Coumel, Marion and Ushioda, Ema and Messenger, Katherine (2026) Cross-structure variation in first and second language syntactic priming as evidence to distinguish models of priming. Other. SSRN Working Paper.
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Speakers of all backgrounds tend to repeat the syntactic structures they hear, a phenomenon known as syntactic priming, and this effect influences not just their immediate language but also contributes to their long-term use and learning of structures. Yet the mechanisms underlying these processes remain the subject of debate. To tease apart the predictions of different classes of syntactic priming models, we took the unique approach of comparing immediate and long-term priming, with and without lexical overlap, in two populations of speakers and for two different structural alternations. We compared L2 and L1 French speakers’ (N=186) production of fronted/non-fronted temporal adverbial phrases and active/passive transitive structures. We replicated standard priming effects observing immediate and long-term priming, and lexical boost effects, across speakers and structures but we found that the magnitude of these effects differed between groups and structures. Abstract priming, both immediate and long-term, was greater for fronted than passive structures but did not differ between L2 and L1 groups, which is inconsistent with our predictions based on implicit learning models of syntactic priming. L2 speakers showed greater priming with lexical overlap and greater lexical boost effects than L1 speakers, which is consistent with developmental residual activation accounts that propose learners rely on lexicalised representations and short-term memory for primes. Our findings also suggest that accounts of syntactic priming should consider the role of production in supporting learning. This study shows the importance of comparing priming across speakers and for different structures for clarifying theoretical accounts of syntactic priming.