Measures Of Lexical Diversity Research Articles

Investigating the Linguistic Fingerprint of GPT-4o in Arabic-to-English Translation Using Stylometry

This study explores the linguistic and stylistic characteristics of machine-generated texts, focusing on the output of GPT-4o. Using various natural language processing (NLP) techniques, including word frequency and stopword count analysis, readability and sentence structure metrics, lexical diversity measures, syntactic frequency analysis, and named entity recognition (NER), the research aims to uncover the stylometric fingerprints present in machine-generated content. The results reveal that GPT-4ogenerated texts exhibit moderate lexical diversity and syntactic complexity, with certain chapters reflecting higher readability and more varied sentence structures, while others lean toward simpler linguistic patterns. The findings also highlight thematic variation across chapters, as observed in the distribution of named entities, which contributes to understanding the model’s handling of different contextual content. The research suggests that while GPT-4o maintains a consistent style in its generated text, there are distinguishable characteristics that may serve as indicators of machine authorship. This provides valuable insights for stylometric analysis, authorship attribution, and the identification of machine-generated texts in various contexts. Future research could extend this work by exploring deeper stylometric features, conducting cross-model comparisons, and developing advanced authorship detection algorithms tailored for AI-generated content. Moreover, the ethical implications of stylometric analysis in the context of AI-generated texts warrant further investigation, particularly as machine-generated content becomes increasingly prevalent across different domains.

Exploring Indonesian EFL students’ lexical diversity and its correlation with academic vocabulary use in an online academic writing environment

This paper reports on a quasi-experimental study designed to explore the relationship between lexical diversity and academic vocabulary use among Indonesian EFL university students engaging in online academic writing discussions and assignments. The study analysed 11,624 tokens and 5437 types collected from students' contributions in online discussions and academic writing assignments. Findings revealed that the level of lexical diversity among the students was significantly varied depending on the text length and the total amount of data. It was found most students were indicated to possess average ESL level of academic writing with a D value ranging from 50 to 70 while some others indicated a high level of adult ESL with developed academic text in the range between 70 and 80 D level. Moreover, it was also found that the degree of lexical diversity was not affected by the writing topic familiarity or students' academic year. Findings revealed a statistically significant negative correlation between measures of lexical diversity and academic vocabulary use. Contrary to expectations, while a diversified vocabulary generally correlates positively with student writing performance, this relationship reverses in contexts emphasizing the academic quality of writing. These results highlight the complex dynamics of lexical usage in academic writing and suggest that mere lexical diversity does not always equate to higher academic writing quality. This study contributes to a critical understanding of how lexical diversity functions in digital academic environments and offers implications for English language teaching practices in higher education settings.

The relationship between self-assessment of language proficiency and measures of lexical diversity and syntactic complexity: evidence from bilingual speakers of Italian in Croatia

The relationship between self-assessment of language proficiency and measures of lexical diversity and syntactic complexity: evidence from bilingual speakers of Italian in Croatia

Patterns of lexical and syntactic adjustment in early infant-directed speech related to language development in Hungarian

ABSTRACT Infant-directed speech (IDS) is known to be characterised by phonetic and prosodic cues along with reduced vocabulary and syntax compared to adult-directed speech (ADS). However, there is considerable variation between mothers in the degree of lexical and syntactic reduction of their IDS. The present study aims to investigate the correspondences of the inter-individual variation of maternal IDS at 6 and 18 months with infants’ language development at 18 months. 109 dyads of mothers and their firstborn infants participated in the study. Mothers’ ID and AD storytelling based on standard picture stimuli were recorded at 6 and 18 months of their infants’ age. We analysed measures of speech quantity (number of utterances and words), syntactic complexity (mean length of utterance), and lexical diversity (type-token ratio). Language growth was measured bimonthly using the Hungarian adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates CDI W&G form. The results did not reveal any association between characteristics of mothers’ ID narratives and their infants’ concurrent language skills at 18 months. However, we found a longitudinal link between a distinct pattern of linguistic simplification in maternal ID storytelling at 6 months and the development of expressive vocabulary in infants at 18 months. Infants whose mother tends to reduce both lexical and syntactic complexity of ID narratives the most are more likely to exhibit higher language outcomes. Further research is warranted to explore the background factors and longer-term effects of this maternal strategy.

