scholarly journals Morphological complexity and rated writing proficiency

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nuria de la Torre García ◽  
María Cecilia Ainciburu ◽  
Kris Buyse
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Morphological Diversity ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Writing Proficiency ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Complexity Measures ◽  
Linguistic Complexity ◽  
Verbal System ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Morphological Complexity

Abstract Linguistic complexity measures are used to describe second language (L2) performance and assess levels of proficiency and development. Although morphology is considered crucial in L2 acquisition, morphological complexity has been relatively neglected, hindering comprehensive views of grammatical complexity in L2. This article presents an application of a recently proposed metric of morphological diversity, the Morphological Complexity Index (MCI), in an L2 Spanish corpus of 113 essays classified into four proficiency levels by expert evaluators. The aim of the study is to investigate the relationships of MCI with subjectively rated proficiency and with other four quantitative measures of L2 complexity. Results indicate that morphological complexity, as measured by MCI, does not vary significantly across proficiency levels in this corpus. The MCI shows significant correlations with lexical but not with syntactic complexity measures. Findings are interpreted in the light of the characteristics of the corpus and the acquisition of the Spanish verbal system.

The development of morphological complexity: A cross-linguistic study of L2 French and English

2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bastien De Clercq ◽  
Alex Housen
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Morphological Diversity ◽  
Complexity Measures ◽  
Linguistic Complexity ◽  
Verbal System ◽  
Continuous Increase ◽  
Morphological Complexity ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
French And English

Studies in second language acquisition (SLA) increasingly rely on measures of linguistic complexity to assess second language (L2) proficiency and development. While an important number of studies have risen to the call of studying a broader range of complexity related constructs (Bulté and Housen, 2012; Norris and Ortega, 2009), few have examined morphological complexity, instead focusing on syntax and lexis. The use of morphology measures is especially warranted in light of complexity trade-offs believed to occur both in language development – when growth in one linguistic domain (e.g. syntax) is temporarily prioritized over growth in another (e.g. morphology) – as well as crosslinguistically, in the form of balancing effects between different domains of the linguistic system. From both a cross-linguistic and developmental perspective, then, the current emphasis in SLA research on measures of syntactic complexity does not comprehensively gauge overall (grammatical) complexity in learner data. This study focuses on the development of morphological complexity using three previously proposed measures based on the notion of morphological diversity, with special attention to the verbal inflectional system (Horst and Collins, 2006; Malvern et al., 2004; Pallotti, 2015). Not only does the verbal system pose significant challenges to language learners, it is also the locus of important differences between inflectionally richer languages, like French, and inflectionally poorer languages, like English. The study investigates cross-linguistic differences in the development of morphological complexity and the effectiveness of the three morphological complexity measures as indicators of proficiency. The analyses were carried out on a multilingual corpus of 100 L2 French and 100 L2 English oral narratives, representing four different proficiency levels in both languages. Results indicate a more continuous increase of morphological complexity in L2 French than in L2 English and underline the importance of morphology as an essential component of a multidimensional view of linguistic complexity in SLA.

scholarly journals L2 Writing: A Comparison of Upper Intermediate and Advanced EFL Learners

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 17
Author(s):  
Ana Cristina Lahuerta
Keyword(s):  
Intermediate Level ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Writing Proficiency ◽  
Complexity Measures ◽  
Advanced Level ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
English Writing ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
General Quality

The present study examines differences in syntactic complexity in English writing among advanced and upper intermediate undergraduates by means of quantitative measures of syntactic complexity. Participants were 250 Spanish undergraduates enrolled in a Degree in Modern Languages. A total of 121 students had an upper intermediate level (B2 level according to the CEFR) and 129 had an advanced level (C1 level according to the CEFR). Essays were evaluated by quantitative measures gauging different aspects of L2 complexity. Results indicate that the complexity measures chosen can capture significant differences in writing proficiency when comparing different proficiency levels. The scores on the general quality of the writings and on all syntactic complexity measures increased from B2 to C12 and for all complexity measures the increase was statistically significant.

Acquiring phenomena at the syntax/semantics interface in L2 Spanish

2007 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 67-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes ◽  
Theodoros Marinis
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Advanced Learners ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Verb Semantics ◽  
Syntactic Features ◽  
Interface Phenomena ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
The Subject

Recent second language (L2) acquisition research has proposed that purely syntactic features are easier to acquire and less vulnerable than ones involving the interfaces (Sorace, 2004; Serratrice et al. 2004). The present paper addresses this issue by investigating the acquisition of the Spanish personal preposition a in English L2 learners of Spanish. The distribution of a in direct object NPs relates to the specificity/definiteness of the NP, the animacy/agentivity of the subject, and verb semantics (Torrego 1998; Zagona 2002). 33 English L2 learners of Spanish of different proficiency levels, and 14 Spanish controls participated in an acceptability judgement task. The results showed significant differences between native speakers and L2 learners of all proficiency levels, who performed at chance, and support the claim that L2 learners have difficulties acquiring structures involving the syntax/semantics interface. However, the advanced learners showed sensitivity to the least complex condition providing evidence that interface phenomena may be acquirable.

scholarly journals Morphological complexity in written L2 texts

2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vaclav Brezina ◽  
Gabriele Pallotti
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
English Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Threshold Level ◽  
Sentence Length ◽  
Inflectional Morphology ◽  
Complexity Measures ◽  
Morphological Complexity

