Producing filler-gap dependencies: Structural priming evidence for two distinct combinatorial processes in production*

A previous model of long-distance dependency production claims that speakers use two distinct pieces of structures containing clause-taking verbs like believe and the complementizer that or the null complementizer when planning sentences with cross-clausal filler-gap dependencies (e.g., Who did the breeder believe (that) the dog bit?) vs. when planning sentences without (e.g., The breeder believed (that) the dog bit them.). Under a certain assumption about the lexical boost effect, this model predicts that the lexical boost effect for that-priming occurs only when prime and target sentences both contain a cross-clausal filler-gap dependency or when neither does. In the current study, a computational model of structural priming implementing the core claims of the previous filler-gap dependency production model was built to show that this prediction coherently follows from the model. The prediction of the model was then tested in five recall-based structural priming experiments. Speakers showed a larger complementizer priming effect when prime and target sentences share a clause-taking verb (i.e., the lexical boost effect). But the lexical boost effect was selective to when both prime and target sentences contained cross-clausal filler-gap dependencies (Experiment 3) and when neither did (Experiment 1). Critically, the lexical boost effect was absent when only either prime or target sentences contained filler-gap dependencies crossing the complementizer structure (Experiments 2, 4, and 5), confirming the prediction of the model.

Automated summary

This study built a computational model to test the lexical boost effect in long-distance dependency sentence production. The results of five recall-based structural priming experiments showed that the lexical boost effect occurs when both prime and target sentences contain cross-clausal filler-gap dependencies or when neither does, but it disappears when only one of them contains filler-gap dependencies crossing the complementizer structure.