Disentangling the Construct of Phraseological Complexity: A Validation Study with Human Judgments
(2026) EuroSLA35 — Location: Lisbon, Portugal (24.June.2026)
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- Abstract
- (en) Linguistic complexity is regarded as a major research variable in Applied Linguistics (AL), being used to describe second language (L2) performance, assess L2 proficiency, and trace L2 development (Housen & Kuiken, 2009; Paquot, 2019). Existing research on complexity has largely focused on developing measures of lexical and syntactic complexity (Bulté & Housen, 2012). At the same time, phraseology has widely been recognised as playing an important role in language proficiency and development (Wray, 2002). Learner Corpus Research (LCR) has established that more proficient L2 learners use a wider range of collocations and more sophisticated recurrent word combinations than less proficient learners (Bestgen & Granger, 2018; Paquot, 2019). Despite this, there remains a lack of studies which theorise and operationalise linguistic complexity at the phrasal level. To address this gap, Paquot (2019) proposed the construct of phraseological complexity, defined in terms of both range (diversity) and sophistication. According to this conceptualisation, a learner's text is considered more complex when it contains a higher proportion of sophisticated and varied phraseological units rather than frequent repetitions of common word combinations (Paquot, 2019). Recent studies suggest that phraseological sophistication, in particular, is a promising linguistic measure for distinguishing among proficiency levels (CEFR) (Paquot, 2019; Vandeweerd et al., 2021; Jiang et al., 2021). This underscores the relevance of phraseological complexity in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research and reinforces the need for validated complexity measures at the phrasal level of language production (Paquot, 2019). Despite this need, the construct validity of phraseological complexity remains unaddressed. Thus far, most existing studies have relied on automatic measures to evaluate phraseological complexity (Paquot, 2019), with little regard for how well these measures align with human perceptions of phraseological complexity. This reflects an ongoing concern in AL regarding the validation of linguistic constructs, as there remains a lack of studies examining the alignment between linguistic constructs and human perception (Purpura et al., 2015; Jarvis, 2017; McManus, 2024). Establishing construct validity and this alignment is essential for developing measures of phraseological complexity that can be meaningfully applied to SLA research. This PhD project addresses this issue by exploring the construct validity of phraseological complexity through a series of human perception studies. Human perception data is captured using the holistic methodological approach of Comparative Judgment (Thwai tes & Paquot, 2024), a novel method in AL that has proven useful for evaluating multidimensional linguistic constructs (Crossley et al., 2023; Zhang & Lu, 2024). This method will provide a comprehensive account of which dimensions of phraseological complexity most influence the evaluation of multi-word units and text - level language production. This project aims (1) to determine whether reliable human judgments of phraseological complexity are attainable, at both the multi -word unit and text level, and (2) to explore the degree to which automated measures of phraseological complexity align with human judgments. By integrating a holistic methodological approach with automatic corpus-based measures, this research aims to enhance our theoretical and methodological understanding of phraseological complexity and clarify its role in SLA research.
- Affiliations
NOVA University Lisbon EuroSLA
Citations
Vaughan, G., & Paquot, M. (2026, June 24). Disentangling the Construct of Phraseological Complexity: A Validation Study with Human Judgments. EuroSLA35, Lisbon, Portugal. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/279493