Syntactic Priming in Bilinguals: Effects of verb repetition in an L2-monolingual and cross-lingual setting Sofie Schoonbaert 1, Robert Hartsuiker 1, & Martin Pickering 2 1 Ghent University, Belgium 2 University of Edinburgh, Scotland ISB2005, March 20-24th, Barcelona

Some background Speaking in a second language  Bilingualism  Speech production

Some background The Architecture of BILINGUAL MEMORY  At least ‘some’ information is shared between languages (perception studies of Dijkstra et al., Brysbaert et al.; production studies of Costa et al., Colome et al.)  mainly studying semantic & lexical representations)  ‘SHARED SYNTAX’ vs. ‘SEPARATE SYNTAX’ hypothesis syntactic rules like: passive-active / prepositional dative [PO]-double object dative [DO]  Syntactic priming in bilinguals?? SEMANTIC/LEXICAL SYNTACTIC

Syntactic priming studies  Speech production  SYNTACTIC PRIMING: tendency to repeat a recently encountered structure In monolinguals: (Bock, 1986, 1989; Bock & Loebell, 1990; Branigan et al., 2000; Hartsuiker & Kolk, 1998; Hartsuiker et al., 1999; Hartsuiker & Westenberg, 2000; Pickering & Branigan, 1998, 1999; Pickering et al., 2002; Potter & Lombardi, 1998)  BOCK (1986): repeating auditory prime sentence – describing visually presented picture with passive-active / DO-PO structures  VERB REPETITION BETWEEN PRIME-TARGET (Pickering & Branigan, 1998)  lexical boost to syntactic priming

Model (adopted from Pickering & Branigan, 1998) lemma stratum lemma nodes combinatorial nodes category node word-form stratum send [DO] [PO] give unrelated verbs PRIME: ‘The chef gives a gun to the boxer’ (PO) TARGET verb: to send

Model (adopted from Pickering & Branigan, 1998) lemma stratum lemma nodes combinatorial nodes category node word-form stratum [DO] [PO] givesend identical verbs condition PRIME: ‘The chef gives a gun to the boxer’ (PO) TARGET verb : to give

Syntactic priming studies Between monolinguals in dialogue: Confederate technique (► dialogue game; Branigan et al., 2000)

Participant Confederate (L2) PRIME ‘The chef gives a gun to the boxer’ [PO] Dialogue game (introduced by Branigan, et al., 2000) The chef gives the boxer a gun Match: press 1 Mismatch: press 2

Participant (L2) Confederate TARGET nun swimmer Match: press 1 Mismatch: press 2 Dialogue game (introduced by Branigan, et al., 2000)

Syntactic priming studies Between monolinguals in dialogue: Confederate technique (► dialogue game; Branigan et al., 2000) In bilinguals: - (Loebell & Bock, 2003;Meijer & Fox Tree, 2003) - In a dialogue game: Hartsuiker, et al., 2004

L2 L1 L1 prime: Passive (verb perseguir) L2 response on target picture (verb ‘to hit’):  More Passives than Actives in L2 combinatorial nodes lemma nodes conceptual nodes category node language nodes Model (adopted from Hartsuiker et al., 2004)

Present study  syntactic priming in L2 ?  cross-linguistic priming (L1->L2)? with dative structures with Dutch-English bilinguals in dialogue  verb manipulation

Participant (L2) Confederate (L2) PRIMETARGET  Looking for syntactic priming of dative structures in Dutch-English bilinguals Experiment 1 : L2 -> L2 ‘The chef gives a gun to the boxer’ [PO] The chef gives the boxer a gun

Experiment 1 : L2 -> L2 Design: 2 ( DATIVE PRIME : DO - PO ) x 2 ( VERB TYPE : identical - unrelated ) MAIN Syntactic priming effect ! INTERACTION verb repetition enhances the syntactic priming effect LEXICAL BOOST give-givegive-show Prop. PO responses

