Neurobiology of Language Department, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2024 Jan;77(1):174-190. doi: 10.1177/17470218231160942. Epub 2023 Mar 24.
How do bilingual speakers represent the information that guides the assembly of words into sentences for their two languages? The shared-syntax account argues that bilinguals have a single, shared representation of the sentence structures that exist in both languages. Structural priming has been shown to be equal within and across languages, providing support for the shared-syntax account. However, equivalent levels of structural priming within and across languages could be observed even if structural representations are separate and connected, due to frequent switches between languages, which is a property of standard structural priming paradigms. Here, we investigated whether cumulative structural priming (i.e., structural priming across blocks rather than trial-by-trial), which does not involve frequent switches between languages, also shows equivalent levels of structural priming within- and cross-languages. Mixed results point towards a possibility that cumulative structural priming can be more persistent within- compared to cross-languages, suggesting a separate-and-connected account of bilingual structural representations. We discuss these results in terms of the current literature on bilingual structural representations and highlight the value of diversity in paradigms and less-studied languages.
双语者如何表示指导将单词组合成句子的信息，以便用于他们的两种语言？共享语法理论认为，双语者对两种语言中存在的句子结构有一个单一的、共享的表示。结构启动在语言内和语言间都是平等的，这为共享语法理论提供了支持。然而，即使结构表示是独立的并且相互连接的，由于在语言之间频繁切换，也可能观察到在语言内和语言间的结构启动具有相同的水平，这是标准结构启动范式的一个特性。在这里，我们研究了累积结构启动（即在块内而不是逐次试验内的结构启动）是否也表现出在语言内和语言间具有相同水平的结构启动。混合结果表明，累积结构启动在语言内可能比在语言间更持久，这表明双语结构表示是独立和连接的。我们根据双语结构表示的当前文献讨论了这些结果，并强调了范式多样性和较少研究的语言的价值。
