The head or the verb: Is the lexical boost restricted to the head verb?

The head constituent plays a key role in the lexical boost in syntactic priming

“…Our findings are therefore compatible with the findings of Carminati et al (2019), van Gompel et al (2022, and Kantola et al (2023). Note that van Gompel et al did find a non-head boost when participants could see the prime when producing the 22 target -an effect which does appear to be due to explicit memory.…”

“…They argued that priming of the subject was due to explicit memory, but priming of the verb was due to a mechanism such as that assumed in the lemma-based residual activation account. Finally, Kantola, van Gompel, and Wakeford (2023) used prime and target sentences such as The hotel owner decided to the loan the tourist a tent (i.e., containing a main verb and a subordinate dative verb).…”

Finding your voice: Voice-specific effects in Tagalog reveal the limits of word order priming

“…There are at least two explanations of the lexical boost effect. The residual activation account explains lexical boost as the additional activation of the verb at the lemma level boosting the priming effect (Kantola et al, 2023;van Gompel et al, 2022), which attributes both forms of priming-abstract word-order priming and lexical boost-to a single mechanism. However, there is evidence against this explanation: for example, abstract priming and lexical-boost effects decay on different time schedules, with the lexical boost being particularly short-lived (Bernolet et al, 2016;Hartsuiker et al, 2008;Mahowald et al, 2016).…”

Grammatical dependencies shape compositional units in sentence production

“…Based on this result, they argued that the lexical boost should not be used as evidence for a privileged relationship between a repeated word and a primed structure. However, more recent studies provide convergent evidence against this view (Carminati et al, 2019;van Gompel et al, 2022;Huang et al, 2023;Kantola et al, 2023), showing that the lexical boost occurs only when the head word of a primed structure is repeated. The current study provides further evidence against the view that the lexical boost reflects the explicit memory of prime sentences.…”

“…In contrast, in sentences with object filler-gap dependencies, verbs anchor a complementizer phrase (CP)-sized structural unit, which contains functional structures above VP, including inflectional phrase (IP) heads such as tense/aspect heads. I will present a formal theory that instantiates this claim and presents a simple computational model that derives empirical predictions about structural priming, speakers' tendency to reuse the structures they recently encountered (Bock, 1986;Levelt & Kelter, 1982;Mahowald et al, 2016;Pickering & Ferreira, 2008), and the lexical boost, the increase in the magnitude of structural priming due to the repetition of the head of the primed structure (Carminati et al 2019;Cleland & Pickering 2003;van Gompel et al 2022;Kantola et al 2023;Pickering & Branigan 1998;Segaert et al 2014 among many others). I will then present five structural priming experiments that test the predictions of the model.…”