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Cross-linguistic syntactic priming in Korean learners of English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2020

Myeongeun Son Open the ORCID record for Myeongeun Son [Opens in a new window]
Myeongeun Son*
Affiliation:
Michigan State University
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This study investigates whether L2 learners develop and share an abstract syntactic representation between an L1 and L2 with different word orders and, if so, whether one language’s unique syntactic features affect the shared representation. Korean (SOV) and English (SVO) have equivalent dative alternations; however, because Korean allows word-order scrambling, several dative structures are available in Korean that do not have English counterparts. In this study’s cross-linguistic syntactic priming experiment, intermediate and advanced Korean learners of English described pictures in English after reading various types of Korean dative sentences. The study found evidence of cross-linguistic syntactic priming between Korean and English, regardless of L2 proficiency, but only when prime and target structures shared identical functional assignments, information structures, and order of thematic roles. These results suggest that, within limits created by language-specific features, L2 learners can develop and share abstract representations between two languages with different word orders.

Keywords

cross-linguistic syntactic primingword ordersyntactic variationsproficiency
Type
Original Article
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 41 , Issue 5 , September 2020 , pp. 1223 - 1247
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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