Lexically-driven syntactic priming

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Cognition xx (2005) 1–10 www.elsevier.com/locate/COGNIT

Brief article

Lexically-driven syntactic priming Alissa Melingera,*, Christian Dobelb a

Dept. of Computational Linguistics and Psycholinguistics, Saarland University, Building 17-1, Saarbru¨cken 66041, Germany b Dept. of Psychology, Westfa¨lische wilhems-Universita¨t, Flied nerstr. 21, Mu¨nster 48149, Germany Received 8 December 2004; accepted 4 February 2005

Abstract Syntactic priming studies demonstrate that exposure to a particular syntactic structure leads speakers to reproduce the same structure in subsequent utterances. Explanations for this phenomenon rely on either the retrieval of morphosyntactic features associated with the verb in the prime sentence or the preservation of the mapping between message and word sequences in the prime sentence. Two experiments test the featural account of syntactic priming. We used single word primes to investigate the dative alternation in German (Experiment 1) and Dutch (Experiment 2). Native speakers read ditransitive verbs that are restricted either to the prepositional (dative) or double object construction, followed by pictures that can be described with either structure. We find that a single verb in isolation is sufficient to bias speakers’ production preferences supporting lexically-driven accounts of syntactic priming. q 2005 Published by Elsevier B.V. Keywords: Syntactic Priming; Sentence Production; Dative alternation; Syntactic features

In natural contexts, speakers have many appropriate syntactic options for expressing ideas and their syntactic choices are guided to a large degree by pragmatic and discourse factors. However, research on sentence production has revealed a tendency for speakers to reuse structures they have previously encountered. This pattern of speaker behavior is known as syntactic or structural priming. Evidence that speakers reuse previously encountered structures can be found in linguistic corpora (e.g. Kempen, 1977; Tannen, 1989) and with experimental approaches. * Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (A. Melinger).

0022-2860/$ - see front matter q 2005 Published by Elsevier B.V. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2005.02.001

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ARTICLE IN PRESS A. Melinger, C. Dobel / Cognition xx (2005) 1–10

In the commonly used paradigm introduced by Bock (1986), sentence primes precede target pictures, which speakers describe. Results demonstrated that speakers often reuse structures presented in prime sentences (e.g. Hartsuiker & Kolk, 1998; Pickering & Branigan, 1998; Smith & Wheeldon, 2001; see Pickering & Branigan, 1999 for a review). This effect is structural rather than semantic, thematic or due to superficial similarities between primes and targets. For example, priming effects are observed when prime and target sentences do not share thematic roles (e.g. locative prepositional by-phrases prime agent by-phrases; Bock & Loebell, 1990) or function words (e.g. for-prepositional phrases prime to-prepositional phrases; Bock, 1989), whereas surface similar sentences with different constituent structures do not induce priming effects (e.g. to-sentential complements do not prime to-dative sentences; Bock & Loebell, 1990). In addition to the widely reported structural effect, studies have demonstrated an independent influence of the mapping of thematic roles to functional positions (Chang, Bock & Goldberg, 2003; Hare & Goldberg, 2000), of the linear order of elements (Hartsuiker, Kolk, & Huiskamp, 1999; Hartsuiker & Westenberg, 2000) and of relative clause attachment preferences (Scheepers, 2003). Accounts of structural priming identify different processing mechanisms and representational levels that could be responsible. One account proposes that the effect is due to residual activation of lexically-specified morphosyntactic features, e.g. subcategorization frames, associated with the verb in the prime sentence (Branigan, Pickering, Liversedge, Stewart, & Urbach, 1995; Pickering & Branigan, 1998). Another account interprets the effect as one of implicit learning, whereby the connection weights that map between message components and word orders are adjusted during prime processing. The weight changes render the mapping procedure and resulting surface-syntactic configuration of the prime sentence more accessible in subsequent trials (Bock & Griffin, 2000; Bock & Loebell, 1990). Crucially, the latter interpretation requires that a mapping between sentence constituents and message components be established during prime processing. The former interpretation places the locus of the priming effect on lexically specified verb information. Thus, the featural account requires only that the prime include a verb with a restricted set of compatible morphosyntactic features. To date, all studies investigating syntactic priming used full sentence primes. Sentence primes confound the potential influence of morphosyntactic features and constituent structure since the features associated with the retrieved lemma govern the type of syntactic structure that can be produced (Chomsky, 1981; Pollard & Sag, 1994). Thus, the constituent structure of a sentence cannot be manipulated without simultaneously manipulating the selection of morphosyntactic features. The two explanations can be discriminated, however, if single word primes are used. If syntactic priming is due, to some degree, to repeated activation of shared syntactic features, then the presentation of a single word that is restricted to one construction should be sufficient to bias speakers’ production preferences. The influence of verb subcategorization biases has previously been demonstrated in sentence comprehension (Trueswell & Kim, 1998). The following studies investigate whether a similar influence is available for sentence production.

