Areal pressure in grammatical evolution

Abstract This article investigates the evolutionary and spatial dynamics of typological characters in 117 Indo-European languages. We partition types change (i.e., gain or loss) for each variant according to whether they bring about a simplification morphosyntactic patterns that must be learned, are neutral neither simplifying nor introducing complexity) introduce more complex pattern. find changes which complexity show significantly less areal signal (according metric we devise) than simplify changes, but no significant differences between latter two groups. result is compatible with scenario where certain parallel likely mediated by advergence contact proximate speech communities, while other developments due purely drift largely independent intercultural contact.