Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T23:53:35.713Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Structural priming and the representation of language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2017

Holly P. Branigan  and
Martin J. Pickering
Holly P. Branigan
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9JZ, United Kingdom. holly.branigan@ed.ac.ukhttp://www.ed.ac.uk/profile/holly-braniganmartin.pickering@ed.ac.ukhttp://www.ed.ac.uk/profile/martin-pickering
Martin J. Pickering
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9JZ, United Kingdom. holly.branigan@ed.ac.ukhttp://www.ed.ac.uk/profile/holly-braniganmartin.pickering@ed.ac.ukhttp://www.ed.ac.uk/profile/martin-pickering
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Structural priming offers a powerful method for experimentally investigating the mental representation of linguistic structure. We clarify the nature of our proposal, justify the versatility of priming, consider alternative approaches, and discuss how our specific account can be extended to new questions as part of an interdisciplinary programme integrating linguistics and psychology as part of the cognitive sciences of language.

Type
Authors' Response
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 40 , 2017 , e313
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agnew, Z. K., van de Koot, H., McGettigan, C. & Scott, S. K. (2014) Do sentences with unaccusative verbs involve syntactic movement? Evidence from neuroimaging. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 29(9):1035–45. doi:10.1080/23273798.2014.887125.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Allen, K., Ibara, S., Seymour, A., Cordova, N. & Botvinick, M. (2010) Abstract structural representations of goal-directed behavior. Psychological Science 21(10):1518–24. doi:10.1177/0956797610383434.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Arai, M., van Gompel, R. P. G. & Scheepers, C. (2007) Priming ditransitive structures in comprehension. Cognitive Psychology 54(3):218–50. doi:10.1016/j.cogpsych.2006.07.001.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bencini, G. M. L. & Valian, V. V. (2008) Abstract sentence representations in 3-year-olds: Evidence from language production and comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language 59(1):97–113. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2007.12.007.Google Scholar
Bernolet, S., Hartsuiker, R. J. & Pickering, M. J. (2007) Shared syntactic representations in bilinguals: Evidence for the role of word-order repetition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 33(5):931–49. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.33.5.931.Google ScholarPubMed
Bernolet, S., Hartsuiker, R. J. & Pickering, M. J. (2013) From language-specific to shared syntactic representations: The influence of second language proficiency on syntactic sharing in bilinguals. Cognition 127(3):287–306. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2013.02.005.Google Scholar
Berwick, R. C. & Weinberg, A. S. (1984) The grammatical basis of linguistic performance: Language use and acquisition. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bever, T. G. & Sanz, M. (1997) Empty categories access their antecedents during comprehension: Unaccusatives in Spanish. Linguistic Inquiry 28:69–91.Google Scholar
Bock, J. K. (1986) Syntactic persistence in language production. Cognitive Psychology 18(3):355–87. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(86)90004-6CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bock, K. (1989) Closed-class immanence in sentence production. Cognition 31(2):163–86. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(89)90022-X.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bock, K. & Griffin, Z. M. (2000) The persistence of structural priming: Transient activation or implicit learning? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 129:177–92. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.129.2.177.Google Scholar
Bock, K. & Loebell, H. (1990) Framing sentences. Cognition 35(1):1–39. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(90)90035-I.Google Scholar
Bock, K., Nicol, J. L. & Cutting, J. C. (1999) The ties that bind: Creating number agreement in speech. Journal of Memory and Language 40(3):330–46. doi:10.1006/jmla.1998.2616.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bott, L. & Chemla, E. (2016) Shared and distinct mechanisms in deriving linguistic enrichment. Journal of Memory and Language 91:117–40. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2016.04.004.Google Scholar
Branigan, H. P. & McLean, J. F. (2016) What children learn from adults' utterances: An ephemeral lexical boost and persistent syntactic priming in adult–child dialogue. Journal of Memory and Language 91:141–57. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2016.02.002.Google Scholar
Branigan, H. P., Pickering, M. J. & Cleland, A. A. (2000) Syntactic co-ordination in dialogue. Cognition 75(2):13–25. doi:10.1016/S0010-0277(99)00081-5.Google Scholar
Branigan, H. P., Pickering, M. J. & McLean, J. F. (2005) Priming prepositional-phrase attachment during comprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 31(3):468–81. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.31.3.468 Google ScholarPubMed
