Lexical and phraseological complexity in learner language
(2026) The Cambridge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics — ISBN: [9781009477888], 142-158, accepted/in-press
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- This chapter provides a critical overview of how L2 researchers have used measures of lexical and phraseological complexity, with a special focus on their definition and operationalization. Lexical and phraseological complexity are often measured in terms of diversity (the number of different words or multi-word units respectively) and sophistication (the number of ‘sophisticated’ words or multi-word units, with ‘sophisticated’ variously understood as less frequent, more specialized, or in the case of phraseological sophistication, as more strongly associated word combinations). With the development of NLP tools such as the Lexical Complexity Analyzer (Lu, 2012) or the Tool for the Automatic Analysis of Lexical Sophistication (Kyle et al. 2018), L2 researchers can now analyse lexical complexity in L2 English texts using dozens or even hundreds of measures with a click of a button. However, unresolved questions remain: How accurate, reliable, and valid are these measures across learner samples and research contexts? Can they assess L2 proficiency across registers? How should measures be selected from the many available? By contrast, do the current, limited set of measures of phraseological complexity represent the full construct, or is there a need to develop for further development?
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Paquot, M. (2026). Lexical and phraseological complexity in learner language. In R. Reppen, D. Biber, L. Goulart (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics (2nd edition, pp. 142-158). Cambridge University Press. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/277155