Using language sample analyses across English dialects: A case-based approach for preschoolers

ABSTRACT This study compared language samples from typically developing 4-year-olds who spoke African American English (AAE), Jamaican English (JE), or Mainstream American English (MAE) to assess the value of using language sample analysis (LSA) measures for characterising language use across dialects of English. Specific LSA metrics included mean length of utterance (MLU) in morphemes and in words, the Index of Productive Syntax (IPSyn), Developmental Sentence Scoring (DSS) and measures of lexical diversity. Children demonstrated diverse linguistic patterns across dialects, but a Kruskal–Wallis H test did not reveal significant differences in scores obtained through LSA measures. Notably, the IPSyn captured morphosyntactic structures in each category across dialects where prior research has highlighted limitations. This preliminary study uses a case-based approach to illustrate the applicability of LSAs in describing linguistic variations across children who speak different dialects of English. Moreover, the findings from this study underscore the potential use of LSAs in describing linguistic patterns to support the characterisation of communication profiles for culturally and linguistically diverse children.

Should We Stop Using Lexical Diversity Measures in Children's Language Sample Analysis?

Prior work has identified weaknesses in commonly used indices of lexical diversity in spoken language samples, such as type-token ratio (TTR) due to sample size and elicitation variation, we explored whether TTR and other diversity measures, such as number of different words/100 (NDW), vocabulary diversity (VocD), and the moving average TTR would be more sensitive to child age and clinical status (typically developing [TD] or developmental language disorder [DLD]) if samples were obtained from standardized prompts. We utilized archival data from the norming samples of the Test of Narrative Language and the Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument. We examined lexical diversity and other linguistic properties of the samples, from a total of 1,048 children, ages 4-11 years; 798 of these were considered TD, whereas 250 were categorized as having a language learning disorder. TTR was the least sensitive to child age or diagnostic group, with good potential to misidentify children with DLD as TD and TD children as having DLD. Growth slopes of NDW were shallow and not very sensitive to diagnostic grouping. The strongest performing measure was VocD. Mean length of utterance, TNW, and verbs/utterance did show both good growth trajectories and ability to distinguish between clinical and typical samples. This study, the largest and best controlled to date, re-affirms that TTR should not be used in clinical decision making with children. A second popular measure, NDW, is not measurably stronger in terms of its psychometric properties. Because the most sensitive measure of lexical diversity, VocD, is unlikely to gain popularity because of reliance on computer-assisted analysis, we suggest alternatives for the appraisal of children's expressive vocabulary skill.

Is language change chiefly a social diffusion affair? The role of entrenchment in frequency increase and in the emergence of complex structural patterns

Complex systems research has chiefly investigated language change from a social dynamics perspective, with undeniable success. However, there is more to language change than social diffusion, i.e., a one-off adoption of an innovative variant by language users. Language use indeed factors in, besides prevalence (the percentage of adopters of the form in the community), lexical diversity (the number of different lexical items a conventionalized pattern combines with), and entrenchment (the average rate at which speakers choose the form in suitable pragmatic environments). Changes in token frequency may reflect changes in any of these three variables. To sort them out, we defined proxies to factor entrenchment out of empirical measures of prevalence and lexical diversity. From a French corpus, we analyzed 25 schematic constructions, featuring an open slot that hosts a variety of fillers. We show that their rise of token frequency across a change episode is mostly explained by entrenchment; however, the magnitude of the change is uniquely explained by the final extent of its lexical diversity. Furthermore, the fillers obey a construction-specific Zipf-Mandelbrot organization, that robustly holds throughout the change episode. We also show that in some cases, the fillers arise simultaneously, hinting at the possibility that such a complex organization emerges all at once, highlighting the role of structural features in language change.

Dialogue journals and traditional writing assignments: A comparison of writing in L2 German classrooms

AbstractDialogue journals (DJs) are a type of extensive writing assignment, in which students write for the purpose of communication with their instructor. Previous research has shown that DJs can help students develop writing skills; however, few studies have analyzed how DJs compare with traditional prompt‐based assignments (TAs). The present study, therefore, presents a quasi‐experimental comparison of texts from first‐ and second‐year German classrooms that used either DJs or TAs. Analysis focused on five metrics: (1) word count, (2) sentence count, (3) words per sentence, (4) text‐type ratio (TTR), and (5) measure of textual lexical diversity (MTLD). Results for word and sentence count indicated that TA texts were longer. However, DJs resulted in more complex writing, as measured by sentence length, MTLD, and TTR. Taken together, results suggest that journals can promote writing that is both communicatively oriented and linguistically complex. The article concludes by offering suggestions for practical implementation of DJs.

