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7 - Lexical and Phraseological Complexity in Learner Language

from Part II - Corpus Analysis of Linguistic Characteristics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2026

By
Magali Paquot
Edited by
Randi Reppen ,
Larissa Goulart  and
Douglas Biber
Randi Reppen
Affiliation:
Northern Arizona University
Larissa Goulart
Affiliation:
Montclair State University, New Jersey
Douglas Biber
Affiliation:
Northern Arizona University
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Summary

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 natural language processing (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 analyze 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?

Keywords

diversitysophisticationvalidityregisterL2 proficiencylearner corpus

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The Cambridge Handbook of English Corpus Linguistics , pp. 142 - 158
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2026

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