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1. Experiment 1 While most dative verbs in languages like English participate in the dative alternation, some verbs do not (Levin, 1993). For example, verbs like contribute only occur in dative sentences consisting of a noun phrase and a prepositional phrase (the prepositional dative construction, PO hereafter; see 1a) while verbs like fine only occur in dative sentences consisting of two consecutive noun phrases (the double object construction; DO hereafter; see 1b). (1a) The man contributed money to the church. *The man contributed the church money. (1b) The judge fined the driver fifty dollars. *The judge fined fifty dollars to the driver. Non-alternating dative verbs also occur in non-dative constructions, such as simple transitive constructions, but crucially they cannot occur with one of the two dative frames needed to describe 3-participant events of transfer. Thus, processing of these verbs increases the availability of only one of the relevant frames. If residual activation of subcategorization frames can influence the selection of competing frames, then the presentation of a non-alternating verb should bias speakers’ description preferences, producing more DO constructions following DO-only verbs and more PO constructions following PO-only verbs. This pattern of results would strongly support the featural account of syntactic priming (e.g. Branigan et al., 1995; Pickering & Branigan, 1998). Note that, in order for this prediction to follow, we must make the additional assumption that at least some grammatical features are primeable entities, an assumption also implicit in the model proposed by Pickering and Branigan. In contrast, if syntactic priming is driven by implicit learning mechanisms that adjust weights between message and word components, then the selectional restrictions of prime words will have no influence on speakers’ description preferences. This pattern of results would be compatible with the implicit learning account of syntactic priming (Bock & Griffin, 2000). 1.1. Method 1.1.1. Participants Forty native German speakers were paid for their participation. 1.1.2. Materials Forty images depicting three-participant-events, see Fig. 1, were chosen for the picture description task.1 The line drawings could be described with either PO or DO sentences. Additionally, 160 filler line drawings were included. These images could best be described with intransitive (NZ60), locative (NZ31) or transitive (NZ69) sentences. 1

To assemble a large number of three-participant events, we used stylistically diverse images drawn from materials used by Branigan, Pickering and Cleland (2000) and Dobel, Meyer and Levelt (in prep).

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Fig. 1. Sample target picture.

1.1.3. Primes Twenty PO-only and 20 DO-only verb primes, such as those in Table 1, were selected and paired with the target pictures. Verb restrictions were determined on the basis of a German grammar (Drosdowski, 1984) and on the basis of an informal sentence production pre-test. We maximized the semantic distance between prime verbs and target pictures and ensured that primes were never semantically appropriate for use in the target description. Items were counter-balanced across two presentation lists such that each target picture appeared only once in each list in one of the two conditions. Filler primes consisted of nouns, adjectives/ adverbs and verbs. Target trials were separated by three to four filler trials. 1.1.4. Procedure Each trial began with an 850 ms presentation of a prime word that participants read silently. Following the prime, a picture was displayed for the participant to describe. Participants were instructed to describe each picture with a single grammatical sentence using full noun phrases rather than pronouns. Since even alternating verbs exhibit different degrees of preference for one structural frame or another, participants were requested to Table 1 Sample non-alternating primes from Experiment 1 PO-only verb primes

