Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T19:36:27.388Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Processing verb argument structure across languages: Evidence for shared representations in the bilingual lexicon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2007

ANGELIKI SALAMOURA  and
JOHN N. WILLIAMS
ANGELIKI SALAMOURA
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
JOHN N. WILLIAMS
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Although the organization of first language (L1) and second language (L2) lexicosemantic information has been extensively studied in the bilingual literature, little evidence exists concerning how syntactic information associated with words is represented across languages. The present study examines the shared or independent nature of the representation of verb argument structure in the bilingual mental lexicon and the contribution of constituent order and thematic role information in these representations. In three production tasks, Greek (L1) advanced learners of English (L2) generated an L1 prime structure (Experiment 1: prepositional object [PO] and double object [DO] structures; Experiment 2: PO, DO, and intransitive structures; Experiment 3: PO, DO, locative, and “provide (someone) with (something)” structures) before completing an L2 target structure (PO or DO only). Experiment 1 showed L1-to-L2 syntactic priming; participants tended to reuse L1 structure when producing L2 utterances. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that this tendency was contingent on the combination of both syntactic structure and thematic roles up to the first postverbal argument. Based on these findings, we outline a model of shared representations of syntactic and thematic information for L1 and L2 verbs in the bilingual lexicon.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , October 2007 , pp. 627 - 660
Copyright
2007 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bachman L. F., & Palmer A. S.1989. The construct validation of self-ratings of communicative language ability. Language Testing, 6, 14– 29.Google Scholar
Bock J. K.1986. Syntactic persistence in language production. Cognitive Psychology, 18, 355– 387.Google Scholar
Bock K., & Loebell H.1990. Framing sentences. Cognition, 35, 1– 39.Google Scholar
Branigan H. P., Pickering M. J., & Cleland A. A.1999. Syntactic priming in written production: Evidence for rapid decay. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 6, 635– 640.Google Scholar
Branigan H. P., Pickering M. J., & Cleland A. A.2000. Syntactic co-ordination in dialogue. Cognition, 75, B13– B25.Google Scholar
Branigan H. P., Pickering M. J., Stewart A. J., & McLean J. F.2000. Syntactic priming in spoken production: Linguistic and temporal interference. Memory & Cognition, 28, 1297– 1302.Google Scholar
Chen H. C., & Ng N. L.1989. Semantic facilitation and translation priming effects in Chinese–English bilinguals. Memory & Cognition, 17, 454– 462.Google Scholar
Cleland A. A., & Pickering M. J.2003. The use of lexical and syntactic information in language production: Evidence from the priming of noun-phrase structure. Journal of Memory and Language, 49, 214– 230.Google Scholar
Corley M. M. B., & Scheepers C.2002. Syntactic priming in English sentence production: Categorical and latency evidence from an Internet-based study. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 9, 126– 131.Google Scholar
Desmet T., & Declercq M.2006. Cross-linguistic priming of syntactic hierarchical configuration information. Journal of Memory and Language, 54, 610– 632.Google Scholar
Dijkstra T., & van Heuven W. J. B.2002. The architecture of the bilingual word recognition system: From identification to decision. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 5, 175– 197.Google Scholar
Fox Tree J. E., & Meijer P. J. A.1999. Building syntactic structure in speaking. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 28, 71– 92.Google Scholar
Francis W. F.2005. Bilingual semantic and conceptual representation. In J. F. Kroll & A. M. B. de Groot (Eds.), Handbook of bilingualism: Psycholinguistic approaches (pp. 251– 267). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gollan T. H., Forster K. I., & Frost R.1997. Translation priming with different scripts: Masked priming with cognates and noncognates in Hebrew–English bilinguals. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition, 23, 1122– 1139.Google Scholar
Hare M. L., & Goldberg A. E.1999. Structural priming: Purely syntactic? In S. C. Stoness (Ed.), Proceedings of the 21st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 208– 211). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Hartsuiker R. J., Pickering M. J., & Veltkamp E.2004. Is syntax separate or shared between languages? Cross-linguistic syntactic priming in Spanish–English bilinguals. Psychological Science, 15, 409– 414.Google Scholar
Hartsuiker R. J., & Westenberg C.2000. Word order priming in written and spoken sentence production. Cognition, 75, B27– B39.Google Scholar
Heydel M., & Murray W. S.1997. Conceptual form and the basis of sentence priming: Cross-linguistic evidence. Paper presented at CUNY 1997, Santa Monica, CA.
Heydel M., & Murray W. S.2000. Conceptual effects in sentence priming: A cross-linguistic perspective. In V. Lombardo (Ed.), Cross-linguistic perspectives on language processing (pp. 227– 254). Dordrecht/London: Kluwer Academic.
Huttenlocher J., Vasilyeva M., & Shimpi P.2004. Syntactic priming in young children. Journal of Memory and Language, 50, 182– 195.Google Scholar
Jackendoff R.1983. Semantics and cognition. Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press.
