Robert J. Hartsuiker

Is Syntax Separate or Shared Between Languages? Cross-Linguistic Syntactic Priming in Spanish-English Bilinguals

Much research in bilingualism has addressed the question of the extent to which lexical information is shared between languages. The present study investigated whether syntactic information is shared by testing if syntactic priming occurs between languages. Spanish-English bilingual participants described cards to each other in a dialogue game. We found that a participant who had just heard a sentence in Spanish tended to use the same type of sentence when describing the next card in English. In particular, English passives were considerably more common following a Spanish passive than otherwise. We use the results to extend current models of the representation of grammatical information to bilinguals.

Word order priming in written and spoken sentence production

An experiment is reported that showed priming of the word order of auxiliary verb and past participle in Dutch subordinate clauses, both in speaking and in writing. Participants completed sentence fragments to full sentences. Prime sentence fragments were constrained so as to be completed with only one possible word order. Target sentence fragments, presented immediately after the prime fragments, could be completed with the same word order as that of the prime and an alternative order with the two words exchanged. Significant priming effects were obtained, so that the same word orders tended to be used in prime and target. We interpret this as evidence for a distinct process of constituent structure linearization during sentence production, which serves to ensure the fluency of speech and writing.

Visual Word Recognition by Bilinguals in a Sentence Context: Evidence for Nonselective Lexical Access

Recent research on bilingualism has shown that lexical access in visual word recognition by bilinguals is not selective with respect to language. In the present study, the authors investigated language-independent lexical access in bilinguals reading sentences, which constitutes a strong unilingual linguistic context. In the first experiment, Dutch-English bilinguals performing a 2nd language (L2) lexical decision task were faster to recognize identical and nonidentical cognate words (e.g., banaan-banana) presented in isolation than control words. A second experiment replicated this effect when the same set of cognates was presented as the final words of low-constraint sentences. In a third experiment that used eyetracking, the authors showed that early target reading time measures also yield cognate facilitation but only for identical cognates. These results suggest that a sentence context may influence, but does not nullify, cross-lingual lexical interactions during early visual word recognition by bilinguals.

Does bilingualism change native-language reading? Cognate effects in a sentence context.

Becoming a bilingual can change a persons cognitive functioning and language processing in a number of ways. This study focused on how knowledge of a second language influences how people read sentences written in their native language. We used the cognate-facilitation effect as a marker of cross-lingual activations in both languages. Cognates (e.g., Dutch-English schip [ship]) and controls were presented in a sentence context, and eye movements were monitored. Results showed faster reading times for cognates than for controls. Thus, this study shows that one of peoples most automated skills, reading in ones native language, is changed by the knowledge of a second language.

Syntactic Persistence in Dutch

Three experiments are reported that showed effects of “structure priming,” the tendency to repeat syntactic structure across successive sentences. These effects were demonstrated in a previously untested language, Dutch. All experiments studied spoken sentence production. Importantly, pre-experimental baselines were measured for all target structures in order to assess possible effects of frequency on the magnitude of priming effect. We obtained priming with dative sentences, including datives with medially placed prepositional phrases, a sentence type not tested before. In one experiment we obtained priming effects with passives, including passives with sentence-final verbs, which also have never been tested before. However, we failed to obtain priming effects with active transitives. A comparison with the baseline data suggested that priming is not related to baseline frequency. Further, the results allowed us to draw an empirical generalization: Structure priming is a relatively long-term event, lasting at least several trials. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Shared syntactic representations in bilinguals: Evidence for the role of word-order repetition

Studies on syntactic priming strongly suggest that bilinguals can store a single integrated representation of constructions that are similar in both languages (e.g., Spanish and English passives; R. J. Hartsuiker, M. J. Pickering, & E. Veltkamp, 2004). However, they may store 2 separate representations of constructions that involve different word orders (e.g., German and English passives; H. Loebell & K. Bock, 2003). In 5 experiments, the authors investigated within--and between--languages priming of Dutch, English, and German relative clauses. The authors found priming within Dutch (Experiment 1) and within English as a 2nd language (Experiments 2 and 4). An important finding is that priming occurred from Dutch to German (Experiment 5), which both have verb-final relative clauses; but it did not occur between Dutch and English (Experiments 3 and 4), which differ in relative-clause word order. The results suggest that word-order repetition is needed for the construction of integrated syntactic representations.

