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Word segmentation is an essential and challenging task in natural language processing, especially for the Chinese language due to its high linguistic complexity. Existing methods for Chinese word segmentation, including statistical machine learning methods and neural network methods, usually have good performance in specific knowledge domains. Given the increasing importance of interdisciplinary and cross-domain studies, one of the challenges in cross-domain word segmentation is to handle the out-of-vocabulary (OOV) words. Existing methods show unsatisfactory performance to meet the practical standard. To this end, we propose a document-level context-aware model that can automatically perceive and identify OOV words from different domains. Our method jointly implements a word-based and a character-based model and then processes the results with a newly proposed reconstruction model. We evaluate the new method by designing and conducting comprehensive experiments on two real-world datasets (e.g., news from different domains). The results demonstrate the superiority of our method over the state-of-the-art models in handling texts from different domains. Importantly, when doing the word segmentation under the cross-domain scenario, our proposed method can improve the performance of OOV words recognition.

Social media platforms have become prominent channels for e-commerce, and the role of social network sites’ (SNS) content marketing is expanding as a strategic marketing communication approach to attract and retain consumers and increase sales. In this study, we focused on South Korea market and explored the influence of linguistic complexity and informality on consumer engagement. In particular, we identified the importance of complexity, focusing on its negative effects, as well as the moderating effect of commerce features to minimize these effects. Specifically, content length, hashtags, long words, and average sentence length significantly and negatively impacted consumer engagement. The influence of emojis, an informality variable, was not statistically significant. Shoppable tags, a commerce feature that provides both advertising explicitness and shopping convenience, were a moderating factor in the influence of complexity. Our findings provide new insights for content marketing researchers, and have practical implications for social media managers and content developers.

The article reports on an action research study which uses reformulation as its key instrument. The aim of the study was to identify the individual characteristics of acquisition of complex structures in Polish (native language) and English (foreign language) by children with speech and language deficits, learning in an inclusive environment at the upper primary level. The analysis of the gathered data focuses on Polish and English structures used by special needs students and mainstream students in their inclusive educational environment, and on the students’ ability to build/reconstruct a narrative structure – according to the unique qualities of the input text. The observed trends help to plan and organise the teaching process, which also includes the rehabilitation of speech and language in a foreign language lesson.

Consultations are thought to increase the legitimacy of policies. However, this reasoning only holds if stakeholders really participate in the consultations. Current scholarship offers three explanations for participation patterns: Institutional rules, policy characteristics, and interest group resources determine participation. This article argues that additionally the linguistic complexity of consultation documents influences participation. Complex language deters potential participants, because it raises the costs of participation. A quantitative analysis of the German consultation of electricity grids lends credibility to the argument: If the description of a power line is simplified between two consultation rounds, the number of contributions mentioning that power line increases. This result contributes to our understanding of unequal participation patterns, and the institutional design of participatory procedures. If we think that legitimacy is enhanced by broad participation, then language of the documents matters.

The efficiency of intervention for children with speech sound disorder may be influenced by linguistic complexity of the phonological intervention target. Complex targets, particularly, later-acquired, less-known consonants and consonant clusters, have been linked to greater post-intervention generalization to untargeted phonological structures. Yet there is little direct evidence to support target selection based on linguistic complexity for Spanish-speaking children with speech sound disorder. This intervention study utilizes an experimental single-case design to examine the efficacy of intervention in Spanish using different complex targets (i.e. /ɡɾ/, /bɾ/, and /l/). For each of the four Spanish-speaking children with speech sound disorder, sounds at 0% accuracy during baseline were monitored across the baseline period, during and post-intervention, and at one- and two-month follow-up visits. Over the course of intervention, only one participant achieved mastery of the targeted structure in practiced words. However, all participants demonstrated some amount of broad phonological generalization to untargeted consonants or clusters. Variable learning trajectories and broad phonological generalization are discussed as they relate to participant characteristics and linguistic complexity.

The readability of 10-K reports, in terms of linguistic complexity, determines the usefulness of information disclosure for stakeholders, particularly individual investors. Since investors largely depend on the financial communication in 10-K reports, firms have an ethical and legal responsibility to present disclosures in a language investors can understand. However, motivated by self-interest, managers obfuscate such disclosures to mask their own actions and hide unfavourable information. Building on the managerial obfuscation hypothesis grounded in stakeholder-agency and ethical-sensitivity theories, I hypothesize and empirically test the relationship between board gender diversity (BGD) and the readability of narrative disclosure in 10-K reports. Based on a relatively large sample of Russell 3000 firms for the years 2002–2018 (6,268 observations), I find a significant positive impact of BGD on 10-K reports’ readability, which in turn improves firm performance. Channel analysis reveals that the findings are driven by (a) female independent directors, and (b) their representation on audit and compensation committees; however, board activity (board meetings and directors’ attendance) does not appear to drive this relationship. Finally, I find that although gender discrimination in the appointment of directors spurs complex readability, the BGD-readability relationship is consistent in gender-biased and non-discriminant firms. I also check the robustness of our main empirical results in several ways. My study has important regulatory and managerial implications in that corporate governance is an important determinant of the readability of disclosure documents.

