Is Syntax Separate or Shared Between Arabic and English? Syntactic Priming in Arabic-English Bilinguals

Abstract

Syntactic priming refers to the likelihood that a particular structure is repeated when preceded by an utterance with the same or a related syntactic structure. Experimental studies that demonstrate syntactic priming have attracted the attention of scholars because syntactic priming provides insightful information about the way language is processed in the human cognitive system, facilitates dialogue and informs linguistic theories about the knowledge of language that is activated via syntactic priming. In this study, we investigate syntactic priming in 15 Arabic-English bilinguals through the Confederate-Scripted Dialogue Game technique, targeting four structures: active, passive, double-object (DO), and prepositional-object structures (PO). The results of the study indicate that the syntax of Arabic-English bilinguals is separate for each language. Participants tend to use the active structure regardless of the structure of the prime sentence. The findings of this study illustrate how the syntax of two unrelated languages (Arabic and English) is represented and processed in bilingual brains, contributing to the fields of bilingualism, syntax, psycholinguistics, and second language acquisition.