Lexical Complexity as Adaptive Compensation for Syntactic Constraint: A Corpus-Based Test of the Principle of Least Effort in Competitive L2 Writing

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-577-5_55How to use a DOI?

Keywords

lexical complexity; syntactic constraint; principle of least effort; competitive writing

Abstract

Lexical and syntactic complexity are key markers of linguistic competence in writing. Research on second-language (L2) writing, particularly in examination contexts, has documented compensatory patterns and interactions between these dimensions across proficiency levels. However, the directionality of such compensation, whether lexical richness offsets limited syntactic proficiency or vice versa, remains underexplored. This study examines lexical and syntactic complexity in L2 competitive writing across English, Japanese, and Spanish. Data were collected from a controlled rewriting task involving 60 participants (20 per language), who produced essays based on a model text. Lexical complexity was assessed using three token-type ratio measures: Yule’s K, Sommer’s I, and Corrected Type-Token Ratio. Syntactic complexity was evaluated through dependency relation distributions classified by Jenks natural breaks, k-means clustering, and percentile-based ranges. Results indicated significant differences between positive entries (n = 9; three per language) and negative entries on all six measures. In positive entries, cosine similarity to the model essay correlated significantly with lexical complexity, but no such relationship was found for syntactic complexity or in negative entries. Token-type ratio indices showed domain-specific, language-dependent variability, while dependency-relation distributions clustered by division, suggesting sensitivity to classification methods rather than underlying linguistic differences. Drawing on an extension of Zipf’s principle of least effort, these findings suggest that increased lexical richness serves as a compensatory strategy for the diminishing returns of heightened syntactic effort, indicating the non-linear development of linguistic competence and the need for norm-referenced assessment of lexical and syntactic performance.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Tao Ma
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/05/15
TI  - Lexical Complexity as Adaptive Compensation for Syntactic Constraint: A Corpus-Based Test of the Principle of Least Effort in Competitive L2 Writing
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 5th International Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities and Arts (SSHA 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 541
EP  - 551
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-577-5_55
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-577-5_55
ID  - Ma2026
ER  -