The lecture explores the construct of lexical diversity while also highlighting some surprising findings concerning the nature of lexical diversity, how it is perceived by human judges, and whether GenAI can replicate this characteristic of human language. It also describes and illustrates some of the major myths about LD that continue to be perpetuated.

Scott Jarvis is the Stoller-Grabe Endowed Distinguished Chair in Applied Linguistics at Northern Arizona University. He is also currently serving as Editor-in-Chief of Language Learning. His main areas of research are crosslinguistic influence, lexical diversity, and forensic linguistics. His recent research has inter alia investigated conceptual transfer, comprehension and comprehensibility of legal language, and the modeling and measurement of lexical diversity.