Title choices: Can you prime syntactic trees without leaves? Or: Abstract and lexical knowledge in language production. Or: How abstract is grammar?
Evidence from structural priming in language production.
Giulia Bencini
New York University
Kathryn Bock
Adele Goldberg
University of Illinois
Address correspondence to:
Giulia Bencini gb62@nyu.edu
New York University
6 Washington Place, Room 862
NY, NY 10003
Phone: (212) 998-7862
Fax: (212) 995-4349

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Abstract
Structural priming provides some of the strongest evidence for the existence of psycholinguistic processes in language production that build the forms of sentences independently of individual words and the meanings that the
3 sentences convey. In structural priming, the basic finding is that people tend to repeat the structure of a sentence they have previously said in the description of an immediately following unrelated picture. The results of the experiment reported here suggest that structural priming operates at a level of generalization that is less abstract than previously assumed. The results provide support for the existence of intermediate generalizations in language production that combine abstract schematic knowledge with more lexically specific knowledge.
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The relationship between lexically-specific and more abstract knowledge
4 is a central concern of psycholinguistics. Structural priming provides a useful tool to investigate how lexical and abstract knowledge interact in language production. In structural priming, the basic finding is that people tend to re-use the structure of a sentence they have previously produced. This has been established experimentally in a variety of paradigms including picture description (Bock, 1986; Bock & Loebell, 1990; Bock, Loebell & Morey, 1992), written sentence production (Pickering & Branigan, 1998), immediate sentence recall (Potter & Lombardi, 1998) and question answering (Levelt and Kelter,
1982).
A typical sequence of events in the picture description paradigm is illustrated in Figure 1. Under the guise of a running recognition memory experiment, participants are exposed to a long sequence of pictures and auditorily presented sentences. On each priming trial participants first hear a priming sentence such as: The new graduate was hired by the software company
(passive). They repeat the sentence out loud and decide whether they have said this sentence before. They then see and describe a pictured event which can be described with either one of the targeted structural alternatives. The tendency to match the overall structure of the sentence prime in their subsequent picture description results in it being more likely for these participants to produce a passive description such as: The mailman is being chased by an angry poodle
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(passive). On the same priming trial another group of participants hears and repeats the sentence The new graduate left the software company (active). These
5 participants will be more likely to produce an active description such as The poodle is chasing the mailman.
The evidence for abstract syntactic knowledge in language production comes from studies that found that structural priming can occur when the prime and the target do not overlap in content words and function words (Bock, 1986,
1989). Other studies have also found that structural priming can occur between sentences that differ in thematic roles (Bock & Loebell, 1990). Together these findings suggest that the language production system recognizes abstractions over classes of lexical items and aspects of sentence meaning (Bock, 1986, 1989;
Bock & Loebell, 1990, Bock et al. 1992). One attractive hypothesis is that the generalizations are at the level of traditional linguistic constituent structure, or syntactic trees. Implicit in this account is the assumption of linguistic uniformity, according to which the linguistic units upon which structural priming operates are uniformly abstract and reflect the same degree of generalization across different sentence types. The assumption of uniformity has its equivalent in prominent linguistic theories in the generative tradition such as Government and
Binding and Minimalism (Culicover, 1997).
Along with evidence for abstraction in structural priming, there is also evidence for the role of more specific, lexical knowledge. Pickering and Branigan
(1998) found that priming was greatly enhanced when there was overlap in the
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4/16/20 open-class words (verbs) between prime and target sentences. However, the magnitude of priming was not affected by overlap is the more specific aspects of
6 verb morphology such as number and tense.
Whereas lexical overlap in content words seems to affect priming, some studies suggest that overlap in closed-class words does not. Bock (1989) found that prepositional dative primes containing for (e.g. The secretary baked a cake for her boss) were equally good as primes containing to (e.g. The secretary took a cake to her boss) in eliciting prepositional dative descriptions with to (e.g. The girl is giving a flower to her teacher). Chang, Bock and Goldberg (submitted) found that theme-locative primes containing a variety prepositions such as over, into, onto, around (e.g. The performer packed all his belongings into the suitcase) primed theme-locative sentences with different prepositions (e.g. The butcher wrapped newspaper around the fish) as effectively as locative-theme sentences
(which only contain the preposition with; e.g. The performer packed the suitcase with his belongings) primed other locative-theme sentences (e.g. (e.g. The butcher wrapped the fish with newspaper).
At first glance, these studies might suggest that lexical overlap of content and function words across prime and target differentially affects structural priming. This is not unexpected, since function and content words have been found to behave differently in a variety of psycholinguistic situations ([but see
King and Kutas 199X for an argument that the distinction is really a cline based on frequency]add references). What is puzzling however is the fact that function
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4/16/20 words, otherwise considered to be key components of grammar, appear to have
7 less of an effect on a phenomenon that seems to be exquisitely adept at probing the workings of the grammatical engine. Before attempting to solve this paradox, we return to the issue of linguistic uniformity and its impact on priming research.
Uniformity provides a powerful inferencing tool to extrapolate the findings from one set of constructions to others. For example if it is found that lexical overlap across prime and target does not affect priming with dative constructions, uniformity suggests that lexical overlap will not affect priming with transitives.
Whereas uniformity seems to be implicitly accepted in the priming literature (e.g. Pickering and Branigan, 2000; Hartsuiker and Kolk 1998), linguistic theories differ as to whether they accept uniformity as a working hypothesis. In particular, in recent years a number of frameworks have been developed as alternatives to classical generative grammar that do not assume linguistic uniformity, such as Construction Grammar, Head Phrase Structure
Grammar and Cognitive Grammar. Although these approaches differ in many respects, by rejecting the assumption of linguistic uniformity and a strict division between syntax and the lexicon, they allow for (and predict) the existence of intermediate generalizations: linguistic entities that combine abstract schematic knowledge with more concrete and lexically specified knowledge. An example of this is the way-construction exemplified by the sentence The climber scraped her
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4/16/20 way to the top of the mountain. This construction is associated with a special semantic
8 interpretation involving motion despite real or metaphorical difficulties. The construction has transitive syntax with an oblique path phrase and also contains the specific morpheme way and a possessive determiner.
