The influence of verb-bound syntactic preferences on the processing of syntactic structures

Katrien Segaert, Kirsten Weber, Mira Cladder-Micus, Peter Hagoort

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

9 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Speakers sometimes repeat syntactic structures across sentences, a phenomenon called syntactic priming. We investigated the influence of verb-bound syntactic preferences on syntactic priming effects in response choices and response latencies for German ditransitive sentences. In the response choices we found inverse preference effects: There were stronger syntactic priming effects for primes in the less preferred structure, given the syntactic preference of the prime verb. In the response latencies we found positive preference effects: There were stronger syntactic priming effects for primes in the more preferred structure, given the syntactic preference of the prime verb. These findings provide further support for the idea that syntactic processing is lexically guided.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1448-1460
JournalJournal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition
Volume40
Issue number5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2014

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