Primed From the Start: Syntactic Priming During the First Days of Language Learning

Abstract

New linguistic information must be integrated into our existing language system. Using a novel experimental task that incorporates a syntactic priming paradigm into artificial language learning, we investigated how new grammatical regularities and words are learned. This innovation allowed us to control the language input the learner received, while the syntactic priming paradigm provided insight into the nature of the underlying syntactic processing machinery. The results of the present study pointed to facilitatory syntactic processing effects within the first days of learning: Syntactic and lexical priming effects revealed participants’ sensitivity to both novel words and word orders. This suggested that novel syntactic structures and their meaning (form–function mapping) can be acquired rapidly through incidental learning. More generally, our study indicated similar mechanisms for learning and processing in both artificial and natural languages, with implications for the relationship between first and second language learning.

The role of L1 and L2 frequency in cross-linguistic structural priming: An artificial language learning study

“…Furthermore, an AL learning study by Wonnacott, Newport and Tanenhaus (2008) showed that learners produce frequent structures in the AL more often than less frequent ones, which suggests that the probabilistic structure of the AL was reflected in the learners' AL productions. In contrast, a recent study investigating structural priming in comprehension during AL learning by Weber et al (2019) did not find any effect of the frequency of word orders in the AL.…”

“…This suggests that abstract syntactic representations are mainly present in high-proficient speakers. Another line of evidence stems from a series of studies that investigated structural priming in an artificial language (AL) learning paradigm (Muylle, Bernolet, & Hartsuiker, 2020, 2021, in press; Weber, Christiansen, Indefrey, & Hagoort, 2019), that allows to study the development of shared syntactic representations in very early stages of L2 acquisition. In a multiple session version of this paradigm, Muylle and colleagues (2021) found evidence for a gradual development of shared syntactic representations in ditransitives (i.e., DO datives and prepositional-object datives, henceforth PO), given that cross-linguistic priming only reliably emerged from the second day of training (in contrast to transitives, which showed cross-linguistic priming already on the first day).…”

On the limits of shared syntactic representations: When word order variation blocks priming between an artificial language and Dutch.

“…In addition, the motivation of a participant to study a non-existing language might be different from people studying a natural language, that serves a communicative purpose in life. Despite these limitations, AL learning paradigms have proven to be a promising tool in second language acquisition research (e.g., Muylle et al, submitted;Weber, Christiansen, Indefrey, & Hagoort, 2019;Wonnacott et al, 2008) and seem to replicate processes and phenomena that are also observed in natural language learning situations. For instance, Muylle and colleagues (submitted) studied structural priming in a five session AL learning design and found priming within the AL during all sessions, and a lexical boost effect, comparable to what has been found in natural language experiments.…”

Expectation Violation Enhances the Development of New Abstract Syntactic Representations: Evidence from an Artificial Language Learning Study

“…The magnitude of these effects tends to be greater for less frequent structures (known as inverse probability effects). This has been observed empirically in both the L1 and L2: Structures that have lower frequency in the input elicit greater priming effects (Hartsuiker et al, 1999;Hartsuiker & Westenberg, 2000;Jaeger & Snider, 2013;Kaan & Chun, 2018b;Kaschak, 2007;Kaschak et al, 2006;Montero-Melis & Jaeger, 2019;Weber et al, 2019).…”