Bidirectional structural priming across alternations: Evidence from the generation of dative and benefactive alternation structures in German

Pappert, Sandra; Pechmann, Thomas

doi:10.1080/01690965.2012.672752

Cited by 32 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…but that goals will not necessarily prime recipients (i.e., locative-to-dative priming in Exp. 4; for similar subsumption arguments regarding benefactives and datives, see, e.g., Goldberg, 1995;Pappert & Pechmann, 2013). We found no evidence for unidirectional priming of this sort, and thus, this relationship, if it exists, is not manifest in priming.…”

Section: "Goals" In Linguistics and Cognitive Developmentsupporting

confidence: 72%

“…These results confirm that the present paradigm is sensitive to priming across constructions (cross-structural priming), using two different contrasts. First, we have replicated Bock (1989; also Chang et al, 2003;Pappert & Pechmann, 2013), showing priming from benefactives to datives (Exp. 6).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 53%

“…4 There are two other phenomena that involve priming across constructions (crossstructural priming) which potentially address our question about the scope of thematic roles. The first is the much-replicated observation that benefactive constructions ("John baked a cake for Susan") prime dative constructions ("John gave a cake to Susan") (Bock, 1989;Chang et al, 2003;Pappert & Pechmann, 2013). This observation could suggest that beneficiaries and recipients take the same thematic role, in support of the broad roles hypothesis.…”

Section: Structural Priming As a Window Onto Thematic Structurementioning

confidence: 94%

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How broad are thematic roles? Evidence from structural priming

Ziegler

Snedeker

2018

Cognition

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Verbs that are similar in meaning tend to occur in the same syntactic structures. For example, give and hand, which denote transfer of possession, both appear in the prepositional-object construction: "The child gave/handed the ball to the dog." We can call the child a "giver" in one case and a "hander" in the other, or we can refer to her more generally as the agent, or doer of the action. Similarly, the dog can be called the recipient, and the ball, the theme. These generalized notions of agent, recipient, and theme are known as thematic roles. An important theoretical question for linguists and psycholinguists is what the set of thematic roles is. Are there a small number of very broad roles, perhaps with each one mapping onto a single canonical syntactic position? Or are there many distinct roles, several mapping to the same syntactic position but conveying subtly different meanings? We investigate this question across eleven structural priming experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk (total N = 2914), asking whether speakers treat the thematic roles recipient and destination (i.e., location or spatial goal) as interchangeable, suggesting the broad role of goal, or distinct, suggesting two separate roles. To do so, we look for priming between dative sentences (e.g., "The man gave the ball to the dog"), which have a recipient role (dog), and locative sentences (e.g., "The man loaded hay onto the wagon"), which instead have a destination role (wagon). Our pattern of findings confirms that thematic role mappings can be primed independent of syntactic structure, lexical content, and animacy. However, we find that this priming does not extend from destinations to recipients (or vice versa), providing evidence that these two roles are distinct.

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Section: "Goals" In Linguistics and Cognitive Developmentsupporting

confidence: 72%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 53%

Section: Structural Priming As a Window Onto Thematic Structurementioning

confidence: 94%

See 1 more Smart Citation

How broad are thematic roles? Evidence from structural priming

Ziegler

Snedeker

2018

Cognition

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show abstract

“…5), but that goals will not necessarily prime recipients (i.e., locative-to-dative priming in Exp. 4; for similar subsumption arguments regarding benefactives and datives, see, e.g., Goldberg, 1995;Pappert & Pechmann, 2013). We found no evidence for unidirectional priming of this sort, and thus, this relationship, if it exists, is not manifest in priming.…”

Section: "Goals" In Linguistics and Cognitive Developmentsupporting

confidence: 72%

How broad are thematic roles? Evidence from structural priming

Ziegler¹,

Snedeker²

2018

Preprint

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Verbs that are similar in meaning tend to occur in the same syntactic structures. For example,give and hand, which denote transfer of possession, both appear in the prepositional-object construction: "The child gave / handed the ball to the dog." We can call the child a "giver" in one case and a "hander" in the other, or we can refer to her more generally as the agent, or doer of the action. Similarly, the dog can be called the recipient, and the ball, the theme. These generalized notions of agent, recipient, and theme are known as thematic roles. An important theoretical question for linguists and psycholinguists is what the set of thematic roles is. Are there a small number of very broad roles, perhaps with each one mapping onto a single canonical syntactic position? Or are there many distinct roles, several mapping to the same syntactic position but conveying subtly different meanings? We investigate this question across eleven structural priming experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk (total N=2,914), asking whether speakers treat the thematic roles recipient and destination (i.e., location or spatial goal) as interchangeable, suggesting the broad role of goal, or distinct, suggesting two separate roles. To do so, we look for priming between dative sentences (e.g., "The man gave the ball to the dog"), which have a recipient role (dog), and locative sentences (e.g., "The man loaded hay onto the wagon"), which instead have a destination role (wagon). Our pattern of findings confirms that thematic role mappings can be primed independent of syntactic structure, lexical content, and animacy. However, we find that this priming does not extend from destinations to recipients (or vice versa), providing evidence that these two roles are distinct.

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“…Verbs had the same form in both verb-second and verb-final position to make the model more comparable to the lemma account. Datives were biased toward the DO structure (75%) to reflect the bias in German speakers (German production studies report similar biases with and without priming: 80% and 70% DO, respectively, Pappert & Pechmann, 2013.…”

Section: A German Dual-path Model Of Primingmentioning

confidence: 96%

Do Lemmas Speak German? A Verb Position Effect in German Structural Priming

et al. 2014

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Lexicalized theories of syntax often assume that verb-structure regularities are mediated by lemmas, which abstract over variation in verb tense and aspect. German syntax seems to challenge this assumption, because verb position depends on tense and aspect. To examine how German speakers link these elements, a structural priming study was performed which varied syntactic structure, verb position (encoded by tense and aspect), and verb overlap. Abstract structural priming was found, both within and across verb position, but priming was larger when the verb position was the same between prime and target. Priming was boosted by verb overlap, but there was no interaction with verb position. The results can be explained by a lemma model where tense and aspect are linked to structural choices in German. Since the architecture of this lemma model is not consistent with results from English, a connectionist model was developed which could explain the cross-linguistic variation in the production system. Together, these findings support the view that language learning plays an important role in determining the nature of structural priming in different languages.

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Bidirectional structural priming across alternations: Evidence from the generation of dative and benefactive alternation structures in German

Cited by 32 publications

References 34 publications

How broad are thematic roles? Evidence from structural priming

How broad are thematic roles? Evidence from structural priming

How broad are thematic roles? Evidence from structural priming

Do Lemmas Speak German? A Verb Position Effect in German Structural Priming

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