Cross-linguistic priming effects during the comprehension of the passive voice: two primes are enough

Natália Pinheiro; Mailce Borges Mota

doi:10.5007/2175-8026.2023.e94718

Authors

Natália Pinheiro UFSC
Mailce Borges Mota UFSC

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-8026.2023.e94718

Keywords:

Brazilian-Portuguese, Structural priming, Bilingual language processing, Comprehension, Residual activation

Abstract

The present study investigated cross-linguistic structural priming effects from L1 to L2 during the comprehension of the passive voice in a group of 35 Brazilian Portuguese-English (BP-EN) late bilinguals. A 4 x 2 experimental design was implemented that included a four levels within-subjects Condition variable and a between-subjects Proficiency variable (Intermediate vs. Advanced). Results show that, regardless of proficiency, participants read target sentences faster in both experimental conditions when compared to the control conditions. Noticeably, cross-linguistic structural priming effects were observed even in the absence of translation equivalents. That is, both abstract and lexically mediated structural cross-linguistic effects were observed. These findings indicate that late bilinguals at intermediate and advanced levels of proficiency have a shared syntactic system between their L1 and L2.

References

Alderson, J. C. (2005). Diagnosing Foreign Language Proficiency: The Interface between Learning and Assessment. (1st. ed.). Continuum.

Alderson, J. C., & Huhta, A. (2005). The development of a suite of computer-based diagnostic tests based on the Common European Framework. Language Testing, 22(3), 301–320.

Bates D, Mächler M, Bolker B, Walker S (2015). “Fitting Linear Mixed-Effects Models Using lme4.” Journal of Statistical Software, 67(1), 1–48. doi:10.18637/jss.v067.i01.

Bernolet, S., Hartsuiker, R. J., & Pickering, M. J. (2007). Shared syntactic representations in bilinguals: Evidence for the role of word-order repetition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 33(5), 931–949. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.33.5.931

Bernolet, S., & Hartsuiker, R. J. (2018). Syntactic representations in late learners of a second language: a learning trajectory. In D. Millner (Ed.), Bilingual cognition and language: the state of the science across its subfields (pp. 205–224). John Benjamins.

Bock, J. K. (1986). Syntactic persistence in language production. Cognitive Psychology, 18(3), 355–387. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(86)90004-6

Branigan, H.; Gibb, C. (2018). Structural priming. In A. De Groot, & P. Hagoort (Eds.), Research Methods in Psycholinguistics and the Neurobiology of Language (pp. 130-150). Wiley Blackwell.

Craik, F. I., & Lockhart, R. S. (1972). Levels of processing: A framework for memory research. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior, 11(6), 671–684. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(72)80001-X

De Leeuw, J. R. (2015). jsPsych: A JavaScript library for creating behavioral experiments in a web browser. Behavior Research Methods, 47(1), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-014-0458-y

Eberhard, D. M., Simons, G., & Fenning, C. D. (Eds.). Ethnologue: Languages of the World. 25a. ed. Dallas: SIL International, 2023. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com

Felicio, A. R. (2018). Cross-linguistic syntactic priming effects in sentence comprehension: a study with Brazilian Portuguese-Bilinguals [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina.

Gámez, P. B., & Vasilyeva, M. (2019). Shared Syntactic Representations in Balanced Bilinguals: Cross- linguistic Priming with and without Verb Overlap. Language Learning and Development, 16, (1), 89–106. https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2019.1689822

Godfroid, A., & Hopp, H. (Eds.). (2023). The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Psycholinguistics. (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003018872

Grosjean, F. (1989). Neurolinguists, beware! The bilingual is not two monolinguals in one person. Brain and Language, 36, 3-15.

Grosjean, F. (2008). Studying Bilinguals. Oxford University Press.

Grosjean, F. (2010). Bilingual: Life and Reality. Harvard University Press.

Grosjean, F. (2013). Bilingualism: A short introduction. In F. Grosjean, & P. Li. (2013), The Psycholinguistics of Bilingualism (pp. 5-25). Wiley-Blackwell.