DO-only verb primes

adressieren ‘address’ verteilen ‘distribute’ u¨berschu¨tten ‘lavish’

bescheren ‘bestow’ go¨nnen ‘not to begrudge’ entziehen ‘revoke’

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vary the words chosen to describe the pictures, resulting in a set of 10 frequently used alternating verbs. To ensure that participants attended to the prime words, a prime memory question was inserted every five to seven trials. On these trials, participants indicated via button press whether the question word had previously occurred. Half of the memory questions were true primes and half were not. 1.2. Results and discussion Target picture descriptions consisting of a dative NP followed by an accusative NP were classified as DO sentences. Descriptions consisting of an accusative direct object NP followed by a prepositional phrase were classified as PO sentences. All other sentence types were classified as Other structures and were excluded from the analysis, accounting for 30% of responses (cf. Bock & Loebell, 1990). Additionally, one item was excluded because it was described with Other structures in over 80% of trials. Excluded Other responses occurred with equal frequency in both prime conditions, both t!1. We calculated proportions of DO structures produced in each prime condition by creating a ratio of DO responses over the sum of DO and PO responses. Since the proportions of PO and DO descriptions are complements of each other, we report only proportions of DO descriptions. As Table 2 shows, German speakers exhibited a very strong preference for the DO structure. In fact, nearly half of the speakers exclusively produced double object structures (NZ19). Despite this strong preference, more PO descriptions were produced following PO-only primes than following DO-only primes. Proportions were arcsin-transformed (Kirk, 1982) before analysis with a one-factor ANOVA (prime type: PO-only vs. DO-only). We analyzed the data both including and excluding speakers who produced only DO constructions throughout the experiment. First, considering only those speakers who produced at least one PO structure on some trial in the experiment, we observe a main effect of prime type, F1(1,19)Z4.81, P!0.05, MseZ0.005; F2(1, 37)Z3.13, P!0.085, MseZ0.005. Including all speakers produced a similar main effect, F1(1, 38)Z4.43, P!0.05, Mse Z0.002; F2(1, 37)Z3.56, P!0.067, MseZ0.004. We also included the counter-balancing factor list as a between-subjects variable. This variable did not interact with prime type in the subjects analyses, both F1!1, but it did interact marginally in one items analysis, F2(1, 37)Z3.26, P!0.08, MseZ0.004. The results demonstrate the first direct evidence of lexically-driven syntactic priming without a confounding structural component. Since speakers were only presented a single verb as prime, the mechanism responsible for the priming effect is unlikely to be structurally-based. Clearly, the effect is not dependent on prime and target sharing Table 2 Percentage (and standard errors) of DO descriptions following PO-only and DO-only verb primes

All speakers Only alternating speakers

PO-only verb primes

DO-only verb primes

94% (1.5%) 89% (2.4%)

96% (1.2%) 93% (2.1%)

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constituent structure. Moreover, the results support our assumption that some grammatical features are primeable. Although the priming effect was quite small ðh2p Z 0:20Þ, it is nevertheless striking because it shows that the strong preference of German speakers for the DO structure (many producing DO structures in between 90 and 100% of the cases with very little variance) was attenuated by the prime word. The absence of a baseline, however, makes it difficult to evaluate the symmetry of the effect. Many syntactic priming studies do not include a baseline condition (Bock & Griffin, 2000; Chang et al., 2003; Pickering & Branigan, 1998). Yet, studies with a baseline have observed increased accessibility only of the dispreferred structure (e.g. Hartsuiker & Westenberg, 2000; Scheepers, 2003). Thus, in Experiment 2, we replicated Experiment 1 in a language in which PO structures are more common, and incorporated a baseline.

