A cross-linguistic study of noun phrase complexity in English-dominant and Turkish EFL writers’ graduate level academic writing in foreign policy

Abstract

This study conducts a linguistic analysis of noun phrase complexity in graduate level academic writing on foreign policy, based on Kyle’s (2016) measures of noun phrase complexity. It focuses on MA theses written by English language dominant writers and English Foreign Language Turkish writers. Focusing on exploring noun phrase complexity is demonstrated and varied with reference to language background, the results of the study highlight differences in nouns as dependents, determiners, adjectives, prepositions, and relative clauses and similarities in following genre requirements and use of possessives, non-clausal adverbial, and verbal modifiers.