Lexical Density Research Articles

What the frequency list can teach us about Turkish sign language?

AbstractRecent studies on linguistics, cognitive science and psychology have shown that describing lexical frequency characteristics can answer many critical questions on language acquisition, mental lexicon and language use. Given the importance of corpus-based methodology, this study reports the preliminary findings from the objective lexical frequency list in TİD based on 103.087 sign tokens. This paper shows that frequency occurrence has a very decisive role on the linguistics categories and language in use. With respect to the multi-functionality of pointing in signed languages, the top ranked ID-gloss occurrences are mostly shaped by the pronominal references. Moreover, when compared to previous studies in terms of lexical density and lexical diversity, TİD shares both similar and different statistical features observed in other signed languages.

The representativeness threshold for the CETA subcorpus of the Coruña Corpus

The concept of representativeness is the main distinguishing characteristic of specialised corpora in comparison to other sets of texts. The Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Writing currently comprises four published subcorpora (astronomy, life sciences, history, and philosophy) plus three others under compilation (physics, chemistry and linguistics). In this paper we aim to assess the lexical density of the text samples in CETA, the Corpus of English Texts on Astronomy, by means of the ReCor tool, a posteriori. The study is motivated by the following question: does quantitative representativeness analysis using ReCor provide, in the form of a cross-check, further validation of previous research on the representativeness of CETA? Previous work (Crespo and Moskowich, 2010) has indicated that the CETA corpus is well designed and valid for the purposes for which it was intended. We will here suggest metrics to measure these findings. The most important contribution of this study is to offer quantitative data collection results using the ReCor tool, which allows data triangulation and consequently ensures overall data quality. Results show that data analysis with the ReCor tool supports previous findings, and thus we are able to verify that CETA is indeed representative of the language of its time and register.

Czech Translations of the Gospel of Matthew from the Diachronic Point of View – Plus Ça Change…

Abstract The paper focuses on dynamics of changes of several linguistic and text properties in diachronic development of Czech. Specifically, we analyze the proportion of identical word-forms (types), the average type length, text length, the proportion of hapax legomena, the moving average type-token ratio, and entropy. For the analysis, seven translations of the Gospel of Matthew from the 14th to the 21st century were used. The study reveals some differences in dynamics of changes of particular properties.

L2 Theme development in Discursive and Experimental undergraduate student writing

Abstract To complement earlier studies of writing development in the BAWE corpus of successful student writing (Nesi & Gardner 2012; Staples et al. 2016), we examine the Systemic Functional Linguistics notion of Theme as used by L2 writers across first- and third-year and in two distinctive discourse types: persuasive/argumentative Discursive writing of assignments in the soft disciplines and Experimental report writing of assignments in the hard sciences. Theme analysis reveals more substantial differences across the two discourse types than between first- and third-year L2 undergraduate writing. Textual Themes are consistently more frequent than interpersonal Themes, and some variance is found within subcategories of each. Significant differences in lexical density occur across third-year discourse types and between first- and third-year Experimental writing where a predominance of N+N topical Themes is also found. These findings are important as previous research has tended to focus on L1 Discursive writing.

Intensifying and downtoning in South Asian Englishes

AbstractAs studies on socio-pragmatics in South Asian Englishes and – more generally – postcolonial Englishes are still rare, the present study analyses how age, formality of context, gender, topic of the conversation and type-token ratio of a given speaker influence intensifiers and downtoners in spoken Indian, Sri Lankan and British English as represented in theInternational Corpus of English. Central research interests cover (a) differences in the frequencies of intensifiers/downtoners regarding these factors and across the varieties studied and (b) variety-specific intensifiers/downtoners in these regional varieties. Two random forest analyses highlight that, while topic and type-token ratio are more important predictors than age and gender, all variables are – to different degrees – sensitive to variety. Possible explanations for a higher incidence of intensifiers/downtoners in British English than in Indian and Sri Lankan English include intensification strategies transferred from indigenous languages or high degrees of uncertainty avoidance in the South Asian speech communities.