2. Experiment 2 We again focus on the dative alternation, but now in Dutch. We used Dutch because it is structurally similar to German but exhibits a preference for the PO structure over the DO structure. To evaluate the symmetry of the above effects, we included a baseline condition consisting of non-biasing Noun primes. 2.1. Method 2.1.1. Participants Eighty two native Dutch speakers were paid for their participation. 2.1.2. Materials We selected a stylistically consistent set of 24 experimental images and 84 filler images from Experiment 1. 2.1.3. Primes Eight PO-only verbs, eight DO-only verb, and eight nouns were selected as primes and paired with the target pictures. Dutch linguists were consulted and an informal sentence production pre-test was conducted to determine verb subcategorization restrictions. Example primes are given in Table 3. As in Experiment 1, prime words were unrelated to

Table 3 Sample non-alternating and control primes from Experiment 2 DO-only verb primes

PO-only verb primes

Noun control primes

garanderen ‘guarantee’ toedragen ‘have confidence’ besparen ‘spare’

meenemen ‘take with’ uitreiken ‘present’ schreeuwen ‘yell’

papagaai ‘parrot’ prikkeldraad ‘barbed-wire’ schaakbord ‘chessboard’

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the target verb and inappropriate for use in the description. Items were counter-balanced across three presentation lists. 2.1.4. Procedure The procedure was exactly the same as for Experiment 1. 2.2. Results and discussion Target descriptions were classified and treated as in Experiment 1. Other responses accounted for 14% of the data and were equally distributed across prime conditions, all F!1. Since Dutch exhibits the reverse structural preference as German, we report the Dutch results as the proportion of PO structures produced by speakers. As in Experiment 1, some speakers failed to produce any of the less preferred DO constructions (NZ20). Table 4 shows that more PO descriptions were produced following PO-only primes compared to either the DO-only or the control prime conditions. Arcsin transformed proportions of PO structures were analyzed as above. First, including only speakers who produced at least one DO structure during the course of the experiment, we observe a main effect of prime type, F1(2, 116)Z4.51, P! 0.02, MseZ0.047; F2(2, 42)Z3.02, P!0.06, MseZ0.015. We also included the counter-balancing factor list as a between-subjects and items variable. This variable interacted with prime type, F1(4, 116)Z2.5, P!0.04, MseZ0.047; F2(4, 42)Z9.1, P!0.001, MseZ0.015. The inclusion of all participants again revealed a main effect of prime type, F1(1, 162)Z4.03, P!0.02, MseZ0.035; F2(2, 42)Z2.57, P! 0.09, MseZ0.007, and a marginal interaction between prime type and list, F1(4, 162)Z2.21, P!0.07, MseZ0.035; F2(4, 42)Z2.12, P!0.1, MseZ0.007. Pairwise comparisons reveal that more PO descriptions were produced following PO-only primes compared to DO-only primes, t1(83)Z2.55, P!0.02; t2(23)Z2.18, P!0.05, and control primes by speakers, t1(83)Z2.5, P!0.02; t2(23)Z1.67, P!0.1. There was, however, no difference between the proportion of PO descriptions produced after DO-only primes and the control primes, t1(83)Z0.83, PZ.4; t2(23)Z0.14, PZ0.89. Experiment 2 successfully replicated the effects from Experiment 1 in a different language, showing that the presentation of a single verb restricted to a specific subcategorization frame is sufficient to drive syntactic priming. However, the baseline condition revealed the pattern in Experiment 2 to be asymmetrically driven by the PO-only primes. Table 4 Percentage (and standard errors) of PO descriptions following PO-only, DO-only and noun control primes

All speakers Only alternating speakers

PP only verbs

DO only verbs

Noun Controls

75% (3.3%) 76% (3.3%)

70% (3.8%) 71% (3.7%)

71% (3.5%) 72% (3.4%)

