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Syntactic complexity has been recognized as an important construct in writing research, and for the past five decades, many syntactic complexity measures (SCMs) have been examined in numerous studies. This systematic review is the first study of its kind to synthesize 36 studies spanning from 1970 to 2019 by identifying and cataloging all SCMs examined during this period. An analysis was performed on how the use of SCMs varied by genre, grade level, students’ writing ability, and writing quality. Five online databases (Academic Search Premier, ERIC, PsycINFO, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, and PsycARTICLES) were searched. A total of 48 SCMs were grouped into six categories: T-units and sentences, clauses, phrases, words, combined measures, and other measures. Most studies examined three common SCMs: mean T-unit length, mean number of words per clause, and mean number of clauses per T-unit. The argumentative genre had the highest values for T-unit length and mean number of clauses per T-unit, which could indicate greater sentence complexity. Higher-grade-level students generally construct sentences that are syntactically complex, but comparison between studies was difficult because different studies investigated different SCMs. Although students with higher writing abilities generally construct sentences that are syntactically more complex compared to students with lower writing abilities, the findings are not conclusive, as only a few studies examined this relationship. A similarly inconclusive relationship was found between syntactic complexity and writing quality because only a few studies examined this relationship. More research is needed to examine the relationship between SCMs, writing quality, and genre.

The acquisition of a heritage language, normally the weaker language of early bilinguals, has been oftentimes defined as incomplete, especially for morphosyntax. As a result, these early bilinguals resemble late bilinguals more than native language speakers, calling into question the role of age of exposure. The effects of syntactic complexity on knowledge of morphosyntactic structures, however, have not been sufficiently considered hitherto. This study investigates age of exposure and syntactic complexity by comparing heritage, second language, and native language speakers on knowledge of Italian accusative clitics in three structures. An oral structural priming task and a speeded grammaticality judgment task find a discrepancy in the level of ultimate attainment heritage speakers reach for syntax and morphology. While their abstract representation of clitic structures approximates that of native language speakers more closely, their morphological knowledge of clitics aligns with second language speakers, suggesting early exposure has tangible effects only on syntactic knowledge. In turn, syntactic complexity affects the representation of clitic structures in a predictable manner, but is inconsequential to explicit knowledge of morphological forms in monolingual and bilingual speakers. Lack of age of exposure effects in the morphological domain are attributed to interface vulnerability.

Complex phrasal structures are considered the distinctive features in the academic writing of high-proficiency writers. The use of more complex phrasal structures increases the quality of the written text. Based on the contrastive rhetorical theory of writing, writers are required to use linguistic components in a specific way that meets the genre of writing. This study aims to investigate and compare the phrasal syntactic complexity measures of the texts of linguistics research articles written by Iraqi and English L1 writers. It identifies if there is a significant difference between the writing of Iraqi and English L1 writers in terms of using phrasal syntactic structures. This study utilised the corpus-based method to analyse linguistics research articles written by Iraqi and English L1 writers and published from 2016 to 2020. Twelve phrasal syntactic complexity measures were analysed by using the automatic analyser TAASSC. This study revealed a significant difference between the writing of Iraqi and English L1 writers in terms of the analysed phrasal complexity measures. Utilising the complex phrasal structures in Iraqi research articles would significantly contribute to the quality and publication acceptance in reputable international journals. This study is therefore significant to guide Iraqi researchers to improvise their academic writing skills for publication purposes.

This study examines large-grained, medium-grained, and fine-grained measures, as different dimensions of syntactic complexity, and their relationship with academic writing proficiency in the abstract sections of academic prose. We sampled 237 texts written by expert academic writers of research articles, PhD level L1 Persian writers, and MA level L1 Persian writers. Using one-way multiple analysis of variance (MANOVA) and ordinal logistic regression, we compared the abstracts in terms of their syntactic complexity and checked the predictability of large-grained, medium-grained, and fine-grained measures in academic writing proficiency. The findings revealed that the differences among the groups were not large enough for clausal and sentential measures of dependent clauses per T-unit, and clauses per sentence to show statistical significance. However, the differences among the groups on length-based measures of mean length of T-unit, and mean length of clause along with noun phrase measures of clauses per nominals, noun premodifiers, and prepositional phrases reached significance. Analysis of fine-grained measures of noun phrase complexity shows that four indices that measured the number and variation of dependents in the texts made unique statistically significant contribution to the prediction of academic writing proficiency. These findings suggest the importance of incorporating complementary measures of syntactic complexity (i.e., large-grained measures) as integral parts of L2 writing instruction practices. The implications of the findings in relation to L2 academic writing pedagogy are discussed.

Recent research on second language (L2) writing has increasingly emphasized syntactic complexity as a key indicator of L2 writing proficiency. From an emergentist usage-based view, drawing on data from the B-JAS corpus, the study conducted both a longitudinal comparison across proficiency levels and a cross-sectional comparison between advanced learners and native speakers to investigate the features and development trends of syntactic complexity in L2 Japanese writing. Two indices were employed to measure syntactic complexity: the clause ratio (a large-grained index) and the ratio of different types of subordinate clauses (a fine-grained index). The results showed that learners had a higher clause ratio and greater use of te-form clauses at the advanced level than at the intermediate level. However, their use of relative clauses was lower, and their use of te-form clauses was significantly higher than that of native speakers. These findings reveal a syntactic usage tendency among learners, marked by an underuse of relative clauses and an overuse of te-form clauses. From a usage-based perspective, attentional biases from Chinese, frequency-based entrenchment, and the semantic ambiguity of te-form structures may primarily drive the observed syntactic usage patterns.

