Lexical and Syntactic Influences on Structural Selection in Language Production.

Structure In abstract structural accounts of production, speakers abstractly represent structural frames. Importantly, these frames are “abstract” in that they are not directly associated with or dependent on specific lexical items (Konopka & Bock, 2009). Support for this idea has come from research showing that as language production proceeds from a non-linguistic to a linguistic representation, syntax is at least partly isolable from both the levels of meaning and sound (Bock, 1986; Bock & Kroch, 1989; Ferreira & Bock, 2006; Ferreira & Clifton, 1986; O’Seaghdha, 1997). In particular, there is an extensive body of research on the phenomenon of structural priming, which has often been interpreted as favoring the idea that abstract structural frames are generated independently of lexical or conceptual content (Pickering & Ferreira, 2008). 6 Structural priming is simply the tendency for speakers to unknowingly repeat abstract syntactic structures they have recently encountered (also termed syntactic persistence or syntactic priming) (e.g., Bock, 1986, 1987; Bock & Griffin, 2000a, 2000b; Ferreira and Bock, 2006; Melinger & Dobel, 2005; Potter & Lombardi, 1998; Pickering & Branigan, 1999; Smith & Wheeldon, 2001; Wheeldon & Smith, 2003; see Pickering & Ferreira, 2008 for a recent review). For example, in one of the first studies on this topic, Bock (1986) demonstrated that after producing the prepositional object sentence “Thesyntactic structures they have recently encountered (also termed syntactic persistence or syntactic priming) (e.g., Bock, 1986, 1987; Bock & Griffin, 2000a, 2000b; Ferreira and Bock, 2006; Melinger & Dobel, 2005; Potter & Lombardi, 1998; Pickering & Branigan, 1999; Smith & Wheeldon, 2001; Wheeldon & Smith, 2003; see Pickering & Ferreira, 2008 for a recent review). For example, in one of the first studies on this topic, Bock (1986) demonstrated that after producing the prepositional object sentence “The rock star sold some cocaine to an undercover agent”, participants were more likely to describe a picture of a girl who is handing a brush to a man with another prepositional object sentence, “The girl handed a paintbrush to the man,” than as a double object sentence, “The girl handed the man the paintbrush”. Thus, speakers were more likely to select the structure that they recently used than they were to select an alternative sentence structure even in the absence of any relation between the two sentences. Structural priming cannot be explained by repetition of themes, lexical items, or metrical relationships between the prime and target utterances (Bock & Loebell, 1990; Chang, Bock, & Goldberg, 2003), though it is increased with lexical repetition (Hartsuiker, Bernolet, Schoonbaert, Speybroeck, Vanderelst, 2008; Pickering & Branigan, 1999); it has been demonstrated across languages (Hartsuiker, Pickering, & Veltkamp, 2004; Loebell & Bock, 2003), in written and spoken production (Branigan, Pickering, & Clelland, 1999 Pickering & Branigan, 1998), between speakers (Bock, Dell, Chang & Onishi, 2007; Branigan, Pickering, & Cleland, 2000), in aphasiac speakers (Ferreira, Bock, Wilson, & Cohen, 2008; Hartsuiker & Kolk, 1998; Saffran & Martin, 1997), in children (Huttenlocher, Vasilyeva, & Shimpi, 2004; Savage, Lieven, Theakston, 7 & Tomasello, 2006), and can be long-lasting (Bock & Griffin, 2000b), persisting across up to ten intervening sentences, though some studies show a reduction in magnitude over time (Branigan, et al., 1999) (see Pickering & Ferreira, 2008 for a recent review) . Essentially, when other factors are equal in production, syntax shows a tendency to repeat. The key property of structural priming for the current purposes is that structural priming occurs in the absence of any lexical repetition. Thus, structural priming supports the idea that at some early point during sentence formulation, an abstract structural frame is generated before any words are selected. In one particularly influential model, the dual-path model, these abstract structural representations are linked to the conceptual level (Chang, et al., 2006), but the structures do not interact with words at a lexical level. In this model, structural priming is explained by an implicit learning mechanism that links certain syntactic structures to certain message level representations, and the strength of those links is altered through experience. This learning process results in the persistent effects of structural priming, such that when the same types of message structures are encountered later, the same syntactic structures are likely to be used again (Bernolet & Hartsuiker, 2010; Bock & Griffin, 2000b; Chang, Dell, Bock, & Griffin, 2000; Chang, et al., 2006; Ferreira & Bock, 2006; Kaschak & Borreggine, 2008; Savage et al., 2006). In other words, speakers of a language need to learn about the relationship between structures and meaning in their language. As they learn these mappings, they accumulate information about the frequency with which certain structures are used with certain types of messages. They then use this distributional information when selecting the form of utterances, resulting in structural priming as a natural consequence of implicit learning mechanisms. Whereas 8 this learning mechanism accounts for the long-lived effects of structural priming, it does not easily account for transient structural priming effects (Smith & Wheeldon, 2001; Wheeldon & Smith, 2003). Significant learning must accumulate over time and therefore should not dissipate rapidly, yet some priming effects are only found between immediately consecutive sentences. This model also does not directly address the fact that structural priming has been shown to be strengthened when lexical repetition is also present (Pickering & Branigan, 1998), though it has been noted that it may be able to account for such effects with additional assumptions (Coyle & Kaschak, 2008), or if considered in conjunction with other production processes (Chang et al., 2006; Ferreira & Bock, 2006; Pickering & Ferreira, 2008). These points will be addressed further shortly.