IV: Intransitive primes: âMickey is jumpingâ. Session 2. Priming (adapted from Rowland et al's, 2012). IV: PO/DO primes: âMickey brings Minnie the fishâ (DO).
Syntactic Priming in a Structurally Biased Language: The Role of Cross-Linguistic Differences in Language Learning
Alina Kholodova, Michelle Peter, Caroline Rowland, Shanley Allen University of Kaiserslautern
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What is syntactic priming?
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The Mechanism of Structural Priming The tendency of a person to repeat the basic syntactic structure that has been either just heard or produced irrespective of lexical information (e.g. Bock, 1986). → This effect is unconscious and purely syntactic Prime: gave the letter to the woman The man sent the woman the letter Target: The boy gave the donut to the girl the girl the donut
(prepositional object - PO) (double object – DO)
more likely less likely
PO DO
Enhanced priming – lexical boost effect (Pickering &Branigan, 1998) 3
What can syntactic priming tell us? • Most effective method to observe abstract syntactic representations in children and adults (e.g.Bock, 1986; Pickering & Branigan, 1998; Bock & Griffin, 2000;)
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How does syntactic priming work?
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The Implicit Learning Account (Bock & Griffin 2000) Priming is a consequence of implicit learning → enables learning of the syntactic structure via an error-driven implicit learning mechanism developmentally and in adulthood PO prime: The boy gave the donut to the girl.
SlightThe biasman PO target: PO target: Theto man gave the letter the sent the letter to woman. the woman. Lexical boost effect
Prediction of the next word at each point in the sentence Match/Mismatch Error driven implicit learning mechanism Strengthening/expanding representations
Adjustment of internal representations Lexical boost stems from explicit memory retrieval (Chang et al., 2006) 6
Predictions of the Implicit Learning Account • Rare or infrequent structures result in stronger priming due to surprisal effects (Jaeger & Snider, 2007)
• Larger priming effects for children due to learning.
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What have priming studies shown to date?
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Previous Findings on Structural Priming Monolingual Adults • Evidence for abstract syntactic representations
Monolingual Children • Evidence for early abstract representations (age 3-6) (Benchini & Valian, 2008; Messenger et al., 2011, 2012; Rowland et al., 2012; Peter et al., 2015)
• Larger priming effects (Messenger et al., 2011; Rowland et al.,2012)
• Lexical boost effect (Pickering & Branigan, 1998)
• No lexical boost for verbs (Rowland et al., 2012; Peter et al., 2015)
• Lexical boost found for verbs (Thothathiri & Snedeker, 2008a (comprehension); Morris & Scheepers, 2015; Branigan et al., 2016; ) and (Savage et al., 2003;2006)
for nouns
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Gap in Research • Most priming paradigms on PO/DO structures have been mainly conducted in English, where both structures are equally common • Little research has been carried out in languages like German where one of the structural options is strongly preferred • 3 pre-studies on verb structure preferences in German: 1. Sentence completion task (adults) 2. Corpus analysis of child and child-directed speech 3. Grammaticality judgement task (adults)
Results + analysis of literature confirmed German to be 80% DO biased 10
Research Questions for German – a DO biased Language Question
Prediction by Implicit Learning Account
• Can syntactic priming boost the dispreferred PO production in German?
• Stronger priming for rare structures caused by surprisal effects
• Do children process abstract structures in a similar way to adults?
• Larger priming effects in children due to learning
• Is the lexical boost effect present in children?
• The lexical boost effect is explained, although not predicted 11
Syntactic Priming Experiment Participants children aged 3-4 (N=42) children aged 5-6 (N=31) adults (N=37)
Materials: 4 ditransitive alternating verbs known by children: geben (give) bringen (bring) schicken (send) verkaufen (sell) 12
Design (within-subjects) Session 1
Baseline IV: Intransitive primes: “Mickey is jumping”.
Session 2
Priming (adapted from Rowland et al’s, 2012)
IV: PO/DO primes: “Mickey brings Minnie
the fish” (DO)
“Mickey brings the fish to Minnie” (PO) IV: SV/DV (same verb/ different verb) in prime and target
ANALYSIS
Mixed Design ANOVA (GLM) with Post Hoc Tests 13
Procedure: BINGO GAME
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PRIME Dora schickt den Hund zu Boots. Dora schickt Boots den Hund.
PO DO
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TARGET:
Mickey bringt …… den Fisch zu Minnie PO Minnie den Fisch. DO
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Results Baseline vs. Priming
Mean % of PO Responses
60%
PO after intransitive
50%
40%
p=.000***
p=.03
p=.03
PO after PO with different verb
30%
20%
10%
0%
Children 3-4
Children 5-6
Adults
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Interpretation Priming • Structural biases do not prevent priming effects – priming can boost the PO production in German children and adults • Largest priming effect found in the youngest group
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Results Lexically independent condition 60%
PO after DO with different verb
Mean % of PO Responses
50%
p=.14 p=.03
p=.001
40%
PO after PO with different verb
30%
20%
10%
0%
Children 3-4
Children 5-6
Adults 19
Interpretation Syntactic Representations • All groups showed lexically independent priming effects Children process syntactic structures similar to adults on a purely structural basis
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Results The Lexical Boost Effect 80%
p=.001*
Mean % of PO Responses
70%
PO after PO with different verb PO after PO same verb
60%
50%
40%
Interaction p=.000
30%
20%
10%
0%
Children 3-4
Children 5-6
Adults
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Interpretation Lexical boost in adults
No lexical boost in children
When it comes to lexically dependent structural representations children differ from adults in processing mechanisms
Implicit Learning Account (Chang et al., 2006) Stronger explicit memory retrieval in adults
Weaker explicit memory retrieval in children
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Comparison with Rowland et al.,2012 Group
Different verb
Same verb
3-4
7%
7%
5-6
3%
13%
Adults
3%
37 %
3-4
14%
-02%
5-6
13%
07%
Adults
16%
55%
ENGLISH Rowland et al., 2012
GERMAN My study
Size of priming effect in the proportion of PO‘s in the same and different verb condition (PO aft. PO – PO aft. DO) 23
Conclusions SUPPORT FOR THE IMPLICIT LEARNING ACCOUNT • Priming effects are larger in structurally biased languages compared to structurally balanced languages like English Data supports the Implicit Learning account – larger priming effects for rare structures due to surprisal effects (Jaeger & Snider, 2007)
• Increased priming effects in younger children (Messenger et al., 2011, Rowland et al.,2012)
Due to weaker representations and lower proficiency Suggests a learning effect
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Open Questions • Children and adults process similarly in lexically independent contexts (DV condition) on a purely abstract level
• They differ in processing when it comes to lexically dependent contexts (SV condition) • Further research necessary
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THANK YOU!
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