Task-based explanation for genre effects: Evidence from a dependency treebank

In task-based second language (L2) writing research, genre effects on linguistic features are usually explained by either task complexity hypothesis or differences in communicative demands. The basic distinction between the two explanations is determined by whether cognitive factors are at work. To date, the actual causes for L2 learners’ different linguistic features in different genres are still unclear. Aiming at providing empirical evidence for explaining the mechanism of genre effects, this investigation uses dependency-grammar-based measures to examine the role of cognitive factors in L2 argumentative, narrative, and descriptive writings. A total of 540 compositions from three different proficiency groups of English as a foreign language learners were collected, and their mean dependency distances and their distributions of dependency distance were calculated. It was found that in all proficiency groups of compositions, dependency distance distributions of five types showed significant differences between genres. Since dependency distance reflects cognitive load, those five dependency types were able to show that cognitive factors are at play in the writing process. Among the five types, the phrasal dependency relation types could reveal genre effects regardless of learners’ language proficiency, and clausal dependency relation types might pinpoint learners’ threshold of perceiving task complexity. The findings suggest that genre effects on linguistic features in L2 writings may result from different cognitive demand imposed by writing tasks with different genres, and genre effect may exhibit variation among different proficiency groups.