In this study we explore the consequences of abandoning the assumption of linguistic uniformity in structural priming. We contrast the Maximal
Abstraction Hypothesis with the hypothesis derived from Construction
Grammar and related theories, that different degrees of abstraction may apply to different constructions. This study is thus an exploration into the possible existence of intermediate generalizations in language production. We will refer to this hypothesis as the Intermediate Generalization Hypothesis.
Rejection of uniformity implies the caveat that one should be careful in drawing inferences from studies of priming involving one type of construction
(e.g. datives) to other constructions (e.g. transitives). With this in mind, the existing data do not allow for a solution of the paradox that lexical overlap in content words affects priming but overlap in function words does not. As will be reviewed shortly, this is because the studies that found structural repetition without overlap in function did not uncontroversially rule out alternative
(semantic) sources of the priming effect. Conversely, studies that found priming without overlap in semantics (thus suggesting a syntactic locus of the effect) are amenable to an explanation based on the contribution of the function words.
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Although Bock’s (1989) finding that for-datives were equally good primes
9 for to-datives as to-dative sentences themselves is consistent with a structural account of priming, which locates the effect is in the repetition of the structural configuration [NP
VP
[V NP
PP
[P NP]]], it is also possible that these results are in part the result of similar sequences of event structures. The semantic role traditionally associated with to-datives (recipient) and the semantic role associated with for-datives (beneficiary) are often subsumed under the semantic category of goal in the linguistic literature (Jackendoff 1972 1983; Lakoff and
Johnson 1980) and beneficiaries have been argued to be metaphorical extensions of recipients at least in the ditransitive construction (Goldberg 1995). If the event roles in to- and for-datives are similar, then Bock’s (1989) results could equally be explained by a tendency for speakers to repeat the previously used sequence of event roles Agent Patient Goal.
A more stringent test that uncontroversially ruled out the contribution of similar event roles was provided by Bock and Loebell (1990, Experiment 2.).
They found that by-passives and intransitive locatives are equally good primes for passive descriptions relative to an active control. Whereas passives and intransitive locatives share the same surface constituent structure i , their semantic roles are considered to be distinct in all current semantic theories. In a passive sentence like The 747 was alerted by the control tower, control tower is the agent of the action. In the locative sentence with the same structure The 747 was
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4/16/20 landing by the control tower control tower plays the role of location. These results suggest that meaning is not necessary for priming to occur.
However, this study did not directly rule out the possible contribution of the function word by. Like the example above, all of the intransitive locative
10 primes in the Bock and Loebell study shared with the passive the presence of the auxiliary be and the preposition by, thus allowing for a lexical as opposed to a syntactic explanation for the priming effect (Bock and Loebell, 1990, Hartsuiker and Kolk, 1998; Hare and Goldberg, 1999). Another experiment was designed to test this possibility [describe “a book to study” vs “a book to Stella” experiment, also in Bock and Loebell 1990].
The passive priming results of Bock and Loebell Experiment 2 stand to date the strongest piece of evidence for the separability of syntax and semantics in normal language production. By assuming linguistic uniformity, Bock and
Loebell extrapolated from the results of Bock (1989) and from the to study/_to
Stella_ experiment just described to to conclude that their results were not due to the overlap in the preposition by. This leads to what might call the Maximal
Abstraction Hypothesis (MAH): the suggestion that there are processes operating in language production that are maximally abstract, in the sense that they are not sensitive to either lexical and semantic overlap.
The present study provides a more stringent test of the MAH. Specifically, it was designed to determine whether the priming of by-passives found with intransitive locatives containing by (by-locatives) is at least in part due to the
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4/16/20 overlap in function words. In addition to the priming conditions used by Bock
11 and Loebell (1990, Experiment 2): active, by-passive, by-locative; a fourth condition was included: intransitive locatives that do not contain by (non-bylocatives) such as The 747 was landing near the control tower.
If, as assumed by MAH, priming is uniformly abstract and function words are not part of the syntactic frame, intransitive locatives that do not contain the preposition by should be equally good primes for passive sentences as intransitive locatives primes containing by. This can be contrasted with the predictions of IGH[what is IGH?]. Although IGH doesn’t a priori predict differences between intransitive locatives with and without by, finding such differences would be more consistent with IGH, because it in general predicts the existence of such interactions between lexical and abstract knowledge.
In addition to the overlap in prepositions, the overlap in auxiliary morphology was also explored. Recall that the intransitive locative primes used by Bock and Loebell (1990) as well as sharing the preposition by with the passive also overlapped in the presence of the auxiliary (which was always a past form of the verb be, i.e. either was or were.)
An additional factor was introduced by having half of the by-locative and non-by-locative items contain an auxiliary (be, have, will, won’t) and half of them contain a modal (would, could, should, shouldn’t). Therefore the intransitive by-locative condition in the current experiment differed from the intransitive locative condition used in Bock and Loebell in that the priming
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4/16/20 sentences contained a variety of auxiliaries and modals, thus allowing the effect
12 of passive morphology on the priming of by-passives to be evaluated.
The combination of the manipulation of the preposition (by vs. non-by) together with the manipulation of verbal morphology makes it possible to explore the degree of abstractness involved in the priming of passive structures without relying on inferences from priming results with different structures such as datives.
