A Meta-analysis of Cross-linguistic Syntactic Priming Effects

doi:10.3969/j.issn.1674-8921.2014.12.002

摘要/Abstract

摘要： Cross-linguistic syntactic priming (CLSP) refers to the phenomenon that the use of a particular structure (e.g., passives) in one language facilitates or primes the subsequent use of the parallel structure in the other language of a bilingual speaker. Individual studies examining CLSP effects have produced conflicting results. This study aims to estimate the population effects of cross-linguistic syntactic priming effects and lexical boost effect, and to examine how potential moderators (priming direction, L2 learners' proficiency levels, and structural similarities) influenced cross-linguistic priming, electronic research databases were searched systematically for published studies, which measured CLSP effects. Meta-analytic techniques were used to analyze 20 L1 to L2 cross-linguistic studies with 32 effects sizes and 10 L2 to L1 studies with 19 effect sizes. Most studies involved 20-45 minutes of priming activities. Heterogeneity exists within the crosslinguistic priming but the priming direction (L1 to L2 or L2 to L1), L2 learners' proficiency levels, experimental modes and structural similarities were not potential moderators. For the L1 to L2 studies, the results turned out to be homogeneous. For the L2 to L1 direction, though the results were heterogeneous, L2 learners' proficiency level, experimental modes, and structural similarities were not moderators. More detailed information should be given for the cross-linguistic priming studies and more refined meta-analysis containing more potential moderators should be carried out in the future.

关键词: cross-linguistic syntactic priming, lexical boost effect, meta-analysis, bilingual

XIANGYU JIANG, LIANG CHEN. A Meta-analysis of Cross-linguistic Syntactic Priming Effects[J]. 当代外语研究, 2014, 14(12): 12-17.

参考文献

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