Lexical Complexity of Students' Oral Performance on PechaKucha

This study examines the lexical complexity of undergraduate students' speaking performance, taking from their performance in Pechakucha. Pechakucha is an internet-based platform that enables people to do their presentations at a specific time and share it worldwide. The researcher uses PechaKucha since it enhances the students' actual speaking competence by giving them limited time to discuss an image. The lexical complexity of the students' speaking performance is measured using Lexical Complexity Analyser (LCA). This present study finds a significant difference between students' lexical frequency when performing descriptive and narrative oral presentations, shown by the sig.2-tailed of that variable is less than 0.05. While on the other hand, students' lexical variation, lexical density and lexical sophistication showed that the sig-2 tailed value is higher than 0.05, which means there is no significant difference between those two oral presentations. The finding indicates that the students' word choices are similar, and the measurements of their lexical complexity are influenced by the different requirements applied in two oral presentations. In addition, Pechakucha is one of the speaking activities which can be an alternative activity during online classes which prevent students from having face-to-face speaking activity.

Early vocabulary size in Argentinean toddlers: associations with home literacy and screen media exposure

The objective of the following study was to analyze the associations of caregivers’ literacy practices and beliefs, and children exposure to screen media with lexical density and syntax development during the first three years. A total of 136 primary caregivers of infants between 12 to 40 months of age (M= 26.34, SD = 7.55) were evaluated. The participants completed a sociodemographic questionnaire, a reading comprehension test, a literacy practices and beliefs survey and the CDI (McArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventory) part II (words and sentences). In addition, children’s daycare attendance was considered. After controlling for age, gender, parent’s education level and daycare attendance, positive attitudes towards literacy and frequency of PC use contributed to CDI vocabulary scores, while shared reading frequency was associated with CDI syntax scores. These results indicate that both parent-child shared reading and PC use provide a context for verbal interaction and joint attention that stimulates language development.

Exploring longitudinal changes in lexical and syntactic features in beginning-level EFL learner writing

This study examined longitudinal changes in lexical and syntactic features in the writing of beginning-level learners in an English as a foreign language (EFL) context. Writing samples were produced by 90 Korean EFL undergraduate students, each of whom produced seven essays over an academic semester, totaling 630 essays. Lexical complexity was measured by lexical density, variation, and sophistication. Syntactic complexity was measured by global complexity, subordination, coordination, and noun phrase complexity. The findings indicate that over time, beginning-level learners showed developmental patterns in lexical features, such that they tended to produce more sophisticated content words and use more function words (e.g., pronouns and articles), which may be difficult for beginning-level learners to learn and use. The findings also indicate that lexical features progressed to a larger degree than syntactic features in beginning-level learners’ writing. In addition, competitive relationships were found between phrasal-level and clause-level complexity and between the use of function words and complex nominals. Last, the use of function words and complex nominals were interrelated, which indicates that changes in lexical and syntactic features appear to be interwoven, thus highlighting the importance of jointly accounting for lexical and syntactic features.

Examining the implementation of academic vocabulary, lexical density, and speech rate features on OpenCourseWare and MOOC lectures

ABSTRACT OpenCourseWare (OCW) and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have gained increasing popularity and importance because they greatly expand students’ access to university lectures. Although the main component of OCW and MOOC platforms is lectures, their differences may potentially affect the difficulty of academic listening comprehension. This study thus explores the extent to which the differences between OCW and MOOC lectures may affect L2 academic listening comprehension in terms of three affecting factors: academic vocabulary coverage, lexical density, and speech rate. The result shows that both OCW and MOOC lectures have a high academic vocabulary coverage, with many more higher-level academic words appearing in the current MOOC lectures. Moreover, the lexical density and speech rate of MOOC lectures are significantly higher than those of OCW lectures, suggesting that students may need to process denser information delivered at a faster speech rate when viewing MOOC lectures. It is thus concluded that comprehending MOOC lectures may demand higher-level academic listening skills and a larger academic vocabulary size. The findings can provide implications for EAP instruction in terms of using OCW and MOOC lectures as academic listening materials for students with different academic vocabulary knowledge and listening proficiency levels.

