Measures Of Lexical Diversity Research Articles

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.

Investigating whether a flemma count is a more distinctive measurement of lexical diversity

Lexical diversity (LD) measures (i.e., vocabulary range deployed in a written or spoken sample) have been shown to predict L2 language proficiency. Treffers-Daller et al. (2018), however, suggest that the analysis unit influences LD measures’ predictability of language proficiency and highlight the greater impact of lemma count on LD measurement. Despite evidence of lemma count usefulness, no single LD study has empirically examined a flemma count. We therefore partially replicate Treffers-Daller et al. to explore potential flemma count influences on LD measure writing predictability, compared to simple and lemma counts. We analyzed 105 Chinese L2 learner IELTS essays, completed at a UK university. We computed LD scores for non-lemmatized, lemmatized and flemmatized texts using three basic LD measures ( Types, T TR, Guiraud’s Index ), and three sophisticated measures ( D, MTLD, HD-D ). Results suggest that both flemmatization and lemmatization influenced LD scores and measures. LD measure predictability is dependent on the analysis unit. All three basic measures and D were reliable writing indicators, based on flemma and lemma counts, whereas HD-D was a better writing predictor once simple and lemma counts were applied. However, MTLD failed to predict any writing level. We conclude that different analysis units have different influences on LD measures. • Lemmatization vs flemmatization is important in lexical diversity assessment. • Lexical diversity measures are important indicators of writing proficiency. • Lexical diversity measures’ predictability is dependent on the word counting criterion. • Flemma and lemma counts are more distinctive lexical units than simple count.

Measurement of Lexical Diversity in Children's Spoken Language: Computational and Conceptual Considerations.

BackgroundType-Token Ratio (TTR), given its relatively simple hand computation, is one of the few LSA measures calculated by clinicians in everyday practice. However, it has significant well-documented shortcomings; these include instability as a function of sample size, and absence of clear developmental profiles over early childhood. A variety of alternative measures of lexical diversity have been proposed; some, such as Number of Different Words/100 (NDW) can also be computed by hand. However, others, such as Vocabulary Diversity (VocD) and the Moving Average Type Token Ratio (MATTR) rely on complex resampling algorithms that cannot be conducted by hand. To date, no large-scale study of all four measures has evaluated how well any capture typical developmental trends over early childhood, or whether any reliably distinguish typical from atypical profiles of expressive child language ability.Materials and MethodsWe conducted linear and non-linear regression analyses for TTR, NDW, VocD, and MATTR scores for samples taken from 946 corpora from typically developing preschool children (ages 2–6 years), engaged in adult-child toy play, from the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES). These were contrasted with 504 samples from children known to have delayed expressive language skills (total n = 1,454 samples). We also conducted a separate sub-analysis which examined possible contextual effects of sampling environment on lexical diversity.ResultsOnly VocD showed significantly different mean scores between the typically -developing children and delayed developing children group. Using TTR would actually misdiagnose typical children and miss children with known language impairment. However, computation of VocD as a function of toy interactions was significant and emerges as a further caution in use of lexical diversity as a valid proxy index of children’s expressive vocabulary skill.DiscussionThis large scale statistical comparison of computer-implemented algorithms for expressive lexical profiles in young children with traditional, hand-calculated measures showed that only VocD met criteria for evidence-based use in LSA. However, VocD was impacted by sample elicitation context, suggesting that non-linguistic factors, such as engagement with elicitation props, contaminate estimates of spoken lexical skill in young children. Implications and suggested directions are discussed.

Characteristics of the written compositions of Spanish children with dyslexia and their relationship with spelling difficulties

Previous work in English has found that the spelling difficulties of children with dyslexia affect the overall quality attributed to their written compositions. The aim of this study was to investigate whether different processes related to transcription, translation and ideas proposing/planning are affected in developmental dyslexia and to what extent potential deficits are associated to poor spelling. Compositions handwritten by Spanish-speaking children with and without dyslexia aged 9–12 years-old (n = 42) were compared on measures of productivity, spelling accuracy, legibility, lexical diversity, punctuation, sentence structure and grammar, organisation, ideas quality, and readability. Children with dyslexia performed worse in spelling, lexical diversity, syntax and grammar and ideas quality. Interestingly, in the group with dyslexia spelling accuracy contributed to lexical diversity, while lexical diversity was the only significant predictor of syntax and grammar, organisation and ideas quality. This pattern of results was absent in typically developing children. This evidence suggests that spelling difficulties reduce the lexical diversity of the texts of children with dyslexia, which may affect the activity of the translator and the proposer, diminishing the perceived quality of their written compositions.

