Measures Of Syntactic Complexity Research Articles

Beyond accuracy

The language of Heritage Speakers (HS), or of early bilinguals of a minority language, is often seen as incomplete or less developed than that of Monolingual Speakers (MS). This study investigates whether 7- to 9-year-old English/Polish HS can be distinguished from MS in terms of linguistic skills when complexity and fluency are focal rather than accuracy. Data from 78 participants shows no significant differences between HS and MS in fluency on an overall measure in either of the languages, although HS produce more fillers and repetitions. On complexity measures, the results for English were similar across groups for Mean Length of T-Unit, but there was a statistically significant difference in Polish, with HS achieving higher values. On a more specific measure of syntactic complexity (Subordination Index), HS achieved higher scores in both languages. There were no significant differences for Lexical Diversity. Corresponding measures were positively correlated across languages, suggesting that the L1 does not impede L2 achievement. Overall, we observed substantial overlap between the groups, with the vast majority of HS falling within the MS norms and the MS falling within the HS norms. This emphasises the need to move away from the deficit approach towards HS.

Automated Measures of Syntactic Complexity in Natural Speech Production: Older and Younger Adults as a Case Study.

Multiple methods have been suggested for quantifying syntactic complexity in speech. We compared eight automated syntactic complexity metrics to determine which best captured verified syntactic differences between old and young adults. We used natural speech samples produced in a picture description task by younger (n = 76, ages 18-22 years) and older (n = 36, ages 53-89 years) healthy participants, manually transcribed and segmented into sentences. We manually verified that older participants produced fewer complex structures. We developed a metric of syntactic complexity using automatically extracted syntactic structures as features in a multidimensional metric. We compared our metric to seven other metrics: Yngve score, Frazier score, Frazier-Roark score, developmental level, syntactic frequency, mean dependency distance, and sentence length. We examined the success of each metric in identifying the age group using logistic regression models. We repeated the analysis with automatic transcription and segmentation using an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system. Our multidimensional metric was successful in predicting age group (area under the curve [AUC] = 0.87), and it performed better than the other metrics. High AUCs were also achieved by the Yngve score (0.84) and sentence length (0.84). However, in a fully automated pipeline with ASR, the performance of these two metrics dropped (to 0.73 and 0.46, respectively), while the performance of the multidimensional metric remained relatively high (0.81). Syntactic complexity in spontaneous speech can be quantified by directly assessing syntactic structures and considering them in a multivariable manner. It can be derived automatically, saving considerable time and effort compared to manually analyzing large-scale corpora, while maintaining high face validity and robustness. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.24964179.

Modelling the use of the tool for the automatic analysis of syntactic sophistication and complexity (TAASSC)

This methods tutorial introduces the Tool for the Automatic Analysis of Syntactic Sophistication and Complexity (TAASSC), a linguistic analysis tool developed by Kyle (2016). In the first part, the tutorial offers an accessible introduction to the key concepts and considerations for using the syntactic complexity and sophistication measures provided by TAASSC. It also overviews the incorporation of new lexico-grammatical features in more recent versions of TAASSC and compares the new versions with earlier versions. The second part of the tutorial guides users through the tool's application by demonstrating a case study of applying TAASSC to a linguistic analysis. It details the process of utilising TAASSC to obtain initial index profiles and conducting mixed-effects modelling using R. The focus is on analysing one aspect of the phrasal complexity development in British school children's writing across academic years, employing mixed-effects models to account for complex data structures and observation interdependence. This tutorial equips researchers with the knowledge to effectively employ TAASSC in linguistic analysis and showcases its utility in exploring syntactic complexity development.

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.

Does Quartile Matter? Investigating syntactic complexity of international publication

With the challenge of international publication, this study compares the syntactic complexity of Indonesian scholars' publications. The analysis covers 21 journal articles from two groups, from the journals with quartile and without quartile. Using 14 syntactic complexity measures, the results show that the journal articles with quartile have higher mean scores of syntactic complexity measures than the non-quartiles. However, significant differences only occur in three groups of measurement: Length of Production Unit, Coordination, and Degree of Phrasal Sophistication. The findings may show the performance gap between groups as the syntactical constructions of the journal articles with quartile surpass the non-quartile.

