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Abstract:
Three experiments investigated the priming of noun
phrase production using a confederate-scripted dialogue method
(Branigan et al., 2000). Experiment 1 found that it is
possible to prime the production of noun phrase structures
containing a pre-nominal adjective (e.g., "the red book")
vs. a post-nominal phrase (e.g., "the book that's red"): 19% more
target structures had the same structure as the prime than the
alternative. The magnitude of priming was over twice as
large (27%) when the noun was repeated between prime and target
versus when it was not (12%). Apart from demonstrating
priming at the level of the noun phrase, the results also
indicate that lexical overlap increases the magnitude of
priming. The results are interpreted in terms of the model
of the lemma stratum developed by Pickering and Branigan (1998),
where each noun node (e.g., for "book") is linked to syntactic
nodes corresponding to constructions in which the adjective
either precedes or follows the noun, and which predicts the
enhanced effect of lexical overlap.
At this point, we outline an extension to
Pickering and Branigan's account that incorporates influence
from the conceptual stratum (Levelt et al., 1999).
Concepts are linked to semantically related concepts, so the
concept "whale" should be linked to "shark". Both of
these are linked to their corresponding lemma nodes. We
demonstrate why this predicts that priming should be enhanced
by the presence of semantically related words in prime and
target. Experiment 2 tested this prediction by
investigating the priming of "red whale" / "whale that is red"
by primes containing the same noun, a related noun ("shark") or
an unrelated noun ("door"). In accord with predictions,
priming for the related noun (31%) was stronger than priming
for an unrelated noun (8%), but priming for the same noun was
strongest (47%).
Given that semantic relatedness leads to
enhanced syntactic priming, an interactive account (e.g., Dell,
1986) allowing feedback from the phonological stratum to the
lemma stratum might predict that strong phonological
relatedness would lead to enhanced syntactic priming.
However, a modular account predicts no feedback and thus no
effect of phonological overlap. Experiment 3 therefore
replaced the semantically related noun ("whale") with a highly
phonologically related noun ("wheel"). The priming effect
of phonologically related nouns was identical to the effect of
unrelated nouns (11%), in contrast to a 31% effect of identical
nouns. In this respect at least, phonology does not
affect syntactic encoding.
References
Branigan, H. P., Pickering, M. J., &
Cleland, A. A. (2000). Syntactic coordination in
dialogue. Cognition, 75, B13-B25.
Dell, G. S. (1986). A spreading-activation
theory of retrieval in sentence production. Psychological
Review, 93, 283-321.
Levelt, W. J. M., Roelofs, A., & Meyer, A.
S. (1999). A theory of lexical access in speech
production. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22, 1-75.
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.
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