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Abstract:
Syntactic or structural priming refers to the
phenomenon of using a particular syntactic structure given prior
exposure to the same structure. This behavior has been
observed when speakers hear, read or write sentences (overview:
Pickering & Branigan, 1999). Syntactic priming in the
production literature has only been observed when the prime is a
sentence or sentence fragment. However, recent studies from
the sentence comprehension literature suggest that a single verb
presented in isolation may be sufficient to drive syntactic
priming (Trueswell & Kim, 1998). In the production
literature, however, it has been claimed that morphosyntactic
features associated with lemma representations are only retrieved
when they are needed for the relevant construction.
Specifically, subcategorization information is retrieved when
producing a sentence which requires this information but not when
naming a verb. If this claim is true, priming in sentence
production should only be observed in the context of full
sentences or sentence fragments and not in the context of single
word primes.
To investigate these issues we conducted a series
of primed picture description experiments in which we attempted
to bias speakers towards producing picture descriptions with a
particular syntactic structure based on the characteristics of
the verb prime. Dutch native speakers saw ditransitive
verbs that are restricted either to a prepositional (dative) or
double object construction, e.g., "transfer" (PP only) vs.
"refuse" (DO only). Following the presentation of the verb,
participants are asked to describe a drawing depicting a
three-participant event. Across experiments we varied the
degree to which participants processed the prime by changing the
secondary task (e.g., recall vs. naming). In the first
experiment, participants additionally kept track of the prime
words for a secondary recall test that was interleaved throughout
the experiment. In the second experiment, we replaced the
secondary recall test with a prime naming task. In the
third experiment, participants used the prime verb in a
sentence.
We found that a single word is sufficient to prime
a particular sentence frame. Furthermore, our results show
that the more actively the participant processes the verb, the
stronger the priming effects become. The results of these
three studies are discussed in light of the current claims about
the locus of syntactic priming and the representation and access
of morphosyntactic information.
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