心理语言学线上论坛 | 2022年4月20日15:00 蔡振光教授讲座

Speaker: Zhenguang G. Cai

Title: Structural priming as a tool 

Time: 15:00 – 16:30, 20 April 2022 

           (Beijing, Hong Kong time)

Venue: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/779556638

            https://cuhk.zoom.cn/j/779556638

Structural priming as a tool

Zhenguang G. Cai

The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Structural priming refers to the phenomenon that speakers tend torepeat syntactic structures across utterances. Since its discovery, structuralpriming has been observed in many constructions, languages, populations, andcontexts. More importantly, it has been utilised as a tool to reveal lexical/syntacticrepresentations and processes underlying language comprehension, languageproduction and language learning. In this talk, I will demonstrate howstructural priming can be creatively used as a tool to address interestingtheoretical questions in psycholinguistics, with a particular focus on Chineselanguage processing. In particular, I will show how structural priming can beused to tap into syntactic processes in language comprehension, to map outrepresentations of syntactic constructions, to examine semantic and lexicalinfluences on syntactic processing, and look into bilingual languageprocessing.

Some further readings

Branigan, H. P., &Pickering, M. J. (2017). An experimental approach to linguistic representation.Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 40.

Cai, Z.G., Zhao, N.,& Pickering, M.J. (in press). How do people interpret implausiblesentences? Cognition.

Cai, Z. G., Pickering, M.J., Wang, R., & Branigan, H. P. (2015). It is there whether you hear it ornot: Syntactic representations of missing arguments. Cognition, 136, 255-267.

Cai, Z. G., Pickering, M.J., Yan, H., & Branigan, H. P. (2011). Lexical and syntacticrepresentations in closely related languages: Evidence from Mandarin andCantonese. Journal of Memory andLanguage, 65, 431-445.

Rafray, C. N., Pickering,M. J., Cai, Z. G., & Branigan, H. P. (2014). The production of coercedexpressions: Evidence from priming. Journalof Memory and Language, 74, 91-106.

About the Speaker

Zhenguang Cai is an associate professor at TheChinese University of Hong Kong. He received his PhD in psychology fromUniversity of Edinburgh. He was a lecturer at University of East Anglia and anESRC Future Research Leader fellow at University College London. He usesstructural priming to reveal representations and processes underlying languagecomprehension, language production, and language learning. More recently, heinvestigates how people adjust language comprehension and production in lightof their interlocutor. He is also interested in Chinese character handwriting.For more info, please visit: www.cuhklpl.github.io. 

Virtual Psycholinguistics Forum:

https://cuhklpl.github.io/forum.html