Myachykov, A. , Garrod, S. & Scheepers, C.
University of Glasgow
The choice of syntactic structure during sentence production partially depends on the distribution of the speaker’s visual attention across the elements of the described event. For example, English speakers are more likely to produce a passive voice sentence when their attention is on the patient (Tomlin, 1995). Although this perceptual priming effect on structural choice is well-established in English; its mechanism, its relative strength, and its cross-linguistic validity are unclear. For example, it is uncertain whether the focused referent maps directly onto the Subject thus directly triggering structural choice (grammatical role assignment) or it affects linear ordering of the constituents via the assignment of the starting point (positional assignment). In English these two hypotheses are difficult to test independently because the Subject typically corresponds to the starting point. Scrambling languages allow for such a test.
Four new studies investigated perceptual priming effect on structural choice during sentence production in one language with constrained word order (English) and two scrambling languages (Russian and Finnish). Experiments 1 and 2 used explicit (constantly visible) visual cueing to capture attention of English and Russian speakers as they described visual-world transitive events. Experiments 3 and 4 used implicit (70 msec duration) cueing and compared English and Finnish speakers. Explicit cueing influenced active/passive voice choice in English but linear ordering in Russian. Importantly, perceptual priming was stronger in English while Russian speakers’ sentence onset latencies were slower. Implicit cueing also triggered active/passive voice choice in English but it had no effect on structural choice in Finnish. We propose a dual-pathway perceptual priming mechanism where both grammatical-role and positional assignment routes are available with stronger reliance on the grammatical-role selection. In languages where the latter mechanism is weaker, positional selection is used to accommodate perceptual priming resulting in generally weaker priming effect and slower sentence onsets.