The development of lexical complexity in second language acquisition has received a considerable amount of attention in applied linguistics research. Many studies have examined the role of lexical diversity, sophistication and density as indicators of L2 proficiency. Few studies, though, have considered the development of lexical complexity from an explicitly cross-linguistic perspective. This article reports on an explorative, cross-linguistic study on the development of lexical diversity, sophistication and density in L2 French and English at four levels of linguistic proficiency. Additionally, the study proposes a number of alternative measures tapping into collocational knowledge and lexical sophistication. The analyses were carried out on a cross-sectional, multilingual corpus of L2 French and English consisting of oral narrative data. The results show a similar development of lexical diversity in L2 French and English, but considerably different developmental tendencies in terms of sophistication and density. The concluding sections discuss possible explanations for these differences and consequences for the measurement of linguistic proficiency.
2020. Investigating the interrelationship between rated L2 proficiency and linguistic complexity in L2 speech. System 91 ► pp. 102246 ff.
De Clercq, Bastien & Alex Housen
2017. A Cross‐Linguistic Perspective on Syntactic Complexity in L2 Development: Syntactic Elaboration and Diversity. The Modern Language Journal 101:2 ► pp. 315 ff.
De Clercq, Bastien & Alex Housen
2019. The development of morphological complexity: A cross-linguistic study of L2 French and English. Second Language Research 35:1 ► pp. 71 ff.
Esfandiari, Rajab & Mohammad Ahmadi
2023. Phraseological Complexity and Academic Writing Proficiency in Abstracts Authored by Student and Expert Writers. English Teaching & Learning 47:4 ► pp. 429 ff.
2019. Syntactic complexity across proficiency and languages: L2 and L1 writing in Dutch, Italian and Spanish. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 29:2 ► pp. 192 ff.
Paquot, Magali
2019. The phraseological dimension in interlanguage complexity research. Second Language Research 35:1 ► pp. 121 ff.
2022. Kolmogorov complexity metrics in assessing L2 proficiency: An information-theoretic approach. Frontiers in Psychology 13
Wang, Hui, Gui Wang, Nan Wang & Li Wang
2023. Effects of speaker types and L1 backgrounds on the linguistic complexity of learners’ writing. International Journal of Applied Linguistics
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