In dialogue (and to a lesser extent elsewhere), certain aspects of the language we produce appears to reflect what came before. This phenomenon is known as priming and may be observed in our phonology (e.g., Thakerar, Giles, & Cheshire, 1982), conceptual representations (e.g., Garrod & Anderson, 1987), lexical choice (e.g., Brennan & Clark, 1996), and syntax. Syntactic priming refers to the phenomenon of using a particular syntactic structure given prior exposure to the same structure. This behaviour has been observed when speakers hear, read or write sentences (e.g., Bock, 1986; Pickering & Branigan, 1998; Schenkein, 1980). For instance, when a speaker has just heard
The judge is being dragged by the cowboy.,
s/he is more likely to produce a description like
The nurse is being bitten by the boxer.
Producing a structure which has recently been used also appears makes speakers more fluent (Levelt & Kelter, 1982), and has been shown to have a shorter speech onset latency than unprimed sentences (Smith & Wheeldon, 2001; Corley & Scheepers, 2002).
Using the confederate priming method (Branigan et al., 2000), I have examined the priming of active versus passive voice and found strong priming effects.
Why are some people primed more than others? This has been explored in collaboration with Alastair Gill (see publications).
References
Bock, J. K. (1986). Syntactic persistence in language production. Cognitive Psychology, 18, 355-387.
Branigan, H.P., Pickering, M.J. and Cleland, A.A. (2000). Syntactic coordination in dialogue. Cognition, 75, B13-B25.
Brennan, S. E. and Clark, H. H. (1996). Conceptual pacts and lexical choice in conversation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 22, 1482-1493.
Corley, M. M. B. and Scheepers, C. (2002). Syntactic priming in English sentence production: Categorical and latency evidence from an internet-based study. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 9.
Garrod, S. C. and Anderson, A. (1987). Saying what you mean in dialogue: A study in conceptual and semantic co-ordination. Cognition, 27, 181-218.
Pickering, M. J. and Branigan, H. P. (1998). The representation of verbs: evidence from syntactic priming in language production. Journal of Memory and Language, 39, 633-651.
Romaine, S. (1994). Language in Society: An introduction to sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schenkein, J. (1980). A taxonomy for repeating action sequences in natural conversation. In B. Butterworth (ed.), Language production, Vol. 1, 21-47. London: Academic Press.
Smith, M. and Wheeldon, L. (2001). Syntactic priming in spoken sentence production: An online study. Cognition, 78, 123-164.
Thakerar, J., Giles, H. and Cheshire, J. (1982). Psychological and linguistic parameters of speech accomodation theory. In: Colin Fraser & Klaus Scherer (eds.), Advances in the social psychology of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 205255.
