Syntactic simplification in interpreted English : dependency distance and direction measures

Abstract

This study investigates the simplification hypothesis in interpreting, as well as its cognitive implications, by examining features of syntactic dependency in three language varieties: English speech simultaneously interpreted from Chinese, original English speech produced by native speakers (L1 speech), and original English speech produced by non-native speakers (L2 speech). Two measures of the dependency relation, namely dependency distance and dependency direction, are employed to explore the distinction among the three language varieties in terms of their syntactic complexity, amount of cognitive demand, and the typological property of word order. The findings reveal that interpreted speech has the lowest mean dependency distance (MDD), followed by L2 speech and L1 speech, which indicates that interpreted English speech is syntactically more simplified than original English speech. The lowest MDD in interpreted speech is associated with the high cognitive demand in simultaneous interpreting, suggesting that increased cognitive demand in language processing is likely to lead to simplification of the syntactic structure of the linguistic output. Furthermore, dependency direction analysis of the three language varieties indicates that interpreted English tends to be more head-final than L1 English speech, confirming a typological word order distinction between translational and original language.