Approaches to Linguistic Complexity and Variation in Language Use (volume collectif)
Calendrier de soumission :
Date limite d’envoi des résumés : 30 mai 2026
Notifications aux auteurs : 30 juin 2026
Envoi du chapitre : 15 octobre 2026
Publication prévue : 2027
Modalités de soumission pour le volume collectif : Résumé (en anglais) entre 300 et 500 mots, à envoyer à Mouna Ayadi <mona.ayadi88@gmail.com>
Argument :
Drawing on corpus-based research, the book investigates how clause architecture, embedding, dependency relations, and phrase-level elaboration contribute to complex meaning-making. It demonstrates how syntactic choices are determined by functional pressures such as transitivity, agency, perspective, thematic progression, and the need to package information in discourse. In addition, the book investigates variation in complexity across spoken and written registers and academic genres, revealing how functional factors drive syntactic change and diversity. Enriched by insights from systemic functional linguistics, corpus linguistics, and discourse analysis, the book looks at the interaction between complexity, transitivity, and event representation across a variety of contexts. It investigates how clause expansion, embedding, and grammatical elaboration emerge as strategies for encoding agency. Through examinations of spoken and written discourse, academic texts, and learner language, the book demonstrates how complexity changes according to genre and register.
By combining theory with empirical research, this volume points out how complexity in language emerges not as an abstract property but as a strategic resource for representing events and organizing discourse. The editor welcomes abstracts on the topics of interest below and/or topics that closely align with the scope of this volume:
Section One: Linguistic Variation in Use
– Register Variation in Spoken vs. Written Genres
– Sociolinguistic Factors that Shape Syntactic Complexity
– Diachronic changes in Linguistic Complexity
Section Two: Applications and Frontiers of Linguistic Complexity
– Complexity in Language Pathology and Impairment
– Towards a Unified Theory of Syntactic Variation and Complexity
Section Three: Measuring Linguistic Complexity
– Metrics of Syntactic Complexity
– Measures of Lexical Complexity
– Quantitative Tools for Tracking Developmental Trajectories in Linguistic Complexity
Section Four: Transitivity and Event Representation
– Processes, participants, agency and transitivity in functional grammar.