Show simple item record

AuthorGrosvald, Michael
AuthorKhwaileh, Tariq
Available date2023-10-03T05:03:03Z
Publication Date2019
Publication NameAl-'Arabiyya
ResourceScopus
ISSN8898731
URIhttp://hdl.handle.net/10576/48201
AbstractThe English and Arabic languages each have passive constructions, but their realizations in the two languages are quite different. We carried out a syntactic priming experiment on Arabic-English bilinguals to investigate whether analogous sentence structures might share a consistent underlying representation across languages, regardless of their different surface forms. Participants read a series of sentence stimuli, half of which were in Arabic and half in English. Sentences could be in active or passive voice. The stimuli were presented in a randomized order so that each target could be preceded by a prime matching or mismatching the target in either voice or language. Subjects needed to decide who carried out the action described in the sentence (first half of the experiment) or to whom the action happened (second half). The resulting reaction time data provide strong evidence of syntactic priming within but not across languages. Our findings are discussed in relation to the shared-syntax and separate-syntax accounts of sentence processing in bilinguals.
SponsorThe authors wish to express their gratitude to Amina Nihad Awartani and to Heba Jamal Taleb Al-Kababji for assistance in creating the sentence stimuli and collecting the experimental data. We also thank attendees of the "Workshop on Sentence Processing in Multilingual and Other Less Commonly Studied Populations," held at Potsdam University on August 4-5, 2016, in Potsdam, Germany, for their comments. This research was funded by a Qatar University grant awarded to the first author (QUSG-CAS-DELL-14\15-24) and by a Qatar National Research Fund award to the second author (NPRP-7-1506-3-390).
Languageen
PublisherGeorgetown University Press
SubjectArabic
Bilingual processing
Crosslinguistic priming
English
Perceptual priming
Syntactic priming
Syntax
TitleProcessing passive constructions in arabic and english a crosslanguage priming study
TypeArticle
Pagination1-28
Volume Number52
dc.accessType Abstract Only


Files in this item

FilesSizeFormatView

There are no files associated with this item.

This item appears in the following Collection(s)

Show simple item record