Jackson, C. 1 & Ruf, H. 2
1 Pennsylvania State University
2 University of Minnesota
Research with L1 adults and highly-proficient L2 speakers reveal similar priming effects, regardless of whether participants repeat the prime sentence (production-to-production priming) or just listen to the prime sentence (comprehension-to-production priming) (Bock et al., 2007; Chen et al., 2013). In contrast, research with young L1 children reveals greater priming for production-to-production priming (Gamez & Shimpi, 2015; Shimpi et al., 2007). The present study addresses whether such task-based differences extend to intermediate-level adult L2 learners by investigating the priming of word order variation (Adverb-Verb-Subject vs. Subject-Verb-Adverb order) in L2 German. Results reveal significant priming regardless of task type -both with and without lexical overlap between prime and target sentences. However, the magnitude of priming was greater in production-to-production priming. Further, while only three participants continued to produce adverb-first sentences in a post-priming phase immediately following the priming task in comprehension-to-production priming, eleven participants did so in production-to-production priming. Those participants exhibiting longer-term priming in the post-priming phase exhibited stronger short-term priming in the absence of lexical overlap (cf. Hartsuiker & Bernolet, 2015). Thus, while listening to target structures is sufficient for short-term priming, repeating such structures may be necessary for priming to persist over time among less-proficient L2 learners.