An Experimental Investigation of Syntactic Priming and the Lexical Boost in Language Production

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An essential part of producing a sentence involves the construction of its syntax. How this is done is a fundamental question in language production research. People often have choices how to express a message. For example, they can say either (1a) or (1b); both sentences express a similar meaning, but their syntactic structures are different.1a. The driver showed the overall to the mechanic. 1b. The driver showed the mechanic the overall. Research has shown that people tend to repeat recently spoken or heard structures: they tend to produce (1a) more often after hearing (2a) than (2b), and (1b) more often after (2b) than (2a), a finding termed "structural priming".2a. The doctor gave the syringe to the nurse.2b. The doctor gave the nurse the syringe.Structural priming can inform us about the structural representations that people access during language production. One critical finding is that structural priming is stronger when the verb in the sentence to be produced is the same as in the previous sentence: the "lexical boost effect". For example, (1a) is more strongly primed by "The doctor showed the syringe to the nurse" than by (2a). There is currently much debate about the origin of the lexical boost and the precise circumstances under which it occurs.Based on pilot studies, we suggest a hierarchical account, which assumes that hierarchical relations play an important role in the lexical boost: a structural representation (e.g., "the syringe to the nurse/the nurse the syringe") is associated not just with its own head (e.g., "gave"), but with any head of a structure in which the representation is embedded. This account makes novel predictions about the lexical boost. For example, despite the fact that "hesitated" in (3a) is not the head of "the syringe to the nurse/the nurse the syringe", priming should be larger when the prime (3a) and target to be produced (3b) contain the same verb ("hesitated") than when the verbs are different ("decided" and "hesitated"), because these verbs are the head of the larger structure "to show the overall to the mechanic/the mechanic the overall".3a. The driver hesitated/decided to show the overall to the mechanic/the mechanic the overall. (prime)3b. The doctor hesitated to give ... (target)In contrast, repetition of "doctor" in (4) should not result in a lexical boost, because it is not the head of a structure that contains "the syringe to the nurse/the nurse the syringe".4a. The driver/doctor showed the overall to the mechanic/the mechanic the overall. (prime)4b. The doctor hesitated to give ... (target)These predictions are different from existing accounts. The experiments will investigate which account makes the correct assumptions about how syntactic structures are mentally represented. We will ask approximately 40 participants to read aloud primes such as (3a, 4a) and then to provide a completion to targets such as (3b, 4b). Around 40 prime-target pairs will be tested. A series of experiments will address several major questions. In addition to the question of whether the lexical boost occurs when the repeated word is the head of a structure in which the primed structure is embedded, we will ask whether the distance between the repeated word and the primed structure matters. Other questions will concern the duration of the boost and whether it is due to explicit memory of the repeated word from the prime. This is important for understanding language production and will contribute to language production models. Research so far has not provided clear answers to the question of what structural information is stored and with which words. Our study will lead to a better understanding of how people produce syntax and contribute to a more precise model of structural priming.