A measure of semantic complexity among predications

Abstract

A scale for assessing the complexity or density of utterances was developed using 10 categories ofsemantic relations (e.g., temporal ordering, causality). The categories are inferable from the particular “meanings” of the words (e.g., connectives, particular tense variations) used in an utterance. The scale was applied to three samples of subjects to assess its interjudge reliability and to compare the utterances of fourth-, sixth-, and eighth-grade children from middle- and working-class neighborhoods. It was also used to compare the complexity of utterances for different types of visual stimuli (used to elicit language samples). Interjudge reliabilities were more than acceptable for each of the samples, and significant differences in semantic density were found across grade, between children from working-class and middle-class neighborhoods, and for the stimuli used to elicit the utterances. When two of the three types of eliciting visual stimuli were equated for content and exposure conditions, the differences in verbal density between eliciting conditions were not replicated. The usefulness of the scale for assessing utterance density and by implication, comprehension difficulty of utterances and of texts, is discussed.