Structural Priming

In this paper we investigate the manner in which the human language comprehension system adapts to shifts in probability distributions over syntactic structures, given experimentally controlled experience with those structures. We replicate a classic reading experiment, and present a model of the behavioral data that implements a form of Bayesian belief update over the course of the experiment.

When we read or listen to language, we are faced with the challenge of inferring intended messages from noisy input. This challenge is exacerbated by considerable variability between and within speakers. Focusing on syntactic processing (parsing), we test the hypothesis that language comprehenders rapidly adapt to the syntactic statistics of novel linguistic environments (e.g., speakers or genres). Two self-paced reading experiments investigate changes in readers’ syntactic expectations based on repeated exposure to sentences with temporary syntactic ambiguities (so-called “garden path sentences”). These sentences typically lead to a clear expectation violation signature when the temporary ambiguity is resolved to an a priori less expected structure (e.g., based on the statistics of the lexical context). We find that comprehenders rapidly adapt their syntactic expectations to converge towards the local statistics of novel environments. Specifically, repeated exposure to a priori unexpected structures can reduce, and even completely undo, their processing disadvantage (Experiment 1). The opposite is also observed: a priori expected structures become less expected (even eliciting garden paths) in environments where they are hardly ever observed (Experiment 2). Our findings suggest that, when changes in syntactic statistics are to be expected (e.g., when entering a novel environment), comprehenders can rapidly adapt their expectations, thereby overcoming the processing disadvantage that mistaken expectations would otherwise cause. Our findings take a step towards unifying insights from research in expectation-based models of language processing, syntactic priming, and statistical learning.

Theories of how people construct linguistic form during production are largely based on English and closely related languages. We report three experiments that used a structural priming paradigm to investigate grammatical encoding in Mandarin Chinese, in particular the way conceptual information is mapped onto grammatical structure. The results show that, in addition to persisting in using the same syntactic form across utterances, speakers of Mandarin persisted in their mappings from conceptual elements to syntactic elements, including both grammatical functions and linear surface word order positions. The results thus argue against a two-stage model where conceptual representations are first mapped onto grammatical functions, which are then in turn mapped onto surface linear positions. Instead, the results support a one-stage model where the processor computes in a single stage a structure that specifies both the linear order and the grammatical functions of its constituents.

Task-solving in dialogue depends on the convergence of the situation models held by the dialogue partners. The Interactive
Alignment Model (Pickering and Garrod, 2004) suggests that this convergence is the result of an interactive alignment process,
which is based on mechanistic repetition at a number of linguistic levels. In this paper, we develop two predictions arising
from the theory, along with two methods to quantify the known structural priming effects in the full inventory of syntactic
choices found in text and speech corpora. (a) Under a rational perspective, we expect increased repetition in task-oriented
dialogue compared to spontaneous conversation. We find within- and between-speaker priming in a corpus of spontaneous
conversations, but stronger priming in task-oriented dialogue. (b) The Interactive Alignment Model predicts linguistic adaptation
to be correlated with task success. We show this effect in a corpus of task-oriented dialogue, where we find a positive
correlation of long-term adaptation and a quantifiable task success measure. We argue that the repetition tendency relevant
for the high-level alignment of situation models is based on slow adaptation rather than short-term priming. We demonstrate that lexical and syntactic repetition are reliable and computationally exploitable predictors of task success.

Speakers often repeat syntactic structures that have recently been used by them or their interlocutors. Such syntactic persistence has variously been attributed to social causes (mimicking to be well-liked), to an effort to reduce processing costs, or as a side effect of either transient activation of previously processed structure or implicit learning. We present new evidence from syntactic persistence in conversational speech consistent with the view that syntactic persistence is an epiphenomenon. We propose that syntactic persistence is linked to the updating and maintenance of probabilistic syntactic knowledge. We find that syntactic persistence is SURPRISAL-SENSITIVE and CUMULATIVE: Syntactic persistence is stronger the less probable the prime and it is sufficiently long-lived to be cumulative.

The article presents the priming as a lingual gear being implicit and modality specified by its nature. Linguistic priming depends on the linguistic features of the input stimulus and occurs predominantly on the pre-semantic level within the representative system of the language. The author has classified the types of priming. Due to its ability for promoting/obstructing perception and production of a target stimulus, priming splits into facilitation and inhibition. In accordance with the implicit or explicit processes underlying the priming, there is under-threshold and over-threshold priming. Due to modal specificity, there is perceptive and conceptual priming.

To compare abstract structural and lexicalist accounts of syntactic processes in sentence formulation, we examined the effectiveness of nonidiomatic and idiomatic phrasal verbs in inducing structural generalizations. Three experiments made use of a syntactic priming paradigm in which participants recalled sentences they had read in rapid serial visual presentation. Prime and target sentences
contained phrasal verbs with particles directly following the verb (pull off a sweatshirt) or following the direct object (pull a sweatshirt off). Idiomatic primes used verbs whose figurative meaning cannot be straightforwardly derived from the literal meaning of the main verb (e.g., pull off a robbery) and are commonly treated as stored lexical units. Particle placement in sentences was primed by both
nonidiomatic and idiomatic verbs. Experiment 1 showed that the syntax of idiomatic and nonidiomatic phrasal verbs is amenable to priming, and Experiments 2 and 3 compared the priming patterns created by idiomatic and nonidiomatic primes. Despite differences in idiomaticity and structural flexibility, both types of phrasal verbs induced structural generalizations and differed little in their ability to do so. The findings are interpreted in terms of the role of abstract structural processes in language production.

