Halliday has claimed that neither spoken nor written language is more complex than the other
per se but that the two mediums show different degrees of complexity on different levels. He
argues that written language uses more lexical items within the clause whereas spoken language
uses more clauses within the clause complex. Thus written language should use more complex
noun phrases and spoken language should use more complex clause complexes. The aim of the study
was to conduct a corpus-based study to analyse spoken and written language samples with regard
to differences in complexity on the level of noun phrases and clause complexes. With the help
of this study it was possible to refute Halliday's thesis as the data show that both noun
phrases and clause complexes are more complex in the language samples under scrutiny.