It’s complicated: The relationship between lexis, syntax and proficiency

This paper explores the relationship between lexical and syntactic complexity measures and proficiency in L2 English argumentative essays written by L1 Czech high school students. Syntactic complexity is generally understood as referring to the “range and sophistication” (Ortega 2015) of grammatical constructions, whereas lexical complexity can refer to the range and frequency of the words used. The research used 100 essays written by final year high school students. Lexical complexity was analysed using the Lexical Complexity Analyzer (Ai & Lu 2010, Lu 2012), syntactic complexity using the L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer (Lu 2010, 2014) and Biber et al.’s (2011) hypothesised developmental stages for complexity framework. Despite a large number of measurements failing to produce any significant patterns, positive correlations were found between lexical diversity measures and vocabulary scores. Similarly, Mean Length of Clause (MLC) and Complex nominals per clause (CN/C) showed weak positive associations with grammar scores, as did Stage 5 of the developmental stages. The findings provide an insight into the kinds of complexity features that can be given more focus during instruction and underscore the potential of these measures as determinants of proficiency.

Personal Narratives of School-Age Children: A Cross-Sectional Developmental Study

Introduction: Personal narratives are monological stories based on a personal experience that help children explain and understand their emotional states, as well as process positive and negative experiences. The aim of this study was to identify age- and emotion-related traits of lexical and grammatical abilities and coherence of personal stories produced by school-aged children between 7 and 13 years. Methods: A total of 60 typically developing children, speakers of Croatian, were stratified into three groups according to age. Using the Global TALES protocol, each child was asked to produce six personal stories prompted by different emotional states. The personal narratives were analysed using measures of lexical diversity (lemma-token ratio and number of different words), productivity (total number of words), and syntactic complexity (mean length of utterances and clausal density). Based on the Narrative Coherence Coding Scheme, three coherence dimensions (context, chronology, and theme) were rated. Results: Age group was shown to explain 18% of the variance in the ability to produce personal narratives. Personal narratives elicited through positive prompts were overall more lexically diverse but were significantly less elaborated chronologically and thematically than negative and neutral narratives. Conclusion: This study showed that coherence of the produced stories was connected with the child’s lexicon and that both variables – lexicon and coherence – were influenced by emotional valence of the story. In contrast, grammatical aspects of the narrative were influenced only by age. Finally, it is possible to state that the Global TALES protocol is sensitive enough to capture specificities of creating personal stories, both developmental ones and those created under the influence of the emotional valence of the prompts.

Coh-Metrix 시스템을 활용한 고등학교 영어 모의고사 읽기 지문의 학년 간 연계성 분석

The main objective of this study was to analyze the continuity of reading passages in high school English mock College Scholastic Ability Test (CAST) exams using Coh-Metrix, a multi-level text analysis tool. To achieve this, the study constructed a corpus of reading passages from the 2022 high school English mock exams and subjected them to a broad range of Coh-Metrix measures. These measures included basic measures (the number of words, the number of sentences, average word length, average sentence length), word frequencies (word frequencies for content words), word features (imageability, concreteness, age of acquisition, familiarity), lexical diversity measures (type-token ratios for content words), personal pronouns (first person pronouns, second person pronouns, third person pronouns), connectives, readability indices (Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level), syntactic complexity (noun density scores, the number of words before main verbs), coreference cohesion measures, and semantic cohesion measures. The main results revealed that the continuity of high school English mock tests was well established for average word and sentence length measures, the average number of words, word frequencies, word familiarity, second person pronouns, standard readability indices, and syntactic complexity measures. These findings have implications for the development of reading passages in high school English mock exams.

Big Words for Little Kids: Rare Vocabulary Use by Preschool Children.

This study presents a preliminary examination of rare vocabulary use by preschool children using a recently developed tool called the Wordlist for Expressive Rare Vocabulary Evaluation (WERVE). The WERVE was used to identify rare vocabulary words language samples of 74 preschool children (M age = 56 months). We examined the relations among rare vocabulary use, performance on norm-referenced measures of single-word vocabulary, and language sample measures of language complexity and lexical diversity. Rare vocabulary use was significantly, positively correlated with standard scores on norm-referenced vocabulary measures and with language complexity and lexical diversity in language samples. Children with higher vocabulary scores used significantly more rare vocabulary than children with lower vocabulary scores. The WERVE shows some promise for providing information about the rare vocabulary use of preschool children. Findings from this preliminary study indicate that further research on rare vocabulary use is warranted. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.23518845.

