Event structure influences language production: Evidence from structural priming in motion event description

Abstract

This priming study investigates the role of conceptual structure during language production, probing whether English speakers are sensitive to the structure of the event encoded by a prime sentence. In two experiments, participants read prime sentences aloud before describing motion events. Primes differed in 1) syntactic frame, 2) degree of lexical and conceptual overlap with target events, and 3) distribution of event components within frames. Results demonstrate that conceptual overlap between primes and targets led to priming of (a) the information that speakers chose to include in their descriptions of target events, (b) the way that information was mapped to linguistic elements, and (c) the syntactic structures that were built to communicate that information. When there was no conceptual overlap between primes and targets, priming was not successful. We conclude that conceptual structure is a level of representation activated during priming, and that it has implications for both Message Planning and Linguistic Formulation.