Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T14:53:08.648Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The role of constituent order and level of embedding in cross-linguistic structural priming*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 August 2016

GUNNAR JACOB ,
KALLIOPI KATSIKA ,
NEILOUFAR FAMILY  and
SHANLEY E. M. ALLEN
GUNNAR JACOB
Affiliation:
Potsdam Research Institute for Multilingualism, University of Potsdam
KALLIOPI KATSIKA
Affiliation:
University of Kaiserslautern
NEILOUFAR FAMILY
Affiliation:
University of Kaiserslautern
SHANLEY E. M. ALLEN*
Affiliation:
University of Kaiserslautern
*
Address for correspondence: Prof. Dr. Shanley Allen, Department of Social Sciences, University of Kaiserslautern, Erwin-Schrödinger-Strasse 57/409, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germanyallen@sowi.uni-kl.de
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In two cross-linguistic priming experiments with native German speakers of L2 English, we investigated the role of constituent order and level of embedding in cross-linguistic structural priming. In both experiments, significant priming effects emerged only if prime and target were similar with regard to constituent order and also situated on the same level of embedding. We discuss our results on the basis of two current theoretical accounts of cross-linguistic priming, and conclude that neither an account based on combinatorial nodes nor an account assuming that constituent order is directly responsible for the priming effect can fully explain our data pattern. We suggest an account that explains cross-linguistic priming through a hierarchical tree representation. This representation is computed during processing of the prime, and can influence the formulation of a target sentence only when the structural features specified in it are grammatically correct in the target sentence.

Keywords

cross-linguistic structural primingconstituent orderlevel of embeddinghierarchical tree structures
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 20 , Special Issue 2: Cross-linguistic Priming in Bilinguals: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Language Processing, Acquisition and Change , March 2017 , pp. 269 - 282
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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.)

Footnotes

*

The research presented in this paper was supported by a startup research grant from the University of Kaiserslautern to Shanley Allen. The authors thank Mark Calley, Alina Kholodova, and Lisa Martinek, for valuable assistance with data collection, and Rob Hartsuiker, Holger Hopp, and the audience of the 2013 ‘Cross-linguistic Priming in Bilinguals: Perspectives and Constraints’ conference in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, for valuable comments on our results.

References

Allen, D. (2004). Oxford Placement Test. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Barr, D. J., Levy, R., Scheepers, C., & Tily, H. J. (2013). Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal. Journal of Memory and Language, 68, 255–278.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, 931–949.Google Scholar
Bock, J. K. (1986). Syntactic persistence in language production. Cognitive Psychology, 18, 355–387.Google Scholar
Bock, J. K., & Griffin, Z. M. (2000). The persistence of structural priming: Transient activation or implicit learning? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 129 (2), 177–192.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Branigan, H.P. (2007). Syntactic priming. Language and Linguistics Compass, 1, 1–16.Google Scholar
Branigan, H.P., Pickering, M.J, McLean, J.F., & Stewart, A. (2006). The role of local and global syntactic structure in language production: Evidence from syntactic priming. Language and Cognitive Processes, 21, 974–1010.Google Scholar
Chen, B., Jia, Y., Wang, Z., Dunlap, S., & Shin, J.-A. (2013). Is word-order similarity necessary for cross-linguistic structural priming? Second Language Research, 29 (4), 375–389.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Desmet, T., & Declercq, M. (2006). Cross-linguistic priming of syntactic hierarchical configuration information. Journal of Memory and Language, 54, 610–632.Google Scholar
Forster, K. I., & Forster, J. C. (2003). DMDX: A windows display program with millisecond accuracy. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers, 35, 116–124.Google Scholar
Hartsuiker, R. J., & Pickering, M. J. (2008). Language integration in bilingual sentence production. Acta Psychologica, 128, 479–489.Google Scholar
Hartsuiker, R. J., Pickering, M. J., & Veltkamp, E. (2004). Is syntax separate or shared between languages? Crosslinguistic syntactic priming in Spanish–English bilinguals. Psychological Science, 15, 409–414.Google Scholar
Jaeger, T. F. (2008). Categorical data analysis: Away from ANOVAs (transformation or not) and towards Logit Mixed Models. Journal of Memory and Language, 59, 434–446.Google Scholar
Kantola, L., & van Gompel, R. P. G. (2011). Between- and within-language priming is the same: Evidence for shared bilingual syntactic representations. Memory and Cognition, 39, 276–290.Google Scholar
Lemhöfer, K., Dijkstra, T., & Michel, M.C. (2004). Three languages, one ECHO: Cognate effects in trilingual word recognition. Language and Cognitive Processes, 19, 585–611.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levelt, W. J. M., & Kelter, S. (1982). Surface form and memory in question answering. Cognitive Psychology, 14, 78–106.Google Scholar
Loebell, H., & Bock, J. K. (2003). Structural priming across languages. Linguistics, 41, 791–824.Google Scholar
Meara, P. M. (1996). English vocabulary tests: 10k. Unpublished manuscript. Swansea: Center for Applied Language Studies.Google Scholar
Meijer, P. J. A., & Fox Tree, J.E. (2003). Building syntactic structures in speaking: A bilingual exploration. Experimental Psychology, 50, 184–195.Google Scholar
Pappert, S., & Pechmann, T. (2014). Priming word order at the conceptual level: No evidence for additional priming at the positional level. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 67, 2260–2278.Google Scholar
Pickering, M., & Ferreira, V. (2008). Structural priming: A critical review. Psychological Bulletin, 134, 427–459.Google Scholar
Salamoura, A., & Williams, J. N. (2006). Lexical activation of cross-language syntactic priming. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 9, 299–307.Google Scholar
Scheepers, C., Sturt, P., Martin, C. J., Myachykov, A., Teevan, K., & Viskupova, I. (2011). Structural priming across cognitive domains: From simple arithmetic to relative-clause attachment. Psychological Science, 22, 10, 1319–1326.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, 56,153–171.Google Scholar
Shin, J-A., & Christianson, K. (2009). Syntactic processing in Korean-English bilinguals: Evidence from cross-linguistic structural priming. Cognition, 112, 175–180.Google Scholar