Is the Levelt and Kelter (1982) Repetition Effect Lexical or Structural Priming?

Abstract

Levelt and Kelter (1982) report an experiment where they called businesses to ask about their closing time. They asked (in Dutch) What time do you close? or At what time do you close? Participants were more likely to use a preposition in their answer (At 9) when the preceding question used a preposition than when it did not. This finding is often cited as one of the first experimental demonstrations of structural priming. Nevertheless, it is not clear whether Levelt and Kelter’s (1982) finding represents structural priming (participants are primed to use any preposition in their answer) or lexical priming (participants are primed to use the lexical item at in their answer). We replicate the basic design of Levelt and Kelter’s (1982) study, asking questions that use different prepositions (At/Around/About/What time do you close?). Our findings suggest that the repetition effect may be driven by lexical and/or pragmatic factors.