Abstract

Syntactic priming is a language phenomenon that the same structure will be repeated in the following sentence after a syntactic structure used. Early studies of it mainly focused on syntactic priming during sentence production and managed to prove two facts. One is syntactic priming can not be simply explained lexically, thematically, or metrically and the other is there is cross-modal syntactic priming both between speaking and writhing and form production to comprehension.

By using paradigm of Spoken Picture Description, this paper extends the research of syntactic priming during sentence production with the active and passive sentence structures. Two variables were tested in one experiment. One was the age and the other was the abstractness of the nouns used in priming sentences. Participants (3- to 5-year-old children) were asked to listen to the priming sentence (either the active structure or the passive one) and then to described pictures in their own words. Their utterances were recorded. After the analysis of the utterances, two conclusions were made: (1)At 5-year-old would syntactic priming becomes a prominent phenomenon during children sentence production in the Chinese context. (2) The change of abstractness of nouns in priming sentence would not change the magnitude of syntactic priming effect.

Keywords: syntactic priming; sentence production; concrete nouns; abstract nouns; 3- to 5-year-old children 

Contents

Abstract

摘  要

1. Introduction-1

1.1 General Background of the Research-1

1.2 Research Questions-1

1.3 Layout of the Thesis-1

2. Literature Review-3

2.1 Definition of Syntactic Priming-3

2.2.1 Spoken Picture Description-3

2.2.2 Written Sentence Completion-4

2.2.3 Sentence Recall-4

2.3 Relevant Studies Abroad and Home-4

2.3.1 Studies Abroad-4

2.3.2 Studies Carried out at Home-6

2.4 Theories of Syntactic Priming-6

2.4.1 Theory of Implicit Study-6

2.4.2 Theory of Activation of Entry-7

2.5 The Significance of the Current Study-7

3. Research Design-8

3.1 Hypothesis-8

3.2 Method-8

3.3 Participants-8

3.4 Experiment Overview-8

3.4.1 Comprehension Procedure and Material-9

3.4.2 Priming and Producing Procedure and Material-10

3.5 Scoring-11

3.5.1 Scoring of Comprehension-12

3.5.2 Scoring of Repetition-12

3.5.3 Scoring of Utterance-12

3.5.4 Scoring of Priming-12

3.6 Results-12

3.6.1 Results of Utterance-13

3.6.2 Results of Priming-13

3.6.3 Discussion-14

4. Conclusion-16

4.1 Conclusion of the Research-16

4.2 Implications to First Language Acquisition-16

4.3 Limitations and Suggestions of the Research-16

References-18

Appendix-20

List of Figures, Tables and Charts-22