Participant (L2) Confederate (L1) PRIMETARGET ‘De kok geeft de bokser een geweer’ [PO] Bilingual version of a dialogue game (introduced by Branigan, et al., 2000) De kok geeft de bokser een geweer  Looking for syntactic priming of dative structures in Dutch-English bilinguals Experiment 2 : L1 -> L2

Design: 2 (DATIVE PRIME: DO - PO) x 2 (VERB TYPE: translation - unrelated) MAIN Syntactic priming effect ! INTERACTION translation equivalence enhances the syntactic priming effect TRANSLATION EQUIVALENCE BOOST geven-givegeven-show Prop. PO responses

EXP 1 L2-L2 EXP 2 L1-L2 TRANSLATION EQUIVALENCE BOOST LEXICAL BOOST

Discussion Basic results :  Syntactic priming within L2  Cross-linguistic syntactic priming (from L1 to L2)  Boost to syntactic priming by: 1/ repetition of the verb (36%) 2/ translation equivalent verbs (17%) (in prime and target) HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN ?

Model EXP1 (adopted from Hartsuiker et al., 2004) conceptual nodes lemma nodes combinatorial nodes An integrated account of bilingual language representation L2 prime: PO (verb ‘to give’) L2 response on target picture  More PO than DO L2 prime: PO (verb ‘give’) L2 response on target picture (verb ‘to give’)  more priming with identical verbs

Model EXP2 (adopted from Hartsuiker et al., 2004) conceptual nodes lemma nodes combinatorial nodes An integrated account of bilingual language representation L1 prime: PO (verb ‘geven’) L2 response on target picture  More PO than DO L1 prime: PO (verb ‘geven’) L2 response on target picture (verb ‘to give’)  more priming with translation equivalents

Discussion We believe that: -the syntactic priming effect within L2 (EXP1) develops in a similar way as in L1 (see Pickering & Branigan, 1998) -cross-linguistic syntactic priming occurs AND was enhanced with translation equivalent verbs due to simultaneous activation of --- a combinatorial node, specifying the dative structure (Pickering & Branigan, 1998) and --- the translation equivalent’s lemma (due to the connection between the semantic representation and the lemma) This activation increases the probability of selecting the same structure with the translation equivalent (cfr. Cleland & Pickering, 2003)

General Conclusions  Bilingualism ---> a single lexical-syntactic memory system With…  ‘SHARED SYNTAX’ vs. ‘SEPARATE SYNTAX’ hypothesis  Shared concepts activating words from both languages  Words from the non-target language influence syntactic choice (via cascading of activation) (with moderately proficient Dutch-English bilinguals)  Speech production  Reliable SYNTACTIC PRIMING across languages - a translation equivalence boost

Thanks to you to Rob Hartsuiker & Martin Pickering (supervising) to the FSR-Flanders (funding)

Exp 1 : L2 -> L2 Identical Unrelated DOPO PO responses significant 2-way interaction

Exp 2 : L1 -> L2 Translation Unrelated PO responses

Discussion A closer look at the results: some models  Levelt & colleagues Lemma = specifies syntactic proporties of a word = contactpoint between meaning and form (the base form of words)  Pickering & Branigan, 1998 (extension) (include combinatorial nodes, that are linked to/shared by the lemma nodes) To account for repeated verb effect in SP (repeated verb: residual activation in both verb&combinat node; different verb: only residual activation in the combinat node)  Hartsuiker et al., 2004 (extension for bilinguals)

Pickering & Branigan 1998 JML

Experiment 1 : L2 -> L2 Subject Confederate (L2) PRIME ‘The chef gives the boxer a gun’ [DO] Monolingual dialogue game in L2 (introduced by Branigan, et al., 2000) The chef gives the boxer a gun Match: press 1 Mismatch: press 2  Looking for syntactic priming of dative structures in Dutch-English bilinguals

Subject (L2) Confederate TARGET nun swimmer Match: press 1 Mismatch: press 2  Looking for syntactic priming of dative structures in Dutch-English bilinguals Experiment 1 : L2 -> L2