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Between- and within-language priming is the same: evidence for shared bilingual syntactic representations.
Leila Kantola1, Roger P G van Gompel
1Department of Language Studies, Umeå University, 901 87 Umeå, Sweden. leila.kantola@ling.umu.se
Memory & Cognition
|January 26, 2011
Summary
Bilinguals share syntactic structures across languages, supporting the shared-syntax account. This research on language representation in bilingual speakers reveals unified cognitive processing for shared linguistic elements.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Cognitive Science
- Bilingualism Research
Background:
- Bilinguals' syntactic structure representation is debated: shared-syntax vs. separate-syntax accounts.
- Understanding how bilinguals process and store linguistic information is crucial for cognitive science.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate whether bilinguals utilize shared or separate syntactic representations for structures common to both languages.
- To test the validity of the shared-syntax account using structural priming experiments.
Main Methods:
- Two structural-priming experiments were conducted.
- Participants were native Swedish speakers with high English proficiency.
- Priming effects within and between Swedish and English were measured.
Main Results:
- Structural priming effects were equally strong within a single language and across languages.
- No significant difference was observed in priming strength between monolingual and cross-linguistic conditions.
Conclusions:
- The findings support the shared-syntax account, indicating that bilinguals have a single, unified representation for syntactic structures present in multiple languages.
- Bilingual language representation is not strictly segregated by language but integrated, challenging separate-syntax models.
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