Non-canonical word order phenomena as indicators of syntactic complexification in advanced L2 German
(2021) Germanic Linguistics Association Annual Conference (GLAC) 27 — Location: University of Wisconsin-Madison (moved online) (12.May.2021)
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- Linguistic complexity has become an established construct in second language research, mainly due to the essential role of complexity measures in the assessment of learners’ written performance (Bulté and Housen 2012; Lambert and Kormos 2014). However, over the last decade, research on syntactic complexity came under criticism for promoting a reductionist approach to the construct, with the consequence that an entire dimension of complexity was left unexplored (Ortega 2012, 2015). In fact, while several definitions of syntactic complexity emphasize concepts such as variety and diversity, most research on L2 writing has confined its calculation to a handful of complexity indices, mainly measures of syntactic elaboration (length-based metrics and frequency of clause-linking devices). There are several reasons for extending the operationalization of syntactic complexity to measures that capture the diversity of structures in learner writing. First, more proficient language use does not necessarily imply an increase in the use of weighty structures (e.g., longer sentences that contain more subordinate clauses). Second, the complexification of learners’ interlanguage is largely dependent on the typological specificities of the target-language system. In other words, complexity measures should be selected carefully since languages may rely on different grammar features to encode similar propositional content. In the present study, we make ours this objective to broaden the spectrum of complexity measures and propose to examine the potential of syntactic diversity indicators to distinguish between proficiency groups in advanced L2 German. Concretely, we argue for the use of two types of non-canonical word order phenomena, argument inversions and passives, as diversity indices and apply them alongside traditional measures of elaboration on 75 texts written by upper-intermediate to near-native L2 learners of German. Using data from the FALKO corpus (Humboldt University of Berlin), we compiled three sub-corpora of 25 texts each, following the corpus guidelines regarding the mapping between learners’ score on a C-test and the three superior proficiency levels (B2, C1 and C2) of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. All texts were segmented into clauses and all clauses coded for (a) instances of passives and argument inversions and (b) five indices of syntactic elaboration targeting complexification at three syntactic levels (sentence, T-unit and clause): T-units/sentence, T-unit length, clauses/T-unit, NP length, and length of clause midfield. Regarding the identification of non-canonical word order phenomena, it should be noted that our coding scheme included a further distinction between the topicalization of non-subject arguments in main clauses and instances of scrambling involving argument reordering in the midfield of both main and embedded clauses. To examine the relationship between complexity measures and proficiency levels, a Kruskal-Wallis test with pairwise comparisons was performed. Results only revealed statistically significant differences between groups for argument inversions. Specifically, data pointed to a significant increase in the frequency of such structures as from C1 level. The fact that no significant differences between groups could be found for all measures of syntactic elaboration confirms the necessity for researchers to supplement large-grained measures (length and clause linking) with more fine-grained indices of diversity which help locate areas of interlanguage complexification that may otherwise stay under the radar.
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Lecouvet, M. (2021). Non-canonical word order phenomena as indicators of syntactic complexification in advanced L2 German. Germanic Linguistics Association Annual Conference (GLAC) 27, University of Wisconsin-Madison (moved online). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/113411