A cross-sectional investigation of disfluencies in typically developing Spanish-English bilingual children

PurposeThis study examined the language skills and the type and frequency of disfluencies in the spoken narrative production of typically developing Spanish-English bilingual children. MethodA cross-sectional sample of 106 bilingual children (50 boys; 56 girls) enrolled in kindergarten through Grade 4, produced a total of 212 narrative retell language samples in English and Spanish. A specialized fluency coding system was implemented to index the percentage of total (%TD) and stuttering-like disfluencies (%SLD) in each language. Large-scale reference databases were used to classify children’s dual language proficiency profiles (balanced, English dominant, Spanish dominant) based on language sample analysis measures of morphosyntax and lexical diversity. ResultsThe bilingual Spanish-English children in this study did not demonstrate significant cross-linguistic differences for mean %TD or %SLD. However, the mean %TD and %SLD in both languages exceeded the risk threshold based on monolingual English-speaking norms. English dominant bilingual children demonstrated significantly lower %TD in English than Spanish. Spanish dominant children demonstrated significantly lower %SLD in Spanish than English. ConclusionsThis study included the largest sample size of bilingual Spanish-English children investigated to date from a fluency perspective. The frequency of disfluencies was found to be variable across participants and change dynamically as a function of grade and dual language proficiency profiles, indicating the need for studies that employ larger sample sizes and longitudinal designs.

Lexical Diversity and Language Impairment

Abstract The development of artificial intelligence tools has seen an enormous growth recently. Linguistic artificial intelligence tools are being successfully applied in the field of speech analysis and discourse. In our study, we used automatic NLP tools to detect differences in picture description in the discourse of people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and healthy people. A measure of lexical diversity was used to compare discourse complexity. Transcripts of recordings of the probands within the EWA project were used in the study. From the multiple comparisons, we found that there is a statistically significant difference between healthy people and people suffering from MCI and AD. Our results indicate that healthy people have more lexical diversity than people suffering from MCI and AD – a more diverse vocabulary in spontaneous speech, in our case, when describing a picture.

Lexical Diversity and Other Linguistic Measures in Schizophrenia: Associations With Negative Symptoms and Neurocognitive Performance.

Straightforward linguistic measures may be indicators of reduced language production and lexical diversity among individuals with schizophrenia with negative symptoms and neurocognitive impairments. We compared 98 patients with schizophrenia to 101 unaffected controls on six language variables ( e.g. , number of relationships between objects, use of complex transitions in the narrative structure), number of words produced, and lexical diversity computed as the moving average type-token ratio from both speaking and writing tasks. Patients differed from controls on nearly all of the linguistic measures; number of words produced had the strongest effect, with an average Cohen's d of 0.68; values pertaining to lexical diversity were 0.50 and 0.32, respectively, for the speaking tasks and the writing tasks. Most measures were correlated with alogia and other domains of negative symptoms (including avolition-apathy and anhedonia-asociality), as well as with diverse neurocognitive domains, especially those pertaining to working memory, verbal learning, and verbal category fluency. Further work is needed to understand longitudinal changes in these linguistic variables, as well as their utility as measures of alogia.

Lexical complexity changes in 100 years’ academic writing: Evidence from Nature Biology Letters

Previous diachronic studies of lexical changes in academic writing have focused on the evolution of specific sets or classes of words with specific grammatical or discourse functions, with no scholarly attention paid to diachronic changes in the overall lexical complexity of academic writing, a construct that has been shown to be closely related to text readability and writing quality. This study explores diachronic lexical complexity changes in academic writing based on a self-built corpus, the Corpus of Nature Biology Letters, comprised of 421 scientific letters sampled with ten-year intervals for 100 years (1929–2019). The corpus was analyzed for nine measures of lexical density, sophistication, and diversity to ascertain the trend and strength of lexical complexity changes. Our findings show that the patterns of diachronic changes in the lexical complexity of academic writing accord with the overall trends in academic writing towards greater compression and conventionalization. These findings add to our understanding of the evolution of the academic writing practices of the scientific community and may also have implications for academic writing pedagogy.

