Translation Equivalence Enhances Cross-Linguistic Syntactic Priming

1. Translation Equivalence Enhances Cross-Linguistic Syntactic Priming Sofie Schoonbaert1, Robert Hartsuiker1, and Martin Pickering2 1Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium; 2Edinburgh University, Edinburgh, Scotland Method PRIME TARGET • Intro • Only recently, some research on bilingualism had focused on the syntactic, rather than the lexical level of language processing. • Shared or separate representations for similar syntactic rules across languages? • SYNTACTIC PRIMING [the tendency to repeat a recently encountered structure (Bock, 1986)] IN BILINGUALS: • within a second language? • from L1 to L2? (see also Hartsuiker, Veltkamp, & Pickering, 2004; Loebel & Bock, 2003) We used a dialogue game (introduced by Branigan, Pickering, and Cleland, 2000), where a confederate tries to affect sentence formulation in Dutch-English bilinguals, while describing pictures to each other (see right). Use of two dative structures, legal and commonly used in both L1 and L2: •  prepositional dative [PO: The nun throws a cup to the swimmer] •  double object dative [DO: The nun throws the swimmer a cup] ‘The chef gives the boxer a gun’ [DO] ‘_ _ _ ? _ _ _’ [PO or DO] Confederate Participant • Experiment 2: • Priming from L1 (Dutch) to L2 (English)? • DESIGN: 2 (Prime type: PO-DO) x 2 (Verb type: translation equivalent-unrelated) • Can we obtain a translation equivalence boost to cross-linguistic syntactic priming by using translation equivalent verbs in prime and target? (as found within L1/L2;Pickering & Branigan, 1998/ Exp1) • PRIME: ‘De kok geeft de bokser een geweer’ [DO-translation equivalent verbs] • ‘De kok geeft een geweer aan de bokser’ [PO-translation equivalent verbs] • ‘De kok gooit de bokser een geweer’ [DO-unrelated verbs] • ‘De kok gooit een geweer naar de bokser’ [PO-unrelated verbs] • RESPONSE: • English PO or DO description • of dative target picture with verb THROW? • RESULTS: • More English PO responses after a Dutch PO prime than after a Dutch DO prime, regardless of the verb type = significant syntactic priming • Significant interaction Prime x Verb type (17% versus 8% priming) = translation equivalence boost • Comparison Exp1-2: The lexical boost is sign. stronger than the translation equivalence boost • Experiment 1: • Priming in L2 (English)? • DESIGN: 2 (Prime type: PO-DO) x 2 (Verb type: identical-unrelated) • Can we obtain a lexical boost to syntactic priming within L2 by using identical verbs in prime and target? (as found within L1, see Pickering & Branigan, 1998) • PRIME: ‘The chef gives the boxer a gun’ [DO-identical verbs] • ‘The chef gives a gun to the boxer’ [PO-identical verbs] • ‘The chef throws the boxer a gun’ [DO-unrelated verbs] • ‘The chef throws a gun to the boxer’ [PO-unrelated verbs] • RESPONSE: • English PO or DO description • of dative target picture with verb THROW? • RESULTS: • More English PO responses after an English PO prime than after an English DO prime, regardless of the verb type = significant syntactic priming • Significant interaction Prime x Verb type (36% versus 9% priming) = lexical boost • Discussion • Using dative structures, we found : • Syntactic priming within L2, enhanced by repeating identical verbs (as in L1, see Pickering & Branigan, 1998) • Cross-linguistic syntactic priming (from L1 to L2)  This strongly suggests SYNTACTIC SHARING BETWEEN LANGUAGES Recent, but less conclusive evidence with dative structures in favor of a ‘shared syntax’ hypothesis was found earlier in a study of Loebell and Bock (2003). However, they tested German-English bilinguals, while the use of a PO in German is more or less restricted. Hartsuiker et al. (2004) also demonstrated that syntactic priming can occur between languages by manipulating the use of transitives (actives-passives). • Translation equivalence (Exp2) enhanced the dative priming effect  This suggests conceptual sharing between languages • We believe that this enhanced priming effect is due to simultaneous activation of a combinatorial node, specifying the dative structure (Pickering & Branigan, 1998), and the translation equivalent’s lemma (due to the connection between the semantic representation and the lemma), increasing the probability of selecting the same structure with the translation equivalent (cfr. Cleland & Pickering, 2003). •  The boost to syntactic priming, due to verb repetition, is stronger within languages than between languages • Our interpretation mentioned above still holds for syntactic priming within languages (Exp 1), but in this case because of the activation of the identical lemma, also the connection between this lemma and the combinatorial node was pre-activated by the L2-prime. • (See A MODEL FOR LANGUAGE NON-SELECTIVE ACCESS, WITH ACTIVATION CASCADING TO THE LEVEL OF COMBINATORIAL NODES, on the right, adopted from Hartsuiker, et al., 2004) References Bock, J.K. (1986). Syntactic persistence in language production. Cognitive Psychology, 18, 355-387. Branigan, H.P., Pickering, M.J., & Cleland, A. (2000). Syntactic co-ordination in dialogue. Cognition, 75, B13-25. Cleland, A., & Pickering, M.J. (2003). The use of lexical and syntactic information in language production: Evidence from the priming of noun-phrase structure. 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