We describe a heuristics-based system for automatic measurement of syntactic complexity using the revised Developmental Level (D-Level) scale (Rosenberg & Abbeduto 1987; Covington et al. 2006). The system takes a raw sentence as input and assigns it to an appropriate developmental level on the scale. The system is designed with child language acquisition and psycholinguistic research in mind, and is therefore developed and evaluated using both written data from the Penn Treebank (Marcus et al. 1993) and spoken child language acquisition data from the CHILDES database (MacWhinney 2000). Experiment results show that the model achieves an accuracy of 94.0% and 93.2% on unseen test data from the Penn Treebank and the CHILDES database respectively. We illustrate how the system is used in an example application to investigate the correlation of average D-Level score and speaker age.
Agmon, Galit, Sameer Pradhan, Sharon Ash, Naomi Nevler, Mark Liberman, Murray Grossman & Sunghye Cho
2024. Automated Measures of Syntactic Complexity in Natural Speech Production: Older and Younger Adults as a Case Study. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 67:2 ► pp. 545 ff.
Estaji, Masoomeh & Arya Ghoddousi
2024. Illuminating the Impacts of Contextual Diversity on L2 Writing Proficiency: A Corpus-Based Analysis in the Measures of Linguistic Complexity. European Journal of Applied Linguistics 12:2 ► pp. 437 ff.
Li, Changye, Jacob Solinsky, Trevor Cohen & Serguei Pakhomov
2024. A curious case of retrogenesis in language: Automated analysis of language patterns observed in dementia patients and young children. Neuroscience Informatics 4:1 ► pp. 100155 ff.
Folesani, F., Martino Belvederi Murri, C. Puggioni, E. Tiberto, M. Marella, T. Toffanin, L. Zerbinati, M.G. Nanni, R. Caruso, D. Brunato, A.A. Ravelli, F. Dell'Orletta, H.M. Chochinov & L. Grassi
2023. Linguistic markers of demoralization improvement in schizophrenia: A pilot study. The European Journal of Psychiatry 37:3 ► pp. 149 ff.
Jiang, Jingyang, Peng Bi, Nana Xie & Haitao Liu
2023. Phraseological complexity and low- and intermediate-level L2 learners’ writing quality. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 61:3 ► pp. 765 ff.
Liu, Yi, Andrew K.F. Cheung & Kanglong Liu
2023. Syntactic complexity of interpreted, L2 and L1 speech: A constrained language perspective. Lingua 286 ► pp. 103509 ff.
Liu, Zoey & Emily Prud’hommeaux
2023. Data-driven Parsing Evaluation for Child-Parent Interactions. Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics 11 ► pp. 1734 ff.
Magnani, Luca, Luca Carmisciano, Felice dell’Orletta, Ornella Bettinardi, Silvia Chiesa, Massimiliano Imbesi, Giuliano Limonta, Elisa Montagna, Ilaria Turone, Dario Martinasso, Andrea Aguglia, Gianluca Serafini, Mario Amore, Andrea Amerio, Alessandra Costanza, Francesca Sibilla, Pietro Calcagno, Sara Patti, Gabriella Molino, Andrea Escelsior, Alice Trabucco, Lisa Marzano, Dominique Brunato, Andrea Amelio Ravelli, Marco Cappucciati, Roberta Fiocchi, Gisella Guerzoni, Davide Maravita, Fabio Macchetti, Elisa Mori, Chiara Anna Paglia, Federica Roscigno & Antonio Saginario
2023. Linguistic profile automated characterisation in pluripotential clinical high-risk mental state (CHARMS) conditions: methodology of a multicentre observational study. BMJ Open 13:3 ► pp. e066642 ff.
Tang, Tempo Po-Yi, Dustin Kai-Yan Lau & Man-Tak Leung
2023. Corpus of Mandarin Child Language: a preliminary study on the acquisition of semantic content categories in Mandarin-speaking preschoolers. Frontiers in Psychology 14
2022. Linguistically-Based Comparison of Different Approaches to Building Corpora for Text Simplification: A Case Study on Italian. Frontiers in Psychology 13
Kessler, Matt, Wenyue Ma & Ian Solheim
2022. The Effects of Topic Familiarity on Text Quality, Complexity, Accuracy, and Fluency: A Conceptual Replication. TESOL Quarterly 56:4 ► pp. 1163 ff.
Liu, Xiaoyue, Yi Xie, Tao Yang & Yuqing Sun
2022. Understanding Expert Knowledge for Chinese Essay Grading. In Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing [Communications in Computer and Information Science, 1491], ► pp. 488 ff.
Mendhakar, Akshay
2022. Linguistic Profiling of Text Genres: An Exploration of Fictional vs. Non-Fictional Texts. Information 13:8 ► pp. 357 ff.
Potratz, Jill R., Christina Gildersleeve-Neumann & Melissa A. Redford
2022. Measurement Properties of Mean Length of Utterance in School-Age Children. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 53:4 ► pp. 1088 ff.
Xu, Jiajin & Hui Kang
2022. Salience-simplification strategy for markedness of causal subordinators: “Because” and “since” in argumentative essays. Lingua 272 ► pp. 103256 ff.
Arnold, Nike
2020. Community, Group Dynamics, Identity, and Anxiety in Learning an Additional Language. In The Cambridge Introduction to Applied Linguistics, ► pp. 71 ff.
Buongiovanni, Chiara, Francesco Gracci, Dominique Brunato & Felice Dell’Orletta
2020. Lost in Text: A Cross-Genre Analysis of Linguistic Phenomena within Text. Italian Journal of Computational Linguistics 6:1 ► pp. 47 ff.