One or More Labels on the Bottles? Notional Concord in Dutch and French

Three experiments, the first two in Dutch and the other in French, in which subject-verb agreement errors were induced, are reported. We investigated the effects of the number of tokens in the conceptual representation of the to-be-uttered subject noun phrase (i.e. distributivity). Previous studies have failed to show an effect of this variable in English (Bock & Miller, 1991; Vigliocco, Butterworth, & Garrett, in press). However, Vigliocco, Butterworth and Semenza (1995) and Vigliocco et al. (in press) did find an effect of distributivity in Italian and Spanish. In an attempt to account for this difference across languages, three structural differences between English and Spanish/Italian have been considered: (1) richness of verbal morphology; (2) possibility of post-verbal subjects; (3) possibility of null subjects. In the present study, we tested French and Dutch, which share some but not all of these properties with Italian and Spanish. In both languages, a distributivity effect was obtained, a result...

Priming Word Order in Sentence Production

When producing a sentence, the speaker needs to place words in linear order. We hypothesized the existence of a linearization process, which imposes order on a constituent structure. This structure is assumed to be specified with respect to hierarchial relations between constituents but not with respect to word order. We tested this hypothesis in a primed picture description experiment. Speakers of Dutch repeated prime sentences and described target pictures. Word order of prime sentences was manipulated (e.g. “On the table is a ball” vs. “A ball is on the table”). Both alternatives could be used in the description of unrelated target pictures. In support of our hypothesis, word order was “persistent”: Speakers were more likely to use a given word order, when the prime sentence had that same word order. We argue that our results support the notion of a linearization process and reject the alternative explanation that the results should be attributed to persistent selection of a fully specified syntactic frame.

Semantic and translation priming from a first language to a second and back: Making sense of the findings

The present study investigated cross-language priming effects with unique noncognate translation pairs. Unbalanced Dutch (first language [L1])-English (second language [L2]) bilinguals performed a lexical decision task in a masked priming paradigm. The results of two experiments showed significant translation priming from L1 to L2 (meisje-GIRL) and from L2 to L1 (girl-MEISJE), using two different stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) (250 and 100 msec). Although translation priming from L1 to L2 was significantly stronger than priming from L2 to L1, the latter was significant as well. Two further experiments with the same word targets showed significant cross-language semantic priming in both directions ( jongen [boy]-GIRL; boy-MEISJE [GIRL]) and for both SOAs. These data suggest that L1 and L2 are represented by means of a similar lexico-semantic architecture in which L2 words are also able to rapidly activate semantic information, although to a lesser extent than L1 words are able to. This is consistent with models assuming quantitative rather than qualitative differences between L1 and L2 representations.

Morphophonological influences on the construction of subject- verb agreement

In three experiments, we investigated whether the production of subject-verb number agreement is affected by the phonological realization of grammatical information. Speakers repeated and completed German or Dutch noun phrases along the lines ofThe position against the demonstrations. We varied the number of the subject noun (position) and the local noun (demonstrations), as well as the number ambiguity of the subject noun’s determiner and the case ambiguity of the local noun phrase. Sentence completions more often contained a verb of the wrong number if the subject and the local nouns mismatched in number than if they matched. Experiments 1 and 2, in German, showed a stronger number mismatch effect if the local noun phrase was ambiguous between the nominative and the accusative cases. Experiment 3, in Dutch, showed a stronger mismatch effect if the subject noun’s determiner was ambiguous in number. We conclude that morphophonological factors affect the implementation of agreement during grammatical encoding.