Structural priming in production through ‘silence’: An investigation of verb phrase ellipsis and null complement anaphora

Ming Xiang,Jason Merchant,Julian Grove

doi:10.5334/gjgl.726

Abstract

There are two common competing conceptions of how ellipsis can be resolved: in the first, ellipsis is resolved by constructing unpronounced syntactic representations at the ellipsis site; in the second, ellipsis can be resolved by consulting the semantic/discourse information present in the antecedent, without the mediation of any syntax at all. In four syntactic priming experiments, we examine whether resolving English VP ellipsis and Null Complement Anaphora involves accessing the syntactic representations, or only the semantic representations, of the antecedent clause. Our findings suggest both VPE and Null Complement Anaphora can trigger structural priming effects, but the conditions under which they trigger priming are different. These results have implications for both theories of structural priming mechanism and theories of ellipsis resolution.

Highlights

A fundamental ontological question in linguistics is whether an empirically adequate model of grammar, in particular of syntax, requires elements or structures that correspond to no pronounced or signed signal
There is a clear interaction between the continuation type of the second clause and the prime type of the prime sentence: when the second clause of the NP PP prime sentence was non-elliptical, or when it was an elliptical structure anaphoric to the first clause, there was an increase of NP PP productions relative to such productions after the NP NP primes, but such a priming effect was absent when the second clause was the neutral control, a simple intransitive
When each of the Clause Structure types was separately examined, there was a numerical trend toward a priming effect for all of the structure types (a 10% increase of NP PP productions following NP PP primes associated with Null Complement Anaphora (NCA) and a 7% increase for the other three structures)

Summary

Introduction

A fundamental ontological question in linguistics is whether an empirically adequate model of grammar, in particular of syntax, requires elements or structures that correspond to no pronounced or signed signal. A central place to look for data bearing on this is the phenomenon of ellipsis. Previous research addressing this question has been divided in its conclusions, answering either in the affirmative or in the negative (see Merchant 2019 and van Craenenbroeck & Merchant 2013 for recent surveys), largely on the basis of grammatical argumentation. We argue, are most compatible with an analysis that posits the availability of syntactic representations for ellipsis resolution. We will compare ellipsis resolution with a closely related phenomenon—null complement anaphora—and conclude that they are representationally distinct, and that their representational differences have processing consequences

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Discussion

Conclusion