The linguistic complexity of many text-based tests can be a source of construct-irrelevant variance, as test-takers’ performance may be affected by factors that are beyond the focus of the assessment itself, such as reading comprehension skills. This experimental study examined the extent to which the use of animated videos, as opposed to written text, could (i) reduce construct-irrelevant variance attributed to language and reading skills and (ii) impact test-takers’ reactions to a situational judgment test. The results indicated that the variance attributed to construct-irrelevant factors was lower by 9.5% in the animated version of the test. In addition, those who took the animated test perceived it to be more valid, fair, and enjoyable, than those who took the text-based test. They also rated the language used as less difficult to understand. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Although in recent years researchers have intensified focus on the communication of the pre-trial right to silence or police caution to native and non-native speakers of English, most of this research has been concerned with linguistic complexity, comprehension, and comprehensibility issues. Relatively few studies have focused attention on the role played by the deliverer of the caution in the communicative equation (Cotterill 2000), particularly in situations where the caution has to be interpreted or translated by its deliverer. Drawing on a sociolinguistic variation approach, this study investigates the communication of the police caution to creole speakers, who remain nearly invisible in the research to date. It uses the categories of literal and free translation as tools to analyze spontaneous translations of the caution from English to French lexicon Creole (Kwéyòl) produced by (n = 25) police officers in St. Lucia. The results show considerable variability in these translations, which may have negative consequences for the accused. This study seeks to draw attention to these consequences, by underscoring some of the inaccuracies that may occur in translating or interpreting a caution written in English to Kwéyòl, and make a case for policy that would use the language of the accused in situations of language variation. The study argues that such a policy, which standardizes the Kwéyòl version of the caution, would not only obviate the potential for variability, but would also minimize misunderstandings, which could compromise the legal rights of the suspect.

This paper aims to explore how translators translate both the connotative and denotative meanings of near-synonyms from the Quran into English language. The article will shed light on the phenomenon of near-synonymy, as well as its connotative and denotative meanings and how the translator’s background could have influenced their translation. There has been a dearth of attention on the translation of near-synonyms in the Quran; accordingly, this study examines three pairs of near-synonyms from the Quran and their particular translations in the following three English translations of the Quran itself : 1) The Koran Interpreted by Arberry; 2) The Quran: A New Translation by Abdel Haleem; and 3) The Sublime Quran by Bakhtiar. These translations were chosen due to the significant differences in style and translators’ backgrounds. The analysis aims to highlight the difference in meaning of each pair of near-synonyms by distinguishing both their connotative and denotative meanings. This will be followed by an examination of the translations to recognise whether the near-synonyms were accurately translated in these given instances or lost some, or even all, of their meaning during the translation process and discuss if translator’s background could have influence on it. Based on the discussion and analysis of these examples, it is evident that all three translations failed to distinguish between the pair of near-synonyms and to capture the accurate meaning throughout the Quran, leading to a semantic void. It is similarly clear that the linguistic complexity of the Holy Quran has created a challenging mission for translators, which has ultimately led to loss of accuracy and meaning. The results have shown that each translator chose their own approach based on their translational goal or their educational and personal backgrounds. Keywords: Quran; Near-Synonyms; Quran Translation; Connotative Meaning; Equivalence

This study explored the interaction between learning conditions, linguistic complexity, and first language (L1) syntactic transfer in semiartificial grammar learning by conceptually replicating and extending Tagarelli et al. (2016). We changed the L1 background, elicited production data during debriefing, and added a binary mixed-effects logistic regression analysis to compare variability at learner and item levels with group-level variation on exposure condition, linguistic complexity, and their interaction. Our results replicated those of the original study regarding the comparative efficacy of explicit instruction; however, we also found a condition × complexity interaction absent in the original study. Debriefing sentence-production data suggest that the changed L1-L2 typological distance may have leveled off the advantage of explicit instruction in the learning of the complex V2-VF structure. Finally, our mixed-effects modeling analysis revealed that variability at learner and item levels accounted for a larger proportion of the variance of the outcomes than all the predictors combined.