Spoken language production involves selecting and assembling words and syntactic structures to convey one’s message. Here we probe this process by analyzing natural language productions of individuals with primary progressive aphasia (PPA) and healthy individuals. Based on prior neuropsychological observations, we hypothesize that patients who have difficulty producing complex syntax might choose semantically richer words to make their meaning clear, whereas patients with lexicosemantic deficits may choose more complex syntax. To evaluate this hypothesis, we first introduce a frequency-based method for characterizing the syntactic complexity of naturally produced utterances. We then show that lexical and syntactic complexity, as measured by their frequencies, are negatively correlated in a large (n = 79) PPA population. We then show that this syntax–lexicon trade-off is also present in the utterances of healthy speakers (n = 99) taking part in a picture description task, suggesting that it may be a general property of the process by which humans turn thoughts into speech.

Blended learning is sometimes called the best of both worlds, as it combines the advantages of online learning with traditional face to face (FTF) instruction. The present study examines the impact of blended learning (BL) on the lexical variety (LV), lexical density (LD), and syntactic complexity (SC) of Iranian high school EFL students’ speaking and writing skills over a nine-month period. Two groups of 42 homogeneous high school students were selected. One group was assigned as the blended and the other as the FTF group using the Top Notch Placement Test. Then, a website was designed as a platform for the BL group’s online activities and tasks, such as chat room discussions, synchronous and asynchronous forums for writing and speaking activities, and an online task-completion activity. The FTF group received equal but different treatment. Interviews and a writing task were administered at the beginning and the end of the nine-month academic year in order to elicit speaking and writing samples from the students. Finally, the corpora obtained from the first and final interviews and writing tasks were analyzed by two independent coders to observe possible changes in linguistic features. A one-way ANOVA test was used to find out any meaningful differences between the indices of linguistic features in the two corpora. The results show that BL instruction exerted a positive effect on lexical variety and density both in terms of speaking and writing. However, the syntactic complexity of speaking and writing were significant for the FTF group. Hence, based on the obtained results, the superiority of BL instruction over FTF was revealed when the focus of attention was on productive skills.

This article reports on the first results of a large-scale research programme that aims to define and circumscribe the construct of phraseological complexity and to theoretically and empirically demonstrate its relevance for second language theory. Within this broad agenda, the study has two main objectives. First, it investigates to what extent measures of phraseological complexity can be used to describe second language (L2) performance at different proficiency levels. Second, it compares measures of phraseological complexity with traditional measures of syntactic and lexical complexity. Variety and sophistication are postulated to be the first two dimensions of phraseological complexity, which is approached via relational co-occurrences, i.e. co-occurring words that appear in a specific structural or syntactic relation (e.g. adjective + noun, adverbial modifier + verb, verb + direct object). Phraseological diversity is operationalized as root type–token ratio computed for each syntactic relation. Two methods are tested to approach phraseological sophistication. First, sophisticated word combinations are defined as academic collocations that appear in the Academic Collocation List (Ackermann and Chen, 2013). Second, it is approximated with the average pointwise mutual information score as this measures has been shown to bring out word combinations made up of closely associated medium to low-frequency (i.e. advanced or sophisticated) words. The study reveals that unlike traditional measures of syntactic and lexical complexity, measures of phraseological sophistication can be used to describe L2 performance at the B2, C1 and C2 levels of the Common European Framework of References for Languages (CEFR), thus suggesting that essential aspects of language development from upper-intermediate to very advanced proficiency level may be situated in the phraseological dimension.

Syntactic complexity is an important measure of second language (L2) writing proficiency (Larsen-Freeman, 1978; Lu, 2011). Large-grained indices such as the mean length of T-unit (MLTU) have been used with the most consistency in L2 writing studies (Ortega, 2003). Recently, indices such as MLTU have been criticized, both for the difficulty in interpretation (e.g., Noms & Ortega, 2009) and for a potentially misplaced focus on clausal subordination (e.g., Biber, Gray, & Poonpon, 2011). In this article, we attempt to address both of these criticisms by using traditional indices of syntactic complexity (e.g., MLTU), finegrained indices of clausal complexity, and fine-grained indices of phrasal complexity to predict holistic scores of writing quality. In 4 studies, we used indices of each index type to predict holistic writing quality scores in independent essays on the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). We then used all index types in a combined analysis to predict a holistic writing score. The results indicated that finegrained indices of phrasal complexity were better predictors of writing quality than either traditional or fine-grained clausal indices, though a single fine-grained index of clausal complexity contributed to the combined model. These results provide some support for Biber et al.'s (2011) claims regarding complexity and academic L2 writing proficiency.

Within the cognitive sciences, most researchers assume that it is the job of linguists to investigate how language is represented, and that they do so largely by building theories based on explicit judgments about patterns of acceptability – whereas it is the task of psychologists to determine how language is processed, and that in doing so, they do not typically question the linguists' representational assumptions. We challenge this division of labor by arguing that structural priming provides an implicit method of investigating linguistic representations that should end the current reliance on acceptability judgments. Moreover, structural priming has now reached sufficient methodological maturity to provide substantial evidence about such representations. We argue that evidence from speakers' tendency to repeat their own and others' structural choices supports a linguistic architecture involving a single shallow level of syntax connected to a semantic level containing information about quantification, thematic relations, and information structure, as well as to a phonological level. Many of the linguistic distinctions often used to support complex (or multilevel) syntactic structure are instead captured by semantics; however, the syntactic level includes some specification of “missing” elements that are not realized at the phonological level. We also show that structural priming provides evidence about the consistency of representations across languages and about language development. In sum, we propose that structural priming provides a new basis for understanding the nature of language.