exoteric language as a lingua franca may result in some changes in its structure, as its ‘purpose’ or ‘function’, if you will, is quite different. Anyway, they found that: