title: Do lemmas speak German? A verb position effect in German structural priming.
abstract: Lexicalized theories of syntax often assume that verb-structure regularities are mediated by lemmas, which abstract over variation in verb tense and aspect. German syntax seems to challenge this assumption, because verb position depends on tense and aspect. To examine how German speakers link these elements, a structural priming study was performed which varied syntactic structure, verb position (encoded by tense and aspect), and verb overlap. Abstract structural priming was found, both within and across verb position, but priming was larger when the verb position was the same between prime and target. Priming was boosted by verb overlap, but there was no interaction with verb position. The results can be explained by a lemma model where tense and aspect are linked to structural choices in German. Since the architecture of this lemma model is not consistent with results from English, a connectionist model was developed which could explain the cross-linguistic variation in the production system. Together, these findings support the view that language learning plays an important role in determining the nature of structural priming in different languages.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Liverpool.
authors.forename: Franklin
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.affiliation: Department of Linguistics, University of Leipzig.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Baumann
authors.affiliation: LiLi Faculty, Bielefeld University.
authors.forename: Sandra
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pappert
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen.
authors.forename: Hartmut
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Fitz
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007858:Learning; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D016571:Neural Networks, Computer; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Connectionist neural network; German dative alternation; Learning; Lemma; Sentence production; Structural priming