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This study investigated the generalizability of the claim that syntactic priming persists, while only the lexical boost to syntactic priming decays (Hartsuiker, Bernolet, Schoonbaert, Spreybroek & Vanderelst, 2008). We report syntactic priming experiments and corresponding memory experiments featuring a lag manipulation (LAG 0, 2 and 6) for three different syntactic contrasts in Dutch: transitives (Experiments 1a and b), datives (Experiments 2a and b) and the choice between auxiliary-participle and participle-auxiliary word order in relative clauses (Experiments 3a and b). Even though prime and target constructions always used unrelated head verbs, decay in the strength of priming was observed for all three contrasts. Participants’ memory for the syntactic structures under study was also significantly better in the immediate condition than at later lags. We conclude that, even in unrelated verb conditions, the explicit memory of the prime sentence enhances syntactic priming, leading to stronger priming in immediate conditions than when sentences intervene between the prime and the target sentence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many dative verbs can be seen to have different senses – e.g. give ’s prototypical ‘transfer of possession’ sense in to give someone a hat vs. its more abstract ‘cause an effect’ sense in to give someone a heart attack – and it could be the case that these different senses correspond to separate lexical representations, with their own links to syntactic information in memory. This study used syntactic priming to investigate this issue. Experiment 1 showed a “sense boost” to dative priming: Stronger priming was observed when the dative verbs in prime and target sentences were used in the same sense than when they were used in different senses. Experiment 2 showed that, in the absence of sense repetition, form overlap between the head verbs of prime and target sentences still caused a boost to dative priming. Finally, Experiment 3 confirmed that the sense boost observed in Experiment 1 was not caused by a general difference in priming strength between dative prime sentences with literal ‘transfer’ vs. more abstract or figurative meanings: When the target pictures depicted the target verbs’ abstract senses, prime sentences with abstract meanings caused stronger priming than prime sentences describing a concrete transfer. These results suggest that the various senses of dative verbs have separate representations that are linked to the syntactic constructions they can be used in. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Syntactic priming is the phenomenon by which the production or processing of a sentence is facilitated when that sentence is preceded by a sentence with a similar syntactic structure. Previous research has shown that this phenomenon also occurs across languages, i.e., hearing a sentence in one language can facilitate the production of a sentence with the same structure in another language. This suggests that syntactic representations are shared across languages. Aims: The aim of the current study is to investigate this cross-lingual syntactic priming in patients with bilingual aphasia. To address this aim, we asked the following three research questions: (1) do patients with bilingual aphasia show priming effects within and across languages? (2) do these priming effects differ from the priming effects observed in control participants? and (3) does the pattern of priming effects interact with the type of aphasia? Methods & Procedures: We tested two groups of patients: one group had similar impairments in both languages (parallel aphasia); in the other group, the impairments were larger in one of the languages (differential aphasia). We investigated syntactic priming within and across languages by means of a dialogue experiment. Outcomes & results: We found significant cross-lingual priming effects in both patient groups as well as in a control group. In addition, the effect size of both patient groups was similar to that of the control group. Conclusions: These findings support models that incorporate shared syntactic representations across languages, and are in favour of a non-localised account of differential aphasia in bilingual aphasia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Four experiments in written and spoken dialogue tested the predictions of two distinct accounts of syntactic encoding in sentence production: a lexicalist, residual activation account and an implicit-learning account. Experiments 1 and 2 showed syntactic priming (i.e., the tendency to reuse the syntactic structure of a prime sentence in the production of a target sentence) and a lexical boost of syntactic priming (i.e., an enhanced priming effect when the verb in prime and target was the same). Experiments 3 and 4 varied the number of filler sentences between prime and target (lag) and showed that lexical enhancement of priming is short-lived, whereas the priming effect is much more long-lived. These results did not depend on whether the modality of prime and target was written or spoken. The persistence of priming supports the view that syntactic priming is a form of implicit learning. However, only a multi-factorial account, in which lexically-based, short-term mechanisms operate in tandem with abstract, longer-term learning mechanisms can explain the full pattern of results. