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

5/9/23 2

- 2 -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 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.

5/9/23 3

- 3 -

The relationship between lexically-specific and more abstract

knowledge 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

5/9/23 4

- 4 -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 (passive). On the same priming trial

another group of participants hears and repeats the sentence The new

graduate left the software company (active). These 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

5/9/23 5

- 5 -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 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

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

5/9/23 6

- 6 -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 words,

otherwise considered to be key components of grammar, appear to

have 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

5/9/23 7

- 7 -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 way to the top of the mountain. This construction is associated

with a special semantic 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

5/9/23 8

- 8 -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.

Although Bock’s (1989) finding that for-datives were equally

good primes 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

5/9/23 9

- 9 -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 structurei, 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 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 primes in the Bock and Loebell study shared

5/9/23 10

- 10 -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 overlap in function words. In addition to

the priming conditions used by Bock and Loebell (1990, Experiment

5/9/23 11

- 11 -2): active, by-passive, by-locative; a fourth condition was included:

intransitive locatives that do not contain by (non-by-locatives) 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,

5/9/23 12

- 12 -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 sentences contained a

variety of auxiliaries and modals, thus allowing the effect 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

5/9/23 13

- 13 -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 transitive descriptions (e.g. A wrecking ball is

destroying a building) and full 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.

5/9/23 14

- 14 -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 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

5/9/23 15

- 15 -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 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 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

5/9/23 16

- 16 -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 sentences were passives. Among the fillers

there were 4 pictures and 4 sets of 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

5/9/23 17

- 17 -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 the arrangement of the fillers was

5/9/23 18

- 18 -random. The order of the fillers was the same 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

5/9/23 19

- 19 -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 pictures. One of the pictures was

repeated during practice. Participants were 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

5/9/23 20

- 20 -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 was played. At the offset of the sentence the word

“repeat” was displayed. This 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

5/9/23 21

- 21 -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.

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 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

5/9/23 22

- 22 -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.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).

5/9/23 23

- 23 -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

5/9/23 24

- 24 -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 as truncated

passives and instrumental passives. Application of these criteria

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

5/9/23 25

- 25 -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 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 + by-passives. 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 (F1)

5/9/23 26

- 26 -and items (F2) 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 (F1 (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 (F2

(3, 28) = 1.6 , MSe = .76 , p = .2)

In the subject analyses planned comparisons revealed that the

number of passives produced in the passive priming condition (245)

was greater than the number of passives produced in the active

control condition (205) (F1 (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 (F1 (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 (F1 (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 (F2 (1, 28) = 2.4 ,

MSe = .68 , p =.13), but the contrast between the by-locative and the

5/9/23 27

- 27 -active priming condition did not (F2 (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 (F2 < 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 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 overall ANOVA was marginally significant by subjects

but not by items (F1 (3, 104) = 2.4, Mse = .22; p < .07; F2 < 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: F1 (1, 104) = 4.9, Mse = .2, p < .03; F2 < 1).

After by-locative participants were only 2% more likely to produce

passives. This comparison was marginally significant by subjects (F1

5/9/23 28

- 28 -(1, 104) = 2.0, Mse = .17; p = .16) but not by items (F2 (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 5 items were in the

wrong direction with fewer passive descriptions in the by-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 ).

5/9/23 29

- 29 -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 differences. This is because each set of

priming sentences was always associated with the same picture. Thus,

the differences in the number of passive descriptions produced across

auxiliary and modal priming conditions could equally reflect

5/9/23 30

- 30 -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.

5/9/23 31

- 31 -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 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

5/9/23 32

- 32 -active primes. However, the differences in the number of actives

across different priming conditions were small and not always

significant. Thus, although numerically actives and passives showed

complementary patterns, these differences were 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

5/9/23 33

- 33 -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 engages processes that operate on abstract units

which correspond to linguistically defined surface syntactic

structures, independent of the meanings 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

5/9/23 34

- 34 -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 auxiliary be. This result is an

extension of Bock and Loebell’s findings and is 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

5/9/23 35

- 35 -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 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

5/9/23 36

- 36 -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.

Author notes

This research was supported by a Beckman Institute Graduate

Fellowship and NSF Grant SBR-98-73450. The authors thank

5/9/23 37

- 37 -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.

5/9/23 38

- 38 -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.

5/9/23 39

- 39 -8a. The new graduate was hired by the software company.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 window10d. 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 complex13c. 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.

5/9/23 40

- 40 -

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 sea21c. 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.25c. The children have played by the church organ.

5/9/23 41

- 41 -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 boy2. rock hitting man

5/9/23 42

- 42 -3. car hitting ambulance4. rock smashing window5. torpedo hitting ship6. crane demolishing building7. tornado destroying barn8. lightning striking church9. doctor and nurse examining baby10. truck towing car11. bee stinging man12. truck hitting sailor13. alarm clock awakening boy14. tank following jeep15. wave engulfing boy16. ambulance hitting policeman17. train hitting truck18. missile hitting airplane19. dog chasing mailman20. clubman chasing caveman21. cat chasing Santa clause22. paramedics loading patient into ambulance23. cat biting veterinarian24. doctor examining boy25. whale swallowing man26. truck hitting nurse27. fortune teller telling man his fortune28. men torturing prisoner29. woman blindfolding man30. policeman give man ticket31. servants moving carriage

5/9/23 43

- 43 -32. pumpkin squashing man

5/9/23 44

- 44 -

Table 1: Number of Passive and Active Descriptions Produced in the Four Priming Conditions

Utterance form

Active

Table 2 . Number of passives produced in locative auxiliary and

locative modal priming conditions

Priming Condition Number of

passives

By-locative, auxiliary 146

By-locative, modal 88

Non-by-locative,

auxiliary

137

5/9/23 45

- 45 -

Non-by-locative, modal 81

5/9/23 46

- 46 -Figure caption

Figure 1. Typical sequence of events on a structural priming trial.

5/9/23 47

- 47 -

‘

SENTENCE TRIAL (AUDITORY PRESENTATION)

The new graduate was hired by the software company

PARTICIPANT REPEATS:

AND MAKES RECOGNITION DECISION ("NO")

PICTURE TRIAL (SENTENCE ELICITATION)

Priming Trial

The new graduate was hired by the software company

PARTICIPANT DESCRIBES PICTURE:

E.G., The postman is being chased by an angry poodle

AND MAKES RECOGNITION DECISION ("NO")

Filler TrialsSENTENCE TRIALPICTURE TRIALPICTURE TRIAL

Filler Trials

SENTENCE TRIALPICTURE TRIAL

SENTENCE TRIAL

5/9/23 48

- 48 -Figure Caption 2. Phrase structure representation of by-passive

sentence

5/9/23 49

- 49 -

5/9/23 50

- 50 -