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Abstract:
In previous work with both the monolingual and
cross-linguistic priming of active and passive sentence productions
in English and German we have consistently found priming effects of
around 8%. This accords well with the magnitude of the effect found
by other researchers who have investigated active/passive sentence
priming. However, unlike the majority of these investigators, we
have concluded that the effect is critically dependent on the
'conceptual form' of the prime, rather than its syntactic
structure, since responses to 'topicalization' primes mirror those
derived from the conceptually related passive, rather than the
syntactically related active. This conclusion was further supported
by the results of a study of active, passive and topicalization
priming in Spanish. The results here again showed topicalization
primes supporting passive rather than active productions with some
indication that the syntactic configuration of a prime can also
play a role, presumably via 'linking rules' that link particular
conceptual forms to a syntactic default.
One intriguing finding from this and a series of other Spanish
studies, however, is that the magnitude of active/ passive priming
in Spanish appears to be approximately half of that found in
English and German (around 4%). One possible explanation for this
is related to the fact that Spanish actives with animate objects in
fact contain a preposition in the direct-object noun phrase. It may
be that the superficial phrase structure similarity between these
forms and passives inhibits the priming effect. In order to test
this, we conducted a monolingual Spanish priming experiment with
two classes of experimental items: half contained only animate
entities in both the prime sentences and the to-be-described
pictures; the other half contained only inanimate entities. The
results provided no evidence that the superficial phrase structure
differences between these conditions exerted any influence on the
magnitude of the priming effect. Animacy did, however, exert a
large overall effect on the production of alternative structures
and this effect interacted with the nature of the prime. We
conclude, in line with our previous studies, that sentence priming
is based on levels of representation well above those related to
superficial phrase structure and that the nature of the conceptual
form involved exerts a potent effect on the chosen syntactic form
of an utterance, with interactions between conceptual and syntactic
effects.
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