Online seminar: How does short-term syntactic priming lead to long-term language learning?

Our next LuCiD seminar will take place online via zoom on Tuesday 2nd March at 11am. Dr Kate Messenger (University of Warwick) will be presenting her research on how short-term syntactic priming leads to long-term language learning. Kate and her group have needed to adapt their research methods during the pandemic, so there will also be opportunity to discuss this.

If you would like to attend the seminar, email our Centre Manager, Helen, who will share the zoom details with you.

Abstract

Syntactic priming, the unconscious repetition of syntactic structure across speakers and utterances, has been a key method in demonstrating the psychological reality of abstract syntactic representations that adults recruit in their language processing. More recently, syntactic priming has been applied to test children's knowledge of syntactic structures and to explain how these structures are acquired. In this talk I will explore how children’s immediate responsiveness to individual experiences of syntactic structures might relate to their longer-term learning of these structures. I will present our recent evidence, which aims to address these questions by examining these effects across different language structures and age groups, and discuss the future directions of this programme, including our post-pandemic research adaptations.

 

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