Branigan, H. P., Pickering, M. J., McLean, J. F. & Stewart, A. J. (2006) The role of local and global syntactic structure in language production: Evidence from syntactic priming. Language and Cognitive Processes 21:974–1010. doi:10.1080/016909600824609.Google Scholar
Bresnan, J. (2007) Is syntactic knowledge probabilistic? Experiments with the English dative alternation. In Roots: Linguistics in search of its evidential base, ed. Featherston, S. & Sternefeld, W., pp. 75–96. Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Bresnan, J., Cueni, A., Nikita, T. & Baayen, R. H. (2007) Predicting the dative alternation. In: Cognitive foundations of interpretation, ed. Bouma, G., Krämer, I. & Zwarts, J., pp. 69–94. Royal Netherlands Academy of Science.Google Scholar
Bunger, A., Papafragou, A. & Trueswell, J. C. (2013) Event structure influences language production: Evidence from structural priming in motion event description. Journal of Memory and Language 69(3):299–323. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2013.04.002.Google Scholar
Cai, Z. G., Pickering, M. J. & Branigan, H. P. (2012) Mapping concepts to syntax: Evidence from structural priming in Mandarin Chinese. Journal of Memory and Language 66(4):833–49. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2012.03.009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cann, R., Kempson, R. & Marten, L. (2005) The dynamics of language: An introduction. Elsevier.Google Scholar
Chang, F., Bock, K. & Goldberg, A. E. (2003) Can thematic roles leave traces of their places? Cognition 90(1):29–49. doi:10.1016/S0010-0277(03)00123-9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chomsky, N. (1981) Lectures on government and binding: The Pisa lectures. Walter de Gruyter/Foris/Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Cho-Reyes, S. & Thompson, C. (2012) Structural priming in agrammatic aphasia. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences 61:259–61. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.10.176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cleland, A. A. & Pickering, M. J. (2006) Do writing and speaking employ the same syntactic representations? Journal of Memory and Language 54(2):185–98. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2005.10.003.Google Scholar
Culicover, P. W. & Jackendoff, R. (2005) Simpler syntax, vol. 10. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof.Google Scholar
Dąbrowska, E. (2010) Naive v. Expert intuitions: An empirical study of acceptability judgments. Linguistic Review 27(1):1–23. doi:10.1515/tlir.2010.001.Google Scholar
Ferreira, F. (1994) Choice of passive voice is affected by verb type and animacy. Journal of Memory and Language 33(6):715–36. doi:10.1006/jmla.1994.1034.Google Scholar
Ferreira, V. S. (2003) The persistence of optional complementizer production: Why saying “that” is not saying “that” at all. Journal of Memory and Language 48:379–98. doi:10.1016/S0749-596X(02)00523-5.Google Scholar
Foltz, A., Thiele, K., Kahsnitz, D. & Stenneken, P. (2015) Children's syntactic-priming magnitude: Lexical factors and participant characteristics. Journal of Child Language 42(4):932–45. doi:10.1017/S0305000914000488.Google Scholar
Fox Tree, J. E. & Meijer, P. J. A. (1999) Building syntactic structure in speaking. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 28(1):71–92. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9949715.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garraffa, M., Coco, M. I. & Branigan, H. P. (2015) Effects of immediate and cumulative syntactic experience in language impairment: Evidence from priming of subject relatives in children with SLI. Language Learning and Development 11:18–40. doi:10.1080/15475441.2013.876277.Google Scholar
Gries, S. Th. (2005) Syntactic priming: A corpus-based approach. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 34(4):365–99. doi:10.1007/s10936-005-6139-3.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gries, S. Th. (2011) Studying syntactic priming in corpora: implications of different levels of granularity. In: Converging evidence: Methodological and theoretical issues for linguistic research, ed. Schönefeld, D., pp. 143–65. John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Gries, S. Th. & Kootstra, G. J. (2017) Structural priming within and across languages: A corpus-based perspective. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 20(2):235–50. doi: 10.1017/S1366728916001085.Google Scholar
Hagoort, P. (2014) Nodes and networks in the neural architecture for language: Broca's region and beyond. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 28:136–41. doi:10.1016/j.conb.2014.07.013.Google Scholar
Hagoort, P. & Indefrey, P. (2014) The neurobiology of language beyond single words. Annual Review of Neuroscience 37(1):347–62. doi:10.1146/annurev-neuro-071013-013847.Google Scholar
Hall, M. L., Ferreira, V. S. & Mayberry, R. I. (2015) Syntactic priming in American Sign Language. PLoS ONE 10(3):e0119611. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0119611.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Haskell, T. R., Thornton, R. & MacDonald, M. C. (2010) Experience and grammatical agreement: Statistical learning shapes number agreement production. Cognition 114(2):151–64. Available at: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2009.08.017.Google Scholar
