Cross-linguistic structural priming in multilinguals: Further evidence for shared syntax

Abstract

The experiments tested whether structural priming within a language differs from priming between languages and whether priming between a first and second language differs from priming between two different second languages.Experiment 1 tested priming of relative clause attachment from Dutch (the subjects' first language), French, or English (two second languages) to Dutch. Experiments 2 and 3 were similar but had respectively French and English as the target language. Experiment 4 tested dative priming from Dutch, English, and German (another second language) to English. Structural priming was always as strong within-as between-languages and priming between a first and a second language was always as strong as priming between two second languages. These findings support accounts that assume syntax is shared across languages.Keywords: Bilingualism; Multilingualism; Structural Priming; Sentence Production multilingual cross-linguistic priming 3 Worldwide it is the rule rather than the exception that people speak more than one language (Graddol, 2004;Grosjean, 1992); in some parts of the world most people even speak more than two languages. For instance, most people from the region of Flanders, Belgium, have Dutch as their first language (L1), but also know French, English and sometimes German as a second language (L2) 1 , which they typically started to learn towards the end of primary school, at the beginning of secondary school, and in the last years of secondary school respectively. Many studies on bilingualism have asked whether there are influences of L1 on processing an L2 (e.g., Thierry & Wu, 2007) or vice versa (e.g., Van Assche, Drieghe, Duyck, & Hartsuiker, 2009). Fewer studies have considered cross-language influences in speakers of more than two languages. However, multilingualism offers the possibility of comparing cross-linguistic influences between a first and second language with influences between two different second languages (see Lemhöfer, Dijkstra, & Michel, 2004;Van Hell & Dijkstra, 2002 for such studies in the lexical domain). This article will present such a comparison in the domain of sentence production in order to arbitrate between theories that assume syntactic representations are shared or separate across a multilingual's languages. Although most cognitive-psychological studies on multilingualism have focused on the representation or processing of words, there is an increasing interest in research on syntactic processes in bilingual sentence production (e.g., Hartsuiker, Pickering, & Veltkamp, 2004;Kootstra, Van Hell, & Dijkstra, 2010;Loebell & Bock, 2003; Meyer & Fox Tree, 2003). Most of these studies use the structural priming paradigm, which is based on the phenomenon that the choice out of two alternative syntactic structures (e.g., an active instead of a passive multilingual cross-linguistic priming 4 sentence) is influenced by having recently processed a prime sentence with that specific structure (Bock, 1986). In a series of seminal studies, Bock and colleagues ruled out that st...

Proficiency modulates between- but not within-language structural priming

“…However, this finding did not hold for the less proficient bilinguals tested by Bernolet et al (2013), leading them to conclude that the shared syntax model in fact represents the final state of bilingual memory, whereas the prevalence of language-specific representations in less proficient bilinguals results in weaker priming from L2 to L1 than within L2. Converging with Hartsuiker et al (2016), we did not find evidence for a significant difference between Irish-to-English and within-English dative priming in terms of magnitude. This exploratory finding points to the engagement of shared, or tightly linked syntactic coding operations for Irish and English, at least in the more proficient bilinguals.…”

“…Several studies have found evidence for equivalent effects, independent of the priming language (e.g., Schoonbaert et al 2007;Kantola and Van Gompel 2011). More recently, Hartsuiker et al (2016) systematically investigated the issue in multilingual speakers and found that structural priming was always as strong between as within languages, supporting a fully shared syntax account (e.g., Hartsuiker et al 2004). However, this finding did not hold for the less proficient bilinguals tested by Bernolet et al (2013), leading them to conclude that the shared syntax model in fact represents the final state of bilingual memory, whereas the prevalence of language-specific representations in less proficient bilinguals results in weaker priming from L2 to L1 than within L2.…”

“…There is some evidence to support the contribution of L2 proficiency to structural priming, from L1 to L2 and also within L2 (reviewed by Hartsuiker and Bernolet 2017). However, this has not been a consistent finding in the literature to date (e.g., Hartsuiker et al 2016;Kutasi et al 2018). We consider these studies in more detail in the discussion section.…”

Structural Priming, Levels of Awareness, and Agency in Contact-Induced Language Change

“…That is, if bilinguals' syntactic choices are primed by the structure of a non-target-language, this can only be explained by assuming the existence of cross-language interaction at the syntactic level. This is indeed what has been found: cross-linguistic structural priming has been observed across many languages, using many tasks, both from the non-dominant to the dominant language and vice versa (e.g., Bernolet et al 2007Bernolet et al , 2012Cai et al 2011;Desmet and Declercq 2006;Hartsuiker et al 2016;Hartsuiker et al 2004;Jacob et al 2017;Kantola and van Gompel 2011;Kidd et al 2015;Kootstra and Doedens 2016;Loebell and Bock 2003;Salamoura and Williams 2006;Schoonbaert et al 2007;Christianson 2009, 2012;Weber and Indefrey 2009). Based on this evidence, bilingual processing models have been developed which specify the mental representations of syntactic information in bilingual speakers, their links with other levels of processing (e.g., lexical, phonological), and the development of these representations, for example during second language learning (Hartsuiker and Bernolet 2017;Hartsuiker et al 2004;Kootstra and Doedens 2016;Schoonbaert et al 2007).…”

Structural priming in bilinguals

“…The PO/DO structures in this study (and other studies) differ in surface constituent structure (NP PP vs. NP NP following the verb), suggesting that constituent structure is fully shared between languages. Hartsuiker, Beerts, Loncke, Desmet and Bernolet (2016) found similar results with relative clause attachment structures, where the clause was attached to a noun either high or low in the hierarchical structure ( the students of the professor who was/were ill ), indicating that hierarchical structure information is also fully shared between languages. They investigated structural priming in trilingual speakers of Dutch (L1), English (L2) and French (L3) and found that priming was the same regardless of whether it was within L1, within L2, between L1 and L2 or between L2 and L3, suggesting that all languages fully share their representations.…”