Development of subordination

The transition from expressing ideas by means of simple clauses to do-ing so in the form of subordinations generally proceeded slowly and only began to speed up in the third year of learning, when the growth rate reached 20% (Figure 5.17) – we can get such an impression when we look at the average developmental curve below. When thinking in terms of average-related outcomes a rather strong positive correlation can be ob-served with the mean text length (r = .55), and a weak positive correla-tion with mean lexical diversity (r = .33) or lexical complexity (r = .29), which could lead to the conclusion that when texts become longer they become at the same time more syntactically complex – but tend to rarely do so at the lexical level.

Figure 5.17. Development of the average subordination ratio (C/T)

Another picture emerges when we look at individual developmental trajectories. What the mean value mirrors is considerable growth in syn-tactic complexity in the fifth experiment, i.e. after the second year of language instruction, followed by a return to the prior value, which in fact may give the impression that syntactic complexity actually hardly progressed at all, except for one spurt (R = 21%). In the case of this spe-cific experiment we can interpret this sudden, single growth event with task specificity (the topic was: “My greatest lie/my greatest offence”), which might have triggered more extensive use of subordinated claus-es. Such an explanation could in fact be given if such growth had been observed in the majority or at least in half of the subjects. But there were only three students, in whom this peak only occurred in the fifth experiment, and with a growth rate of at least 38% (Figure 5.18), which undoubtedly had an impact on the overall mean growth. Apart from one learner (S11), in whom syntactic complexity continued to develop later on, i.e. up to the sixth experiment, the other writers experienced an exceptional spurt in complexity when they wrote about their great-est lie. And for these students it might have been the specificity of the topic that influenced the degree of their syntactic complexity, because in the next experiment they achieved a similar degree of complexity to that recorded at the end of the fourth semester, i.e. before the spurt occurred.

It is very difficult to identify any developmental patterns in syntac-tic complexity, because almost every learner developed in his or her own way. What could be observed was a growth in this property in about one half of the participants (Figure 5.19), which in fact goes against the devel-opmental path presented in the average curve. The progress in these stu-dents proceeds not linearly, but smoothed results, established by means of the moving averages for each of them, clearly show a developmental upward trend.

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Figure 5.19. Progress in syntactic complexity (C/T-unit)

In turn, the other half of the participants did not show any progress in subordination after three years of learning (Figure 5.20). Apart from a few single spurts reported earlier in this chapter syntactic complexity appears to be a rather stable property in these students. And this appears to be the case regardless of the degree of subordination at the time of the first experiment. The question is what these results mean. They do not actually comply with the view that an increase in proficiency implies a greater ability to build syntactically advanced utterances. And because it concerns so many of the learners it cannot be interpreted as an error of measurement or an isolated case.

The answer to this question can be found in the overall tendency of each individual to use many subordinated clauses or not to do so.

Figure 5.18. Peak of syntactic complexity in the fifth experiment

Similarly to the development of text length and lexical diversity, some learners built syntactically complex texts throughout the entire period of the study. The majority of them were writers with generally high lev-els of complexity, regardless of whether they were already using a large number of subordinated clauses from the very beginning or first began to write more complex texts in later periods. Figure 5.21 below pre-sents the data for this particular group, illustrating their complexity in relation to the mean (expressed as 1). All these participants achieved above-average syntactic complexity in at least four of the six experi-mental sessions.

Figure 5.20. Learners achieving no progress in syntactic complexity

Figure 5.21. Learners with a high level of syntactic complexity (Mean for the entire group Y = 1)

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Other learners displayed the opposite tendency (Figure 5.22) and gen-erally wrote syntactically less complex texts. Two of the students in this group, however, diverged significantly from the general pattern. Their first texts consisted of many subordinated clauses, between 20 and 30% above the average. This was especially the case with student S14, whose syntactic complexity after the first semester was the highest of all the 15 students in the group. Afterwards, however, a considerable decline in complexity was noted in both cases, followed by a continuing low level of subordina-tion in all subsequent periods. What is interesting is that these are the same students whose texts were also very long in the first experiment and which decreased afterwards and remained low.

