The Comprehension of the Passive Voice by Different Populations and the Effects of Structural Priming on this Process By: Nenad Jovanović Submitted to the Faculty of Human Sciences of the University of Potsdam 2018 Supervisors Prof. Dr. Barbara Höhle (University of Potsdam) Prof. Dr. James Law (Newcastle University) Dr. Kai Alter (Newcastle University) Published online on the Publication Server of the University of Potsdam: https://doi.org/10.25932/publishup-47590 https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-475900 The work reported in this dissertation has been conducted under the auspices of the Erasmus Mundus Joint International Doctorate for Experimental Approaches to Language and Brain (IDEALAB) of the University of Potsdam (DE), Newcastle University (UK), University of Groningen (NL), University of Trento (IT) and Macquarie University, Sydney (AU). The work presented here was funded by the European Commission within the action nr: 2014—0685/001-001-EMJD (Framework Partnership Agreement 2012-2025). ii Acknowledgements This dissertation is signed by me alone but producing such work would not have been possible without the help and support of numerous individuals. I want to thank everyone who made this possible. I would like to thank all three of my supervisors, Prof. Barbara Höhle, Prof. James Law and Dr. Kai Alter for their guidance and support throughout the process. Thank you to all of my colleagues whom I have shared an office with – in Golm, Newcastle and Sydney. I am thankful to all of my other colleagues and friends who supported me throughout this period. A special thanks to all of my participants, who taught me a lot about testing human subjects. I have gained a lot of valuable experience from that process. I am grateful for everyone who helped me with various technical elements one encounters while doing an international Ph.D., such as eye tracker setup and troubleshooting, item preparation, data analysis, participant management, ethics approvals, visas, employment and travel regulations etc. Thank you to the dear people around the globe who supported me and who were there for me during this time. Berlin, June 2018 iii Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................................. iii Contents .................................................................................................................................................. iv List of Figures .......................................................................................................................................... vii List of Tables .......................................................................................................................................... viii CHAPTER I – GENERAL INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 10 General Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 11 About the Passive Voice .................................................................................................................... 12 Processing of the Passive Voice by Adults ......................................................................................... 18 Acquisition and Processing of the Passive Voice by Children ........................................................... 20 Acquisition and Processing of the Passive Voice by Bilinguals .......................................................... 24 Methodological Background ................................................................................................................. 24 What is Structural Priming and What can it tell us About the Processing of the Passive Voice? ..... 25 Structural Priming in Production ....................................................................................................... 26 Structural Priming in Comprehension ............................................................................................... 26 Structural Priming of the Passive Voice ............................................................................................ 28 Eye Tracking and the Visual-World Paradigm as a Window into Syntactic Processing ..................... 30 The Current Thesis ................................................................................................................................. 33 References ............................................................................................................................................. 35 CHAPTER II: THE EFFECTS OF PRODUCTIVE AND RECEPTIVE STRUCTURAL PRIMING ON THE COMPREHENSION OF GERMAN PASSIVES: AN EYE TRACKING STUDY ............................................................................................... 41 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 42 The relationship between language production and comprehension .............................................. 42 Priming as a method of testing this relationship .............................................................................. 43 Previous priming in production studies ............................................................................................ 44 Previous priming in comprehension studies ..................................................................................... 45 Research question ............................................................................................................................. 47 Motivation: Why eye-tracking is useful............................................................................................. 49 Short preview for experiment and hypotheses ................................................................................ 49 Methods ............................................................................................................................................ 50 Preparation of data for analysis ........................................................................................................ 58 Data Analysis ..................................................................................................................................... 60 iv Results ................................................................................................................................................... 61 Discussion .............................................................................................................................................. 65 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 69 Literature ............................................................................................................................................... 71 CHAPTER III – PRIMING EFFECTS ON THE COMPREHENSION OF PASSIVE SENTENCES BY GERMAN-ACQUIRING CHILDREN – AN EYE TRACKING STUDY .......................................................................................................... 74 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 75 Theories on the delay in the comprehension of passives ................................................................. 76 Acquisition of passives by German-speaking children ...................................................................... 77 The Effect of structural priming on children´s comprehension of passives ...................................... 79 The Current Study ................................................................................................................................. 84 Experiment I – Children ......................................................................................................................... 87 Methods ............................................................................................................................................ 87 Data Analysis ..................................................................................................................................... 93 Results ............................................................................................................................................... 95 Experiment II – Adults ........................................................................................................................... 99 Methods ............................................................................................................................................ 99 Data analysis .................................................................................................................................... 100 Results – the priming group ............................................................................................................ 100 Results – the no-priming group ....................................................................................................... 101 Discussion ............................................................................................................................................ 102 Conclusion ..........................................................................................................................................