Proficient L2-English speakers were primed to produce near-ungrammatical double-objects.

Priming from grammatical alternating verbs and near-ungrammatical non-alternating verbs.

There was lexical boost from non-alternating same-verb double object primes.

No difference found in priming patterns between L1-Germanic and L1-Romance speakers.

Results are consistent with abstract and lexically-based L2-statistical learning but not L1-generalization.

In two structural priming experiments, we investigated the representations of lexically-specific syntactic restrictions of English verbs for highly proficient and immersed second language (L2) speakers of English. We considered the interplay of two possible mechanisms: generalization from the first language (L1) and statistical learning within the L2 (both of abstract structure and of lexically-specific information). In both experiments, L2 speakers with either Germanic or Romance languages as L1 were primed to produce dispreferred double-object structures involving non-alternating dative verbs. Priming occurred from ungrammatical double-object primes involving different non-alternating verbs (Experiment 1) and from grammatical primes involving alternating verbs (Experiment 2), supporting abstract statistical learning within the L2. However, we found no differences between L1-Germanic speakers (who have the double-object structure in their L1) and L1-Romance speakers (who do not), inconsistent with the prediction for between-group differences of the L1-generalization account. Additionally, L2 speakers in Experiment 2 showed a lexical boost: There was stronger priming after (dispreferred) non-alternating same-verb double-object primes than after (grammatical) alternating different-verb primes. Such lexically-driven persistence was also shown by L1 English speakers (Ivanova, Pickering, McLean, Costa, & Branigan, 2012) and may underlie statistical learning of lexically-dependent structural regularities. We conclude that lexically-specific syntactic restrictions in highly proficient and immersed L2 speakers are shaped by statistical learning (both abstract and lexically-specific) within the L2, but not by generalization from the L1.

L2 processing

Structural priming

Syntactic restrictions

Dispreferred sentences

Trial-level data and analysis code are publicly available on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/9u6r4/).

© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc.