Conceptual structure modulates structural priming in the production of complex sentences
Zenzi M Griffin1, Justin Weinstein-Tull2
1Georgia Institute of Technology, Stanford University.
Journal of Memory and Language
|January 10, 2017
Summary
Speakers often repeat grammatical structures they recently used. This study shows that adding a conceptual role to a sentence structure reduces this syntactic priming effect, influencing how we encode messages.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Cognitive Science
- Linguistics
Background:
- Syntactic priming describes the tendency for speakers to reproduce grammatical structures they have recently comprehended or produced.
- This phenomenon typically persists irrespective of variations in conceptual or event roles within sentences.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if the addition of a conceptual role influences syntactic priming.
- To examine how subtle conceptual differences affect grammatical encoding in sentence production.
Main Methods:
- Two sentence recall studies were conducted.
- The tendency to paraphrase finite complements of object-raising verbs into infinitive complements was utilized.
- Prime constructions with and without an additional conceptual role were compared.
Main Results:
- Prime constructions with an additional conceptual role led to fewer paraphrases compared to those without.
- This reduction in paraphrasing suggests the extra conceptual role interfered with the priming effect.
Conclusions:
- Subtle differences in conceptual structures can significantly impact how speakers grammatically encode message elements.
- The findings highlight the interplay between conceptual representation and syntactic production in language.
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