Construction preference

One of the main questions in this chapter and throughout the thesis is whether priming might be a factor that affects syntactic choices in L1-L1 and L2-L2 spoken interaction. The conditional probability analysis for particle placement prime-target

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pair combinations can be taken as initial indication for particle placement priming (see Table 4.4). However, no support for particle placement priming, independent of the priming-related predictors, has been observed in either L1-L1 or L2-L2 data sets (see Table 4.5 and Table 4.7). That is, priming did not reach significance when all particle placement predictors were considered in a regression analysis. This means that the particle placement construction used in the targets was not contingent on the particle placement variant that was used in the prime. However, priming can be observed in the L2-L2 conversations when the main verb lemma match and the direct object overlap are factored in (see Table 4.9).

This is a rather interesting finding considering the vast number of

experimental studies that found robust evidence for syntactic priming independent of the lexical boost effect (e.g., Bock, 1986; Pickering & Branigan, 1998; Branigan et al., 2000; Corley & Scheepers, 2002; Ferreira, 2003; Hartsuiker et al., 2008; Segaert et al., 2011; Wheeldon et al., 2011; Jaeger & Snider, 2013). The lack of support for priming in the present study, however, is consistent with some of the recent corpus-based studies that provided evidence against the robustness of priming in spoken L1 dialogue (Howes et al., 2010; Fernández & Grimm, 2014; Healey et al., 2014).

The lack of particle placement priming in the current study may be explained by the nature of the task itself, which was not designed to elicit verb-particle

constructions per se. Unlike picture description or sentence completion tasks, the participants began the narration task with little or no memory of a recent input and they were not given any prompts that include any examples of the two particle placement variants. The Charlie Chaplin movie, i.e. the immigrant, was of course a silent film with no written or spoken input. What tends to happen in the experimental studies is that participants are presented with written, spoken and, sometimes, visual input, during and sometimes before the experiment, that include the structure to be

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elicited. Therefore, one might expect a higher tendency to reproduce a target structure in picture description or sentence completion tasks, relative to a task based naturalistic dialogue, given the participants’ recent exposure to the target structure, in the former setting, and the length of their exposure to it.

Secondly, the relatively high English proficiency of the advanced L2 speakers as well as the American participants, being native speakers of American English, might partially explain the lack of priming in both data sets. Although some of the German participants made some English grammatical mistakes during their narration of certain scenes of the movie, they have a relatively high English proficiency level, as they were English linguistics and English literature university students at the time the corpus was compiled. It is plausible that both groups have had enough experience with the verb-particle construction in English and so they do not have to rely on the

repetition of verb-particle prime to create intelligible and successful communication with their interlocutors.

We see this clearly in the L2-L2 conversations, where some participants used a verb like ‘wear’ to express the notion of Charlie Chaplin ‘putting on’ clothing items, instead of using the verb-particle form, i.e. ‘put up’. For example, early on in the German 41 transcript, speaker A used the simple past of the verb ‘wear’ (see Figure 4.7). Later on in the same conversation, we can see that speaker B also used the verb ‘wear’ instead of using the verb-particle form, i.e. ‘put on’, (see Figure 4.8). The L1 speakers, however, used the verb-particle form, i.e. ‘put on’ for the same context. Figure 4.7: German transcript 41, Speaker A using the verb ‘wear’ as opposed to ‘put on’

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Figure 4.8: German transcript 41, Speaker B using the verb ‘wear’ as opposed to ‘put on’

Similarly, Figure 4.9 is an extract from the same conversation as Figure 4.8. The same speaker describes a scene from the Charlie Chaplin movie where a group of waiters attacked a customer who did not have the money to pay for his meal. Instead of using the verb-particle form ‘beat up’, the same German speaker used the simple verb of ‘hit’. The L1 speakers, however, always used the verb-particle form ‘beat up’ in the same context.

Figure 4.9: German transcript 41, Speaker B using the verb ‘hit’ as opposed to ‘beat up’

While replacing the verb-particle construction with the single verb form can be seen as an indication for the L2 speakers’ ability of taking another pathway to

communicate the same notion, it might also be taken as a sign of under-representation or even avoidance of the verb-particle construction by the L2 speakers (Dagut & Laufer, 1985; Liao & Fukuya, 2004). The suggestion that the L2-L2 conversations contain fewer verb-particle constructions due to their L1 is not plausible because the verb-particle construction occurs in most Germanic languages, including English and German (Dehe, 2005, p. 185) (see section 2.11.1). It seems that the verb-particle form is the more natural use in the contexts presented in Figure 4.8 and Figure 4.9. The L2 speakers’ use of the simple verbs ‘wear’ and ‘hit’ might be caused by their lack of awareness of the natural L1 use in those contexts.

