How complex can languages get? The case of Tsez

A. Tsez is spoken in the Caucasus Mountains in Asia by about 14,000 people. It does not have a large written literature: it is mostly a spoken language.

B. In Tsez, there are four “genders” of noun. There is a masculine class and a feminine one. But the feminine gender also contains objects that are flat or pointed (go figure). Another gender has many animals but also lots of other things, and the fourth one has various other inanimate objects.

C. The gender marker is not attached to the noun but to the verbs, adjectives, adverbs, or prepositions associated with the noun. Here, for example, we see three of the gender markers on verbs following the noun.

D. But then, there is a bizarre wrinkle—the gender markers are only used when the word begins with a vowel! If it begins with a consonant there is no marker. This means that, in a way, the exception is the rule:

kid y-iys “the girl knows”

kid __-božizi yoq-xo “the girl believes”

E. Tsez also has many case markers, like Latin. But these are often extremely irregular, as if such differences as children versus child and people versus person were typical of hundreds of nouns in English. The word for fish is regular, but look what happens when the same endings are added to the words for tongue and water. These things must simply be learned by rote:

F. In addition, Tsez has a trait common in small languages: a subject takes an ending when it has an object but not when it doesn’t. Therefore, to say The girl knows is one thing, but to say The girl washed the dress means putting a special ending onto the word for girl! This is called ergativity.

kid     y-iys

“the girl knows”

kid-ba    ged    esay-si.

“girl-ERG dress washed”

“The girl washed the dress.”

G. Finally, Tsez is full of unusual sounds, many made back in the throat, with fine variations on these to boot, including mixtures of them.

H. And of course, there are, as in all languages, exceptions galore to the rules, plus all kinds of other complications (for example, Tsez has evidential marking). Yet people speak this language without effort every day. This is what “real” languages are like. We find similarly complex grammars in languages spoken by small tribes in the Amazon and many other locations. It has been said that Native American languages, such as Cree and Ojibwa, are so complex that children are not fully competent in them until the age of 10.