Complexity
Language complexity is a hot debated issue, relevant to various areas of linguistics present at the ACLC, e.g. language typology, language evolution, first and second language acquisition, language impairment, corpus and cognitive linguistics. It is a multidisciplinary theme par excellence, which is investigated from different perspectives and (sub)disciplines.
Key objectives
- Investigating complexity from various perspectives and disciplines, including phraseological, morphological, propositional, phonological and discourse-interactional complexity.
- Looking for non-redundant, valid and reliable measures of complexity.
- Establishing developmental measures of complexity.
- Doing longitudinal and cross-linguistic research on complexity.
- Doing research on complexity in instructional practice.
Events
The members of the research group meet on a regular basis. During these meetings colleagues from other universities inside and outside the Netherlands are invited to discuss their findings with the group.
Impact
Recent special issues on complexity (co-)edited by ACLC members:
- Aboh, E.O. (ed.) (2017). Special issue on Complexity in human languages: A multifaceted approach. Language Sciences 60, 1-198.
- Housen, A., De Clercq, B., Kuiken, F. & Vedder, I. (2019). Special Issue on Linguistic Complexity. Second Language Research 35(1), 1-145.
- Kuiken, F., Vedder, I., De Clercq, B. & Housen, A. (2019). Special Issue on Syntactic complexity. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 29(2), 159-264
- Kuiken, F., Michel, M. & Vedder, I. (2019). Special Issue on Linguistic Complexity and Instruction in SLA. Instructed Second Language Acquisition 3(2), 119-257.
Other publications are foreseen in the near future.
Coordinator and group members
Coordination: Folkert Kuiken and Ineke Vedder
Group members: Enoch Aboh, Kees Hengeveld, Petra Sleeman, Klaas Seinhorst, Jacub Szymanik, Thom Westveer
Guests: Margreet Dorleijn, Federico Gobbo, Aafke Hulk, Jan Hulstijn, Caitlin Meyer, Arjen Versloot