Morphological complexity (MC) is a relatively new construct in second language acquisition (SLA). After critically discussing existing approaches to calculating MC in first- and second-language acquisition research, this article presents a new operationalization of the construct, the Morphological Complexity Index (MCI). The MCI is applied in two case studies based on argumentative written texts produced by native and non-native speakers of Italian and English. Study 1 shows that morphological complexity varies between native and non-native speakers of Italian, and that it is significantly lower in learners with lower proficiency levels. The MCI is strongly correlated to proficiency, measured with a C-test, and also shows significant correlations with other measures of linguistic complexity, such as lexical diversity and sentence length. Quite a different picture emerges from Study 2, on advanced English learners. Here, morphological complexity remains constant across natives and non-natives, and is not significantly correlated to other text complexity measures. These results point to the fact that morphological complexity in texts is a function of speakers’ proficiency and the specific language under investigation; for some linguistic systems with a relatively simple inflectional morphology, such as English, learners will soon reach a threshold level after which inflectional diversity remains constant.

scholarly journals Kolmogorov complexity of morphs and constructions in English

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharina Ehret
Keyword(s):  
Gospel Of Mark ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Compression Technique ◽  
Linguistic Complexity ◽  
Compression Algorithms ◽  
Information Theoretic ◽  
Morphological Complexity ◽  
Linguistic Patterns ◽  
Point Of Departure

This chapter demonstrates how compression algorithms can be used to address morphological and syntactic complexity in detail by analysing the contribution of specific linguistic features to English texts. The point of departure is the ongoing complexity debate and quest for complexity metrics. After decades of adhering to the equal complexity axiom, recent research seeks to define and measure linguistic complexity (Dahl 2004; Kortmann and Szmrecsanyi 2012; Miestamo et al. 2008). Against this backdrop, I present a new flavour of the Juola-style compression technique (Juola 1998), targeted manipulation. Essentially, compression algorithms are used to measure linguistic complexity via the relative informativeness in text samples. Thus, I assess the contribution of morphs such as –ing or –ed, and functional constructions such as progressive (be + verb-ing) or perfect (have + verb past participle) to the syntactic and morphological complexity in a mixed-genre corpus of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the Gospel of Mark and newspaper texts. I find that a higher number of marker types leads to higher amounts of morphological complexity in the corpus. Syntactic complexity is reduced because the presence of morphological markers enhances the algorithmic prediction of linguistic patterns. To conclude, I show that information-theoretic methods yield linguistically meaningful results and can be used to measure the complexity of specific linguistic features in naturalistic corpora.

Second language acquisition of pragmatic inferences: Evidence from the Frenchc'est-cleft

2016 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 703-732 ◽  
Author(s):  
EMILIE DESTRUEL ◽  
BRYAN DONALDSON
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Choice Task ◽  
Empirical Adequacy ◽  
Control Group ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Forced Choice Task

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the extent to which second language (L2) speakers of French acquire the semantic and pragmatic (or interpretive) properties associated with thec'est-cleft, specifically the exhaustive inference. This phenomenon is relevant to theories of language acquisition because it is situated at the interface of syntax and pragmatics. The results from a forced-choice task challenge the empirical adequacy of the interface hypothesis (Sorace, 2011, 2012; Sorace & Filiaci, 2006), which claims that external interfaces between a linguistic module and a cognitive module remain problematic even at the highest levels of L2 acquisition. The results from 40 L2 learners at three proficiency levels reveal development from nontargetlike to nativelike behavior. In particular, the high-proficiency group interprets thec'est-cleft, as well as canonical subject–verb–object sentences and sentences with exclusives (i.e.,seul(ement)“only”), in a statistically identical way to the French native speaker control group.

Applying phraseological complexity measures to L2 French

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Vandeweerd ◽  
Alex Housen ◽  
Magali Paquot
Keyword(s):  
Complexity Measures ◽  
Linguistic Validation ◽  
Lexical Diversity ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Morphological Complexity ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Direct Objects ◽  
Argumentative Essays ◽  
Adverbial Modifiers ◽  
Grammatical Dependencies

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.

scholarly journals Measuring syntactic complexity in learner Finnish

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Taina Mylläri
Keyword(s):  
Language Learners ◽  
Task Type ◽  
Language Learner ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Complexity Measures ◽  
Vast Number ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Proficiency Level ◽  
The Common ◽  
Do So

In the study of complexity, accuracy and fluency (CAF), syntactic complexity can be measured by a multitude of measures. Traditionally, the measures are quantitative and they use production units such as words, clauses, T-units, and sentences. Despite the vast number of measures available, many studies have used only one or two of them, or parallel ones tapping the same component of complexity. The present study explores syntactic complexity using seven frequently used quantitative complexity measures to gauge different facets of complexity in written learner Finnish. The data of the study consist of texts written by adult and adolescent language learners, and they cover proficiency levels from beginner (A1) to advanced learner (C2) in the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). According to the results, changes in the measures are not linear from one proficiency level to the next. The results also show that while all the selected measures catch some statistically significant differences between proficiency levels in adult language learner texts, only four measures do so in adolescent language learner texts. The results also suggest that the measures are sensitive to task type.

Reassembly of plural and human features in the L2 acquisition of Chinese by adult Korean speakers

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 529-555
Author(s):  
Jiajia Su
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Proficiency Levels ◽  
Grammaticality Judgment ◽  
Feature Reassembly ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Korean Speakers

This article reports on a study investigating the second language (L2) acquisition of the plural and human features in Mandarin Chinese by adult Korean speakers. Both plural and human features are represented in Korean and Chinese, but assembled in different ways. Forty-eight L2 learners at beginner, intermediate, and advanced Chinese proficiency levels and twenty-three native speakers of Chinese were tested using a grammaticality judgment task. The results show that L2 learners can successfully reassemble the two features, though L2 specific contexts and restrictions on feature realization are difficult. The advanced group has achieved native-like performance. The findings provide empirical evidence for the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (Lardiere, 2009).

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document