Applying phraseological complexity measures to L2 French

Abstract This study partially replicates Paquot’s (2018, 2019) study of phraseological complexity in L2 English by investigating how phraseological complexity compares across proficiency levels as well as how phraseological complexity measures relate to lexical, syntactic and morphological complexity measures in a corpus of L2 French argumentative essays. Phraseological complexity is operationalized as the diversity (root type-token ratio; RTTR) and sophistication (pointwise mutual information; PMI) of three types of grammatical dependencies: adjectival modifiers, adverbial modifiers and direct objects. Results reveal a significant increase in the mean PMI of direct objects and the RTTR of adjectival modifiers across proficiency levels. In addition to phraseological sophistication, important predictors of proficiency include measures of lexical diversity, lexical sophistication, syntactic (phrasal) complexity and morphological complexity. The results provide cross-linguistic validation for the results of Paquot (2018, 2019) and further highlight the importance of including phraseological measures in the current repertoire of L2 complexity measures.

Variability in Quantity and Quality of Early Linguistic Experience in Children With Cochlear Implants: Evidence from Analysis of Natural Auditory Environments.

Understanding how quantity and quality of language input vary across children with cochlear implants (CIs) is important for explaining sources of large individual differences in language outcomes of this at-risk pediatric population. Studies have mostly focused either on intervention-related, device-related, and/or patient-related factors, or relied on data from parental reports and laboratory-based speech corpus to unravel factors explaining individual differences in language outcomes among children with CIs. However, little is known about the extent to which children with CIs differ in quantity and quality of language input they experience in their natural linguistic environments. To address this knowledge gap, the present study analyzed the quantity and quality of language input to early-implanted children (age of implantation <23 mo) during the first year after implantation. Day-long Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA) recordings, derived from home environments of 14 early-implanted children, were analyzed to estimate numbers of words per day, type-token ratio (TTR), and mean length of utterance in morphemes (MLUm) in adults' speech. Properties of language input were analyzed across these three dimensions to examine how input in home environments varied across children with CIs in quantity, defined as number of words, and quality, defined as whether speech was child-directed or overheard. Our per-day estimates demonstrated that children with CIs were highly variable in the number of total words (mean ± SD = 25,134 ± 9,267 words) and high-quality child-directed words (mean ± SD = 10,817 ± 7,187 words) they experienced in a day in their home environments during the first year after implantation. The results also showed that the patterns of variability across children in quantity and quality of language input changes depending on whether the speech was child-directed or overheard. Children also experienced highly different environments in terms of lexical diversity (as measured by TTR) and morphosyntactic complexity (as measured by MLUm) of language input. The results demonstrated that children with CIs varied substantially in the quantity and quality of language input experienced in their home environments. More importantly, individual children experienced highly variable amounts of high-quality, child-directed speech, which may drive variability in language outcomes across children with CIs. Analyzing early language input in natural, linguistic environments of children with CIs showed that the quantity and quality of early linguistic input vary substantially across individual children with CIs. This substantial individual variability suggests that the quantity and quality of early linguistic input are potential sources of individual differences in outcomes of children with CIs and warrant further investigation to determine the effects of this variability on outcomes.

Literary “higher dimensions” quantified: a stylometric study of nine stories

Abstract The study will focus on the quantitative assessment of nine stories, considered important contributions in the supernatural and in the early and modern science-fiction prose. Besides the two treatments of the topic of imaginary Flatland – penned by E. A. Abbott and C. H. Hinton –, the corpus includes writings by H. G. Wells, A. Blackwood, M. Leinster, G. Waldeyer, R. A. Heinlein, L. Padgett, and A. C. Clarke. Texts are researched on the bases of four analyses (moving-average type-token ratio, average tokens length, Busemann’s coefficient, and collocation associativity), with the results tested for statistical significance; next, the textual comparisons will provide a springboard for sketches of literary criticism interpretations. The analyzed corpus has revealed the distinctive and colorful take writers have in their stories. By the nature of their subject, the texts are expected to share higher dimensions and time warps, a thread implying a meeting point in terms of vocabulary richness, plot development, and possibly of narrative structure. Yet, in most cases, the findings suggest basic and nuanced differences, hinting at clear stylistic physiognomies in the authorship. The outcome affects not only the assessment of the weight individual samples have, but also the interface between a common (sub)genre and personal style.

