Pappert S, Baumann M, Bader M. Structural priming of SO vs. OS in German: Clauses with psychological verbs as a test case. Presented at the 30th CUNY Annual Conference on Human Sentence Processing (CUNY 2017), Poster, Cambridge MA

Bader, Markus

Baumann, Michael

Pappert, Sandra

Publications at Bielefeld University

IntroductionStructural priming: Speakers tend to reuse linguistic structures they have processed previously. • Lexical boost: Repeating lexical heads and especially the verb enhances the effect of structural priming (cf. Pickering & Ferreira, 2008). • Studies targeting priming of OS order in canonically SO languages apart frompassivization are sparse (cf. Mahowald et al., 2016).• Probable reason: The specific discourse functional demands on the use of active OS are hard to create in experimental settings. • However, in German, experiencer-object psych-verbs occur with the stimulus subject and the experiencer as object. Using them with OS order in a NP-V-NP structure does not result in information structural peculiarity (Primus, 2003). MaterialsTarget Exp1:erzürnen (enrage)Verrat (betrayal)König (king)Current studyTaking advantage of experiencer-object verbs andthe relatively flexible word order in German, wetested the persistence of OS (vs. SO) structures in two primed sentence production experiments.Aims:• to investigate the representations involved in structural priming • to contribute to the evaluation of explanatory accountsConclusionThe findings are in line with accounts of structural priming that assume a primed linearization of event participant roles at a pre-linguistic conceptual level of sentence production or a parallelization of the mapping from concepts onto syntactic structure (Cai et al., 2012; Pappert & Pechmann, 2014). In a broader sense this corresponds to direct mapping from semantic features to functional syntactic categories and positions in sentence production theories (Bock, Loebell, & Morey 1992). Additionally, under the standard assumption that the SO/OS serialization in a NP-V-NP frame is not part of a verb`s argument structure, or that monotransitive NP-V-NP as default is not represented at all (Van Gompel et al., 2012), the boost by verb overlap is best explained by episodic memory traces (Bock & Griffin, 2000). Upcoming experiments will beconducted to dissociate the contribution of conceptual, syntactic and lexical factors to the present priming effect in detail.• 1103 valid trials from 48 participants• Thereof 20.5% OS responses• OS responses in OS prime trials: 26.6%;in SO prime trials: 14.7%• Main effect of prime structure (p < .001), target noun order (p < .001), no interaction (p = .45)• Binomial mixed model structure equal to Exp1Results experiment 2Results experiment 1Given the main effect of prime structure in bothexperiments we commit to the inference that participants in our samples showed persistence of prime structure in their sentence production. The interaction of prime structure and experiment suggests that this effect was boosted by verb overlap between prime and target. We attributethe outcome to the persistence of conceptual representations in terms of participant order (stimulus-before-experiencer or vice versa) or thealignment of animacy since participant roles were confounded with animacy features. Constituent structure overlap can be ruled out becauseboth OS and SO had NP-V-NP. Priming of syntactic functions can not be fully excluded, but see Köhne et al. (2014) for evidence againstpersistence at a functional level. Persistence of case marking is improbable in light of the evidence from Santesteban et al. (2015).DiscussionReferencesBock, J. K., Loebell, H., & Morey, R. (1992). From conceptual roles to structural relations: Bridging the syntactic cleft. Psychological Review, 99(1), 150–171. doi:10.1037//0033-295X.99.1.150Bock, J. K., & Griffin, Z. M. (2000). The persistence of structural priming: Transient activation or implicit learning? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 129(2), 177–192. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.129.2.177Cai, Z. G., Pickering, M. J., & Branigan, H. P. (2012). Mapping concepts to syntax: Evidence from structural priming in Mandarin Chinese. Journal of Memory and Language, 66(4), 833–849. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2012.03.009Gompel, R. van, Arai, M., & Pearson, J. (2012). The representation of mono- and intransitive structures. Journal of Memory and Language, 66(2), 384–406. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2011.11.005Köhne, J., Pickering, M. J., & Branigan, H. P. (2014). The relationship between sentence meaning and word order: Evidence from structural priming in German. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 67(2), 304–318. doi:10.1080/17470218.2013.807855Mahowald, K., James, A., Futrell, R., & Gibson, E. (2016). A meta-analysis of syntactic priming in language production. Journal of memory and language, 91, 5–27. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2016.03.009 Pappert, S., & Pechmann, T. (2014). Priming word order by thematic roles: No evidence for an additional involvement of phrase structure. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 67(11), 2260–2278. doi:10.1080/17470218.2014.918632Pickering, M. J., & Ferreira, V. S. (2008). Structural priming: A critical review. Psychological Bulletin, 134(3), 427–459. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.134.3.427Primus, B. (2003). Protorollen und Verbtyp: Kasusvariaton bei psychischen Verben. In M. Hummel & R. Kailuweit (Eds.), Semantische Rollen (pp. 377–401). Tübingen: Narr.Santesteban, M., Pickering, M. J., Laka, I., & Branigan, H. P. (2015). Effects of case-marking and head position on language production?: Evidence from an ergative OV language.Language, cognition and neuroscience, 30(9), 1175–1186. doi:10.1080/23273798.2015.1065335Poster presented at CUNY 2017, Cambridge, MA.Sandra Pappert a, Michael Baumann a and Markus Bader ba Bielefeld University, b Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Mainsandra.pappert@uni-bielefeld.deTarget Exp2:verunsichern (unsettle)Nebel (fog)Rennfahrer (racing driver)participanthears andrepeatsprime sentencetargetwordlistparticipantgeneratestarget sentenceexperimenter codesstructure of responseProcedure• Prime structure (SO vs. OS) and target noun order (stimulus > experiencervs. experiencer > stimulus) were manipulated within experiments.• Verb overlap was manipulated between experiments (Exp1: same verb; Exp2: different verbs).SO-prime Der Fehler erzürnt den Vorgesetzten.the.NOM mistake enrages the.ACC bossOS-prime Den Vorgesetzten erzürnt der Fehler.the.ACC boss enrages the.NOM mistake‘The mistake enrages the boss.’Item:Coding:• Valid responses weregrammatical sentences thathad SO or OS structure.• 36 experiencer-object verbsfor 36 experimental items• experiencer = animate; stimulus = inanimate• A GLMM on the data from both experimentsshowed an interaction of prime structure and experiment (~ verb overlap; p < .01).• 1299 valid trials from 48 participants• Thereof 34.6% OS responses• OS responses in OS prime trials: 46.7%;in SO prime trials: 22.3%• Main effect of prime structure (p < .001), target noun order (p < .05), no interaction (p = .25)• Binomial mixed model on OS (vs. SO) responses: OS ~ prime.structure * target.noun.order + (1 | Subject) + (1 + target.noun.order | Item)Relative frequency of OS (vs. SO) responses by prime structure andexperiment (~ verb overlap), averaged over target noun order.Structural priming of SO vs. OS in German: Clauses with psychological verbs as a test case

Structural priming of SO vs. OS in German: Clauses with psychological verbs as a test case

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Structural priming of SO vs. OS in German: Clauses with psychological verbs as a test case

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