Experiment: Priming of by passives with locatives not containing ‘by’
Method
Participants. One-hundred-and-two students from the University of
Illinois in return for their participation received $10 payment or partial credit for introductory courses in psychology or education. Of those tested, 96 (30 males and 66 females) were included in the analyses. The remaining 6 were excluded either because they were not native speakers of English (2) because they were considerably older than the typical undergraduate population (1) or because of equipment failure (3). An additional 12 students from New York University were tested. In return for their participation, they received partial credit for an introductory course in psychology. The total number of participants whose data were included in the analyses was 108.
Materials. The experimental materials consisted of 32 pictures and 32 sets of spoken sentence primes. The pictures were selected to elicit simple active
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4/16/20 transitive descriptions (e.g. A wrecking ball is destroying a building) and full
13 passive descriptions (e.g. A building is being destroyed by a wrecking ball). The pictures were line drawings that depicted events involving two participants
(typically an inanimate or non-human agent or initiator of the action (the wrecking ball in the example above) and an animate or inanimate patient or undergoer of the action (the building in the example). Fifteen of the experimental pictures (47%) had the agent on the left and fifteen had the agent of on the right
(47%). Two pictures were neutral as to the orientation of the agent relative to the patient on the horizontal plane (in one picture the agent was above the patient, another picture had two agents one to the left and one to the right of the patient).
All 32 experimental pictures were previously normed by asking students (none of whom participated in the experiment) to describe a long list of assorted pictures presented on the computer screen. Participants in the norming study typed in their descriptions on the computer keyboard.
The median use of a transitive sentence (active or passive) for the experimental pictures was 74%. The range between 29% and 100%. Within the transitive descriptions, the mean proportion of passives and actives were 20% and 53%.
The sentence primes were 32 sets of transitive sentences in each one of the four priming conditions: Full passive (The woman was stung by the jellyfish), active (The woman caught the jellyfish), locative with a by-phrase (The woman won't swim by the jellyfish) and a locative with a non by-phrase (The woman
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4/16/20 14 won't swim through the jellyfish). The active sentences had the structure: subject noun phrase (NP) followed by a verb phrase (VP) followed by an object NP. The full passive, the intransitive locative containing by (by-locative) and intransitive locative with a preposition that wasn’t by (non-by-locatives) all had the following sentence structure: subject NP followed by a VP followed by a prepositional phrase (PP) containing an NP. A list of all the priming sentences and target pictures is given in the Appendix.
In the active prime, the agent of the action appeared in the NP. The VP contained a verb in the active voice (caught) followed by the direct object NP containing the patient (the jellyfish). In the corresponding passive primes, the patient appeared in the subject NP (identical to the subject of the corresponding active, The woman), the VP contained a verb in the passive form (was stung), and the agent of the action appeared in the PP headed by the preposition by (by the jellyfish). In the by-locatives, the agent of the action appeared in the subject
NP (identical to the subject in the corresponding active and passive sentences,
The woman), the VP contained either an auxiliary (be, have, do, will) or a modal
(can, could, should, might, would) and an intransitive verb (won’t swim), the PP contained the locative preposition by followed by the object NP (by the jellyfish).
The semantic role of the noun (jellyfish) was that of location.
In the non-by-locative primes, the subject NP, the VP and the locative PP were identical to their by-locative counterparts except for the presence of a different preposition in the locative PP (e.g. The woman won’t swim through the
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4/16/20 jellyfish). In the by-locative and non-by-locative conditions half (16) of the sentence primes contained an auxiliary (e.g. was, will) and the other half
15 contained a modal (e.g. should, could) Three (20%) of the auxiliaries and three
(20%) of the modals were negatives (e.g. didn’t, couldn’t). For each set of priming sentences the by-locative and non-by-locative primes always contained identical auxiliaries or modals. (e.g. the woman won’t swim by the jellyfish; the woman won’t swim through the jellyfish).
Each set of priming sentences was paired with one of the experimental pictures to form a priming item. The pairings were subject to the general constraint that there be no obvious thematic, lexical or phonological overlap between the sentence primes and the expected picture descriptions.
In addition to the experimental items 94 pictures and 108 sentences served as fillers. The pictures depicted a variety of events involving 1 or more participants (e.g. boy shivering in the cold; 3 people barbecuing). Care was taken to not select filler pictures that elicited transitive (active or passive) descriptions.
The pictures were typically described with intransitive or sentences (e.g. A boy shivering in the cold; A girl sitting on a skate-board; A boy running toward a girl; People barbecuing). The filler sentences instantiated a wide variety of constructions such as reflexives (The man looked at himself in the mirror), causatives
(The freezing rain made the streets slippery), clefts (It was an old lady who discovered
the weapon), existentials (There is a red spot on Jupiter), resultatives (The girl laughed
herself silly), ditransitives (The singer gave the piano player a wave). None of the filler
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4/16/20 sentences were passives. Among the fillers there were 4 pictures and 4 sets of
16 priming sentences of a sentence structure that was different from the one under investigation. There were two additional sets of sentences also unrelated to the focus of this study that appeared at the end of the presentation lists, after the occurrence of the last priming trial. The inclusion of all of these materials was for reasons unrelated to this study, and for the purposes of this experiment these additional items were treated as fillers.
All of the sentence materials were digitally recorded by a college age female speaker of North American English with the SoundEdit 16 software package at a sampling rate of 22 Hz. The sentences were checked for comprehensibility, fluency, naturalness of intonation and uniformity. Recordings that did not meet these criteria were re-recorded and checked till they were deemed satisfactory. The auditory stimuli from the computer were played through a Realistic SA-10 solid state amplifier and a Realistic 40-1996B speaker.
