1. Verb Activation through Priming at the Syntax-Semantics Interface
SARAH MCCULLEY
LING 620

2. Research Area Psycholinguistics Cognitive Science
Syntax-Semantics Interface

3. Aim/Justification
Beth Levin and Malka Rappaport Hovav propose a lexicalist/projectionist framework to deal with verbal polysemy. Adoption of such a framework has implications for the organization of the lexicon.
Any proposed theoretical framework should also be plausible at the psychological level.
The majority of priming studies test for semantic activation, and there are many that test for phonological, orthographic, or morphological activation. Very few studies test for syntactic activation, and none for activation at the level of the syntax-semantics interface.

4. References
1. Aitchison, J. (2003). Words in the mind: An introduction to the mental lexicon. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.
2. Goldinger, S., Luce, P. & Pisoni, D. (1989). Priming lexical neighbors of spoken words: Effects of competition and inhibition. Journal of Memory and Language,28,
 3. Levin, B. (1993). English verb classes and alternations: A preliminary investigation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
4. Rappaport-Hovav, M. & Levin, B. (1998). Building verb meanings. In M. Butts & W. Geuder (Eds.) The projection of Arguments (97-143). Stanford: CSLI Publications.
5. Rastle, K., Davis, M., Marslen-Wilson, W., & Tyler, L. (2000). Morphological and semantic effects in visual word recognition: A time-course study. Language and Cognitive Processes, 15 (4/5),

5. Research Questions
Does priming of a verb that belongs particular verb class (e.g., manner of motion, surface contact through motion) produce an effect in the length of time it takes the participant to recognize the target verb (of the same class)?
Is the amount of time it takes the participant to recognize the target verb of the same category faster than the time it takes the participant to recognize a target verb that is unrelated semantically, syntactically, or both?

6. Methodology
Participants will be Ohio University students who are native speakers of English between the ages of
Participants will be recruited from linguistics and philosophy classes at OU.
A computer program will be developed using E-prime or similar software that will provide the prime, and record the duration of time it takes the participant

7. Procedure
Participants will be seated at a computer for the duration of the study.
They will be primed with a verb (for a certain duration of time).
Then they will be asked to fill in the target verb as quickly as they can, as letters of the target will be filled in, one by one.
All data will be recorded by the computer program.

8. Data Type and Analysis The data will be quantitative in nature.
The data will be statistically analyzed.

9. Expected Findings
I expect to find activation of verbs by semantic content.
I do not know whether the common syntactic element between the prime and the target will further shorten the time it takes the participant to recognize the target verb.

10. Anticipated Problems/Limitations
It will be difficult to find verb that share semantic content, but are not members of the same verb class/related syntactically.
Therefore, the choice of the verbs used in the study must be chosen extremely carefully in order to test for evidence for Levin and Rappaport-Hovav’s proposed framework and not just for semantic content only.