Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T15:31:35.733Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Structural priming is most useful when the conclusions are statistically robust

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2017

Kyle Mahowald
Affiliation:
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139. [email protected]@[email protected]
Ariel James
Affiliation:
Psychology Department, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Champaign, IL 61820. [email protected]
Richard Futrell
Affiliation:
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139. [email protected]@[email protected]
Edward Gibson
Affiliation:
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139. [email protected]@[email protected]

Abstract

Branigan & Pickering (B&P) claim that the success of structural priming as a method should “end the current reliance on acceptability judgments.” Structural priming is an interesting and useful phenomenon, but we are dubious that the effect is powerful enough to test many detailed claims about specific points of syntactic theory.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bock, K. & Loebell, H. (1990) Framing sentences. Cognition 35(1):139. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(90)90035-I.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Flett, S. (2006) A comparison of syntactic representation and processing in first and second language production. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Mahowald, K., James, A., Futrell, R. & Gibson, E. (2016b) A meta-analysis of syntactic priming in language production. Journal of Memory and Language 91:527. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2016.03.009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wittenberg, E. (2014) With light verb constructions from syntax to concepts. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Potsdam.Google Scholar