Priming Prosodic Boundaries Across Constructions
Abstract
Unlike perception studies, production studies have so far failed to prime intonational phrase structure. One reason for this might be syntactically-biased materials. This study aims to assess whether prosodic boundaries can be primed in production when their saliency is not reduced by a strong syntactic bias. We replicated the prosodic priming paradigm from Tooley et al. (2014, 2018) in an online production study testing two constructions: the original PP-attachment (transfer of location) sentences used by Tooley et al. and newly constructed relative clause attachment constructions. A norming study confirmed a strong syntactic bias in the original materials while showing more balanced preferences for RC attachment. Prosodic analyses revealed a priming effect for RC attachment constructions only, suggesting that intonational phrase structure can be primed in production in proper conditions.
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