Descriptive discourse in fluent aphasia: The predictive role of attention, phonology, lexical retrieval and semantics

AimsTo study the relationship between cognitive and linguistic skills (as measured through standardized tasks) over spontaneous speech elicited during a picture description task. Methods & procedures21 controls and 19 people with fluent aphasia matched by age and sex were evaluated using transcripts made from a picture description task coded using the CHAT format and analyzed using Computerized Language Analysis (CLAN). Indices obtained from the speech samples contained measures of lexical quantity and diversity, morphosyntactic complexity, informativeness, and speech fluency, along with different kinds of speech errors. We studied their correlations with attentional measures from Conners’ Continuous Performance Test and with standardized measures of naming, pseudoword repetition and semantic non-verbal association. We further used stepwise linear regression to analyze the predictive value of standardized linguistic and cognitive skills over discursive indices. Outcomes & resultsContrary to our initial hypothesis, there were no significant correlations between attentional scores and discourse variables in aphasic participants. Moreover, semantic association, along with naming, was the measure more related with discourse performance in people with fluent aphasia, but cognitive and linguistic standardized measures had overall little predictive power on most discourse indices. In the control group, there was a certain association of naming skills and attentional reaction time with discourse variables, but their predictive power was also low. Conclusions & implicationsThe current results do not support a strong relationship between basic attentional skills and performance in descriptive discourse in fluent aphasia. Although some of the standardized tasks seem to bear some relationship with spontaneous speech, there is a high amount of interindividual variability in discourse that is not captured by classical cognitive tasks routinely used in assessment. Further work on the determinants of discourse performance in aphasia and on the clinical application of discourse analysis is warranted.

A multi-measure approach for lexical diversity in writing assessments: Considerations in measurement and timing

Several researchers (e.g., Gebril & Plakans, 2016; Crossley & McNamara, 2012) have noted a relationship between lexical diversity (LD) and writing proficiency. Previous research has indicated that typical LD measures can account for as much as 44 % of variability in writing proficiency (Crossley et al., 2011). However, it remains unclear which of the numerous LD measures (or combination of measures) that exist best predict writing proficiency (e.g., McCarthy & Jarvis, 2010). The present study addresses these issues using scored writing assessment samples from 911 ESL students. LD was assessed with a battery of ten measures through the Python lexical-diversity package (Kyle, 2020). A PCA was conducted to determine how these LD measures varied in deriving LD scores. Writing proficiency scores were then predicted by using linear mixed-effects regressions that included either a single LD measure or multiple measures. The results indicated that LD is a meaningful predictor in timed writing proficiency assessments, multiple LD measures have more predictive power than individual measures, timing has a slight effect on LD, and some LD measures are highly correlated while others are not. Implications for automated writing proficiency assessment and rubric design as well as LD measurement research are explained.

Linguistic measures of personality in group discussions.

This investigation sought to find the relationships among multiple dimensions of personality and multiple features of language style. Unlike previous investigations, after controlling for such other moderators as culture and socio-demographics, the current investigation explored those dimensions of naturalistic spoken language that most closely align with communication. In groups of five to eight players, participants (N = 340) from eight international locales completed hour-long competitive games consisting of a series of ostensible missions. Composite measures of quantity, lexical diversity, sentiment, immediacy and negations were measured with an automated tool called SPLICE and with Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count. We also investigated style dynamics over the course of an interaction. We found predictors of extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism, but overall fewer significant associations than prior studies, suggesting greater heterogeneity in language style in contexts entailing interactivity, conversation rather than solitary message production, oral rather than written discourse, and groups rather than dyads. Extraverts were found to maintain greater linguistic style consistency over the course of an interaction. The discussion addresses the potential for Type I error when studying the relationship between language and personality.

Measurement Properties of Mean Length of Utterance in School-Age Children.

Mean length of utterance (MLU) is one of the most widely reported measures of syntactic development in the developmental literature, but its responsiveness in young school-age children's language has been questioned, and it has been shown to correlate with nonsyntactic measures. This study tested the extent to which MLU shows measurement properties of responsiveness and construct validity when applied to language elicited from elementary school children. Thirty-two typically developing children in two age groups (5 and 8 years) provided four short language samples each. Language samples were elicited in a question-answer context and a narrative context. MLU was calculated with both morpheme and word counts. Other established measures of syntactic complexity (clausal density [CD], developmental level [D-Level], mean length of clause [MLC]) and lexical diversity (lexical density, moving-average type-token ratio, number of different words) were also calculated. Linear mixed-effects analyses revealed that MLU varied systematically with discourse context and children's age group. The syntactic measures, CD and MLC, were found to vary systematically with MLU. None of the lexical diversity measures varied systematically with MLU. Results suggest that MLU is a responsive and valid measure of children's syntactic development across age and discourse context during the early school-age years.