Session 10
Grammar - Overview
One-liner
We will go over how people have measured grammar and what are the current states in grammatical complexity research.
🎯 Learning Objectives
By the end of this session, students will be able to:
- Provide historical overview of the syntactic complexity research
- Describe different approaches to grammatical features:
- Grammatical complexity strand
- Fine-grained grammatical complexity strand
- Descriptive (register-based analysis) strand
- Verb Argument Construction (VAC) strand
- Understand current trends of syntactic complexity research
🔑 Key Concepts
- Grammatical complexity
- Predictive measures versus Descriptive measures
📚 Required Readings
Durrant Ch. 5.
Kyle, K., & Crossley, S. A. (2018). Measuring Syntactic Complexity in L2 Writing Using Fine‐Grained Clausal and Phrasal Indices. The Modern Language Journal, 102(2), 333–349. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12468
🌊 Dive Deeper - Recommended Readings
Biber, D., Gray, B., Staples, S., & Egbert, J. (2020). Investigating grammatical complexity in L2 English writing research: Linguistic description versus predictive measurement. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 46, 100869. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2020.100869
Biber, D., Gray, B., & Poonpon, K. (2011). Should We Use Characteristics of Conversation to Measure Grammatical Complexity in L2 Writing Development? TESOL Quarterly, 45(1), 5–35. https://doi.org/10.5054/tq.2011.244483
Norris, J. M., & Ortega, L. (2009). Towards an Organic Approach to Investigating CAF in Instructed SLA: The Case of Complexity. Applied Linguistics, 30(4), 555–578. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amp044
Lu, X. (2011). A Corpus‐Based Evaluation of Syntactic Complexity Measures as Indices of College‐Level ESL Writers’ Language Development. TESOL Quarterly, 45(1), 36–62. https://doi.org/10.5054/tq.2011.240859
Materials
Slides for the session
Reflection
- You can now:
- Describe classic linguistic complexity measures
- Describe how