Figure 5.22. Learners with low syntactic complexity (Mean as Y = 1) Another striking observation is that this group of learners with low syntactic complexity consists exclusively of writers whose subordination rate did not progress during the study, which may lead to the general conclusion that in some learners syntactic complexity is generally low.

On the other hand, nor was any progress in the subordination rate ob-served in two other learners (S1 and S12) who, however, belong to the former group, i.e. those learners characterised by a high level of syntac-tic complexity. From these results two possible explanations emerge. The first one relates to the propensity of an individual to use few complex constructions, which, for example, could apply not only to the language that is actually learned, but even to the first language. This assumption, however, should be explored separately, by comparing writing samples in both languages. The other explanation is connected with the specificity

of the measure. The ratio of subordinated clauses to a T-unit only informs us about how many clauses the writer used. What we do not know is how heterogeneous they were, i.e. if only the same constructions were involved, such as declarative content clauses (a), relative clauses (b) or temporal claus-es (c) (conjunctions in bold):

a. Jag drömde att jag åkte till Sverige med mina kompisar [2-S2]

(I had a dream that I went to Sweden with my friends)

b. Då kom polisen som skrev en raporrt om det som hade hänt [3-S9]

(Then the police came and wrote a report about what had happened) c. När jag var liten tyckte jag väldigt mycket om godis [5-S12]

(When I was little I liked sweets very much)

What we can assume is that increased lexical diversity will result in greater diversity of syntactic constructions. This assumption, however, could be confirmed by measuring the correlation coefficient for syntactic complexity and lexical diversity (GI), which on average was moderately positive (r = .33). However, only in three students (S2, S3, S11) was the relationship between both dimensions very positive (r > .50). No such interconnection was observed in the other subjects or the correlation was rather negative.

The outcome of the analysis suggests that the C/T ratio might not give the whole picture when it comes to the development of syntactic com-plexity. The predominant lack of growth in so many learners (fully half of the participants) may suggest that the development of this aspect of pro-ficiency may involve other variables than simply the degree of subordina-tion, which in turn would require the implementation of other measures.

The fact that the learners are polarized into groups with low and high degrees of syntactic complexity, respectively, should not be interpreted as a natural outcome of the relation to the mean. We may conclude that the mean value by definition takes into account results that are below the average and above it. In general, the arithmetic mean encompasses such a logical conclusion. However, what should be stressed here is that this claim could be tenable if the same or at least some of the learners some-times produced above average texts, and somesome-times below average texts.

And this is not the case. In the present study only one student (S7) could be called “an average learner,” with syntactic complexity around the mean, and who did not display a tendency to write more or less complex texts.

As Figures 5.15 and 5.16 above show, a clear pattern can be observed in all the other learners: they can be classified either as students with high or with low levels of syntactic complexity. Without such an individualised

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approach we would never be able to recognize this characteristic. This individualised approach to the data even revealed that four subjects (S4, S10, S13, S14) could be tentatively described as learners writing short texts, with low lexical diversity and syntactic complexity. At the same time, the interconnection between these different aspects is very clear:

The longer the texts the less elaborate they are, both at a lexical and a syn-tactic level. These students appeared to have difficulties processing longer text units, and thus chose a way (perhaps unconsciously) to write simply.

The general absence of any growth in the subordination ratio in so many students, the splitting into groups characterised by low vs. high levels of complexity, as well as the lack of any correlation between lexical diversity and the number of clauses per T-unit suggest that the develop-ment of syntactic complexity cannot be reduced to a numerical account of subordinated clauses in a syntactic unit. This conclusion is in line with the previous findings cited above, which in turn suggests the need to take a broader view of the connectedness of syntactic structures.