While traditionally linguistic complexity analysis of learner language is mostly based on essays, there is increasing interest in other task types. This is crucial for obtaining a broader empirical basis for characterizing language proficiency and highlights the need to advance our understanding of how task and learner properties interact in shaping the linguistic complexity of learner productions. It also makes it important to determine which complexity measures generalize well across which tasks. In this paper, we investigate the linguistic complexity of answers to reading comprehension questions written by foreign language learners of German at the college level. Analyzing the corpus with computational linguistic methods identifying a wide range of complexity features, we explore which linguistic complexity analyses can successfully be performed for such short answers, how learner proficiency impacts the results, how generalizable they are across different contexts, and how the quality of the underlying analysis impacts the results.

The present paper uses corpus linguistics methods to study a born-digital cultural artifact, namely the collectible card game Hearthstone, released in 2014 and still under active development in 2020. As indicated by the developers’ public statements, such a game, which is framed as an ongoing service rather than a final product, needs to strike a balance between two conflicting constraints: while the game must remain easily accessible at any stage of its development to increase the player base, the player’s experience must be constantly renewed to keep the existing player base from getting bored and leaving the game. In practice, this translates into the regular addition of new card sets by the developer. Our hypothesis is that linguistic traces of these opposite forces can be found in the evolution of lexical diversity in the text of the game’s rules, as opposed to its ‘flavour’ text, which plays no role in the game’s mechanics. To test this hypothesis, a corpus documenting the first two years of the game has been built and it is distributed in open access. The analysis of lexical diversity in these data shows that the rule text vocabulary is both highly controlled and subject to steady diversification. We view these features as reflecting stakes that characterise the ongoing management and development of a game-as-a-service like Hearthstone.

In the absence of complex and diverse Latinx characters in entertainment media, film and television representations of Latinxs’ culture and language typically embody limiting and harmful stereotypes. However, the highly praised U.S.-based romantic comedy-drama “Jane the Virgin” offers a very different representation. With believable characters and complex linguistic dynamics, the show provides a positive and relatively realistic representation both of Latinxs across generations and of their linguistic repertoires as documented in community studies of Latinx language. Through an analysis of the linguistic practices of Latinx characters in “Jane the Virgin,” including patterns of intergenerational language shift, linguistic accommodation, and codeswitching, it is argued that the show acknowledges and treats as unmarked the linguistic complexity of Latinx families and communities. At the same time, the show oversimplifies this complexity in some ways, creating a representation that may be perceived as authentic despite its divergence from real-world Latinx language use.

This paper aims to analysis an English language textbook used in “middle school” (high school) in Saudi Arabia in-depth, to ascertain the type of pedagogy pushed by the teacher’s book. The criteria of analysis are adapted from Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). These criteria are used to analyses the textbook in terms of how communicative it is and personalised, how authentic, how meaningful; its degree of linguistic complexity; whether it is scaffolded, accuracy or fluency oriented; and how much of all each of these categories is in the textbook activities. The methodology of this paper is qualitative and presents only one aspect, textbook analysis, of a broader case study which forms part of a Ph.D. project that explores the factors behind the failure of implementation of CLT in Saudi Arabia. The results of this analysis show that in the textbook there is a careful balance between accuracy and fluency. There are some person, alised and meaningful activities, however most of the activities lack of authenticity which limits freedom for the students in using use the target language.

Many research studies indicated a correlation between classroom behaviour and the language of the instructors and learners. The inter-language that the teachers prefer to use in the class differs from the natural, daily life conversations in linguistic terms. It is characterized by more simplistic, repetitive, carefully selected language, or “classroom register”. The paper discusses a „foreign language classroom register” as a specific linguistic subsystem which is operated both by the rules of linguistic simplification and by constraints imposed by the specific social (school) setting. The standard language used in a classroom communication with a high ratio of short basic and coordinate sentences, more universal constructions, such as base case nominal phrases and active present indicative verb phrases, the limited reduction in morphological complexity as a result of a preference for a simple sentence structure. The research study examines a linguistic complexity of the teacher talk with focus on reductions, modifications, and simplifications. It also studies the personal attitudes of lecturers toward school discourse and the relation between teachers´ personality and a language complexity of their language.

PurposeMany states are restructuring their US history state assessments to include written-response assessment items that evaluate students' literacy skills in high-stakes environments. The purpose of this study was to investigate how the addition of an extended-response item to a US history state assessment was associated with an increase in the racial achievement gap.Design/methodology/approachThe theoretical framework included linguistic complexity of standardized assessment items and academic language demand and utilized a difference-in-difference research design.FindingsThe findings indicate that the achievement gap between students of color and White students increased when an extended-response assessment item was added to an exclusively multiple-choice item exam and that this increase in the achievement gap may be contributed to a literacy gap.Research limitations/implicationsThe continued investigation of how students of color perform on different types of extended-response standardized assessment items. And, the continued investigation of evidenced-based instructional practices that focus on developing students' literacy skills in US history as well as culturally responsive instructional practices.Practical implicationsThe knowledge and implementation of literacy instruction and culturally responsive instruction in US history classrooms as well as in preservice teacher education programs and in-service professional development programs.Originality/valueThe current study is one of the first large-scale investigations into the racial achievement gap on US history written-response standardized assessment items and in identifying a literacy gap between students of color and White students on US history written-response state assessment items.

The goal of this study was to assess recognition of foreign-accented speech of varying intelligibility and linguistic complexity in older adults. It is important to understand the factors that influence the recognition of this commonly encountered type of speech, in a population that remains understudied in this regard.A repeated measures design was used. Listeners repeated back linguistically simple and complex sentences heard in noise. The sentences were produced by three talkers of varying intelligibility: one native American English, one foreign-accented talker of high intelligibility and one foreign-accented talker of low intelligibility. Percentage word recognition in sentences was measured.Twenty-five older listeners with a range of hearing thresholds participated.We found a robust interaction between talker intelligibility and linguistic complexity. Recognition accuracy was higher for simple versus complex sentences, but only for the native and high intelligibility foreign-accented talkers. This pattern was present after effects of working memory capacity and hearing acuity were taken into consideration.Older listeners exhibit qualitatively different speech processing strategies for low versus high intelligibility foreign-accented talkers. Differences in recognition accuracy for words presented in simple versus in complex sentence contexts only emerged for speech over a threshold of intelligibility.

Famous trials not only generate immense popularity and intrigue, they also have the power to change history. Surprisingly, little research examines the use of complex language during these culturally-significant trial outcomes. In the present study, we helped fill in this gap by evaluating the relationship between attorneys’ use of integratively complex language and trial outcomes. Using the well-validated Automated Integrative Complexity scoring system, we analyzed the complexity of language in the opening and closing statements of famous trials. We found that higher levels of integrative complexity led to a significant increase in winning outcomes, but only for the prosecution. Further, this effect was driven by elaborative forms of complexity and not dialectical forms of complexity. Taken together, these results fill a large gap in our understanding of how language might influence the outcomes of culturally-significant legal proceedings.

The celebrated novel Pornopopéia, by Reinaldo Moraes, represents a type of joycean Ulysses of the city of São Paulo’s underground in the excesses of the 1980s extended to the beginning of the 21st century. Despite its importance in contemporary Brazilian literature and perhaps because of its literary and linguistic complexity in producing its distinct humor, it has never before been translated into English. This article reports some results of a post-doctoral research in which we carried out a literary, commented translation of this epic novel. The theoretical framework of the research was based in general on a model of language from the perspective of the Theory of Genre and Register (TGR) (MARTIN; ROSE, 2008) and on Berman’s concept of ‘tradutology’ (2012), while the translation practice was informed by adaptations of Rothenberg’s concept of ‘total translation’ (2010), Frota’s Jazz Theory (1989), Toury’s ‘norms’ (1995), Milton’s (1998) discussion of metaphors for the practice of translation. Some results point to the following features as contributing to humor and presenting distinct challenges in the process of translating them: code-mixing and switching, punning haiku, rapid changes in registers from erudite to street, sonority (hard rhymes), neologisms, blends, and other linguistic, semantic and generic transgressions, along with those of a social nature. Ultimately, with this research we hope to offer the anglophone reader the pleasure of this text by Reinaldo Moraes, simultaneously disseminating Brazilian literature and culture to a broad anglophone speech community through the translation, and ultimately contributing to reflections on the practice of translation in translation studies.

A learner corpus, i.e., a principled collection of contextualized texts produced by second language learners, can be of invaluable help in identifying learners’ needs. Previous learner corpus research has indicated that an area for improvement in second language writing is learners’ use of logical connectors as cohesive devices. While most previous studies have been general surveys that examined a wide range of English connectors, the present one is a more focused investigation, probing into Chinese-speaking learners’ use of concessive connectors. The data is taken from a self-constructed corpus of argumentative essays written by Taiwanese freshmen, who were placed into four proficiency levels. Common errors, including orthographical, syntactic, and semantic ones, were identified and categorized. The frequency distribution of the attested concessive connectors reveals Chinese learners’ development in their use of individual connectors. Difficulties may be attributed to the linguistic complexity of concessive connectors in English and L1 transfer. Moreover, previously identified lexico-syntactic characteristics in learners’ use of English connectors were reconfirmed by our corpus data. More importantly, the pragmatic function of concessive connectors in Chinese learners’ argumentative writing is also addressed. The findings have important pedagogical implications. Pragmatics is an area in need of further attention in learner corpus research, and we have gone some way toward enhancing our understanding of that area.

