Between-and within-language priming is the same: Evidence for shared bilingual syntactic representations

Abstract

Two structural-priming experiments investigated how bilinguals represent syntactic structures. According to the shared-syntax account (Hartsuiker, Pickering, & Veltkamp, 2004), bilinguals have a single syntactic representation for structures that exist in both languages, whereas separatesyntax accounts claim that the representations for these structures are language specific. Our experiments tested native speakers of Swedish who were highly proficient in English. The results showed that structural priming within language and between languages was equally strong. This indicates that representations of syntactic structures fromdifferent languages are shared and, therefore, supports the shared-syntax account. © The Psychonomic Society 2010.