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Both the L1 and L2 participants greatly favoured the VP NP PRT, relative to the VP PRT NP variant even if the prime was a VP PRT NP (see Table 4.3). The preference for a noun phrase preceding the particle seems so strong in both groups that it may require factors that are very strong to influence target types. It was pointed out in section 2.11.1 that the German language does not allow a particle placement construction variant where the particle is placed in an immediate post-verbal position. It may well be, therefore, that the German speakers had their German particle

placement procedures activated while performing their English dialogue task. Given that both English and German share the VP NP PRT sequence whereby the particle is placed at a final position, the high frequency of the VP NP PRT in German might be caused by cross-linguistic transfer whereby the German learner relied on their L1 to produce their L2 verb-particle constructions (Loebell & Bock, 2003).

The overall lower frequency of particle placement use in the L2-L2

conversations, relative to the L1-L1 conversations may be partially attributed to the observation that sometimes the German speakers failed to combine an appropriate particle to a main transitive verb. Figure 4.10 illustrates this observation.

Figure 4.10: German transcript 200, Speaker B using particles with the wrong verb

Figure 4.10 shows a description of the same scene described in Figure 4.9 in another L2-L2 conversation. It appears that the same German speaker was attempting to use the verb-particle construction to communicate the noting of someone being hit. However, the speaker used ‘hitting on him’, which might not be what the speaker intended to express.

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Let us now turn to the other predictors of particle placement use. The L1-L1 verb-particle constructions with more complex direct objects are seen to favour the VP PRT NP (Figure 4.4). This finding can probably be explained by the suggestion that complex phrases are delayed to the end of a sentence so speakers can have more time for ‘utterance planning’ (Wasow, 1997, p. 353). Verb-particle constructions that include direct objects that are long in syllables also show the same preference for VP PRT NP sequence in both datasets. This is not a surprising finding because long noun phrases are likely to be complex because they stand a higher chance of including embedded clauses than short ones. The syllable length of the direct object can effectively be considered an equivalent to the complexity predictor, where noun phrases that are long and complex are placed after the particle to allow more time for speakers to plan their utterance.

Discourse new direct objects tend to favour the VP PRT NP sequence in both data sets. It could be argued that new direct objects are meant to carry more weight because they are describing information that has not been introduced before in the conversations. That is, they often are not pronouns with preceding referents in the conversations. Therefore, it is conceivable that direct objects that are discourse new will be longer in syllables, and therefore, just as with the complexity and syllable length predictors, they may be positioned at the end of the sentence.

A link can also be made between the L2-L2 definiteness of direct object and news value of the direct object factors. Direct objects that are definite often refer to or describe events and objects that have been introduced before. The observed rise in the proportions of VP NP PRT sequence when the target has a definite direct object, (see Figure 4.5), can be explained by the understanding that definite direct objects tend to be shorter because they are not discourse new. Therefore, it might be that the L2 speakers preferred maintaining the short, definite direct objects before the particles but

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delayed long ones to a final position following the particle in order to win some planning time for the longer constituent (see Wasow, 1997).

Another interesting finding of this chapter is the similarities in the L1-L1 and L2-L2 speakers in terms of their reproduction of one verb-particle type, relative to the other, following exposure to a verb-particle prime (see Table 4.3). The L1 speakers used either variant of the verb-particle significantly more frequently than the L2 speakers did. However, the difference in the proportion of target types following the verb-particle primes was not statistically significant. It could be argued, therefore, that both groups displayed similarities in terms of their reproduction of the verb-particle primes in subsequent AS-units.

The similarities in the L1-L1 and L2-L2 verb-particle reproduction strategies, therefore, can also be attributed to the fact that both data sets influenced by almost the same set of factors that determine the verb-particle type to be used (see Table 4.5, Table 4.6 Table 4.7 and Table 4.8). These similar tendencies confirm Costa et al.'s (2008, p. 551) suggestion that the mechanisms responsible for priming in L1-L1 and L2-L2 dialogues are very similar. Costa et al.’s (2008) suggestion about the similarity in the mechanisms underpinning priming between L1-L1 and L2-L2 interlocutors resonates with language processing research which suggests a considerable level of similarity in the mechanisms of L1 and L2 speech production (Kormos, 2011, p. 40).

Finally, it is important to highlight the similarity between both groups in terms of verb-particle priming behaviour. As section 4.5.2 and 4.5.3 showed, almost the same factors that influenced particle placement use in L1-L1 also influenced particle placement use in L2-L2 conversations. The similarity in priming behaviour may be attributed to the similarity between English and German being members of the Germanic family of languages. If the same movie narration task was used to elicit L2-

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L2 conversations where the interlocutors are of an Arabic or Chinese L1, for example, one might perhaps expect more different verb-particle L2-L2 priming tendencies (Costa et al., 2008, pp. 549–550). That is because of the greater differences between the L1 and L2 linguistic systems, i.e. English vs. Arabic or Chinese. Therefore, investigating evidence for linguistic similarity on L2 priming, by including a different L1 linguistic system to English and German under the same study design circumstances could be an important asset for future research.