Text length effects on the reliability of syntactic complexity indices

Automated tools are widely used to assess syntactic complexity in second language (L2) writing studies; however, the effects of text length on syntactic complexity indices remain unclear. This can pose a challenge when studying underrepresented populations (e.g., young learners, adults with limited literacy skills), as their lower proficiency may result in less text production. To address this issue, we investigated the minimum text length threshold at which automated measures of syntactic complexity become the most reliable while considering L2 proficiency and prompt topic. Essays from the ICNALE corpus, a dataset of 5,200 essays with four proficiency levels, were used to create a dataset of texts of varying lengths (50, 100, 150, and 200 words). Mixed-effects regression models showed that seven out of 14 indices were not affected by text length regardless of learner proficiency and prompt topic. The other seven differed only between the 50- and 200-word texts within intermediate levels. We suggest a minimum of 100 words as a conservative threshold for the reliability of syntactic complexity indices. Finally, we emphasize the importance of transparent reporting practice regarding text length information.

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.

Feasibility of Using the Global Tales Protocol to Elicit Personal Narratives in 10-year-Old Children in Ireland

Introduction: This small-scale study explored the feasibility of the Global TALES protocol in eliciting personal narratives in typically developing monolingual Irish children, using the online Zoom platform. We investigated children’s performance on measures of productivity (total number of utterances; total number of words) and syntactic complexity (MLU in words). We also documented the topics children talked about in response to the six emotion-based prompts contained in the Global TALES protocol. Methods: Nineteen typically developing children (6 male, 13 female), aged between 10.0 and 10.11 years produced personal narratives in response to the Global TALES protocol. Given COVID-19 pandemic-related public health restrictions, the language samples were elicited using Zoom. All stories were transcribed and analysed using Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts software. Qualitative content analysis was used to code the topics of the children’s stories. Results: Sixteen participants responded to all prompts. One participant only responded to three of the six prompts. The prompt that was least successful in eliciting a response was the “problem” prompt; 15.7% (n = 3) of the children did not provide a response to this prompt. On average, children produced 40 utterances, although individual variability was high. On average, MLU was 8.7, ranging from 6 to 11. Children’s topics closely resembled those reported in the Global TALES feasibility study despite the fact, the current study took place during the COVID-19 pandemic. The most frequent topics were related to family (events, illnesses, relationships, siblings) and finding or fixing something. Conclusion: The Global TALES protocol was successful in eliciting personal narratives from 10-year-old Irish English-speaking children. Future larger scale studies are now needed to investigate if the results generalise to the wider Irish population with a view to create local benchmarks of personal narrative performance.

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.

Reconsidering the syntactic complexity measures on L2 spoken English: A multi-dimensional perspective

Based on a review of previous measures employed in English syntactic complexity investigation, this article, following Biber's Multi-dimensional approach, re-establishes a comprehensive new measure system which is composed of four dimensions i.e. Subordination, Length of Production, Coordination and Nominals using factor analysis upon a collection of indices in reference. Under the newly established framework, the research examines the effects of grade level and genre factors on second language English learners' syntactic complexity in oral English in terms of the four indices representing the four dimensions. ANOVA results show that all indices except C/T, the one representing the Subordination dimension, which shows stability across grade levels, are positively related with grade level and susceptible to genre. In the argumentative genre, students generally produce more complex sentences than in the narrative genre as regards all the four dimensions.

Syntactic complexity and diversity of spontaneous speech production in schizophrenia spectrum and major depressive disorders

Syntax, the grammatical structure of sentences, is a fundamental aspect of language. It remains debated whether reduced syntactic complexity is unique to schizophrenia spectrum disorder (SSD) or whether it is also present in major depressive disorder (MDD). Furthermore, the association of syntax (including syntactic complexity and diversity) with language-related neuropsychology and psychopathological symptoms across disorders remains unclear. Thirty-four SSD patients and thirty-eight MDD patients diagnosed according to DSM-IV-TR as well as forty healthy controls (HC) were included and tasked with describing four pictures from the Thematic Apperception Test. We analyzed the produced speech regarding its syntax delineating measures for syntactic complexity (the total number of main clauses embedding subordinate clauses) and diversity (number of different types of complex sentences). We performed cluster analysis to identify clusters based on syntax and investigated associations of syntactic, to language-related neuropsychological (verbal fluency and verbal episodic memory), and psychopathological measures (positive and negative formal thought disorder) using network analyses. Syntax in SSD was significantly reduced in comparison to MDD and HC, whereas the comparison of HC and MDD revealed no significant differences. No associations were present between speech measures and current medication, duration and severity of illness, age or sex; the single association accounted for was education. A cluster analysis resulted in four clusters with different degrees of syntax across diagnoses. Subjects with less syntax exhibited pronounced positive and negative symptoms and displayed poorer performance in executive functioning, global functioning, and verbal episodic memory. All cluster-based networks indicated varying degrees of domain-specific and cross-domain connections. Measures of syntactic complexity were closely related while syntactic diversity appeared to be a separate node outside of the syntactic network. Cross-domain associations were more salient in more complex syntactic production.

