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Beyond syntactic priming: Evidence for activation of alternative syntactic structures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2011

MARINA VASILYEVA  and
HEIDI WATERFALL
MARINA VASILYEVA*
Affiliation:
Boston College
HEIDI WATERFALL
Affiliation:
Cornell University
*
[*]Address for correspondence: Marina Vasilyeva, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467. tel: 617-552-1755; fax: 617-552-1981; e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Priming methodology was previously used to investigate children's ability to represent abstract syntactic forms. Existing evidence indicates that following exposure to a particular syntactic structure (such as the passive voice), English-speaking children increase their production of that structure with new lexical items. In the present work, we utilize priming methodology to explore whether exposure to passive primes may increase children's production of sentences that have a different structure but share a similar purpose in discourse. We report three studies, two involving English- and Russian-speaking children, and a third involving Russian-speaking adults. Unlike English, Russian offers a variety of syntactic forms that emphasize the patient of a transitive action, thus fulfilling the discourse function of the passive. We found that English speakers increased the use of the particular syntactic form presented in the prime, whereas Russian speakers increased their production of several different syntactic forms used to emphasize the patient of the action.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , March 2012 , pp. 258 - 283
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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