Priming Center-Embedded Object and Extraposed Subject Relative Clauses in Persian Language Production: Searching for Persistence of Hierarchical Configuration

• Published in: Journal of psycholinguistic research Vol. 52; no. 4; pp. 1289 - 1324
• Main Authors: Rafiee Fazel, Amirabbas, Golfam, Arsalan, Ameri, Hayat, Bahrami-Khorshid, Sahar, Safavimanesh, Farzaneh
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.08.2023; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Adult; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Child; Children; Cognitive Psychology; Comprehension; Foregrounding; Grammatical subject; Hearing; Humans; Interpersonal communication; Language; Persian language; Persistence; Priming; Psycholinguistics; Psychology; Relative clauses; Semantics; Syntactic structures; Syntax; Thematic roles; Verbs; Persian; Thematic emphasis; Structural priming; Hierarchical configuration; Relative clauses
• ISSN: 0090-6905; 1573-6555; 1573-6555
• DOI: 10.1007/s10936-022-09922-3

Substantial evidence suggests that priming can co-occur at different syntactic and nonsyntactic levels. In this study, we further explore two loci of priming concerned with hierarchical configuration and thematic information using relative clause (RC) constructions. In a comprehension-to-production task, Persian speakers (42 adults and 42 children) described pictures after hearing extraposed subject or center-embedded object RCs containing the same or different verbs. We ask whether priming the object RC mitigates the computational cost of center-embedding and thus increases the subsequent production of this infrequent structure. We also measured persistence effects associated with the assignment of emphasis to thematic roles, examining whether a particular portrayal of an event is captured and reproduced (e.g., foregrounding the patient). Although this study could not establish any significant priming effects in the production of the center-embedded object RC, we observed that adults used this construction more in the same verbs condition. The overall results instead revealed strong evidence for thematic emphasis persistence, such that patient-emphasis object relatives further elicited functionally equivalent RC constructions. We discuss priming of hierarchical configuration as a candidate locus and explain the activation of functional information from the speaker’s perspective.