A Study on Syntactic Complexity and Topic Difference Influence in Second Language Writing Based on Dependency Treebank

Using Stanford parser as a tool, taking 1840 articles on two topics by 920 English learners of four levels after random selection as the research corpus, this study attempts to explore the development trend of syntactic complexity of learners of different levels and what influence divergent topic can have on it. Results show that multi-level learners generally prefer adverbial clauses (advcl) and complement clauses (ccomp) to relative clauses (acl: recl); adjective modifiers (amod) are the best in distinguishing the level of English learners, which can be used as an important basis for judging the level of L2; in addition, different topics of the same task type have no significant effect on L2 learners’ syntactic complexity. It can be concluded that most syntactic complexity measures at the clause and phrase level show a non-linear development trend. Based upon the findings, implications are provided for English textbook development and English pedagogical practices.

Phrasal Syntactic Complexity Measures in Linguistics Research Articles Written by Iraqi and English L1 Writers

Complex phrasal structures are considered the distinctive features in the academic writing of high-proficiency writers. The use of more complex phrasal structures increases the quality of the written text. Based on the contrastive rhetorical theory of writing, writers are required to use linguistic components in a specific way that meets the genre of writing. This study aims to investigate and compare the phrasal syntactic complexity measures of the texts of linguistics research articles written by Iraqi and English L1 writers. It identifies if there is a significant difference between the writing of Iraqi and English L1 writers in terms of using phrasal syntactic structures. This study utilised the corpus-based method to analyse linguistics research articles written by Iraqi and English L1 writers and published from 2016 to 2020. Twelve phrasal syntactic complexity measures were analysed by using the automatic analyser TAASSC. This study revealed a significant difference between the writing of Iraqi and English L1 writers in terms of the analysed phrasal complexity measures. Utilising the complex phrasal structures in Iraqi research articles would significantly contribute to the quality and publication acceptance in reputable international journals. This study is therefore significant to guide Iraqi researchers to improvise their academic writing skills for publication purposes. Keywords: English for research publication purposes ERPP; English L1 writers; linguistics research articles; Iraqi writers; phrasal syntactic complexity

Clausal and phrasal complexity in research articles published in well-established and predatory journals

Predatory publishing has attracted much scholarly attention recently, but little is known about the actual material published in predatory journals. In this paper, we address this gap focusing on syntactic complexity. Using both traditional syntactic complexity measures and more fine-grained indices of phrasal and clausal complexity, the study explores the similarities and differences between two corpora consisting of 220 research articles drawn from two comparable journals in the discipline of Political Science, one purportedly predatory and one top-ranking. The results show that the articles look similar in many respects (e.g., mean length of sentences/T-units, number of T-units per sentence). Differences are found in more fine-grained indices such as clausal complements, adverbial clauses, and noun phrases with noun premodifiers, which are associated with discipline-specific rhetorical and ideational functions. The study demonstrates the potential of linguistic analyses in contributing to our understanding of predatory publishing as a complex phenomenon. 

Lexical Richness and Syntactic Complexity as Predictors of Academic Writing Performance

Language researchers have long looked for ways to investigate the connection between textual language use and the development of both L1 and L2 writing. The purpose of this research study is to examine the predictors of writing quality in terms of lexical richness and syntactic complexity in academic writing. The study was based on a hypothesis that the lexical sophistication and the mean length T-unit (MLTU) are the indicators of writing quality.  A corpus of 50 article abstracts written by Tunisian scholars was analyzed and scored using a holistic scoring rubric that indicates writing quality (test of written English), and then regressed against the chosen measures of lexical richness and syntactic complexity. The findings revealed that lexical sophistication   GSL-1 1000 words is the indicator of writing quality. For syntactic complexity, findings showed that the mean length T-unit (MLTU) is not a good predictor of academic writing. However, the clause per T-unit (C/TU) indicated a strong correlation with writing quality. Furthermore, the ability to use sophisticated vocabulary rather than grammatical knowledge was an effective predictor of academic writing. The results of this research can help EFL scholars improve the quality of their writing so they can employ it in academic writing.  

