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How similar are shared syntactic representations? Evidence from priming of passives in Greek–English bilinguals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2022

Sotiria Kotzochampou Open the ORCID record for Sotiria Kotzochampou [Opens in a new window]  and
Vasiliki Chondrogianni
Sotiria Kotzochampou*
Affiliation:
School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Vasiliki Chondrogianni
Affiliation:
School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
*
Address for correspondence: Sotiria Kotzochampou, E-mail: skotzochampou@gmail.com
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Abstract

The shared-syntax account of bilingual syntactic representations suggests that similar structures from different languages are represented as one in the bilingual mind. In this study, we examined the degree of morpho-syntactic similarity needed for representations to be shared in the bilingual mind by comparing passive structures in Greek and English. Contrary to English, non-active morphology in Greek is not restricted to passives and the “by phrase” is considered marked. In two structural priming experiments, we examined whether passives can be primed in L1-Greek and, subsequently, whether there is a single representation for passives in Greek–English bilinguals despite distributional and morpho-syntactic differences. Results showed that passive structures were primed in L1-Greek (Experiment 1) and from L1-Greek to L2-English (Experiment 2). Our findings suggest that morpho-syntactic and distributional differences inherent to passives do not prevent priming, and that structural representations can be shared even when featural structure is not identical.

Keywords

language productionbilingualismsyntactic representationsstructural primingpassive
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 25 , Issue 5 , November 2022 , pp. 726 - 738
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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