| In language use,people tend to repeat the syntactic structures they have recently contacted or processed.This phenomenon is called syntactic priming.There are some controversies about the working mechanism of syntactic priming.In recent years,researches have shifted from verifying the existence of syntactic priming to exploring the factors that promote priming effect and have discovered the cumulative effect from frequency.But it is not clear what specific influence the different verb frequencies have.The present research is aimed at probing into the causes and working mechanisms of the priming effect of verb token frequency and type frequency.Besides,it tends to provide suggestions for second language teaching.Research questions:1.How does verb token frequency influence the priming effect of DO structure and PO structure? Does this influence change due to verb repetition and non-verb repetition?2.How does verb type frequency influence the priming effect of DO structure and PO structure? Does this influence change due to verb repetition and non-verb repetition?3.How does the same verb token frequency and type frequency differentially influence the priming effect of DO structure and PO structure? Does this influence change due to verb repetition and non-verb repetition?190 freshmen from a vocational college in Wuxi participated in the experiment.23 of them participated in the pilot study and the rest participated in the main study who were classified as 5 groups,that is token/type frequency 1(32 persons),token frequency 3(32 persons),token frequency 6(32 persons),type frequency 3(35persons),and type frequency 6(36 persons),and each group was divided into double-object(DO)structure group and preposition-object(PO)structure group.Participants firstly were required to take a baseline test,then take a priming test one week later,and finally take a post-test and a questionnaire survey after another week.The experimental paradigm chosen in this study was picture description and sentence completion.These three tests were conducted in the form of slides.First,subjects were presented with pictures containing target verbs and other related information.Then,they needed to select appropriate dative structure to complete sentences within limited time after observing the pictures.In order to conceal the target structure and the experimental purpose,two interval fillers with corresponding pictures and information were inserted between each target structure.The experiment results indicate that:Firstly,because of the insertion of fillers between each target structure and the low proficiency of subjects,whether verbs are repeated or not,token frequency makes no significant difference on DO structure.However,it can be observed that the higher the token frequency,the stronger the priming effect,which reflects cumulative effect.In addition,the overall priming rate of DO structure is higher than that of PO structure,embodying the inverse preference effect of implicit priming.Due to the ceiling effect,token frequency has no significant priming effect on PO structure with which subjects have good mastery.While in the case of verb repetition,token frequency 3 causes the production of DO structure to be marginally significant,which manifests the lexical boost effect in certain degree.Therefore,the priming effect of token frequency on dative structure is partly consistent with the dual-path mechanism.Secondly,because of the interference of different verbs,token frequency does not significantly improve the priming effect on DO structure,but also disturbs learners' mastery of this structure,especially the sharp decrease of DO structure's production in type frequency 3 under non-verb repetition.However,type frequency 6 can strengthen the linguistic representation of DO structure under non-verb repetition and thus produce long-term memory in certain degree.On the contrary,due to the diversity of verbs,type frequency 3 and 6 promote the productivity of PO structure and lead to a significant priming effect both in immediate and delayed test,which mainly originates from verb repetition.Thus it can be seen that the priming effect of type frequency on dative structure is better in accordance with the residual activation mechanism.Thirdly,token/type frequency 3 and 6 produce significant difference on the immediate priming effect of DO structure and the facilitation of token frequency is better than that of type frequency.This significance results from the verb repetition between priming sentences and target sentences,which would gradually disappear in delayed priming.And the main reason for this phenomenon is that token frequency could help acquire and construct the immediate knowledge of DO structure,but type frequency can enrich the experience of language use in different contexts and strengthen linguistic representation in the long term.In addition,due to Chinese learners' good mastery of PO structure,the production of this structure has reached the ceiling level,so there is no significant difference between the priming effect of token/type frequency 3 and 6 on PO structure.All in all,the present research confirms the existence of priming effect from verb token frequency and type frequency on dative structure.Comparatively speaking,token frequency is more conducive to the immediate production of DO structure,however,type frequency could produce certain delayed effect on DO structure.Both token frequency and type frequency can facilitate the high production of PO structure.At the same time,the inverse preference and the explicit promotion of verb repetition supports the dual-path mechanism of syntactic priming.Therefore,L2 teachers need to flexibly apply the frequency effect on L2 syntactic priming according to different characteristics of syntactic structures. |
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