Syntactic complexity of interpreted, L2 and L1 speech: A constrained language perspective

This study investigates the differences in syntactic complexity among three language varieties: interpreted speech, nonnative English (L2) speech, and native English (L1) speech. The examination was conducted through the evaluation of 14 measures across five subconstructs: the length of the production unit, the amount of subordination, the amount of coordination, phrasal sophistication, and overall sentence complexity. We used a self-compiled comparable corpus of these three language varieties and tested the simplification hypothesis under the framework of constrained language. Our results showed that the two spoken constrained varieties, interpreted speech and L2 speech, had significantly lower scores on most of the syntactic complexity measures compared to non-constrained L1 speech. However, there was no consistent pattern between the two constrained varieties. Specifically, interpreted speech had longer language units and more coordination than L2 speech, which contained more subordination. Overall, this study provides new insights for simplification research by examining syntactic complexity measures from a constrained language perspective.

A corpus-based study of syntactic complexity of translated and non-translated chairman’s statements

The chairman’s statement of the corporate annual report plays an important role in informing the decision-making of investors. Thus, it is often targeted at an international audience. The present study compares the syntactic complexity of translated chairman’s statements (Chinese to English) and non-translated ones (English), to determine the role that translation plays in conveying the chairman’s message. The results show that translated chairman’s statements are significantly simpler in subordination as well as overall sentence complexity, using fewer verbal phrases and T-units than the non-translated ones. However, translated chairman’s statements have longer length of production units, use more coordinate phrases and complex nominals than their non-translated counterparts. The findings indicate that simplification exists in half of the 14 syntactic complexity measures, providing some evidence for the simplification universal. They also reveal that in addition to translation universals, social factors also affect the complexity level of translated and non-translated chairman’s statements. The findings of the present study contribute to a systematic understanding of syntactic features of translated and non-translated chairman’s statements, enrich the present knowledge of translation universals and provide pedagogical implications for translation teaching and training in the context of Chinese-English translation.

Syntactic complexity and connector use in the summary writing of L1 and L2 Canadian students

AbstractThe study compared the syntactic complexity and the use of logical connectors in summaries written in French by two groups of students: speakers of French as first language (L1) and peers in a French-immersion program (L2) from grade nine to university. Both L1 and L2 groups of university students demonstrated more general complexity in their written summaries than less mature writers. However, the use of phrasal elaboration was apparent just at the upper secondary and university levels with L1 students. Both groups generally tend to overuse causal connectors while underusing additive and adversative connectors compared to the author’s use in the source text. Yet both groups employ significantly more adversative connectors just at the post-secondary level. The only difference observed between L1 and L2 writers was in the diversity of connector words used in the summary, with the former group using a richer, more diverse vocabulary. Several measures for succinctness differentiated L1 and L2 students in early secondary with the latter group condensing the source text less than L1 students. Correlation analysis suggested that many measures of syntactic complexity and connector use are inextricably linked.

Assessing the writing quality of English research articles based on absolute and relative measures of syntactic complexity

Prediction of writing quality based on various linguistic features has greatly supported writing assessment in academic contexts. Research article (RA) is an important academic genre widely taught and assessed in EAP (English for Academic Purposes) writing courses, but there is little research exploring the assessment of RA writing quality on the basis of linguistic features, which may have the potential to assist teachers’ evaluation of students’ RA drafts. The present study aims to explore whether features of syntactic complexity can effectively predict RA writing quality. To represent syntactic complexity as a multidimensional construct, we employed traditional absolute measures and the newly proposed relative measures related to the use of verb argument constructions (VACs). Robust predictors of writing quality were identified at both the whole RA level and the part-genre level. It is found that VAC-based measures are more useful for indexing the writing quality of RAs at whole text level, while absolute measures have a stronger predictive power at part-genre level. Our research also shows that the relationships between writing quality and syntactic complexity are subject to part-genre variation. Implications for language teaching and assessment in the EAP context are discussed.

Linguistic Features of Korean EFL Learners’ Writing: Based on Writing Quality and Genre

The present study examines the linguistic features of Korean college students’ English writings in terms of their writing quality and genre. Forty-eight Korean college students took part in the study, and their writing samples, comprised of narrative and exposition compositions, were collected to analyze on the basis of fluency and syntactic complexity. A total of 95 writings were entered into the computer program L2 syntactic complexity analyzer (L2SCA), and then statistical analyses such as ANOVA and t-test were performed to investigate how the linguistic features of the participants’ English writings are different depending on their writing quality and genre. The results showed that participants’ writing quality had a statistically significant impact on the text length of their writings, while it did not have a statistically significant effect on 13 measures out of 14 syntactic complexity measures. However, the results of genre differences indicated that the genre of writing had a substantial impact on 15 measures including fluency and syntactic complexity in the participants’ writing. Based on the results, some implications on how English writing instruction can better help Korean learners develop their English writing skills are discussed in the end.