Recent studies have uncovered substantial individual differences in first language (L1) language attainment across the lifespan and across multiple components of language. The existence of such variability raises the question of its role in second language (L2) learning. The existing body of research on L1–L2 relationships has primarily targeted reading comprehension by means of controlled experimental designs. This study extended existing research by investigating L1–L2 relationships in writing through the automatic analysis of linguistic complexity in paired samples of authentic production data. For each writing sample, a series of measurements of 12 indicators was obtained using a computational tool that implements a sliding-window approach. Results from mixed-effects modeling revealed significant relationships between L1 complexity and L2 complexity for all but one measure, indicating that an L1 effect is robust across different levels of linguistic description.

English Medium Instruction (EMI) in secondary education has increasingly become a focus of research. One dimension of this research has been on whole-class interaction patterns of teachers and students, interaction having been established as important for learning in both second language (L2) contexts and in content subjects such as science. Previous EMI studies have reported teacher dominance of the interaction and low levels of student participation. A possible explanation has been that research hitherto has investigated mostly local EMI teachers who have been reported to lack the linguistic proficiency to engage in ‘unscripted’ interaction. To explore this we investigated the interaction patterns of 15 secondary science teachers in EMI high school programs in China, for whom English was their first and most proficient language in order to eliminate the teacher language proficiency issue. Our findings show that interaction was similarly teacher dominated and students’ responses were of low linguistic complexity. Suggestions for further research to identify the reason for low student participation are given, together with some implications for EMI teacher professional development.

The complexity of science discourse has long been recognized as challenging for many students. Systemic functional linguistic accounts of technicality and meaning aggregation, differentiating scientific and everyday discourse, have explicated the linguistic complexity confronting students. The complexity of images and image-language ensembles in science discourse has not been similarly delineated. Two aspects of multimodal meaning-making have not been sufficiently theorized to support pedagogies of visualization interpretation and creation in science: (1) the role of the verbiage within scientific visualizations has been largely ignored; (2) image analysis has emphasized single-structure images, e.g. narrative or classificational or analytical, whereas multiple structures in a single image is a frequent and significant resource in science. This paper outlines a framework describing the co-deployment of image and verbiage to construct multi-structure image-language ensembles in high school science textbooks. Using this framework two investigations are described: (1) variation among textbook infographics in image-language co-articulation representing meaning complexes of phenomena such as mitosis; (2) the relationship between co-articulation of image-language resources and achievement level in infographics constructed by senior high school students. Implications are drawn for extending transdisciplinary research in educational semiotics and science education and for pedagogies of multimodal disciplinary literacy development in high school science.

In studies on second language writing, linguistic complexity exhibited by learners has long been regarded as being indicative of writing proficiency. However, there are relatively scant studies focusing on the diversity and structural elaboration of complexity in L2 production data that are extracted from high-stakes tests [such as Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and International English Language Testing System (IELTS)]. Using a large-scale learner corpus collected from a TOEFL (internet-based test (iBT), this study aims to explore the extent to which the three dimensions of linguistic complexity, syntactic, lexical, and morphological complexity, are associated with human scoring in high-stakes tests. In addition, we also tend to tap into within-genre topic effects on the production of complexity measures by learners. To this end, a total of 1,002 writing samples were collected from a TOEFL11 corpus, and six automated-coding instruments were used to investigate the variations of complexity among Chinese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. The results from the correlation analysis, multiple linear regression, and independent sample t-tests indicated that there was not a linear correlation between the majority of linguistic complexity and human-rated score levels and that proficiency among Chinese EFL learners did not signal a discriminative power in their language production. In the meantime, strong within-proficiency topic effects were found on the majority of measures in the syntactic, lexical, and morphological dimensions.

Views and downloads of academic articles have become important supplementary indicators of scholarly impact. It is assumed that linguistic characteristics have an influence on article views and downloads to some extent. To understand the relationship between linguistic characteristics and article views and downloads, this study selected 63,002 full-text articles published from 2014 to 2015 in the PLoS (Public Library of Science) journals (PLoS Biology, PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Genetics, PLoS Medicine, PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, PLoS One and PLoS Pathogens), and introduced seven indicators (title length, abstract length, full text length, sentence length, lexical diversity, lexical density and lexical sophistication) to measure linguistic characteristics of articles, grouped into Top 20% viewed and downloaded (proxy of highly browsed and downloaded articles), total and Bottom 20% viewed and downloaded categories. The results suggested that most linguistic characteristics played little role in article views and downloads in our data sets in general, but some linguistic characteristics (e.g. title length and average sentence length) in specific PLoS journal and platform (PLoS platform or PubMed Central platform) played certain role in article views and downloads. Also, journal differences and platform differences regarding linguistic characteristics of highly viewed and downloaded articles were existed.