Developmental Features of Lexical Richness in English Writings by Chinese L3 Beginner Learners.

Lexical richness is considered as one of the most efficient methods for assessing writing proficiency and development. However, the developmental features of lexical richness in L3 writing remain relatively poorly understood compared with that of L2 writings. This study reports a cross-sectional corpus-based study that aims to explore the developmental features of lexical richness in L3 writings by Chinese beginner learners of English from the perspective of the dynamic usage-based approach. Specifically, this study compares samples of English writing by Chinese L3 secondary students (grades 7–12) aged 13–18 across three learning stages in terms of lexical sophistication, lexical diversity and lexical density. The writing samples were collected from the Writing Corpus of Chinese Ethnic Minority Beginner Learners as the Third Language (WCCMBL), and the sample sizes of the three stages remained almost the same. The results revealed that lexical richness was generally low in L3 beginner learners' writing. Specifically, L3 beginner learners used fewer diverse words and lexical words, but used numerous high-frequency words in their writing. Additionally, lexical sophistication and lexical density yielded positive growth across the three learning stages, whereas lexical diversity developed non-linearly. These findings reveal a dynamic development of lexical richness in L3 writings, with each of the three measures developing unevenly. Drawing upon these findings, several suggestions for L3 vocabulary teaching are also proposed.

Investigating the impact of a semester-long study abroad program on L2 reading and vocabulary development

Abstract This study investigates the impact that a semester-long study abroad program has on the L2 reading and vocabulary development of a group of Catalan/Spanish bilinguals learning English as an L2 (n = 30). Another objective is to determine whether gains in participants’ vocabulary and reading – if any – are related to their initial L2 proficiency and L2 vocabulary level. Participants were administered (1) a reading text, (2) the Updated Vocabulary Levels Test, (3) a written essay, (4) a placement test and (5) an online questionnaire before and after their SA experiences. The results suggest that the sojourn was positive for participants’ reading comprehension, receptive vocabulary and lexical accuracy, but not for reading fluency, lexical fluency, lexical density and lexical sophistication. It was also found that the students’ initial L2 vocabulary and proficiency level were related to gains in receptive vocabulary and reading comprehension.

Lexical density and variation in Indonesian folklores in English student textbooks: an SFL study

This study aims to study the lexical density and lexical variation in Indonesian folklore narrative texts in English textbooks for grade X which were published by the Ministry of Education and Culture of The Republic of Indonesia. This study uses qualitative method since this study focuses on lexical density and lexical variation in the texts from the textbooks. This study applies the theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics based on lexical density theory of Ure (1971) which was refined by Halliday (1985) and the theory of lexical variation of Castello (2008). In addition, Gunning Fog Index and Estimated Reading Grades by Heydari (2012) are also applied to help measure suggested reading grades of the texts. The data are three narrative texts about Indonesian folklore from Bahasa Inggris: third edition (2017) and Interlanguage (2008) textbooks. This study revealed that the texts vary in terms of their lexical density and lexical variation. Moreover, in some of the texts, their lexical variation does not go in line with their lexical density and affect the difficulty level of the texts to be comprehended. This study also revealed that the texts vary in terms of Gunning Fog Index and many of the texts are suggested for lower graders.

Immediate effect of dialogic reading on interactive quality of book sharing among Chinese preschool mother–child dyads

Shared book reading is often used as an educational tool to promote the development of children’s early language and literacy skills. This study aimed to describe and compare the linguistic features of parent–child interactions during two shared book-reading sessions among 45 children (aged 4–6 years old) and their mothers. The dyads were divided into 2 groups: the intervention group ( n = 25), and the control group ( n = 20). In the first reading session, mothers read with their children the way they were most comfortable with and as they would usually do at home. Before the second reading session, we provided a 30-minute intervention on strategies of dialogic reading to the intervention group. Both readings were video-recorded. Mothers completed home literacy environment questionnaires. The results showed that even for mothers who were initially very skillful at reading with their children, this immediate intervention promoted a number of aspects of interactivity between mothers and their children, namely, the number of utterances, completion, open-ended, closed and labeling questions, and type token ratio by mothers, the number of utterances and initiated talk by children, and extra-textual talk and total number of turns by both mother and child. Mothers who received the intervention demonstrated more flexibility and more discursive styles, even though the intervention was short, and the time for them to practice was minimal.