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• How do shared syntactic representations develop in late L2 learners? • Structural priming as tool to investigate shared syntactic representations. • Priming assessed during 5 sessions in which an artificial language is learned. • Cross-linguistic priming from Day 1 for transitives and Day 2 for ditransitives. • • Syntactic representations first shared within and later between languages. Two longitudinal studies investigated the development of syntactic representations in late second language (L2) learners by means of structural priming in an artificial language (AL) paradigm. Several studies found cross-linguistic structural priming in L2 learners, suggesting that they have shared syntactic representations across languages. But how are these shared representations established? Hartsuiker and Bernolet's (2017) account claims that 1) L2 syntactic representations evolve gradually from being item-specific to more abstract, and that 2) over time these representations are integrated with available native language (L1) representations. We tested predictions of this theory with native Dutch speakers, who acquired the AL in the lab during five sessions by means of a battery of tasks, the last of which was a sentence priming task. The AL syntax resembled Dutch syntax. We manipulated the relation between prime and target to investigate whether structural priming occurred in conditions with meaning overlap (item-specific) and without overlap (abstract). In Experiment 1, participants responded only in the AL, but in Experiment 2, where the AL was more difficult, the target sentence could also be in Dutch. In both studies, there was an effect of within-language priming and AL-Dutch priming in transitives and ditransitives, but no effect of Dutch-AL priming in ditransitives on Day 1. On Days 2–5, however, priming emerged in most cross-linguistic priming conditions. These findings partly confirm Hartsuiker and Bernolet's (2017) predictions and suggest that at least for structures that are very similar between languages, shared syntactic representations can be established very early during language learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The Mandarin Ba-SVO transitive alternation shows structural priming. • There is a lexical, but not a semantic, boost of such priming. • The phonological boost of such priming does not depend on orthographic overlap. • Syllabic overlap promotes structural priming while tonal overlap is not. • Phonological (and lexical) overlap facilitates word order encoding. Numerous studies have established that speakers tend to form utterances by reusing previously experienced sentence structures (i.e., structural priming). It was also frequently found that the repetition of lexical items enhances structural priming (i.e., lexical boost). This facilitation effect occurs not only when there is a full overlap of verbs, but also when one level of the lexical representation (semantic or phonological representation) overlaps between the prime and the target. In the current study, we further scrutinize the phonological overlap effect on structural priming. We asked whether the phonological effect is independent of orthographic overlap, and whether it is driven by overlap of segments, tone, or both. In five structural priming experiments (three lab-based, two web-based experiments), native Mandarin speakers were instructed to describe transitive pictures after receiving SVO or SOV "ba" prime sentences. In Experiment 1, prime and target verbs had lexical overlap (e.g., 脱[tuo1, to take off]-脱[tuo1]), semantic overlap (e.g., 卸[xie4, to remove]-脱[tuo1]), phonological overlap (e.g., 拖[tuo1, to mop]-脱[tuo1]), or no overlap (e.g., 打[da3, to beat]-脱[tuo1]) while similarities at other levels were carefully avoided. There were structural priming and lexical boost effects, but semantic or phonological overlap did not boost priming. In two further lab-based experiments and their large-scale online replications, verbs in prime and target had full phonological overlap (segmental + tonal, e.g., 拖[tuo1]-脱[tuo1]), syllabic overlap only (e.g., [tuo2, to carry]-脱[tuo1]), tonal overlap only (称[cheng1, to weigh]-脱[tuo1]), or no overlap. All four experiments showed structural priming, which was boosted by full phonological overlap. The syllabic overlap exerted a significant facilitation effect on structural priming, whereas no tonal effect was found. Together, these results indicate that processing at the phonological level feeds back to syntactic encoding in sentence production, which further supports an interactive view of language production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Four cross-linguistic structural priming experiments with multilinguals investigated whether syntactic representations for different languages are shared or separate and whether such representations in the first language are stored in a fundamentally different way from those in later acquired languages. The experiments tested whether structural priming within a language differs from priming between languages and whether priming between a first and second language differs from priming between two different second languages. Experiment 1 tested priming of relative clause attachment from Dutch (the subjects’ first language), French, or English (two second languages) to Dutch. Experiments 2 and 3 were similar but had respectively French and English as the target language. Experiment 4 tested dative priming from Dutch, English, and German (another second language) to English. Structural priming was always as strong within- as between-languages and priming between a first and a second language was always as strong as priming between two second languages. These findings support accounts that assume syntax is shared across languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]