Syntactic complexity and discourse type

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to find out whether a specific kind of texts structuring is correlated with syntactic complexity. Sixty texts (argumentative, descriptive and narrative) written by linguistically competent adults were selected as a sample and analyzed in terms of Kellog Hunt's syntactic maturity indices validated for Spanish by Véliz (1998). Results reveal that discourse type is significantly associated to syntactic maturity. Argumentative texts show the highest values; descriptive papers exhibit intermediate values while narratives seem to be the least complex writings in terms of syntactic maturity.