The Effects Of Animacy And Language Proficiency On The Syntactic Priming Of Object Relative Clauses

Syntactic priming refers to the fact that individuals tend to reuse syntactic structures that have just been processed or comprehended,resulting in the facilitation effect of syntactic processing.Previous research on syntactic priming mostly focused on simple structures like the double object structure and the prepositional object structure.However,few researchers choose complex sentences as target structures.Even fewer explore how the animacy condition of nouns affects syntactic priming.In addition,second language learners’ language proficiency is a crucial factor influencing syntactic priming.Based on this,this thesis chooses Object Relative Clauses(ORC)as target structures,attempting to explore the syntactic priming effect and sustainable effect of ORC priming.And how the animacy condition of nouns and second language learners’ language proficiency affect ORC priming.The research questions of the present study are formulated as follows: 1)Does syntactic priming facilitate the production of ORC under different animacy conditions in the priming stage? If so,is it sustainable? 2)How does language proficiency affect ORC priming under different animacy conditions?3)How does animacy condition affect ORC priming? And how do animacy condition and language proficiency interactively affect the priming of ORC?A 2×3 two-factor mixed experimental design is adopted.Twenty-five graduate students and twenty-five undergraduate students of English majors are selected to participate in the experiment.The experimental procedures include three stages: pre-test,priming test,and post-test.In the pre-test and post-test,subjects are required to finish a10-minute written sentence completion task.This task consists of 12 uncompleted sentences under three animacy conditions(e.g.,inanimate-animate,animate-inanimate,animate-animate)with a “Here is ＿＿.(prompt words)” sentence pattern.Subjects need to complete each sentence in written form with three prompt words in the bracket.In the priming test,subjects are asked to complete an oral sentence completion task for around 30 minutes.This task is composed of 60 stimuli materials including three animacy conditions and 80 fillers.Each sentence is presented by Power Point for 10 seconds and subjects need to read sentences aloud.When uncompleted sentences with“Here is ＿＿.(prompt words)” sentence pattern occurs on the screen,subjects should complete sentences orally with three prompt words in the bracket.Finally,the experimental data were analyzed by descriptive statistics,the Independent Sample T-test,and the repeated measures of ANOVA.The major findings are as follows:(1)Syntactic priming can facilitate the production of ORC under inanimateanimate condition and animate-animate condition but not under animate-inanimate condition.And this facilitation effect is unsustainable.(2)There was no significant difference in the priming of ORC under different animacy conditions between the higher and lower language proficiency groups.(3)There is a main effect of the animacy condition but no interaction effect between the animacy condition and language proficiency in the priming of ORC.At last,limitations of the current study are proposed based on the major findings of this study.Relevant suggestions for future studies in ORC processing and language teaching are recommended.