The linguistic organization of grammatical text complexity: comparing the empirical adequacy of theory-based models

IF 1 2区 文学 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS
D. Biber, Tove Larsson, G. Hancock
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引用次数: 2

Abstract

Abstract Although there is a long tradition of research analyzing the grammatical complexity of texts (in both linguistics and applied linguistics), there is surprisingly little consensus on the nature of complexity. Many studies have disregarded syntactic (and structural) distinctions in their analyses of grammatical text complexity, treating it instead as if it were a single unified construct. However, other corpus-based studies indicate that different grammatical complexity features pattern in fundamentally different ways. The present study employs methods that are informed by structural equation modeling to test the goodness-of-fit of four models that can be motivated from previous research and linguistic theory: a model treating all complexity features as a single dimension, a model distinguishing among three major structural types of complexity features, a model distinguishing among three major syntactic functions of complexity features, and a model distinguishing among nine combinations of structural type and syntactic functions. The findings show that text complexity is clearly a multi-dimensional construct. Both structural and syntactic distinctions are important. Syntactic distinctions are actually more important than structural distinctions, although the combination of the two best accounts for the ways in which complexity features pattern in texts from different registers.
语法篇章复杂性的语言组织:比较基于理论模型的经验充分性
虽然在语言学和应用语言学中对语篇语法复杂性的研究有着悠久的传统,但令人惊讶的是,人们对复杂性的本质几乎没有共识。许多研究在分析语法文本复杂性时忽略了句法(和结构)的区别,而是将其视为一个单一的统一结构。然而,其他基于语料库的研究表明,不同的语法复杂性以根本不同的方式特征模式。本研究采用结构方程建模的方法来检验四个模型的拟合优度,这些模型可以从以前的研究和语言理论中得到激励:一个将所有复杂性特征视为单一维度的模型,一个区分三种主要结构类型的复杂性特征的模型,一个区分复杂性特征的三种主要句法功能的模型,一个区分结构类型和句法功能的九种组合的模型。研究结果表明,文本复杂性显然是一个多维结构。结构和句法的区别都很重要。语法上的区别实际上比结构上的区别更重要,尽管两者的结合最好地说明了复杂性在不同语域的文本中的特征模式。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
4.20
自引率
12.50%
发文量
15
期刊介绍: Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory (CLLT) is a peer-reviewed journal publishing high-quality original corpus-based research focusing on theoretically relevant issues in all core areas of linguistic research, or other recognized topic areas. It provides a forum for researchers from different theoretical backgrounds and different areas of interest that share a commitment to the systematic and exhaustive analysis of naturally occurring language. Contributions from all theoretical frameworks are welcome but they should be addressed at a general audience and thus be explicit about their assumptions and discovery procedures and provide sufficient theoretical background to be accessible to researchers from different frameworks. Topics Corpus Linguistics Quantitative Linguistics Phonology Morphology Semantics Syntax Pragmatics.
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