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3. General discussion Existing accounts of syntactic priming are based on results from experiment which used sentence primes and thus cannot distinguish between mapping and featural accounts. The present study is the first to demonstrate that a single verb prime is sufficient to bias speakers’ production preferences. Supporting the featural account of syntactic priming, we explain the priming effect in the following manner: Non-alternating verb primes spread activation to one of two frames suitable for use in a subsequently produced sentence. Residual activation heightens the accessibility of the compatible frame, making its subsequent selection easier than for the unprimed alternative. The results of Experiment 2 reveal an asymmetrical effect of our verb primes (cf. Hartsuiker & Westenberg, 2000; Scheepers, 2003). Double Object verbs influenced speakers’ description preferences relative to the control condition while Prepositional Object verbs did not. The asymmetry may reflect differences between the effectiveness of the two verb classes in activating one relevant frame. As mentioned above, non-alternating verbs are compatible with several frames inappropriate for target picture descriptions, such as transitive structures. These frames may nevertheless have an influence on the effectiveness of the primes to bias speakers’ production preferences. Specifically, the DOonly verbs are associated with non-dative constructions compatible with the PO dative. For example, although the PO dative sentence *The storekeeper overcharged 10 dollars to the client is disallowed in English, the structurally similar The storekeeper overcharged 10 dollars for the dress is perfectly acceptable. In contrast, PO-only verbs are not compatible with constructions that are structurally similar to DO sentences. Thus, DO-only verbs may have indirectly supported selection of the PO frame in a way that the PO-only verbs did not support the selection of the DO frame. This explanation remains speculative; more research is needed to properly determine the source of the asymmetry. However, it is intuitively more appealing than alternative explanations relying on markedness (Scheepers, 2003). Note that a markedness explanation makes the counterintuitive prediction that fewer DO structures would have been produced in German in the absence of a prime manipulation. The fact that the verb primes are compatible with multiple structures is also important for another reason. It makes it unlikely that the priming effect was driven by sentences that speakers were internally generating on each trial. In pre-tests of the verbs, speakers generated critical sentence types (namely, ditransitive DO and PO structures) in only a fraction of instances. If our effect derived from internally produced sentences, we would have expected to find smaller priming effects, since only a subset of spontaneous sentences would have had the necessary structure. Although the observed effects are smaller than previously reported dative priming results in English, they are similar to full sentence priming effects reported for German (4% reported by Loebell & Bock, 2003: Fig. 2) and for Dutch (6% reported by Hartsuiker & Kolk, 1998b (Table 2)). Thus, while we cannot fully control what speakers do internally, it is unlikely that internally generated sentences are responsible for the obtained priming pattern. A similar finding has also been reported for a very different domain of language processing. In a reading study, Trueswell and Kim (1998) presented single verb primes that had strong selectional biases either for a sentential complement (e.g. realized) or a

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direct object (e.g. obtained) continuation. Trueswell and Kim observed that the prime verbs‘ selectional biases influenced the readers’ unfolding interpretation of temporarily ambiguous sentences. Thus, evidence for the influence of lexically-specified verb features on linguistic processing can be found in two different domains of investigation. Although the present findings are consistent with lexical, feature-based explanations of syntactic priming, we wish to emphasize that they cannot exclude the possibility that syntactic priming arises on more than one level. The featural account argued for here is also generally consistent with the proposal that syntactic priming is sensitive to the order in which structural subparts are activated (Scheepers, 2003). This extension of the featural account was proposed to explain relative clause attachment priming; high and low attachments involve a common set of morphosyntatic features selected in different orders. Attachment priming, which contrasts hierarchical configurations, is best attributed to the positional level of grammatical encoding (Bock & Levelt, 1994). The dative alternation priming described in the present paper, on the other hand, is more likely to arise at the functional level, as it involves alternative functional role assignments. How feature activation and the order of feature activation can influence separate processing stages is a question for future work. In this paper we have introduced a new method for investigating syntactic priming effects that offers the unique opportunity to disentangle structural and lexical accounts of syntactic priming effects. This method offers a new approach to investigate the properties of syntactic information in the mental lexicon and how this information becomes activated during speech production.

Acknowledgements The authors thank Jens Bo¨lte, Kerstin Hadelich, Andrea Weber, Pienie Zwitserlood, and three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. This research was partially supported by the German Research Council from a grant to the second author.

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