A Study On Linguistic Complexity Of Chinese English-Major Postgraduates’ Academic Writings

Complexity is the feature of human language. In the past decades, many studies have been conducted on the linguistic complexity, which witnesses accumulate evidences of lexical complexity and syntactic complexity. Nevertheless, with many previous researches focusing on either lexical complexity or syntactic complexity, seldom studies them altogether. As vital parts of linguistic complexity and the evident representation of writing performance, the study of the two can provide us more complete understanding of the characteristics of linguistic complexity in academic writing. In the light of Bao’method (2013), this thesis studies linguistic complexity by researching lexical complexity and syntactic complexity. This thesis studies the linguistic complexity of Chinese English-major postgraduates’theses by measuring the lexical complexity and syntactic complexity, in which lexical variation, lexical sophistication and lexical density are employed as measures of lexical complexity and unit length, clausal density, independent clauses and condensed structures are used as indices of syntactic complexity. Two corpora are established for the research with one called Chinese English-major Postgraduates’ Theses containing 48 master theses from eight major foreign language universities and the other named Native Speakers’Journal Articles including 40 journal articles from four influential international journals. Three research questions are dealt with in this research:1) What are the characteristics of linguistic complexity in Chinese English-major postgraduates’academic writings in terms of lexical complexity and syntactic complexity? 2) What are the characteristics of linguistic complexity in native speaker’s journal articles in terms of lexical complexity and syntactic complexity? 3) What are the differences in the linguistic complexity of Chinese English-major postgraduates’academic writings and native speakers’journal articles in the light of lexical complexity and syntactic complexity? Do these differences have statistic significance?The following is the major findings in this study:1) lexical complexity:for lexical variation, Chinese postgraduates have lower lexical variation than native speakers, which is of significance, The outcome results from Chinese postgraduates’conservative strategy toward vocabulary use and native speakers’high competence in the use of varied wording and diction. For lexical sophistication, native speakers have higher lexical sophistication than Chinese postgraduates, which is significant, This is because of Chinese postgraduates’ relatively small stock of academic vocabulary, Chinese postgraduates’more using of high-frequency academic words and different distribution of academic words in different parts of a paper and different length of these parts. For lexical density, within the range of the samples, native speakers have higher lexical density than Chinese postgraduates. But this difference is of no significance. The result is due to two parties’using plenty of content words in lengthy academic writings.2) Syntactic complexity, for unit length, native speakers’W/T and W/C are higher than Chinese postgraduates’, which is significant. The difference results from Chinese postgraduates’dependence on clausal structures rather than phrasal structures and native speakers’higher capacity in the use of noun constituents and clause constituents. For clausal density, Chinese postgraduates’C/T and DC/C are significantly lower than native speakers’, which results from Chinese postgraduates’more use of simple sentences, clauses and native speakers’high competence in manipulating subordination and embeddness, For independent clauses, Chinese postgraduates use more simple sentences, compound sentences, complex sentences and compound-complex sentences than native speakers, which is significant. This is due to Chinese postgraduates’incompetence in flexible use of phrasal structures, the negative transfer of mother language. For condensed structures, native speakers employ more nominal verb phrase, adjective phrase and adverbial phrase than Chinese postgraduates, which is significant. The reasons are native speakers’high competence in academic writing by using more phrasal structures and the negative transfer of Chinese.Some implications are suggested as follows:first, in academic writing, language learners should be aware of using more varied words rather than simple and repeated words and employ more low-frequency academic words. Second, Chinese students should reduce the use of simple sentences and compound sentences, be aware of employing more phrasal structures, such as nominal verb phrases, adjective phrases to improve the unit length, clausal density and acquire the high subordination and embeddness.