Register-Functional Approach to Grammatical Complexity

Douglas Biber is Regents' Professor of English (Applied Linguistics) at Northern Arizona University. His research efforts have focused on corpus linguistics, English grammar, and register variation. Previous books include Register, Genre, and Style (2009/2019); the co-authored Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (1999); and studies of grammatical complexity (2016), university registers (2006), and Multi-Dimensional Analyses of register variation (1988, 1995, 2018).Bethany Gray is Associate Professor of English (Applied Linguistics and Technology) at Iowa State University. Her research employs corpus linguistics methodologies to explore register variation, with a focus on academic language. Her publications include monographs on academic research articles (2015) and historical change in writing (2016). She is a co-founding editor of Register Studies.Shelley Staples is Associate Professor of English (Applied Linguistics/SLAT) at the University of Arizona. Her research focuses on corpus analysis, particularly for applications to language learning/teaching. Her publications include a monograph and edited volume on healthcare discourse, as well as articles in the Journal of English for Academic Purposes, English for Specific Purposes, Applied Linguistics, and TESOL Quarterly. Jesse Egbert is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at Northern Arizona University. He specializes in register variation, corpus linguistics, and quantitative research methods. He is a General Editor of Register Studies. Two of his recent books focus on online register variation (2018) and corpus linguistics methods (2020).

• List of Figures List of TablesPermissionsPART I: The Register-Functional Perspective on ComplexityChapter 1: IntroductionChapter 2: Theoretical and Descriptive Linguistic Foundation of the Register-Functional Approach to Grammatical Complexity Chapter 3: Overview of the Analytical Methods Used in Register-Functional Complexity ResearchPART II: Descriptive Linguistic Studies of Synchronic PatternsChapter 4: On the complexity of discourse complexity: A multidimensional analysisChapter 5: Challenging stereotypes about academic writing: Complexity, elaboration, explicitnessChapter 6: On the complexity of academic writing: Disciplinary variation and structural complexityChapter 7: Stance and grammatical complexity: An unlikely partnership discovered through corpus analysisPART III: Descriptive Linguistic Studies of Diachronic PatternsChapter 8: Grammatical change in the noun phrase: The influence of written language useChapter 9: Being specific about historical change: The influence of sub-registerChapter 10: Nominalizing the verb phrase in academic science writingChapter 11: The functional extension of phrasal grammatical features in academic writingChapter 12: The loss of explicitness in academic research writingPART IV: Applied Research Chapter 13: Rationale and hypotheses for the study of writing development from the RF perspectiveChapter 14: Should we use characteristics of conversation to measure grammatical complexity in L2 writing development? Chapter 15: Predicting patterns of grammatical complexity across language exam task types and proficiency levels. Chapter 16: Academic writing development at the university level: Phrasal and clausal complexity across level of study, discipline, and genreChapter 17: Understanding first-year L2 writing: A lexico-grammatical analysis across L1s, genres, and language ratingsChapter 18: Exploring the longitudinal development of grammatical complexity in the disciplinary writing of L2-English university studentsChapter 19: The longitudinal development of grammatical complexity at the phrasal and clausal levels in spoken and written responses to the TOEFL iBT testChapter 20: Investigating grammatical complexity in L2 English writing research: Linguistic description versus predictive measurementPART V: ConclusionChapter 21: Reflecting on the Register-Functional Approach to Grammatical Complexity: What do we know and where do we go from here? ReferencesIndex