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Abstract:
Syntactic priming has been frequently used to study syntactic processes in language production in monolinguals [1][2] and bilinguals [3]. In a previous study in language comprehension [4] we showed that passive sentences in English (the participant’s L2) can be primed by passive sentences in German (L1) and English (L2). This was manifested in faster reading times for target sentences and repetition suppression effects in left inferior frontal, left precentral and left middle temporal regions of interest in an fMRI study. However, syntactic priming in comprehension is complicated by the influence of verb repetition between prime and target [5][6]. Therefore, we conducted a reading time and fMRI study looking at the influence of verb repetition on syntactic priming. In this study of monolingual comprehension in Dutch we primed passive sentences as well as sentences with crossed-dependency structures. The reading time results revealed a syntactic priming effect for passive sentences, while the effect for crossed-dependency structure sentences interacted with the factor verb repetition. The preliminary fMRI results suggest that the repetition of passive structures leads to reductions in neural activity. The repetition of crossed dependency structures causes repetition enhancement, an increase in the BOLD response, an effect that interacts with the factor verb repetition. In conclusion, the influence of verb repetition on syntactic priming in comprehension is complex and seems to depend on the type of syntactic structure investigated.
References
[1] Bock K. (1986). Syntactic persistence in language production. Cognitive Psychology, 18(3), 355-387.
[2] Pickering M, & Branigan H. (1999). Syntactic priming in language production. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 3(4), 136-141.
[3] Schoonbaert S, Hartsuiker RJ, & Pickering MJ. (2007). The representation of lexical and syntactic information in bilinguals: Evidence from syntactic priming. Journal of Memory and Language, 56(2), 153-171.
[4] Weber K, & Indefrey P. (in press). Syntactic priming in German-English bilinguals during sentence comprehension. NeuroImage.
[5] Arai M, van Gompel R, & Scheepers C. (2007). Priming ditransitive structures in comprehension. Cognitive Psychology, 54, 218-250.
[6] Thothathiri M, & Snedeker J. (2008). Give and take: Syntactic priming during spoken language comprehension. Cognition, 108(1), 51-68.
