WHO’S AFRAID OF COMPLEXITY? An Exploration of the Influence of Native Language Complexity on L2 Complexity

Sammanfattning: The matter of linguistic complexity has been widely scrutinised in the last few decades, within theoretical linguistics, as well as in second language acquisition studies. A concept introduced in the last half of the previous century, it continues to be a matter of debate in the linguistic field, as it eludes a clear-cut definition and interpretation. In this thesis, the morphological and lexical complexity of learner essays in Swedish are calculated using type-token, entropy and Kolmogorov complexity measures in order to determine whether properties of the native language (L1) of the learner influence the complexity of the second language (L2). A supplementary measure is devised by aggregating morphological features pertaining to each language as taken from the World Atlas of Language Structures. The languages under analysis are: Arabic, Chinese, Dari, English, German, Persian, Spanish and Swedish. The measures are computed on both the L1s and L2s, which are afterwards analysed with the help of data visualisations and linear regression models. This study concludes that the complexity of the L1 is not a reliable predictor of L2 complexity, although it does act as a predictor regarding the instructional level of the learners.