Healey, P. G. T, Purver, M. & Howes, C. (2014) Divergence in dialogue. PLoS ONE 9(2):e98598. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0098598.Google Scholar
Huang, J., Pickering, M. J., Yang, J., Wang, S. & Branigan, H. P. (2016) The independence of syntactic processing in Mandarin: Evidence from structural priming. Journal of Memory and Language 91:81–98. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2016.02.005.Google Scholar
Hudson, R. (2010) An introduction to word grammar. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ivanova, I., Pickering, M. J., McLean, J. F., Costa, A. & Branigan, H. P. (2012b) How do people produce ungrammatical utterances? Journal of Memory and Language 67:355–70. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2012.06.003.Google Scholar
Kaschak, M. P. & Glenberg, A. M. (2004) This construction needs learned. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 133(3):450–67. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.133.3.450.Google Scholar
Kempen, G. & Harbusch, K. (2004) A corpus study into word order variation in German subordinate clauses: Animacy affects linearization independently of grammatical function assignment. In: Multidisciplinary approaches to language production, ed. Pechmann, T. & Habel, C., pp. 173–81. Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Kim, A. & Osterhout, L. (2005) The independence of combinatory semantic processing: evidence from event-related potentials. Journal of Memory and Language 52(2):205–25. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2004.10.002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knoeferle, P. (2014) Conjunction meaning can modulate parallelism facilitation: Eye-tracking evidence from German clausal coordination. Journal of Memory and Language 75:140–58. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2014.05.002.Google Scholar
Köhne, J., Pickering, M. J. & Branigan, H. P. (2014) The relationship between sentence meaning and word order: Evidence from structural priming in German. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 67(2):304–18. doi:10.1080/17470218.2013.807855.Google Scholar
Konopka, A. E. & Bock, K. (2009) Lexical or syntactic control of sentence formulation? Structural generalizations from idiom production. Cognitive Psychology 58(1):68–101. doi:10.1016/j.cogpsych.2008.05.002.Google Scholar
Larson, R. K. 1988. On the double object construction. Linguistic Inquiry 19(3):335–91. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25164901.Google Scholar
Luka, B. J. & Barsalou, L. W. (2005) Structural facilitation: Mere exposure effects for grammatical acceptability as evidence for syntactic priming in comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language 52(3):444–67. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2005.01.013.Google Scholar
Mahowald, K., James, A., Futrell, R. & Gibson, E. (2016b) A meta-analysis of syntactic priming in language production. Journal of Memory and Language 91:5–27. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2016.03.009.Google Scholar
Malhotra, G., Pickering, M., Branigan, H. & Bednar, J. A. (2008) On the persistence of structural priming: Mechanisms of decay and influence of word-forms. In: Proceedings of the Thirtieth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Austin, TX, pp. 657–62, ed. Love, B. C., McRae, K. & Sloutsky, V. M.. Cognitive Science Society.Google Scholar
Marslen-Wilson, W., Tyler, L. K., Waksler, R. & Older, L. (1994) Morphology and meaning in the English mental lexicon. Psychological Review 101:3–33. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.101.1.3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDonough, K. & Mackey, A. (2006) Responses to recasts: Repetitions, primed production, and linguistic development. Language Learning 56(4):693–720. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9922.2006.00393.x.Google Scholar
Melinger, A. & Cleland, A. A. (2011) The influence of sentential position on noun phrase structure priming. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 64(11):2211–35. doi:10.1080/17470218.2011.586709.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Menenti, L., Gierhan, S. M. E., Segaert, K. & Hagoort, P. (2011) Shared language: Overlap and segregation of the neuronal infrastructure for speaking and listening revealed by functional MRI. Psychological Science 22(9):1173–82. doi:10.1177/0956797611418347.Google Scholar
Messenger, K., Branigan, H. P. & McLean, J. F. (2011) Evidence for (shared) abstract structure underlying children's short and full passives. Cognition 121(2):268–74. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2011.07.003.Google Scholar
Messenger, K., Branigan, H. P., McLean, J. F. & Sorace, A. (2012b) Is young children's passive syntax semantically constrained? Evidence from syntactic priming. Journal of Memory and Language 66(4):568–87. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2012.03.008.Google Scholar
Myslín, M. & Levy, R. (2016) Comprehension priming as rational expectation for repetition: Evidence from syntactic processing. Cognition 147:29–56. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2015.10.021.Google Scholar
Osterhout, L. & Mobley, L. A. (1995) Event-related brain potentials elicited by failure to agree. Journal of Memory and Language 34(6):739–73. doi:10.1006/jmla.1995.1033.Google Scholar
