Linking up phraseology and complexity research in L2

In this talk, I will present my current research efforts to define and circumscribe the construct of phraseological complexity and to theoretically and empirically demonstrate its relevance for second language theory (e.g. Paquot, 2017). As illustration, I will report on a study in which we made use of syntactic co-occurrences, more particularly verb + object structures, to trace phraseological complexity development (in the form of phraseological sophistication) in the French L2 component of the Longitudinal Database of Learner English (LONGDALE; Meunier 2013) (cf. Paquot et al, submitted)