Naming A World of Things – An investigation of the development of noun phrases in written expository discourse, from adolescents to expert writers

Abstract: One component in writing development is a more efficient use of syntactic tools. Later syntactic development, specifically that of the noun phrase, is an understudied area, notably so for Swedish. The demand for specified and concise information in an expository text, and the availability of more planning time in the written modality, are important factors contributing to more complex noun phrases. The aim of this study is to analyse noun phrase length, lexicality and complexity in age-related and expert development. This corpus-based study consisted of 96 expository texts written by groups of writers 10, 13, 15 and 17 years old, by adult university students and by adult expert students. All NPs (N=8670) – at least one pronoun or lexical noun plus modifiers – were analysed as lexical or pronominal, simple or complex, and NP length was calculated. Finally, development was analysed over syntactic constituent (Subject, Object or Other). Results show that NPs are significantly less pronominal, longer, and more complex in older age groups, and most saliently in the subject constituent. However, two important implications are that age-related development is not straightforwardly linear, and that expert development results in less complexity. Results are discussed with respect to the concept of writing expertise, written modality characteristics and general cognitive development.