Instituto Cervantes (2022). El español en el mundo 2022: Anuario del Instituto Cervantes. Instituto Cervantes. Available in: https://cvc.cervantes.es/lengua/anuario/anuario_22/default.htm

Hartsuiker, R. J., Pickering, M. J., & Veltkamp, E. (2004). Is Syntax Separate or Shared Between Languages? Psychological Science, 15(6), 409–414, 2004. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00693.x

Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world?. The Behavioral and brain sciences, 33(2-3), 61–135. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X0999152X

Henrich, J. P. (2020). The WEIRDest people in the world: how the West became psychologically peculiar and particularly prosperous. (1st. ed.). Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Jaeger, T. F., & Snider, N. E. (2013). Alignment as a consequence of expectation adaptation: Syntactic priming is affected by the prime's prediction error given both prior and recent experience. Cognition, 127(1), 57–83. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2012.10.013

Jiang, N. Conducting Reaction Time Research in Second Language Studies. Routledge, 2012.

Just, M. A., Carpenter, P. A., & Wooley, J. D. (1982). Paradigms and processes in reading comprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 111(2), 228–238. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.111.2.228

Kektsidou, N., & Tsagari, D. (2019). Using DIALANG to track English language learners’ progress over time. Language Testing and Assessment, 8(1), 1-30.

Kidd, E., Tennant, E. & Nitschke, S. (2015). Shared abstract representation of linguistic structure in bilingual sentence comprehension. Psychon Bull Rev 22, 1062–1067. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-014-0775-2

Kroll, J. F., & Navarro-Torres, C. (2018). Bilingualism. In J. Wixted (Ed.), The Stevens’ Handbook of Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience (pp. 245-274). Wiley/Blackwell.

Kroll, J. F., Dussias, P. E., Bogulski, C. A., & Valdes-Kroff, J. (2012). Juggling two languages in one mind: What bilinguals tell us about language processing and its consequences for cognition. In B. Ross (Ed.), The Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Volume 56 (pp. 229-262). Academic Press.

Kroll, J. F., Bobb, S., & Wodniecka, Z. (2006). Language selectivity is the exception, not the rule: Arguments against a fixed locus of language selection in bilingual speech. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 9, 119-135.

Li, P., Legault, J., & Litcofsky, K. A. (2014). Neuroplasticity as a function of second language learning: Anatomical changes in the human brain. Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior, 58, 301–324. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2014.05.001

Loebell, H., & Bock, K. J. (2003). Structural priming across languages. Linguistics, 5, 791–824. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling.2003.026

Muylle, M., Bernolet, S., & Hartsuiker, R. J. (2020). The Role of Case Marking and Word Order in Cross-Linguistic Structural Priming in Late L2 Acquisition. Language Learning, 70, 194-220. https://doi.org/10.1111/lang.12400

Muylle, M., Bernolet, S., & Hartsuiker, R. J. (2021). On the limits of shared syntactic representations: When word order variation blocks priming between an artificial language and Dutch. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 47(9), 1471–1493. https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000997

Paap, K. (2019). The Bilingual Advantage Debate. In J.W. Schwieter & M. Paradis (Eds.), The Handbook of the Neuroscience of Multilingualism (pp. 701-735). John Wiley & Sons. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119387725.ch34

Peal, E., & Lambert, W. E. (1962). The relation of bilingualism to intelligence. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 76(27), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0093840

Rothman, J., et al. (2022). Monolingual comparative normativity in bilingualism research is out of “control”: Arguments and alternatives. Applied Psycholinguistics, 1–14. http://doi.org/10.1017/S0142716422000315

Teixeira, M. (2016). O efeito de priming sintático no processamento de sentenças ativas e passivas do português brasileiro. Dissertação (Mestrado em Letras) – Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre.

Tooley, K. M. (2020). Contrasting mechanistic accounts of the lexical boost. Memory & Cognition, 48, (5), 815–838, 2020. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-020-01019-3

Thothathiri, M., & Snedeler, J. (2008). Give and take: Syntactic priming during spoken language comprehension. Cognition, 108, (1), p. 51–68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2007.12.012

Weber, K., & Indefrey, P. (2009). Syntactic priming in German – English bilinguals during sentence comprehension. NeuroImage, 46, (4), 1164–1172, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.03.040

Wei, H., et al. (2019). Persistent structural priming during online second-language comprehension. Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition, 45(2), 349–359. https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000584