International Journal of Language & Linguistics

Quantifying Lexico-Semantic Complexity in Academic Writing with Complexana
Christoph Haase

Abstract
In this contribution, a novel tool for automatically assigning a score for semantic complexity to a given text is introduced together with a number of results from corpus studies concerning the linguistic parameters of academic texts. The tool is based on the WordNet project as part of the semantic-web initiative. The texts come from a self-compiled corpus project called SPACE and represent different registers of academic writing – specified academic texts and popular-science articles. The comparability is ensured by selecting texts in parallel which concern the same academic research. Further, by application of the introduced tool, ideas are developed how a self-assessment of semantic complexity can be applied to teaching academic writing.

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