Pickering, M. & Barry, G. (1993) Dependency categorial grammar and coordination. Linguistics 31:855–902.Google Scholar
Pickering, M. J. & Branigan, H. P. (1998) The representation of verbs: Evidence from syntactic priming in language production. Journal of Memory and Language 39(4):633–51.Google Scholar
Pickering, M. J. & Ferreira, V. S. (2008) Structural priming: A critical review. Psychological Bulletin 134(3):427–59. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.134.3.427 Google Scholar
Pickering, M. J. & Garrod, S. (2017) Priming and language change. In: The changing English language: Psycholinguistic perspectives, ed. Hundt, M., Mollin, S. & Pfenninger, S. E., pp. 173–90. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pickering, M. J., McLean, J. F. & Branigan, H. P. (2013) Persistent structural priming and frequency effects during comprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 39(3):890–97. doi:10.1037/a0029181.Google Scholar
Pollard, C. & Sag, I. A. (1994) Head-driven phrase structure grammar, vol. 8. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Raffray, C. N., Pickering, M. J., Cai, Z. G. & Branigan, H. P. (2014) The production of coerced expressions: Evidence from priming. Journal of Memory and Language 74:91–106. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2013.09.004.Google Scholar
Reitter, D. & Moore, J. D. (2014) Alignment and task success in spoken dialogue. Journal of Memory and Language 76:29–46. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2014.05.008.Google Scholar
Rowland, C. F., Chang, F., Ambridge, B., Pine, J. M. & Lieven, E. V. M. (2012) The development of abstract syntax: Evidence from structural priming and the lexical boost. Cognition 125(1):49–63. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2012.06.008.Google Scholar
Scarborough, D. L., Cortese, C. & Scarborough, H. S. (1977) Frequency and repetition effects in lexical memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 3(1):1–17.Google Scholar
Scheepers, C. (2003) Syntactic priming of relative clause attachments: Persistence of structural configuration in sentence production. Cognition 89:179–205. doi:10.1016/S0010-0277(03)00119-7.Google Scholar
Schoonbaert, S., Hartsuiker, R. J. & Pickering, M. J. (2007) The representation of lexical and syntactic information in bilinguals: Evidence from syntactic priming. Journal of Memory and Language 56:153–71. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2006.10.002.Google Scholar
Segaert, K., Menenti, L., Weber, K., Petersson, K. M. & Hagoort, P. (2012) Shared syntax in language production and language comprehension: An fMRI study. Cerebral Cortex 22(7):1662–70. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhr249.Google Scholar
Segaert, K., Wheeldon, L. & Hagoort, P. (2016) Unifying structural priming effects on syntactic choices and timing of sentence generation. Journal of Memory and Language 91:59–80. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2016.03.011.Google Scholar
Smith, M. & Wheeldon, L. (2001) Syntactic priming in spoken sentence production: An online study. Cognition 78:123–64. doi:10.1016/S0010-0277(00)00110-4.Google Scholar
Snyder, W. (2000) An experimental investigation of syntactic satiation effects. Linguistic Inquiry 31(3):575–82. doi:10.1162/002438900554479.Google Scholar
Sprouse, J. (2009) Revisiting satiation: Evidence for an equalization response strategy. Linguistic Inquiry 40(2):329–41. doi:10.1162/ling.2009.40.2.329.Google Scholar
Sprouse, J., Wagers, M. & Phillips, C. (2012) A test of the relation between working-memory capacity and syntactic island effects. Language 88(1):82–123. doi:10.1353/lan.2012.0004.Google Scholar
Steedman, M. (2000) The syntactic process. MIT Press/Bradford Books.Google Scholar
Steedman, M. (2002) Plans, affordances, and combinatory grammar. Linguistics and Philosophy 25(5/6):723–53. doi:10.1023/A:1020820000972.Google Scholar
Szmrecsanyi, B. (2006) Morphosyntactic persistence in spoken English: A corpus study at the intersection of variationist sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and discourse analysis. de Gruyter Mouton. doi:10.1515/9783110197808.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thothathiri, M. & Snedeker, J. (2008a) Give and take: Syntactic priming during spoken language comprehension. Cognition 108:51–68. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2007.12.012.Google Scholar
Traxler, M. J., Tooley, K. M. & Pickering, M. J. (2014) Syntactic priming during sentence comprehension: Evidence for the lexical boost. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition 40(4):905–18. doi:10.1037/a0036377.Google Scholar
Van der Cavey, J. & Hartsuiker, R. J. (2016) Is there a domain-general cognitive structuring system? Evidence from structural priming across music, math, action descriptions, and language. Cognition 146:172–84. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2015.09.013.Google Scholar
Van Gompel, R. P. G., Pickering, M. J., Pearson, J. & Jacob, G. (2006) The activation of inappropriate analyses in garden-path sentences: Evidence from structural priming. Journal of Memory and Language 55(3):335–62. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2006.06.004.Google Scholar
Zaenen, A. E. (1988) Unaccusative verbs in Dutch and the syntax-semantics interface. CSLI/SRI International 123:317–35.Google Scholar