Cross-language Syntactic Representation in Chinese-English Bilinguals: Evidence from Structural Priming

Abstract

The tendency to use the syntactic structure that has been processed or encountered before is called syntactic priming or structural priming. There are an increasing number of bilingual speakers, therefore, it is crucial to explore the mental storage and processes of two languages in people’s mind and to discover the potential similarity or difference between bilinguals and monolinguals so as to interpret the language use in real world. With regard to cross-language priming, it is uncertain about whether bilinguals shared information with the two languages or separate the storage and processing of syntactic information one after another. This study focused on how Chinese-English bilingual speakers represent cross-language syntax using the phenomenon of syntactic priming. With the confederate scripting task, 60 Chinese-English bilinguals took part in the experiment of syntactic priming on passive structure. It was found that the participants produced more English passive structure after they heard either marked passive or unmarked passive in Chinese. However, there is no significant difference between the number of English passive structures produced after Chinese marked and unmarked passive sentences. In other words, both marked passive and unmarked passive structures in Chinese primed English passive structure, which supported the view of syntactic representation as shared between languages and shed light on syntactic account across languages.