The experimental materials and filler items formed 4 presentation lists consisting of 426 items each. Each list contained the 32 experimental items, 94 filler pictures and 96 filler sentences. The 94 filler pictures and 94 out of the 96 filler sentences were repeated once in the course of the presentation list. Of the repeated fillers 10% of the repetitions occurred in the first quarter of the list, 33% in the second, 25% in the third, and 32% in the fourth. The fillers were arranged so that the priming trails were separated by 11 filler trials and there were no more than 3 consecutive picture or sentence trials. Other than these constraints
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4/16/20 the arrangement of the fillers was random. The order of the fillers was the same
17 across presentation lists.
The assignment of priming sentences to lists was counterbalanced so that every list contained only one sentence from each of the 32 sets of primes. Every list contained an equal number of sentence primes (8) in each one of the main priming conditions (active, passive, by-locative and non-by-locative). Within the
8 locative and non-by-locative primes there were an equal number of sentences in the conditions obtained by crossing the nested factors of auxiliary type
(auxiliary, modal) and preposition type (long, short). So there were 2 by-locative sentences with auxiliaries and long prepositions, 2 with auxiliaries and short prepositions, etc. This was also the case for non the non-by-locative primes. The order of the priming trials was the same across lists.
Procedure. Participants were run individually. They were informed that they were about to participate in a recognition memory experiment during which they would be presented with a long list of pictures and sentences. They were told that their memory would be tested by having them decide whether each item had occurred earlier in the list. On the pretext of aiding their memory for the materials, they were also told that they should repeat each sentence aloud and describe what was happening in each picture. The instructions for the picture descriptions were simply to use one full sentence and not to use pronouns. Two examples were given (a picture and a sentence). Following the instructions participants went through a practice list containing 3 sentences and 4
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4/16/20 pictures. One of the pictures was repeated during practice. Participants were
18 informed that the experimental session would last about 70 minutes and that they could take breaks at any time. There were no scheduled breaks during the experiment. The experimenter was present in the testing room during the entire experiment, occupying a chair in a corner of the room.
The computer monitor was visible to the experimenter, but the participant could not see the experimenter while facing the monitor. Participants were told that the experimenter had available a written list of the sentences in case they accidentally missed or misheard one.
The presentation of the events in the experiment was controlled by the
Psyscope software package (J. D. Cohen, MacWhinney, Flatt, & Provost, 1993) running on a Macintosh Quadra 650 (for the Illinois participants) or a Macintosh
Imac (for the New York University participants). Participants advanced through the trials by way of a Psyscope button box. They pressed the green button on the button box to start the trials. At the beginning of a picture trial the word
“describe” appeared on the screen. The prompt stayed on the screen until the participant depressed the yellow button, which in turn caused the picture to be displayed. The picture remained on the screen till the description was completed and the button was released. Then the question “have you seen this picture before?” appeared. The trial ended when the participant pressed the green
(“yes”) or red (“no”) button on the button box. On sentence trials the message
“listen and repeat” appeared on the screen for 500 ms. Then an auditory sentence
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4/16/20 was played. At the offset of the sentence the word “repeat” was displayed. This
19 was a cue for the participant to depress the yellow button on the button box
(ostensibly to start audio recording). The “repeat” prompt stayed on the screen till the repetition was completed and the button was released. Then the question
“have you said this sentence before?” appeared. The trial ended when the participant made a “yes” or “no” response on the button box. Participants’ repetitions of the sentences and picture descriptions were recorded either using a
Shure SM10A headworn microphone connected to Applied Research and
Technology Tube preamplifier and a DAT tape recorder (for the Illinois participants) or a RadioShack Portable Cassette Recorder (for the New York
University participants).
Design. Every participant received 32 different experimental pictures, 8 in each of the four main cells of the design defined by the type of prime (active, passive, by-locative and non-by-locative). There was an additional factor that was nested within the by-locative and non-by-locative prime types. This was type of auxiliary (auxiliary, modal). Each participant received 4 pictures in the two cells defined by this additional factor (by-locative-auxiliary, by-locative- modal, non-by-locative-auxiliary, non-by-locative-modal).
Scoring. Participants’ repetitions of the priming sentences and descriptions of the target pictures were transcribed word-for-word, including pauses, hesitations and speech errors.
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The repetitions of the priming sentences were coded for accuracy of reproduction. Repetitions were scored accurate when they were verbatim reproductions of the primes or when they contained minor deviations from complete accuracy. Ninety six percent of the 3456 prime reproductions were
20 completely fluent repetitions, produced only once and without assistance from the experimenter. Another 4% of the repetitions contained minor deviations from accuracy. These deviations were changes in inflection (e.g. producing a plural instead of a singular), changes in closed class words (e.g. producing a definite article instead of an indefinite one) long pauses, false starts, repetitions. Changes in prepositions were considered acceptable so long as the change did not result in a preposition of a different length (e.g. replacing on with at or vice versa, but not on with below or vice versa.) Crucially no substitutions involving the preposition by were accepted, regardless of the length of the preposition.
Changes in auxiliaries were allowed so long as auxiliaries were exchanged with auxiliaries and modals were substituted with modals. No substitutions that involved any form of the verb “be” and no omissions of auxiliaries were accepted. Additionally, changes in content words or deletions that did not change the overall structure of the sentence were also deemed acceptable. For example reproducing the prime A foreigner shouldn't loiter at a blinking traffic light as A foreigner shouldn't linger at a blinking traffic light does not alter the structure of the sentence.
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The remaining 1% of the prime repetitions did not meet the above criteria and were subsequently excluded from the analyses.
The descriptions of the experimental pictures were scored for syntactic structure. If the description consisted of more than one sentence, only the first complete sentence containing both the agent and the patient was scored. If participants hesitated, stuttered, or produced a false start, the final form of the utterance was scored. Responses were divided into one of the three categories:
Active, By-passive and Other. In order to assess the effect of priming we required that it be possible to express the meaning of each utterance in its alternative syntactic form. For example, to score a description as a by-passive it had to have an acceptable corresponding active sentence in which the patient was in the subject role and the agent was in a by-phrase.
