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Measuring linguistic complexity in long‐term L2 speakers of English and L1 attriters of German
Author(s) -
Lahmann Cornelia,
Steinkrauss Rasmus,
Schmid Monika S.
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
international journal of applied linguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.712
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 1473-4192
pISSN - 0802-6106
DOI - 10.1111/ijal.12259
Subject(s) - linguistics , german , psychology , linguistic sequence complexity , variation (astronomy) , context (archaeology) , term (time) , computer science , natural language processing , history , philosophy , physics , archaeology , astrophysics , quantum mechanics
Linguistic complexity is neither easily defined nor measured. The challenge in finding reliable ways to measure linguistic complexity is even more pronounced when the variation of contexts in which complexity is measured is taken into account. This paper therefore aims at finding measures for assessing syntactic and lexical complexity that are sensitive and non‐overlapping even in a less frequently studied context: spontaneous speech of L1 attriters and highly proficient L2 English speakers. To evaluate operationalizations of syntactic and lexical complexity, several previously proposed measures are applied to a corpus of spontaneous speech and a principal component analysis is conducted. The results show which of the measures group together as underlying variables of syntactic and lexical complexity and how this can inform future operationalizations of complexity.