Grammatical and lexical development in Modern Greek expository and narrative texts: A focus on noun phrases and word length

Abstract

While previous research has explored grammatical and lexical development in writing, little is known about how these aspects develop in Modern Greek, particularly across different text types. This study explores grammatical and lexical development in Modern Greek texts written by children, adolescents, and young adults. Focusing on expository texts in comparison to a narrative, it examines the influence of age, text type and task on the development of phrasal-level complexity and structural lexical complexity, in particular compositionality. The study analyzed three texts written by participants aged 10, 13, 16, and 23-35. We examined four indices: noun-dependent genitives per clause, noun-dependent noun phrases per clause (excluding personal pronouns), subjective/objective genitives per clause and word length (as a reflection of lexical compositionality). Results indicated that noun phrase complexity increased with age, with expository texts showing additional topic-based variation. Word length also increased with age across all text types, with one expository text eliciting significantly longer words than the others. These findings suggest that noun phrase structure, and noun dependent genitives in particular, as well as word length are informative measures of syntactic and lexical development in Modern Greek, and that expository texts may present unique challenges for developing writers. The results are discussed in relation to the discourse stance young and mature authors adopt in their texts.