An extensive body of research has investigated the role of syntactic complexity in gauging the linguistic complexity of reading texts, particularly for the purpose of determining their grade appropriateness. However, little such research has focused on adapted teaching materials for English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts, and to date there has been no systematic effort in establishing syntactic complexity benchmarks to guide text adaptation practices in such contexts. This paper reports on a large-scale study that assessed the quantitative differences in syntactic complexity among adapted teaching materials for different grade levels in the EFL curricula in China. Our data consisted of 3,368 adapted English texts solicited from a corpus of teaching materials approved for use in the 12 primary and secondary grade levels in China by the Chinese Ministry of Education. All texts were analyzed using 8 syntactic complexity measures representing different dimensions of syntactic complexity. All 8 measures showed significant between-level differences with moderate to large effect sizes and nonuniform patterns of progression, and 5 measures were identified as significant predictors of grade levels in a logistic regression analysis. The implications of our results for establishing syntactic complexity benchmarks to inform future text adaptation practices are discussed.

Performance on word problems is influenced by linguistic and arithmetic factors, and by their interaction. To study these factors and interactions, we manipulated linguistic and arithmetic factors independently in a within-participant design that included complexity parameters (a) in the domain of arithmetic: carry/borrow (no-carry/borrow vs. carry/borrow), operation (addition vs. subtraction), (b) in the domain of linguistics: nominalization (nominalized vs. verbalized form), and (c) linking the two domains: lexical consistency (linguistic predicate locally consistent vs. inconsistent with mathematical operation). Response times of 25 students solving 320 one-step word problems were measured. All four factors showed a main effect on response times, and interactions between linguistic and arithmetic factors affected response times. These interactions were observed when the linguistic and arithmetic factors were conceptually linked. Our results highlight that not only the linguistic and arithmetic complexities of an item contribute to the difficulty of a word problem, but linguistic and arithmetic factors interact. We discuss the theoretical implications for the numerical and the linguistic domain as well as the possible impact of domain-general characteristics, such as working memory limitations as a potential reason for the observed interactions between numerical and linguistic attributes. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s10339-019-00948-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Resumen Las opciones de ayuda (transcripciones, notas culturales, traducciones y glosarios, entre otros) en tareas de comprensión oral en segunda lengua han sido históricamente ignoradas por los usuarios, a pesar de que su uso beneficia este tipo de comprensión. En el ámbito de la enseñanza de idiomas asistida por computador (CALL) se ha sugerido abordar esta problemática a través del diseño de Tutores Virtuales Interactivos (TVI). Esta propuesta ha sido explorada principalmente en tareas de gramática y vocabulario, pero no en tareas de comprensión oral. En este estudio, un TVI es un parser que, al analizar input oral, identifica características lingüísticas del mismo que podrían dificultar la comprensión. A su vez, el TVI sugiere al estudiante la o las opciones de ayuda que le permitirían solucionar sus problemas puntuales de comprensión. El objetivo de este estudio y primer paso para la conceptualización de un TVI, es identificar características del input que interfieren en la comprensión de textos orales. En este estudio la identificación se hace a través de la medición de la complejidad lingüística en 13 charlas de divulgación científica en sus dimensiones léxica, fonológica, sintáctica y discursiva. En el artículo se presenta una descripción detallada de los criterios de selección del input al igual que los tipos de análisis. El artículo culmina con una reflexión sobre las limitaciones de las herramientas de procesamiento automatizado con textos orales y sugiere líneas de investigación futura.

This paper is an attempt to study the linguistic layer of the memoir-writing genre primarily as exploration of linguistic mentality of a person (linguistic person, character), through which both the human being and the social environment become recognizable. This research describes the conceptual framework of the linguistic structure of the literary nonfiction by employing the following two principles: definition of the linguistic complexity of text-writing techniques and presentation of aesthetic value of these texts. A number of descriptive, stylistic and structural methods employed in the study show that memoir writing undergoes significant changes and enriches itself through various linguistic forms and internal conceptual frameworks. The author’s presence in the text is often manifested through its original word structure essentially expressed in the common stylistic system of the work. References to time and places in texts present non-fiction character in a new light. The writer’s primary goal is not enriching the literary language, but ensuring the composition’s linguistic authenticity and individuality. Flexibility of the genre is enhanced by intertextual manifestations. Lastly, memoir-writing may have a therapeutic effect on the author.

