The simple emerging from the complex

Abstract This chapter examines the system of nominal number in Juba Arabic. Its complexity is compared with its superstrate language, Sudanese Arabic, and its substrate, the Nilotic language Bari. It also compares its similarity with a number of creoles, Nilotic languages and Arabic dialects. Both Arabic and Nilotic languages are notorious for their complex systems of nominal number, making Juba Arabic an interesting case for the study of creole complexity. Following Bakker et al. (2011) , I use computational phylogenetic tools to look at the linguistic similarity of the languages under examination. The findings show that Juba Arabic is simpler than its constrates, and that it is more similar to unrelated creoles than the languages from which it emerged.