Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000 Ghent, Belgium.
Cognition. 2013 Jun;127(3):287-306. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2013.02.005. Epub 2013 Mar 30.
Studies on cross-linguistic syntactic priming suggest that bilinguals can share syntactic representations across languages (e.g., Hartsuiker, Pickering, & Veltkamp, 2004). But how are these representations established in late learners of a second language? Specifically, are representations of syntactic structures in a second language (L2) immediately collapsed with similar structures of the first language (L1), or are they initially represented separately? In order to investigate this, we primed the use of English genitives with Dutch (Experiment 1) and English (Experiment 2) genitives (e.g., het hemd van de jongen/the shirt of the boy vs. de jongen zijn hemd/the boy's shirt) in late Dutch-English bilinguals with varying levels of proficiency in English (their L2). The head nouns of prime and target constructions either had the same meaning (hemd/shirt - shirt) or a different meaning (duim/thumb - shirt), in order to test whether the use of both genitives was generalized across nouns. Experiment 1 found stronger between-language priming for more than less proficient bilinguals in both conditions, thus suggesting a shift from language-specific to shared syntactic representations. Experiment 2 suggests that these early, language-specific syntactic representations might be item-specific: Less proficient bilinguals showed much weaker priming when the heads of prime and target constructions had different meanings than when they were repeated.
跨语言句法启动研究表明，双语者可以在不同语言之间共享句法表征（例如，Hartsuiker、Pickering 和 Veltkamp，2004）。但是，第二语言（L2）的后期学习者是如何建立这些表征的呢？具体来说，第二语言（L2）的句法结构表征是否立即与第一语言（L1）的类似结构融合，还是最初分别表示？为了研究这个问题，我们用荷兰语（实验 1）和英语（实验 2）的所有格结构（例如，het hemd van de jongen / the shirt of the boy 与 de jongen zijn hemd / the boy's shirt）对不同英语熟练程度的后期荷兰-英语双语者进行了启动，他们的英语（L2）水平各不相同。启动和目标结构的名词主语要么具有相同的含义（hemd / shirt - shirt），要么具有不同的含义（duim / thumb - shirt），以检验两种所有格结构的使用是否可以跨名词进行概括。实验 1 发现，在两种情况下，英语熟练程度较高的双语者的跨语言启动作用要强于英语熟练程度较低的双语者，这表明从语言特定的句法表征向共享的句法表征转变。实验 2 表明，这些早期的、语言特定的句法表征可能是特定于项目的：当启动和目标结构的名词主语具有不同的含义时，英语熟练程度较低的双语者的启动作用要弱得多，而当它们重复时，启动作用要强得多。