Background: Many aphasia assessments and therapies select and/or sequence verbs based on linguistic complexity of their verb argument structure (VAS). However, further empirical testing is needed t...

The paper seeks to establish the level of lexical complexity in the discourse of Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) peacekeeping agreements (EPKA) and to describe the lexical strategies through which the observed complexity is created. Many studies on linguistic complexity focus on second language acquisition, assessment and writing development. But, this article focuses on lexical choices that create complexity capable of hindering reader’s comprehension. It utilizes quantitative and qualitative designs in its analysis of corpus which consists of ten purposively selected EPKA texts. The data are analysed using Web-based Lexical Complexity Analyzer. The findings indicate that the language of the EPKA is complex. The complexity is attributed to high lexical density, lengthy words and long sentences in the corpus. Also, a large proportion of words in the corpus are redundant and vague. It is hoped that this article provides information about the lexical choices needed to improve the discourse of peacekeeping agreements.

This research evaluates the appropriateness of test accommodations among Chinese university students with hearing impairment, using reliability estimates and exploratory factor analysis. Study 1 explores the appropriateness of test directions accommodation for one nonverbal assessment (Group Embedded Figures Test) and two verbal assessments with increasing linguistic complexity levels (the Conceptions of Learning Inventory III and the Thinking Styles Inventory-Revised II) among 213 participants. Study 2 examines the appropriateness of combining test directions accommodation with language accommodation for the two revised verbal assessment, among a second sample of 366 participants. Results show that test directions accommodation was appropriate for nonverbal assessment, while the combination of test directions accommodation and language accommodation was more suitable for less linguistically complex verbal assessment. The limitations and significance of the study and implications for future studies are discussed.

This classroom study aims to explore the instructional effects of structure-based (SB) or dynamic usage-based (DUB) instruction with free response, communicative writing tasks after three years of L2-French instruction on linguistic complexity measures in (morpho)syntax and lexicon. We investigated data from forty-three young high school beginner learners of L2-French after three years of instruction with similar amounts of L2 exposure. The SB treatment included a traditional focus on explicit grammar; the DUB group was taught using the Accelerated Integrated Method, a highly communicative, meaningfocused method without explicit instruction, but with a great deal of exposure and repetition to induce frequency effects. Results after three years show that DUB instruction leads to more linguistic complexity in terms of various (morpho)syntactic and some lexical measures (multi-word sequences coverage). On other lexical measures (such as Guiraud index and average word length), no differences were found. The results are discussed using insights from the dynamic usage-based perspective.

We quantify the linguistic complexity of different languages' morphological systems. We verify that there is an empirical trade-off between paradigm size and irregularity: a language's inflectional paradigms may be either large in size or highly irregular, but never both. Our methodology measures paradigm irregularity as the entropy of the surface realization of a paradigm -- how hard it is to jointly predict all the surface forms of a paradigm. We estimate this by a variational approximation. Our measurements are taken on large morphological paradigms from 31 typologically diverse languages., TACL 2018

The authors examined teachers’ (N = 19) use of different question types during small‐group comprehension instruction for 6–11‐year‐olds (N = 115). The authors tagged the corpus of 40 hours of guided reading sessions to enable computer‐based searches for syntactic forms of questions. Teachers frequently asked high‐challenge wh‐ word questions (e.g., “How does that fit in with what you just read?”), and this was more pronounced in schools located in regions of low socioeconomic status, a finding associated with recency of completion of teacher training. Students’ responses were more linguistically complex when teacher questions comprised a high frequency of high‐challenge questions, particularly wh‐ word adverb questions (predominantly why and how). These findings applied across the wide age and ability range of the sample, indicating that high‐challenge questions are effective in small‐group comprehension instruction for students in different age groups and at various levels of reading ability. The authors conclude that teachers benefit from being informed about the effect of various syntactic forms of questions, particularly the nuances of wh‐ word questions. The findings also highlight the advantages of using corpus search methods to examine the influence of teacher question‐asking strategies during classroom interactions.

This article examines how the language of science and non-science texts differred across levels in a book series which is used in teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL). Employing Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) as the principal theoretical and analytical framework, this research examines linguistic features characterizing complexity, namely lexical density and nominalization of 24 reading texts in both science and non-science fields. The result shows that while the language grew more complex as the book levels advanced, the linguistic features of the scienceoriented and non-science oriented texts were not significantly different in the same book level. Based on a discussion of the findings, this article suggests that English textbooks should include texts that use genre and field-appropriate language in order to help students acquire technical and specialised language to prepare them for success in higher education and the workplace.