To be scored as an active a description had to have the form NP- (Aux) V-
NP. It had to contain the agent or initiator of the event in subject position, the action had to be expressed by a transitive predicate in the active voice and not followed by prepositions (e.g. sentences with verbs like crash into, or look at were not counted as active.) To be scored as a by-passive a description had to have the surface form: NP (be/get) Verb-ed by NP. The patient of the event had to occur in subject position, the action had to be expressed by a strictly transitive predicate (i.e. no verbs followed by prepositions) in the passive voice and the agent had to be expressed in a PP headed by the preposition by. The Other category included intransitive descriptions, and different types of passives, such
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4/16/20 as truncated passives and instrumental passives. Application of these criteria
22 yielded 2135 scorable transitive (i.e. either active or by-passive) responses. These represented 62% of the total number of possible descriptions. Of the scorable responses 25% occurred in the passive priming condition, 26% occurred in the by-locative priming condition, 25% in the non-by-locative and 24% in the active control condition. The descriptions were scored by two judges (one of them was the first author) who agreed on 95% of the scores. The discrepancies were resolved by a third judge in consultation with the first author.
How is priming measured? Two ways of measuring priming are commonly found in the structural priming literature. Irrespective of the measure adopted, the goal is to ensure that priming has the same basis upon which to operate across experimental conditions.
The first measure is as a proportion of opportunities to produce the target structure, (i.e. number of passives per condition divided by the number of items per condition). To ensure that an equal number of subjects perceive the events in the pictures equivalently, and develop equivalent preverbal messages, this measure requires that across conditions the total number of target responses
(actives + by-passives) be roughly the same. As reported above, this condition was met in the present data. The second way to measure priming is as proportions of responses with the same meaning, where ‘same meaning’ is defined as expressing the roughly the same proposition (therefore, according to this criterion a passive sentence such as The man is being chased by a dog and
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4/16/20 23 the corresponding active The dog is chasing the man have the same meaning, but the loosely related intransitive The man is running away from a dog does not).
The measure is thus the proportion of passives out of the number of actives + bypassives. So, for example, if a participant used 3 passives and 2 actives in describing the pictures in one cell of the design, the score for that cell would be
.6.
Results
Count results
Table 1 summarizes the number of passive and active descriptions produced in each one of the main priming conditions. Passive primes and intransitive locative primes containing the preposition by (by-locatives) primed passive descriptions, but locative primes that did not contain the preposition by
(non-by-locatives) did not. This was confirmed by analyses of variance
(ANOVAs) on the square root of the count scores (Winer 1971) with participants
(F
1
) and items (F
2
) as random effects. In these analyses the 4-leveled factor
‘experimental list’ was treated as a between-participant covariate in the subject analyses and the 4 level factor ‘item group’ was a between-item covariate in the item analyses (Pollatsek 1995).
The overall (4 X 4) ANOVA with factors prime condition (within) and list
(between) was significant by participants (F
1
(3, 104) = 3.12, Mse = .58; p < .03) but the overall 4 X 4 ANOVA with factors prime condition and item group (between) was not significant by items (F
2
(3, 28) = 1.6 , MSe = .76 , p = .2)
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In the subject analyses planned comparisons revealed that the number of
24 passives produced in the passive priming condition (245) was greater than the number of passives produced in the active control condition (205) (F
1
(1, 104) =
6.13, Mse = .47 p < .01). The number of passives in the by-locative priming condition (234) was also significantly greater than the number of passives produced in the active control (F
1
(1, 104) = 5.33, Mse = .45 p < .02). However, the number of passives produced in the non-by-locative priming condition did not significantly differ from the number of passives produced in the active control
(F
1
(1, 104) = 2.00, Mse = .37, p = .2). In the analyses by items the contrast between the passive priming condition and the active condition approached significance
(F
2
(1, 28) = 2.4 , MSe = .68 , p =.13), but the contrast between the by-locative and the active priming condition did not (F
2
(1, 28) = 2 , MSe = .63 , p = .17). [below you describe Mse = .2, p=.16 as “marginally significant”—are the differences here and below enough to justify dismissing this difference but highlighting the one below?] The contrast between the non-by-locative and the active priming condition was also not significant (F
2
< 1). [was there a sig difference between passives and by-locs? ]
Proportional results
Table 1 also displays the proportion of passive descriptions produced in each one of the main priming conditions. Analyses of variance (ANOVAs) were performed on the arcsine transforms of the proportion passives. As with the count data, the 4-level counterbalancing variable‘experimental list’ was treated
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4/16/20 as a between-participant covariate in the subject analyses, and the 4-level variable ‘item group’ was a between-item covariate in the item analyses. The
25 overall ANOVA was marginally significant by subjects but not by items (F
1
(3,
104) = 2.4, Mse = .22; p < .07; F
2
< 1). Participants were more likely to produce a passive description after a passive prime (.46) than after an active prime (.40)
(significantly by subjects but not by items: F
1
(1, 104) = 4.9, Mse = .2, p < .03; F
2
<
1). After by-locative participants were only 2% more likely to produce passives.