Comparing contract cheating papers and L2 university student papers using lexical complexity analysis: An exploratory study

Instructors typically use widely available plagiarism detection tools to uncover overlapping vocabulary with other texts; however, they lack empirical evidence on measures differentiating between student writing and outsourced papers. Contract cheating is defined as purchasing custom-made assignments with the intention of submitting them for course credit. In this exploratory study, disparities between student papers and contract cheating papers are examined using a computational tool, the Lexical Complexity Analyzer (Ai &amp;amp; Lu, 2010) that automatically identifies twenty-five lexical complexity features (e.g., noun and verb variation). Results show statistically significant differences between L2 student papers and contract cheating papers in features of lexical density and lexical sophistication, supporting instructors’ intuitions about differences in the lexical make-up of papers written by students versus contract cheating staff. At the same time, tools such as the Lexical Complexity Analyzer provide valuable information for instructors through quantitative measures, which effectively reveal features of lexical variation that could not otherwise be obtained.

What makes mathematics difficult for adults? The role of reading components in solving mathematics items

Although it is widely known that reading plays a significant role in mathematics performance, it remains unclear how specific reading component skills and item characteristics are associated with adults’ mathematics performance. The aim of this study was to investigate reading component skills (printed vocabulary, sentence processing, passage comprehension), characteristics of mathematics items (picture/table, complex verb forms, number of prepositions, lexical density), and the possible interaction effects thereof on mathematics performance. The sample consisted of 368 German adults (age: M = 50.45; 59% female). Our results showed main effects on performance from adults’ reading component skills and item characteristics. Furthermore, interaction effects between passage comprehension and two item characteristics on mathematics performance emerge. Implications include enhancing adults’ reading component skills.

A Study of Analogical Density in Various Corpora at Various Granularity

In this paper, we inspect the theoretical problem of counting the number of analogies between sentences contained in a text. Based on this, we measure the analogical density of the text. We focus on analogy at the sentence level, based on the level of form rather than on the level of semantics. Experiments are carried on two different corpora in six European languages known to have various levels of morphological richness. Corpora are tokenised using several tokenisation schemes: character, sub-word and word. For the sub-word tokenisation scheme, we employ two popular sub-word models: unigram language model and byte-pair-encoding. The results show that the corpus with a higher Type-Token Ratio tends to have higher analogical density. We also observe that masking the tokens based on their frequency helps to increase the analogical density. As for the tokenisation scheme, the results show that analogical density decreases from the character to word. However, this is not true when tokens are masked based on their frequencies. We find that tokenising the sentences using sub-word models and masking the least frequent tokens increase analogical density.

Analysis of English Alive Textbook in Terms of Genres and Lexical Density

The current study aimed at analyzing an English textbook titled English Alive used by English teachers from some senior high schools in Curup, Bengkulu, Indonesia. The textbook analysis was oriented towards two domains, namely genres and lexical density, by applying a content analysis method. This study revealed that the English Alive textbook had five genres: reading materials in the narrative, report, analytical exposition, spoof, and hortatory exposition. Those genres were embedded in sixteen passages distributed to the entire textbook, and those passages were mapped into ten units. Lexical density measurement indicated that most of the passages were categorized as easy to be comprehended, and a few passages were categorized as too easy to be comprehended. However, text genres in this textbook did not sufficiently conform to the distribution of English reading materials as suggested by the K-13 curriculum. Some reading passages did not seem contributive to students’ English acquisition according to comprehensible input theory and other related findings. Hence, the English Alive textbook could be used in today’s context and needs as supplementary material, but the primary reading materials should be resting upon K-13-driven English textbooks. Strength and weaknesses were also identified from the English Alive textbook. The former could be noted that this textbook adopted the constructivism theory and genre-based approach properly. However, the latter indicated that the provision of genre materials did not entirely conform to essential competencies formulated in the current K-13 curriculum of English education. Further studies could analyze more textbooks to help teachers choose appropriate English textbooks.