Cross-linguistic structural priming and bilingual models of production

Angeliki Salamoura
University of Cambridge, U.K.

Structural or syntactic priming, the tendency to reproduce the same syntactic structure in a different semantic content, is a well-documented phenomenon that has been argued to tap into syntactic representation and processing. Although it has been extensively researched in monolingual literature using a number of different conditions, tasks, languages and
modalities (cf. Bock, 1986; Bock & Loebell, 1990; Pickering & Branigan, 1998; Potter & Lombardi, 1998; Branigan, Pickering & Cleland, 2000), there is little evidence of its occurrence across languages. This paper is a preliminary examination of cross-language processing of syntactic structure and provides evidence that bears on two interrelated issues:

(i) Are there any cross-language links between L1 and L2 syntactic structures and/or processes?
(ii) Will L1 syntactic structures and/or processes affect - facilitate or inhibit - the selection of equivalent L2 syntactic structures? I.e., will L2 syntactic representations map on to L1 representations?

To investigate these questions we conducted two oral sentence completion experiments (Branigan, Pickering, Stewart & McLean, 2000) in which participants completed sentence fragments that allowed a choice between two meaning-
equivalent syntactic forms. The syntactic structures under investigation were the complement phrases of ditransitive verbs (e.g., give + NP NP vs. NP PP).

Experiment 1 with English native speakers replicated Branigan et al.'s (2000) findings of structural priming in L1 oral production, i.e. the completion of a prime fragment with a prepositional object (PO) structure increased the probability of
completing a subsequent and semantically unrelated target fragment with a PO rather than a double object (DO) structure. This was true not only when the prime and target verb were the same but even when adding a condition where the prime and target verb differed. Moreover, the fact that there was always one intervening filler fragment between prime and target further precluded any discourse influences. Experiment 2 with Greek advanced learners of English (L2) had the
same design as Experiment 1 except that the prime fragments were now in the participants' L1 whereas the targets in their L2. The results showed structural priming from L1-to-L2, suggesting that L1 syntactic structures and/or processes affect selection of syntactic structures during L2 processing, in the case of advanced L2 learners and equivalent L1-L2
structures. The implications of these findings for, and their integration within, bilingual production models will be discussed.

References

Bock, J.K. (1986). Syntactic persistence in language production. Cognitive Psychology, 18, 355-387.

Bock, J.K., & Loebell, H. (1990). Framing sentences. Cognition, 31, 163-186.

Branigan, H.P., Pickering M.J., & Cleland, A. (2000). Syntactic co-ordination in dialogue. Cognition, 75, B13-B25.

Branigan, H.P., Pickering M.J., Stewart, A.J., & McLean, J.F. (2000). Syntactic priming in spoken production: Linguistic and temporal interference. Memory & Cognition, 28 (8), 1297-1302.

Pickering, M.J., & Branigan, H.P. (1998). The representation of verbs: Evidence from syntactic priming in language production. Journal of Memory and Language, 39, 633-651.

Potter, M.C., & Lombardi, L. (1998). Synatctic priming in immediate recall of sentences. Journal of Memory and Language, 38 (3), 265-282.