The Use of Nominal Subordinate Clause as a Syntactic Complexity Measure by Some National University of Lesotho Students

Abstract

The paper explores the use of nominal subordinate clause as a syntactic complexity measure in some examination scripts of the National University of Lesotho (NUL) fourth year students. The study is based on the employment of the interpretivist paradigm as well as descriptive and case study designs. Data was collected from the students’ essays in the (2016/2017) examination papers and analysed qualitatively, following the Transformational Generative Grammar (TGG) and the Cognitive Grammar (CG), both of which formed the theoretical frameworks for the study. The paper shows that NUL students have a reasonably high level of syntactic complexity with the use of nominal subordinate clause.