Susan Conrad, Alissa Hartig & Lynn Santelmann
2020. The Cambridge Introduction to Applied Linguistics,
2020. Evaluating the state-of-the-art of End-to-End Natural Language Generation: The E2E NLG challenge. Computer Speech & Language 59 ► pp. 123 ff.
Hartig, Alissa J.
2020. Disciplinary Education and Language for Specific Purposes. In The Cambridge Introduction to Applied Linguistics, ► pp. 133 ff.
JIN, TAN, XIAOFEI LU & JING NI
2020. Syntactic Complexity in Adapted Teaching Materials: Differences Among Grade Levels and Implications for Benchmarking. The Modern Language Journal 104:1 ► pp. 192 ff.
Polio, Charlene & Hyung-Jo Yoon
2020. Exploring Multi-Word Combinations as Measures of Linguistic Accuracy in Second Language Writing. In Learner Corpus Research Meets Second Language Acquisition, ► pp. 96 ff.
Polio, Charlene & Hyung‐Jo Yoon
2018. The reliability and validity of automated tools for examining variation in syntactic complexity across genres. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 28:1 ► pp. 165 ff.
Roberts, Jenny A., Evelyn P. Altenberg & Madison Hunter
2020. Machine-Scored Syntax: Comparison of the CLAN Automatic Scoring Program to Manual Scoring. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 51:2 ► pp. 479 ff.
Wu, Xue, Anna Mauranen & Lei Lei
2020. Syntactic complexity in English as a lingua franca academic writing. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 43 ► pp. 100798 ff.
Yoon, Hyung-Jo & Ute Römer
2020. Quantifying Disciplinary Voices: An Automated Approach to Interactional Metadiscourse in Successful Student Writing. Written Communication 37:2 ► pp. 208 ff.
Jonell, Patrik, Per Fallgren, Fethiye Irmak Doğan, José Lopes, Ulme Wennberg & Gabriel Skantze
2019. Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Conversational User Interfaces, ► pp. 1 ff.
Kover, Sara T. & Abbeduto, Leonard
2019. Syntactic Ability of Girls With Fragile X Syndrome: Phonological Memory and Discourse Demands on Complex Sentence Use. American Journal on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities 124:6 ► pp. 511 ff.
Bernstein, Katie A.
2018. The Perks of Being Peripheral: English Learning and Participation in a Preschool Classroom Network of Practice. TESOL Quarterly 52:4 ► pp. 798 ff.
Gonzalez-Dios, Itziar, María Jesús Aranzabe & Arantza Díaz de Ilarraza
2018. The corpus of Basque simplified texts (CBST). Language Resources and Evaluation 52:1 ► pp. 217 ff.
Ellis, Nick C.
2017. Cognition, Corpora, and Computing: Triangulating Research in Usage‐Based Language Learning. Language Learning 67:S1 ► pp. 40 ff.
Yoon, Hyung-Jo
2017. Linguistic complexity in L2 writing revisited: Issues of topic, proficiency, and construct multidimensionality. System 66 ► pp. 130 ff.
Yoon, Hyung-Jo
2021. Challenging the connection between task perceptions and language use in L2 writing: Genre, cognitive task complexity, and linguistic complexity. Journal of Second Language Writing 54 ► pp. 100857 ff.
Yoon, Hyung-Jo & Charlene Polio
2017. The Linguistic Development of Students of English as a Second Language in Two Written Genres. TESOL Quarterly 51:2 ► pp. 275 ff.
Altenberg, Evelyn P. & Jenny A. Roberts
2016. Promises and pitfalls of machine scoring of the Index of Productive Syntax. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics 30:6 ► pp. 433 ff.
Brunato, Dominique & Felice Dell’Orletta
2016. ISACCO: a corpus for investigating spoken and written language development in Italian school–age children. Italian Journal of Computational Linguistics 2:1 ► pp. 63 ff.
2015. Il ruolo delle tecnologie del linguaggio nel monitoraggio dell’evoluzione delle abilità di scrittura: primi risultati. Italian Journal of Computational Linguistics 1:1 ► pp. 105 ff.
Greene, Rebecca D. & Kenji Hakuta
2015. Epistemological Linguistics. In Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences, ► pp. 1 ff.
Stevens, Robert J., Xiaofei Lu, David P. Baker, Melissa N. Ray, Sarah A. Eckert & David A. Gamson
2015. Assessing the Cognitive Demands of a Century of Reading Curricula. American Educational Research Journal 52:3 ► pp. 582 ff.
Lu, Xiaofei
2014. Summary and Outlook. In Computational Methods for Corpus Annotation and Analysis, ► pp. 175 ff.
Lu, Xiaofei
2014. Syntactic Analysis. In Computational Methods for Corpus Annotation and Analysis, ► pp. 115 ff.
2014. Corpora and Language Assessment: The State of the Art. Language Assessment Quarterly 11:1 ► pp. 27 ff.
Gamson, David A., Xiaofei Lu & Sarah Anne Eckert
2013. Challenging the Research Base of the Common Core State Standards. Educational Researcher 42:7 ► pp. 381 ff.
Sahakian, Sam & Benjamin Snyder
2013. Modeling Child Divergences from Adult Grammar. Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics 1 ► pp. 125 ff.
Meurers, Detmar
2012. Natural Language Processing and Language Learning. In The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics,
Thorne, Steven L.
2012. Massively Semiotic Ecologies and L2 Development: Gaming Cases and Issues. In Serious Games: The Challenge [Communications in Computer and Information Science, 280], ► pp. 18 ff.
Thorne, Steven L. & Ingrid Fischer
2012. Online gaming as sociable media. Alsic Vol. 15, n°1
Thorne, Steven L., Ingrid Fischer & Xiaofei Lu
2012. The semiotic ecology and linguistic complexity of an online game world. ReCALL 24:3 ► pp. 279 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
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