What can Head‐Final Languages Tell us about Syntactic Priming (and vice versa)?

Abstract

AbstractSyntactic priming, a phenomenon that previous exposure to a particular syntactic structure makes the structure more accessible in subsequent utterances, has widely been observed in both language production and comprehension. Previous research using this paradigm revealed a great deal about processing and representations of syntactic structures. Based on previous findings, it is recently proposed that priming plays a central role in the language processing and learning system. Such a claim often presumes that syntactic priming occurs in the same way across languages. Increasing evidence demonstrates priming in many different languages but what is challenging is to establish that syntactic priming is underlain by the same mechanism across languages. Perhaps the strongest test of such a common mechanism account is to examine the phenomenon in languages that are typologically different from English and other Germanic languages on which the majority of previous studies were conducted. To address this issue, this article reviews the previous studies conducted in head‐final languages. Finding that syntactic priming occurs in a similar way between head‐final languages and head‐initial languages would provide strong support to the common mechanism of priming across languages. Although evidence is still limited, previous studies support that syntactic priming occurs in head‐final languages in a similar way and possibly by the same mechanism as in head‐initial languages. I also discuss implications of the results of those studies for the syntactic representations and processing in head‐final languages.