Measuring complexity in long-term L2 speakers of English and L1 attriters of German

Cornelia Lahmann, Rasmus Steinkrauss, Monika S. Schmid

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

    6 Citations (Scopus)
    214 Downloads (Pure)

    Abstract

    Linguistic complexity is neither easily defined nor measured. The challenge in finding reliable ways to measure linguistic complexity is even more pronounced when the variation of contexts in which complexity is measured is taken into account. This paper therefore aims at finding measures for assessing syntactic and lexical complexity that are sensitive and non-overlapping even in a less frequently studied context: spontaneous speech of L1 attriters and highly proficient L2 English speakers.
    To evaluate operationalizations of syntactic and lexical complexity, several previously proposed measures are applied to a corpus of spontaneous speech and a principal component analysis is conducted. The results show which of the measures group together as underlying variables of syntactic and lexical complexity and how this can inform future operationalizations of complexity.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)173-191
    Number of pages19
    JournalInternational Journal of Applied Linguistics
    Volume29
    Early online date28-May-2019
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Jul-2019

    Keywords

    • COH-METRIX
    • FLUENCY
    • LEVEL
    • ACCURACY
    • PERSPECTIVE
    • PROFICIENCY
    • SPEECH
    • USAGE
    • TEXT

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