ABSTRACT This investigation extended the use of the priming methodology to 5- and 6-year-olds at the beginning stages of learning English as a second language (L2). In Study 1, 14 L2 children described transitive scenes without an experimenter’s input. They produced no passives and minimal actives; most of their utterances were incomplete. In Study 2, 56 additional L2 children were exposed to an experimenter’s transitives (actives or passives) to determine whether and how it affected their English production and comprehension of these forms. Results showed that exposure to passives increased children’s production of passives. Repetition of the experimenter’s sentences increased both production and comprehension of passives and actives. Further, exposure to passives increased children’s use of complete sentences (transitives, nontransitives), primarily those with a focus on the putative patient of the transitive scene. Findings suggest that exposure to developmentally advanced forms activates the relevant transitive conceptual structure which facilitates the acquisition of syntactic forms.

Ellipsis alternation refers here to the alternation between two kinds of ellipsis remnants whose correlates are prepositional phrases. One kind of remnant includes the preposition hosted by its correlate and the other doesn't. This alternation is now known to be cross-linguistically widespread although it was originally assumed to be banned in languages without preposition stranding under wh-movement. I argue that there is a nonsyntactic relationship between ellipsis alternation and preposition stranding that helps explain the availability and distribution of both types of remnants in terms of general performance preferences. Two pieces of corpus evidence from English are offered in support of this argument. The first piece of evidence reveals that the content of a remnant and its correlate affects ellipsis alternation both in languages without preposition stranding and in English. The second piece of evidence shows that the availability of preposition stranding in English nonelliptical clauses supports the use of prepositionless remnants via structural persistence, that is, reuse of syntactic structure found in antecedent clauses. These data lead me to conclude that ellipsis alternation is subject to a stronger processing constraint in English than in languages without preposition stranding.

We provide an overview of a structural priming study in Turkish and an analysis of the data using logit mixed-effects modeling. As Turkish is an agglutinative language, it constitutes a unique testing ground for the universal and language-specific aspects of structural priming and linguistic representations. Using the idiosyncratic properties of Turkish, this study demonstrates priming effects in written production of Turkish by adult native speakers. The structures of interest are possessive noun phrases (nominal structure) (e.g. Ali[Ayse-nin ses-in]-i duydu: Ali [Ayse-GEN voice-3SG.POSS]-ACC heard “Ali heard [Ayse’s voice]”) and noun clauses (verbal structure) which are embedded complementizer phrases with a genitive subject and a nominalized verbal predicate (e.g. Ali[Ayse-nin git-tig-in]-i duydu: Ali [Ayse-GEN leave-VN-3SG.POSS]-ACC heard “Ali heard [that Ayse was leaving/(had) left]”. Certain verbs such as duy- (“to hear”) allow both such nominal and verbal structures as their direct object. The two structures have the same GEN-POSS morphology, but different inner constituents. Participants completed sentence target fragments (which are equally likely to be completed with either type under normal circumstances) with more nominal structures after nominal primes and with more verbal structures after verbal primes, which indicates a significant priming effect. Structural priming accesses the inner nominal vs. verbal constituents of these structures and is sensitive to the distinction between phrases and clauses. Despite their identical external morphological template, the two structures are represented distinctly and not as a single, general GEN-POSS form in Turkish native speakers’ minds.

This study investigated whether we can find reliable comprehension-to-production syntactic priming effects in children aged 2;0 to 2;11 and how phonological working memory and sentence production skills relate to the syntactic priming process. A finding of reliable syntactic priming effects would provide strong evidence that children's syntactic representations are abstracted over individual lexical items. To test children at this young age, they were primed with simple and early-acquired transitive (e.g., tickling (a) baby) and unergative intransitive (e.g., running) syntactic structures. Children aged 2;7 to 2;11, primed with alternating prime structures, revealed a reliable syntactic priming effect. In addition, phonological working memory (moderated by age) and sentence production skills positively affected transitive productions. Children aged

Using data from a behavioral structural priming experiment, we test two competing theoretical approaches to argument structure, which attribute different configurations to (in)transitive structures. These approaches make different claims about the relationship between unergatives and transitive structures selecting either a DP complement or a small clause complement in structurally unambiguous sentences, thus making different predictions about priming relations between them. Using statistical tools that combine a factorial 6 × 6 within subjects ANOVA, a mixed effects ANCOVA and a linear mixed effects regression model, we report syntactic priming effects in comprehension, which suggest a stronger predictive contribution of a model that supports an interpretive semantics view of syntax, whereby syntactic structures do not necessarily reflect argument/event structure in semantically unambiguous configurations. They also contribute novel experimental evidence that correlate representati...

Theories differ as to how people recover the meaning of verb-phrase (VP) ellipsis. According to the syntactic account, people reproduce the syntactic structure of the antecedent during the processing of VP ellipsis. This account thus predicts that the ellipsis site contains syntactic information. Using the structural priming paradigm, we found that, in Mandarin, an ellipsis prime (a double-object or prepositional-object dative antecedent plus a VP ellipsis) was less effective in priming than a full-form prime sentence (the same antecedent plus the full-form equivalent of the VP ellipsis) but behaved similarly to a baseline prime (the same antecedent plus a neutral sentence). The result thus suggests that syntactic structure is not reproduced at the ellipsis site and supports the semantic account in which VP ellipsis is interpreted via a semantic representation.

Structural priming is the facilitation in the processing of a linguistic form due to repetition (Bock 1986). This study investigates structural priming in second language (L2) acquisition of Turkish in relation to the representation of L2 grammar. The linguistic structures investigated are possessive noun phrases (NPs) and noun clauses with nominalized verbs, which share the same external genitive-possessive morpho-syntax in Turkish. Adult L2 learners first read prime sentences, and then completed target fragments. Overall, they produced more possessive NPs than noun clauses. Crucially, they produced more possessive NPs after reading NP primes, and more noun clauses following noun clause primes. This suggests that L2 learners have two distinct mental representations for these structures, rather than a single, unspecified one.