This comparison was marginally significant by subjects (F
1
(1, 104) = 2.0, Mse =
.17; p = .16) but not by items (F
2
(1, 28) = 1.1, MSe = .008 , p = .3). The comparison between the non-by-locative condition and the active condition was not significant (both Fs <1)
Auxiliary vs. modal primes
Whereas all the (by) locative primes in the original Bock and Loebell study had complete morphological overlap with passives because they always contained a past form of the verb be (e.g. The woman was swimming by the jellyfish; The 747 was landing by the airport control tower) the majority of the intransitive locative primes (both the ones with by and the ones without by) in the present study did not overlap with the passive; they contained a variety of auxiliaries and modals other than be (e.g. The woman won't swim by/through the jellyfish; The 747 might land by/near the airport control tower). Only 5/32
(16%) of the locative priming sentences contained a form of the verb be. These items were not associated with a greater number of passive descriptions (3 of the
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5 items were in the wrong direction with fewer passive descriptions in the by-
26 locative condition than in the active control condition; than in the by-locative condition; 1 had an equal number of passives in the active and by locative conditions, and 2 were in the right direction with more ).
To further explore what level of generalization is involved in transitive priming, we examined the effects of the factors auxiliary type (auxiliary or modal) which was a nested factor within the two intransitive locative conditions
(by-locative, non-by-locative). It could be that priming of passives occurs at a level that is sensitive to the nature of the auxiliary, something more abstract than be, but not as abstract as to include any element (e.g. modals such as might and should). The number of by-passives produced in the locative and non-by locative modal and auxiliary conditions are shown in table 2.
As can be seen from the table, it appears that more passives were produced after by-locative primes containing auxiliaries than after by-locatives containing modals (146 vs. 88). The same difference in the number of passives produced is evident among the non-by-locative primes auxiliaries and modals
(137 vs. 81). Can these differences be taken to suggest that transitive priming occurs at a level that is sensitive to the distinction between auxiliaries (e.g. be, have, will) and modal auxiliaries (e.g. should, could)? Unfortunately not. There is an aspect of the materials and design that can account for the afore-mentioned
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4/16/20 differences. This is because each set of priming sentences was always associated
27 with the same picture. Thus, the differences in the number of passive descriptions produced across auxiliary and modal priming conditions could equally reflect differences in the number of passive descriptions associated with each picture. In fact, this latter explanation seems likely. This can be seen by examining the differences in the number of passive descriptions produced after passive primes. The distinction between auxiliary and modals was obviously not a factor within the passive priming condition (passives always contained a form of the verb be), but the condition could be artificially subdivided into ‘auxiliary’ or ‘modal’ based on whether within an item set the picture was associated with an auxiliary or modal prime in the locative conditions. The number of passives produced after passive primes that were associated with auxiliary locatives (137) was much greater than the number of passives produced after passive primes associated with modal locatives (81). Therefore these data do not allow us to conclude whether the type of auxiliary (i.e., auxiliary or modal) makes a difference in priming.
Discussion
The count results indicate that intransitive locatives containing by primed passive descriptions, but intransitive locatives that did not contain by did not prime passives. These results are not predicted by the Maximal Abstraction
Hypothesis, but can easily be accommodated by the Intermediate Generalization
Hypothesis.
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The proportional results do not provide as clear a picture, and thus deserve some discussion. Although the data are in the right direction with a
28 greater proportion of passives being produced in the by-locative condition than in the non-by-locative and active conditions, these differences were small and not significant. As can be seen in Table 1, the reason for the difference between the count and the proportional results is the higher number of active sentences produced after locatives containing by; numerically more actives were produced in the by-locative condition than in the active control (although this difference was not statistically significant). Because the proportions of passives are computed over the total number of actives and passives descriptions, a higher number of actives in the by-locative condition necessarily leads to a smaller numeric value in the proportional scores. It is hard to know exactly why locative primes that contained by lead to an increase number of active descriptions. To gain some insight into why in the proportional data do not as strongly match the count data it is useful to compare the distributions of active and passives in this study with the Bock and Loebell study, which most closely resembles the present one. In Bock and Loebell Experiment 2, the production of actives and passives showed a complementary distribution, with more passives produced after passive and (by-) locative primes and more actives produced after active primes.
However, the differences in the number of actives across different priming conditions were small and not always significant. Thus, although numerically
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4/16/20 actives and passives showed complementary patterns, these differences were
29 attenuated for the actives.
One possible reason for the differential effect of active and passive primes in the present study lies in the fact that actives were by far the more frequent structure that participants produced, irrespective of priming condition. There were a total of 896 active and 684 passive descriptions. By comparison, in the
Bock and Loebell study, passives were overall the more frequently produced structure, with a total of 818 passives and a mere 233 actives. Whereas baseline frequency of using alternative syntactic forms to describe events has been found not to affect the magnitude of priming per se (Hartsuiker & Kolk, 1998, Bock &
Griffin, 2000), it is possible that the overwhelming production of actives overall
‘swamped’ any real differences existing across priming conditions. This is all the more likely if one bears in mind that the effects of structural priming seem to be cumulative and long-lasting (Bock & Griffin, 2000; Hartsuiker & Kolk, 1998; Bock
& Kroch, 1989).
For the purpose of this study, the count provide strong evidence that the presence of the preposition by was necessary for intransitive locative sentences to prime passives.
General Discussion
The goal of this experiment was to evaluate what we termed the Maximal
Abstraction Hypothesis according to which the language production system
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4/16/20 engages processes that operate on abstract units which correspond to linguistically defined surface syntactic structures, independent of the meanings
30 and the lexical items involved.
The critical test for this hypothesis was to determine whether sentences that had the same structure, did not share semantics and did not overlap in function words would show priming. For this purpose passives and intransitive locatives that did not contain the preposition by.
The results indicate that for these structures, priming operates at a level of generalization that is less abstract than previously assumed. Lexical overlap of the function words was found to be necessary for priming to occur; intransitive locatives containing by primed passives, but intransitive locatives that did not contain by did not prime passive descriptions. The results replicate the Bock and
Loebell findings that priming between constructions does not require that they overlap in semantic roles. Thus the results suggest that form and meaning can dissociate in the process of language production (Bock & Kroch 1989), however the nature of the dissociation is less abstract than previously assumed.
