Text Structure Complexity: A Question of Language Typology or Language Usage?

In this paper, I describe some of the most distinct differences between typical Romance and Scandinavian text structure, with particular reference to Italian and Danish respectively. I point to some of the phenomena which – in my experience as a teacher of Italian in Denmark for over 40 years – have been most problematic to Danish students of Italian, namely the differences in text complexity and text density between otherwise parallel Italian and Danish texts. Other things being equal, Romance text structure typically reveals a more complex and compact form than Scandinavian text structure, with more propositions per sentence and more propositions textualised without a finite verb, i.e., “deverbalised.” On the basis of statistical analyses of four different Italian-Danish text corpora, three of (typologically different) comparable texts and one of adaptations, I discuss whether the mentioned text structure differences should be considered a question of language typology, e.g., the fundamental differences between “endocentric” and “exocentric” lexicalisation ascertained by the Danish research group Typolex, or rather a question of language usage. I also briefly comment on the usefulness of the two text types, comparable texts and adaptations, for cross-linguistic text structure comparison.