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Linguistics and the measurement of syntactic complexity : the case of raising

One factor which contributes to the difficulty that a reader may encounter in reading a text is the syntactic complexity of the constructions used in the text. This report focuses on one particular type of sentence structure which would be difficult to process, according to most measures of complexity. This construction type also poses a problem for linguistic theory, because it is hard to describe adequately in terms of syntactic transformations. The problem is that the transformations in question, which relate variant sentence forms within the construction type, appear to have conditions on them which are complex, variable,and related to meaning as well as syntactic form. The report examines the conditions on the rules of Raising to Object and Raising to Subject, and proposes that there are really just a small number of factors involved. For example, the NP which is raised must be perceived as a good discourse topic in the discourse context where the sentence occurs. Differences of meaning among the variant forms can be accounted for as inferences from different surface structures. Extra inferred meanings are conveyed by the structures which are more complex to process according to absolute measurements of syntactic complexity. It is proposed, however, that syntactic complexity is not an absolute value, because it may vary with discourse context and the function of the construction in discourse. An understanding of the relation between syntactic complexity and discourse function allows a writer to use more complex constructions without increasing text difficulty for the reader. Syntactic Complexity