At the same time simple changes in verbal morphology did not significantly reduce priming of passive structures. Sentences that contained a variety of auxiliaries and modal auxiliaries were found to be equally good primes for passive sentences as sentences that in addition to sharing the preposition by also overlapped with the passive in containing some form of the
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4/16/20 auxiliary be. This result is an extension of Bock and Loebell’s findings and is
31 similar to the findings of Pickering & Branigan (1998) with dative sentences.
The linguistic properties of Transitive priming
What is the nature of the linguistic generalizations that are engaged in structural priming? As suggested at the outset of the paper, the Maximal
Abstraction Hypothesis can be contrasted with the Intermediate Generalization
Hypothesis according to which different levels of generalization may involved for different constructions. This hypothesis suggests that careful attention to each sentence type is needed before a more general picture of priming can emerge.
The current data support a characterization of transitive priming as a process that operates at a level of abstraction that is intermediate between being concrete and lexically driven, and being maximally abstract and operating at the level of pure constituent structure. What we mean by ‘intermediate generalization’ is illustrated in Figure 2, in which we provide a schematic representation of the overlap in linguistic units that best capture the result that by-locative sentences prime by-passives while locatives without by do not.
Figure 2 shows a conventional representation of the surface constituent structure of passives and locatives with the additional specification that the function word by is also part of the structural skeleton. In other words, the shared linguistic units are a tree with a lexically filled terminal element (or leaf).
This level of generalization is problematic for those theories of grammar that rely on a strict division between lexical units and syntactic units, but is easily
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4/16/20 32 accommodated within linguistic theories that recognize units of different degrees of abstraction, such as constructional approaches to grammar (e.g., Langacker
1987, 1991; Lakoff 1987; Fillmore, Kay, O’Connor 1988; Goldberg, 1995; Culicover
1999; Jackendoff 2002).
Together with evidence from previous studies that point to broad ranging differences between transitive and dative priming (see Bock and Griffin 2000 for a review), these data seem to suggest that different levels of generalization apply to different types of construction. These results make a strong argument for reevaluating the source of linguistic generalizations with respect to the relationship between sentence form and sentence meaning.
References
Bock, J. K. (1986). Syntactic persistence in language production. Cognitive
Psychology, 18, 355-387.
Bock, J. K. (1989). Closed-class immanence in sentence production.
Cognition, 31, 163-186.
Bock, K., & Loebell, H. (1990). Framing sentences. Cognition, 35, 1-39.
Hare, M, & Goldberg, A. (1999) Structural priming, purely syntactic?
Proceedings of the XXI Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 208-211.
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Author notes
33
This research was supported by a Beckman Institute Graduate Fellowship and NSF Grant SBR-98-73450. The authors thank Stephanie Ippolito, Renee
Mehl, Lisa Octigan, Stacy Manning, and Brian Sapir for assisting at various points in the research.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Giulia Bencini, gb62@nyu.edu, Department of Psychology, New York University, 6 Washington
Place, NY, NY 10003.
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Appendix
Experimental Sentences (a=passive; b=active; c=by-locative; d=non-by-locative)
1a. The senator was awed by the statue.
1b. The senator unveiled the statue.
1c. The senator won't speak by the statue.
1d. The senator won’t speak about the statue.
2a. The woman was stung by the jellyfish.
2b. The woman caught the jellyfish.
2c. The woman won't swim by the jellyfish.
2d. The woman won't swim through the jellyfish.
3a. The escaping prisoner was illuminated by the guard tower.
3b. The escaping prisoner skirted the guard tower.
3c. The escaping prisoner could hide by the guard tower.
3d. The escaping prisoner could hide below the guard tower.
4a. A foreigner was confused by a blinking traffic light.
4b. A foreigner misunderstood a blinking traffic light.
4c. A foreigner shouldn't loiter by a blinking traffic light.
4d. A foreigner shouldn't loiter at a blinking traffic light.
5a. The dalmatian was hit by the firetruck.
5b. The dalmatian chased the firetruck.
5c. The dalmatian will run by the firetruck.
5d. The dalmatian will run around the firetruck.
6a. The secretary was splashed by the drinking fountain.
6b. The secretary cleaned the drinking fountain.
6c. The secretary had tripped by the drinking fountain.
6d. The secretary had tripped near the drinking fountain.
7a. The construction worker was hit by the bulldozer.
7b. The construction worker drove the bulldozer.
7c. The construction worker should work by the bulldozer.
7d. The construction worker should dig with the bulldozer.
8a. The new graduate was hired by the software company.
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8b. The new graduate failed at/left the software company.
8c. The new graduate should drive by the software company.
8d. The new graduate should drive around the software company
9a. The ship was damaged by the pier.
9b. The ship approached the pier.
9c. The ship had docked by the pier.
9d. The ship had docked at the pier.
10a. The minister was cut by the broken stained glass window.
10b. The minister fixed the broken stained glass window.
10c. The minister can pray by the broken stained glass window
10d. The minister can pray below the broken stained glass wind
11a. The engineers were appalled by the Beckman cafeteria.
11b. The engineers criticized the Beckman cafeteria.
11c. The engineers can confer by the Beckman cafeteria.
11d. The engineers can confer in the Beckman cafeteria.
12a. The lumberjack was struck by the giant redwood tree.
12b. The lumberjack felled the giant redwood tree.
12c. The lumberjack didn’t eat by the giant redwood tree.
12d. The lumberjack didn’t eat inside the giant redwood tree.
13a. The students were bankrupted by the new sports complex.
13b. The students tried the new sports complex
13c. The students were working by the new sports complex.
13d. The students were working in the new sports complex.
14a. The 747 was radioed by the airport control tower.
14b. The 747 radioed the airport control tower.
14c. The 747 might land by the airport control tower.
