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Priming and adaptation in native speakers and second-language learners

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2017

EDITH KAAN  and
EUNJIN CHUN
EDITH KAAN*
Affiliation:
University of Florida
EUNJIN CHUN
Affiliation:
University of Florida
*
Address for correspondence: Edith Kaan, University of Florida, Department of Linguistics, Box 115454, Gainesville, Fl 32611, USA[email protected]
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Abstract

Native speakers show rapid adjustment of their processing strategies and preferences on the basis of the structures they have recently encountered. The present study investigated the nature of priming and adaptation in second-language (L2) speakers and, more specifically, whether similar mechanisms underlie L2 and native language adaptation. Native English speakers and Korean L2 learners of English completed a written priming study probing the use of double object and prepositional phrase datives. Both groups showed cumulative adaptation effects for both types of dative, which was stronger for the structure that was initially less frequent to them (prepositional phrase datives for the native English speakers, and double object datives for the L2 learners). This supports models of priming that incorporate frequency-based modulation of long-lasting activation of structures. L2 learners and native speakers use similar processing mechanisms; differences in adaptation can be accounted for by differences in the relative frequency of structures.

Keywords

syntactic primingadaptationsecond language processingerror-based learning
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , March 2018 , pp. 228 - 242
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

*The authors would like to thank Martha Hinrichs and Aleuna Lee for their assistance with data collection and data analysis, Giboom Kim for creating line drawings, and Nalanda Chakraborty for picture editing.

Supplementary material can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728916001231

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