Syntactic priming effects in Brazilian children production of active and passive sentences

Abstract

Syntactic priming is the facilitation of the speaker’s syntactic processing that occurs when a syntactic structure is repeated through two (or more) consecutive sentences. It is possible to stimulate the production of passive structures (or infrequent structures) if we give to the speaker, in an earlier moment, a passive prime. The frequency of sentence production in the active voice is higher in languages. We investigated the syntactic priming effect in 8 and 9-years-old children, who speak Brazilian Portuguese, in order to answer if (i) the abstract grammatical knowledge of active and passive structures is consolidated in 8 and 9-years-old PB speakers children; (ii) children show the syntactic priming effect and learn from the production of repeated structures between prime and target corroborating the Implicit Learning theory; and (iii) the syntactic priming effect occurs with the repetition of the sentential structure between prime and target, suggesting that there is a syntactic component of language not mediated by semantic or other linguistic issues in the human grammar. The syntactic priming effect was significant in passive sentences. Children present abstract knowledge of syntactic structures. However, they seem to show room for "learn" the use of these structures, being sensitive to the syntactic priming effect.