14d. The 747 might land near the airport control tower.
15a. The missing geologist was smothered by the volcano.
15b. The missing geologist underestimated the volcano.
15c. The missing geologist might wander by the volcano.
15d. The missing geologist might wander into the volcano.
16a. The cub scouts were singed by the campfire.
16b. The cub scouts enjoyed the camp fire.
16c. The cub scouts were singing by the campfire.
16d. The cub scouts were running around the campfire.
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17a. The princess was delighted by the palace's old gate.
17b. The princess renovated the palace's old gate.
17c. The princess had daydreamed by the palace's old gate.
17d. The princess had daydreamed at the palace's old gate.
18a. The stockbroker was sued by the client.
18b. The stockbroker impressed the client.
18c. The stockbroker was sitting by the client.
18d. The stockbroker was sitting opposite the client.
19a. The businessman was paged by the airline ticket counter.
19b. The businessman left the airline ticket counter.
19c. The businessman could wait by the airline ticket counter.
19d. The businessman could wait behind the airline ticket count
20a. Isaac Newton was inspired by the apple tree.
20b. Isaac Newton examined the apple tree.
20c. Isaac Newton couldn't sleep by the apple tree.
20d. Isaac Newton couldn't sleep in the apple tree.
21a. The surfer was excited by the stormy sea.
21b. The surfer watched the stormy sea
21c. The surfer will run by the stormy sea.
21d. The surfer will run along the stormy sea.
22a. Keith Richards was annoyed by the jukebox in the bar.
22b. Keith Richards destroyed the jukebox in the bar.
22c. Keith Richards will drink by the jukebox in the bar.
22d. Keith Richards will drink at the jukebox in the bar.
23a. The bag lady was caught by the revolving door.
23b. The bag lady stopped the revolving door.
23c. The bag lady might fall by the revolving door.
23d. The bag lady might fall in the revolving door.
24a. The dictator was overthrown by the general.
24b. The dictator killed the general.
24c. The dictator should stand by the general.
24d. The dictator should stand behind the general.
25a. The children were deafened by the church organ.
25b. The children disliked the church organ.
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25c. The children have played by the church organ.
25d. The children have played beside the church organ.
26a. Some men were startled by the buoy.
26b. Some men damaged the buoy.
26c. Some men have fished by the buoy.
26d. Some men have fished at the buoy.
27a. A young woman was calmed by the lake.
27b. A young woman admired the lake.
27c. A young woman shouldn't walk by the lake.
27d. A young woman shouldn't walk along the lake.
28a. The bum was scratched by the bushes.
28b. The bum circled the bushes.
28c. The bum couldn't nap by the bushes.
28d. The bum couldn't nap in the bushes.
29a. The dog was protected by the fence.
29b. The dog jumped the fence.
29c. The dog was barking by the fence.
29d. The dog was barking behind the fence.
30a. The grandmother was pleased by the flowers.
30b. The grandmother liked the flowers.
30c. The grandmother was sketching by the flowers.
30d. The grandmother was sketching near the flowers.
31a. The councilman was impressed by the new building.
31b. The councilman opened the new building.
31c. The councilman could stroll by the new building.
31d. The councilman could stroll past the new building.
32a. The nymphs were soaked by the waterfall.
32b. The nymphs saw the waterfall.
32c. The nymphs would bathe by the waterfall.
32d. The nymphs would bathe under the waterfall.
Experimental Pictures
1. ball striking boy
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2. rock hitting man
3. car hitting ambulance
4. rock smashing window
5. torpedo hitting ship
6. crane demolishing building
7. tornado destroying barn
8. lightning striking church
9. doctor and nurse examining baby
10. truck towing car
11. bee stinging man
12. truck hitting sailor
13. alarm clock awakening boy
14. tank following jeep
15. wave engulfing boy
16. ambulance hitting policeman
17. train hitting truck
18. missile hitting airplane
19. dog chasing mailman
20. clubman chasing caveman
21. cat chasing Santa clause
22. paramedics loading patient into ambulance
23. cat biting veterinarian
24. doctor examining boy
25. whale swallowing man
26. truck hitting nurse
27. fortune teller telling man his fortune
28. men torturing prisoner
29. woman blindfolding man
30. policeman give man ticket
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31. servants moving carriage
32. pumpkin squashing man
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Table 1: Number of Passive and Active Descriptions Produced in the Four
Priming Conditions
40
Priming condition
Passive
By-locative
Non-by-locative
Active control
Utterance form
Passives
245 (.46)
234 (.42)
218 (.41)
205 (.40)
Active
283
314
299
306
Table 2.
Number of passives produced in locative auxiliary and locative modal priming conditions
Priming Condition
By-locative, auxiliary
By-locative, modal
Non-by-locative, auxiliary
Non-by-locative, modal
Number of passives
146
88
137
81
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Figure caption
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Figure 1. Typical sequence of events on a structural priming trial.
41
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Figure Caption 2. Phrase structure representation of by-passive sentence
43
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4/16/20 44
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4/16/20 45 i The NPs in the locative and passive by-phrases not only differ in semantic roles, but also with respect to the linguistic argument/adjunct distinction. Linguistic theories vary widely with respect to where in the grammar they assume that the distinction between arguments and adjuncts should be represented. In the GB framework, the distinction is assumed to be represented tree-configurationally. Thus, for theories in the GB tradition, locatives and passives would not have the same structure. Other theories such as Lexical Functional Grammar (Bresnan
1982), HPSG (Pollard & Sag 1987; but see Pollard & Sag 1994) and CG have questioned the notion that the argument/adjunct distinction should be represented syntactically. In this work we are assuming a non syntactic representation of the argument/adjunct distinction. For arguments why the argument/adjunct distinction may not be relevant to language production see Bencini
(2002).
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