We know from the literature that high cognitive load can impede performance and educational outcomes. Previous measures of cognitive load have largely relied on subjective scales but few have explored more objective measures. This paper aims to address this issue by examining the validity of electroencephalography (or EEG) as an objective measure of cognitive load in the context of educational video. EEG is an online brain measure of the electrical activity that a population of neurons elicits when they are activated. Theta power is a brain oscillation ranging from 4 to 7 Hz that has been linked to cognitive and memory performance. We manipulated the linguistic complexity of three texts delivered by a speaker on video to induce a simple, a moderate and a complex level of cognitive load amongst a sample of students pursuing postgraduate studies through the medium of English as a second language (n = 35). We specifically measured intrinsic cognitive load via a subjective scale, a recall test, and theta power as an objective measure (average cognitive load). Our results show that the subjective scale was significantly different across the three levels of linguistic complexity. However, theta power and recall were only significantly different between the two most distinct levels of linguistic complexity. Although, this finding suggests theta power may not be as sensitive for average cognitive load as the subjective scale for intrinsic cognitive load, a correlation analysis shows that theta power was correlated with self-reported cognitive load. However, it may need more power compared to the subjective scale. These findings suggest that theta power may be developed into a valid objective measure of average cognitive load although its true potential lies in the possibility to measure online fluctuations in cognitive load or instantaneous cognitive load.

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.

Drawing on research on task-based L2 teaching and writing, this study examines the effects of integrated writing – as a function of task-complexity – on the quality of written texts produced by intermediate learners of German at a U.S. university. Participants completed six writing tasks over ten weeks: three were based on authentic resources (two multimodal and one print-only texts), while three required learners to describe their own experiences based on textbook prompts (non-content supported tasks). In line with current TBLT research, learners' texts were analyzed for syntactic complexity, grammatical accuracy, fluency, lexical accuracy, choice and richness. The results suggest that content provision likely reduced learners’ cognitive processing burden, resulting in improvements on all linguistic features. These findings offer theoretical, methodological and pedagogical insights for investigating integrative writing within TBLT research, especially regarding the use of authentic source texts and the potential benefit of multimodal source texts for promoting L2 writing quality.

Work in sociolinguistic typology and creole studies has established the theory that intensive language contact involving second language acquisition by adults tends to lead to grammatical simplification. This theory is built on many anecdotal case studies, including developments in the history of Continental North Germanic associated with contact with Middle Low German. In this paper, we assess the theory by examining two changes in the history of Norwegian: the loss of coda /Cr/ clusters and the loss of prepositional genitives. If the theory is correct, these changes should have been innovated in centers of contact with Middle Low German. We find that both changes in fact spread into southeastern Norwegian from Swedish. Since contact with Low German also took place in Sweden and Denmark, this is consistent with the theory. It opens questions for future research about the role of dialect contact in simplificatory change in North Germanic.

This paper examines the question of linguistic complexity in two shift ecologies in northeastern Russia. It is frequently claimed that language shift results in linguistic simplification across a range of domains in the grammars of shifting speakers (Campbell and Muntzel 1989; Dorian 1989; O’Shannessy 2011). We challenge the breadth of this claim, showing that while there are undoubtedly patterns that can be described as a simplification of some grammatical domain, the overall grammars of these speakers cannot be said to be “simple,” as simplification in one part of the grammar often corresponds to complexification in other parts (“complexity trade-offs”). Furthermore, patterns that are deemed loss or simplification are often presented in such a way because they are being compared to earlier varieties of the shifting languages; however, such patterns are entirely typologically expected, are consistent with other languages of the world, and can be seen as more or less complex depending on one’s locus of measurement. In this paper, we present incipient changes taking place in Chukchi (Chukotko-Kamchatkan, ISO ckt) and Even (Tungusic, ISO eve) stemming from the modern language shift context. We evaluate these changes against different notions of complexity to demonstrate that a more nuanced approach to morphosyntactic change in language obsolescence is warranted. While morphological simplification is expected in these scenarios, other changes in these speakers’ systems (occurring as potential adaptations in light of simplification) provide a more enlightening avenue for research on shifting varieties.

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. online first, no volume/issue numbering ispartof: ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics vol:172 issue:2 pages:290-318 status: published

In this paper, we combined linguistic complexity and (dis)fluency features with pretrained language models for the task of Alzheimer's disease detection of the 2021 ADReSSo (Alzheimer's Dementia Recognition through Spontaneous Speech) challenge. An accuracy of 83.1% was achieved on the test set, which amounts to an improvement of 4.23% over the baseline model. Our best-performing model that integrated component models using a stacking ensemble technique performed equally well on cross-validation and test data, indicating that it is robust against overfitting.