Buckle Leone, Lieven Elena, Theakston Anna L
ESRC International Centre for Language and Communicative Development (LuCiD), School of Health Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom.
Front Psychol. 2017 Dec 20;8:2246. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02246. eCollection 2017.
Sentence production relies on the activation of semantic information (e.g., noun animacy) and syntactic frames that specify an order for grammatical functions (e.g., subject before object). However, it is unclear whether these semantic and syntactic processes interact and if this might change over development. We thus examined the extent to which animacy-semantic role mappings in dative prime sentences and target scenes influences choice of syntactic structure (structural priming, analysis 1) and ordering of nouns as a function of animacy (animacy noun priming, analysis 2) in children and adults. One hundred forty-three participants (47 three year olds, 48 five year olds and 48 adults) alternated with the experimenter in describing animations. Animacy mappings for themes and goals were either prototypical or non-prototypical and either matched or mismatched across the experimenter's prime scenes and participants' target elicitation scenes. Prime sentences were either double-object datives (DOD e.g., ) or prepositional datives (PD e.g., ), and occurred with either animate-inanimate or inanimate-animate, post-verbal noun order. Participants' target sentences were coded for syntactic form, and animacy noun order. All age groups showed a structural priming effect. A significant interaction between prime structure, prime animacy-semantic role mappings and prime-target match indicated that animacy could moderate structural priming in 3 year olds. However, animacy had no effect on structural priming in any other instance. Nevertheless, production of DOD structures was influenced by whether animacy-semantic role mappings in primes and target scenes matched or mismatched. We provide new evidence of animacy noun order priming effects in 3 and 5 year olds where there was prime-target match in animacy-semantic role mappings. Neither prime animacy noun ordering nor animacy-semantic role mappings influenced adults' target sentences. Our results demonstrate that animacy cues can affect speakers' word order independently of syntactic structure and also through interactions with syntax, although these processes are subject to developmental changes. We therefore, suggest that theories of structural priming, sentence production, linguistic representation and language acquisition all need to explicitly account for developmental changes in the role of semantic and syntactic information in sentence processing.
句子生成依赖于语义信息（如名词的生命性）和句法框架的激活，这些句法框架规定了语法功能的顺序（如主语在宾语之前）。然而，尚不清楚这些语义和句法过程是否相互作用，以及这种情况在发展过程中是否会发生变化。因此，我们研究了与格启动句和目标场景中的生命性 - 语义角色映射在多大程度上影响儿童和成人对句法结构的选择（结构启动，分析1）以及作为生命性函数的名词排序（生命性名词启动，分析2）。143名参与者（47名三岁儿童、48名五岁儿童和48名成年人）与实验者交替描述动画。主题和目标的生命性映射要么是典型的，要么是非典型的，并且在实验者的启动场景和参与者的目标诱发场景中要么匹配要么不匹配。启动句要么是双宾语与格（DOD，例如），要么是介词与格（PD，例如），并且与有生命 - 无生命或无生命 - 有生命的动词后名词顺序一起出现。参与者的目标句子根据句法形式和生命性名词顺序进行编码。所有年龄组都表现出结构启动效应。启动结构、启动生命性 - 语义角色映射和启动 - 目标匹配之间的显著交互作用表明，生命性可以调节三岁儿童的结构启动。然而，在任何其他情况下，生命性对结构启动都没有影响。尽管如此，双宾语与格结构的生成受到启动和目标场景中生命性 - 语义角色映射是匹配还是不匹配的影响。我们提供了新的证据，表明在生命性 - 语义角色映射中存在启动 - 目标匹配的情况下，三岁和五岁儿童存在生命性名词顺序启动效应。启动生命性名词排序和生命性 - 语义角色映射都不会影响成年人的目标句子。我们的结果表明，生命性线索可以独立于句法结构并通过与句法的相互作用影响说话者的词序，尽管这些过程会受到发展变化的影响。因此，我们建议，结构启动、句子生成、语言表征和语言习得的理论都需要明确说明语义和句法信息在句子处理中的作用的发展变化。