Tell or Retell? The Role of Task and Language in Spanish-English Narrative Microstructure Performance.

This study examined performance of dual language learners (DLLs) on Spanish- and English-language narrative story retells and unique tells. Transcription and analysis focused on comparisons of common microstructural language sample measures in Spanish and English across tasks. Each language sample measure was evaluated for its possible convergence with norm-referenced standardized assessments for DLL children. Spanish-English DLLs (N = 133) enrolled in English-only kindergarten or first-grade classrooms completed two-language sample tasks (one in each language), which were transcribed and analyzed using Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (Miller & Iglesias, 2017) for measures of syntactic complexity (mean length of utterance [MLU] in words), lexical diversity (number of different words [NDW]), and grammaticality (percent grammatical utterances [PGU]). Students also completed a norm-referenced sentence repetition task (Peña et al., 2014) and expressive vocabulary assessment (Martin, 2013). Comparison of story retells and unique stories revealed similar performance on MLU, NDW, and PGU across elicitation techniques, with one exception: NDW in Spanish was higher in the story retell condition. Predictive models revealed several differences in the relations between the microstructure measures and norm-referenced language measures by elicitation technique, although neither context demonstrated a consistent advantage across all metrics. Measures derived from story retells and unique tells offer practical findings for speech-language pathologists and other educators to use in assessment of early grade DLLs. This work increases knowledge of procedural differences across narrative assessments and their influence on language variables, supporting school-based speech-language pathologists in making assessment decisions for DLLs on their caseload. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.19191278.

Validating a rubric for assessing integrated writing in an EAP context

Although researchers have argued for a mixed-method approach to rubric design and validation, such research is sparse in the area of L2 integrated writing. This article reports on the validation of an analytic rubric for assessing a classroom-based integrated writing test. Argumentative integrated essays (N = 48) written by EAP students at an English-medium Canadian university were rated by instructors (N = 10) with prior EAP teaching experience. Employing a mixed methods design, the quality of the rubric was established through many facet Rasch measurement and perceptions from the instructors elicited during semi-structured interviews. To further explore the rubric’s ability to differentiate among students, essays from three performance levels (low, average, high) were compared in terms of fluency, syntactic and lexical complexity, cohesion, and lexical diversity measures. Results have suggested the rubric can capture variation in student performance. Implications are discussed in terms of validation of assessment rubrics in localized assessment contexts.

Automating Lexical Complexity Measurement in Chinese with WeCLECA

Lexical complexity, generally understood as a multidimensional construct consisting of lexical density, sophistication, and diversity, has been recognized as an important construct in first language acquisition and second language acquisition. A large variety of lexical complexity measures have been proposed by researchers to study its relationship to second language learners’ writing and/or speaking proficiency. While this line of research has generated fruitful results for languages such as English and other Indo-European languages, less is known about how it may be applicable to a typologically distance language such as Chinese. In this paper, we report the design of a computational tool for automating the measurement of lexical complexity with 25 indices. The Batch Mode of the software supports analyses of a large number of .txt files and outputs results to a .CSV file suitable for importation into statistical packages for further analyses. In an example application, we analyzed 87 texts from three distinct registers (academic prose, fiction, and press reportage) from the Lancaster Corpus of Mandarin Chinese (McEnery and Xiao, The Lancaster Corpus of Mandarin Chinese: A corpus for monolingual and contrastive language study, in Proc. Fourth Int. Conf. Language Resources and Evaluation, eds. M. Lino, M. Xavier, F. Ferreira, R. Costa and R. Silva, (European Language Resources Association, Paris, 2014), pp. 1175–1178) and explored how register variation may manifest in lexical complexity. The ANOVA analyses showed linear increase in multiple lexical sophistication and diversity measures across academic prose, fiction and press reportage. The results showed that press reportage has lower lexical density, but higher lexical sophistication and diversity than academic prose; fiction also has higher lexical diversity than academic prose. This paper concluded with discussions of potential pedagogical applications for Chinese language teaching and learning.