Jackendoff R.1987. The status of thematic relations in linguistic theory. Linguistic Inquiry, 18, 369– 411.Google Scholar
Jiang N.1999. Testing processing explanations for the assymetry in masked cross-language priming. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 2, 59– 75.Google Scholar
Kempen G., & Hoenkamp E.1987. An incremental procedural grammar for sentence formulation. Cognitive Science, 11, 201– 258.Google Scholar
Kroll J. F., & Stewart E.1994. Category interference in translation and picture naming: Evidence for asymmetric connections between bilingual memory representations. Journal of Memory and Language, 33, 149– 174.Google Scholar
La Heij W.2005. Selection processes in monolingual and bilingual lexical access. In J. F. Kroll & A. M. B. de Groot (Eds.), Handbook of bilingualism: Psycholinguistic approaches (pp. 289– 307). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lascaratou C.1994. Performace principles in word order variation. Athens, Greece: University of Athens.
Leonard L. B., Miller C. A., Deevy P., Rauf L., Gerber E., & Charest M.2002. Production operations and the use of nonfinite verbs by children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, 45, 744– 758.Google Scholar
Levelt W. J. M.1989. Speaking: From intention to articulation. Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press.
Levelt W. J. M., Roelofs A., & Meyer A. S.1999. A theory of lexical access in speech production. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22, 1– 75.Google Scholar
Levin B.1993. English verb classes and alternations: A preliminary investigation. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press.
Loebell H., & Bock K.2003. Structural priming across languages. Linguistics, 41, 791– 824.Google Scholar
MacWhinney B.1997. Second language acquisition and the competition model. In J. F. Kroll (Ed.), Tutorials in bilingualism: Psycholinguistic perspectives (pp. 113– 142). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Meijer P. J. A., & Fox-Tree J. E.2003. Building syntactic structures in speaking: A bilingual exploration. Experimental Psychology, 50, 184– 195.Google Scholar
Monsell S., Matthews G. H., & Miller D. C.1992. Repetition of lexicalization across languages: A further test of the locus of priming. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 44A, 763– 783.Google Scholar
Myers-Scotton C., & Jake J. L.1995. Matching lemmas in a bilingual competence and production model. Linguistics, 33, 981– 1024.Google Scholar
Pfaff C. W.1979. Constraints on language mixing: Intrasentential code-switching and borrowing in Spanish/English. Language, 55, 291– 318.Google Scholar
Pickering M. J., & Branigan H. P.1998. The representation of verbs: Evidence from syntactic priming in language production. Journal of Memory and Language, 39, 633– 651.Google Scholar
Pickering M. J., Branigan H. P., & McLean J. F.2002. Constituent structure is formulated in one stage. Journal of Memory and Language, 46, 586– 605.Google Scholar
Poplack S.1980. Sometimes I'll start a sentence in English and Y TERMINO EN ESPANOL: Towards a typology of code-switching. Linguistics, 18, 581– 618.Google Scholar
Potter M. C., & Lombardi L.1998. Syntactic priming in immediate recall of sentences. Journal of Memory and Language, 38, 265– 282.Google Scholar
Poulisse N.1999. Slips of the tongue: Speech errors in first and second language production. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Roelofs A.1992. A spreading-activation theory of lemma retrieval in speaking. Cognition, 42, 107– 142.Google Scholar
Roelofs A.1993. Testing a non-decompositional theory of lemma retrieval in speaking: Retrieval of verbs. Cognition, 47, 59– 87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salamoura A.2004. The representation of syntactic information in the bilingual lexicon. PhD Dissertation, University of Cambridge.
Scheepers C.2003. Syntactic priming of relative clause attachments: Persistence of structural configuration in sentence production. Cognition, 89, 179– 205.Google Scholar
Schoonbaert S., Hartsuiker R. J., & Pickering M. J.(in press). The representation of lexical and syntactic information in bilinguals: Evidence from syntactic priming. Journal of Memory and Language.
Sebastián-Gallés N., & Bosch L.2005. Phonology and bilingualism. In J. F. Kroll & A. M. B. de Groot (Eds.), Handbook of bilingualism: Psycholinguistic approaches (pp. 68– 87). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Selinger H.1989. Semantic transfer constraints on the production of English passives by Hebrew–English bilinguals. In M. Raupach (Ed.), Transfer in language production (pp. 210– 234). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Smith M., & Wheeldon L.2001. Syntactic priming in spoken sentence production: An online study. Cognition, 78, 123– 164.Google Scholar
Tanenhaus M. K., & Carlson G. N.1989. Lexical structure and language comprehension. In W. Marslen-Wilson (Ed.), Lexical representation and process (pp. 529– 561). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Trévise A.1986. Is it transferable, topicalization? In M. Sharwood Smith (Ed.), Crosslinguistic influence in second language acquisition (pp. 186– 206). New York/Oxford: Pergamon Institute of English.
Wasow T.1997. Remarks on grammatical weight. Language Variation and Change, 9, 81– 105.Google Scholar
Wheeldon L. R., & Monsell S.1992. The locus of repetition priming of spoken word production. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 44A, 723– 761.Google Scholar