The article focuses on the hypothesis that the structural complexity of languages is variable and historically changeable. By means of a quantitative statistical analysis of naturalistic corpus data, the question is raised as to what role language contact and adult second language acquisition play in the simplification and complexification of language varieties. The results confirm that there is a significant correlation between intensity of contact and linguistic complexity, while at the same time showing that there is a need to consider other social factors, and, in particular, the attitude of a speech community toward linguistic norms.*

Dutch reuze(n)(-) has a wide range of synchronic uses that form part of a broad categorical and semantic continuum. Derived from the noun reus ‘giant’, it is often used to express a comparison in nominal and adjectival compounds (for example, reuzegroot ‘as big as a giant’, lit. ‘giant-big’), but it can also have a merely intensifying function (for example, reuzeleuk ‘very nice’, lit. ‘giant-nice’). Moreover, it currently occurs as a free adjective and adverb while keeping its morphological linking morpheme -e- and intensifying value (for example, Het feestje was reuze ‘The party was great’). Drawing on synchronic and diachronic corpus data, this paper argues that the emergence of reuze as a free morpheme should be accounted for by debonding (an instance of degrammaticalization) and clipping.*