A Comparative Linguistic Analysis of Lexical Diversity in AI-Generated and Human-Written Academic Research

Abstract

The study compares the lexical diversity of AI generated academic research and human written academic research and provides a comparative linguistic analysis. As AI assistants like ChatGPT are becoming more prevalent in the world of academic writing, issues of authenticity, vocabulary usage, and linguistic originality are gaining in prominence. The main goal of this research is to analyze differences and similarities with regard to the lexical diversity, the lexical sophistication and the vocabulary variation between AI-generated and human written academic texts. The methodology adopted in the study is a corpus-based qualitative and quantitative research approach, and the samples from the academic field are selected from the products of human research and AI systems, which are then analyzed by linguistic and computational methods. Linguistic richness and variation are measured through various lexical indices such as type-token ratio, lexical density and vocabulary sophistication. It will be revealed that the texts created with AI are grammatically consistent and formal, however, they might lack in the domain of the context in terms of creativity and repetition of lexical patterns as opposed to human written research. On the other hand, texts produced by human writers often will show more lexical diversity, context sensitivity, and subtle text choices. The study has implications for applied and corpus linguistics and digital humanities as it brings a better understanding of the relationship between AI and academic discourse that has developed over time. It also explores the pedagogical and ethical issues arising from AI-supported academic writing in modern education. Also, the study highlights the increasing need for digital literacy and critical thinking skills when assessing academic materials generated by AI. It aims to offer useful suggestions to teachers, researchers and policy makers on how to responsibly incorporate AI technologies in academic environments. The study also seeks to inspire future research in the field of linguistics to explore how AI will affect language and scholarly communication over time.

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, ChatGPT, Lexical Diversity, Academic Writing, Corpus Linguistics, AI-Generated Texts, Human-Written Research, Applied Linguistics, Vocabulary Sophistication, Digital Humanities