Cover not available

Article published In: Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 15:2 (2025) ► pp.117–151

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB

Shared syntax and cross-linguistic influence in bilingual children

Evidence from between- and within-language priming

ORCiD logo with link | Radboud UniversityNijmegen
Open Access logo
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Radboud University Nijmegen.

Published online: 10 October 2023
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.22093.uns
Abstract
This paper investigates the role of structural priming in cross-linguistic influence, a well-established yet poorly understood characteristic of bilingual language development. More specifically, we test the proposal that cross-linguistic influence may be conceptualized as between-language priming, that is, as the result of prior linguistic exposure ( (2016). Cross-linguistic influence, cross-linguistic priming and the nature of shared syntactic structures. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 6(6), 822–827. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) and shared syntactic representations between languages (Hartsuiker, R. J., Pickering, M. J., & Veltkamp, E. (2004). Is syntax separate or shared between languages? Cross-linguistic syntactic priming in Spanish-English bilinguals. Psychological Science, 151, 409–414. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). In Experiment 1, we primed bilingual English-Dutch children between languages using possessive structures (e.g., the astronaut’s dog, the dog of the astronaut). In Experiment 2, we compared the same group of children with bilingual Spanish-Dutch and monolingual Dutch children using within-language priming. Within-language priming was stronger than between-language priming. In both experiments, we examined the relation between priming behaviour and individual differences in language exposure, use and proficiency. Experiment 1 found between-language priming with long-lasting effects modulated by proficiency. The results of Experiment 2 were consistent with inverse priming effects in within-language priming modulated – to a degree – by properties of the bilingual children’s other language. Taken together, these findings are consistent with the proposal that between-language priming is a plausible mechanism underpinning cross-linguistic influence and that bilingual children develop shared syntactic representations for structures which are similar across their two languages.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Factors affecting structural priming in bilingual adults
    • 1.2Structural priming and cross-linguistic influence in bilingual children
    • 1.3Possessive structures in Dutch, English and Spanish and their acquisition
  • 2.Experiment 1: Between-language priming in bilingual English-Dutch children
    • 2.1Method
      • 2.1.1Participants
      • 2.1.2Materials and design
        • Item selection
        • Elicitation task
        • Syntactic priming task
        • Picture-naming task
      • 2.1.3Procedure
      • 2.1.4Coding and analysis
    • 2.2Results
    • 2.3Discussion
  • 3.Experiment 2: Within-language priming in bilingual English-Dutch and Spanish-Dutch children and monolingual Dutch children
    • 3.1Method
      • 3.1.1Participants
      • 3.1.2Materials and design
      • 3.1.3Procedure
      • 3.1.4Coding and analysis
    • 3.2Results
    • 3.3Discussion
  • 4.Experiment 1 & 2 compared: Between- vs. within-language priming in English-Dutch bilingual children
  • 5.General discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Data availability
  • Notes
  • References
References (75)
References
Alonso, M. A., Fernandez, A., & Díez, E. (2015). Subjective age-of-acquisition norms for 7,039 Spanish words. Behavior Research Methods, 47(1), 268–274. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baguley, T. S. (2012). Serious stats: A guide to advanced statistics for the behavioural sciences. Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bannard, C., & Matthews, D. (2008). Stored word sequences in language learning: the effect of familiarity on children’s repetition of four-word combinations. Psychological Science, 19(3), 241–248. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bates, D., Mächler, M., Bolker, B. M., & Walker, S. C. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67(1). Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bernolet, S., Hartsuiker, R. J., & Pickering, M. J. (2007). Shared syntactic representations in bilinguals: Evidence for the role of word-order repetition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 33(5), 931–949.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2013). From language-specific to shared syntactic representations: The influence of second language proficiency on syntactic sharing in bilinguals. Cognition, 127(3), 287–306. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bock, K. J. (1986). Syntactic persistence in language production. Cognitive Psychology, 181, 355–387. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bock, K. J., & Griffin, Z. M. (2000). The persistence of emphasis in language production: Transient activation or implicit learning? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 1291, 177–192. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Branigan, H. P., McLean, J. F., & Jones, M. (2005). A blue cat or a cat that is blue? Evidence for abstract syntax in young children’s noun phrases. In A. Brugos, M. Clark-Cotton, & S. Ha (Eds.), Proceedings of the 29th Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 109–121). Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brysbaert, M., Stevens, M., De Deyne, S., Voorspoels, W., & Storms, G. (2014). Norms of age of acquisition and concreteness for 30,000 Dutch words. Acta Psychologica, 1501, 80–84. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cai, Z. G., Pickering, M. J., Yan, H., & Branigan, H. P. (2011). Lexical and syntactic representations in closely related languages: Evidence from Cantonese-Mandarin bilinguals. Journal of Memory and Language, 65(4), 431–445. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chang, F. (2002). Symbolically speaking: A connectionist model of sentence production. Cognitive Science, 261, 609–651. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chang, F., Dell, G. S., & Bock, K. (2006). Becoming syntactic. Psychological Review, 113(2), 234–272. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dijkstra, T., & van Heuven, W. J. B. (2002). The architecture of the bilingual word recognition system: From identification to decision. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 5(3), 175–197. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dussias, P. E., & Sagarra, N. (2007). The effect of exposure on syntactic parsing in Spanish-English bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10(1), 101–116. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Field, A. (2013). Discovering statistics using IBM SPSS Statistics (4th edition). SAGE Publications Ltd.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Flett, S., Branigan, H. P., & Pickering, M. J. (2013). Are non-native structural preferences affected by native language preferences? Bilingualism, 16(4), 751–760. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Genesee, F., Nicoladis, E., & Paradis, J. (1995). Language differentiation in early bilingual development. Journal of Child Language, 22(3), 611–631. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goodhew, S. C., & Edwards, M. (2019). Translating experimental paradigms into individual-differences research: Contributions, challenges, and practical recommendations. Consciousness and Cognition, 691(November 2018), 14–25. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gullifer, J. W., Chai, X. J., Whitford, V., Pivneva, I., Baum, S., Klein, D., & Titone, D. (2018). Bilingual experience and resting-state brain connectivity: Impacts of L2 age of acquisition and social diversity of language use on control networks. Neuropsychologia, 1171, 123–134. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haeseryn, W., Romijn, K., Geerts, G., de Rooij, J., & van den Toorn, M. C. (1997). Algemene Nederlandse Spraakkunst. Martinus Nijhoff/Wolters Plantyn.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haman, E., Łuniewska, M., Polišenská, K., Mieszkowska, K., & Chiat, S. (2013). Cross-linguistic Lexical Tasks: British English version (CLT-EN). As part of LITMUS COST IS0804 Battery. Unpublished material.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haman, E., Łuniewska, M., & Pomiechowska, B. (2015). Designing Cross-linguistic Lexical Tasks (CLTs) for bilingual preschool children. In S. Armon-Lotem, J. De Jong, & N. Meir (Eds.), Assessing multilingual children: Disentangling bilingualism from language impairment (pp. 196–240). Multilingual Matters. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hartsuiker, R. J., & Bernolet, S. (2017). The development of shared syntax in second language learning. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 20(2), 219–234. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hartsuiker, R. J., & Pickering, M. J. (2008). Language integration in bilingual sentence production. Acta Psychologica, 1281, 479–489. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hartsuiker, R. J., Pickering, M. J., & Veltkamp, E. (2004). Is syntax separate or shared between languages? Cross-linguistic syntactic priming in Spanish-English bilinguals. Psychological Science, 151, 409–414. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hervé, C., Serratrice, L., & Corley, M. (2016). Dislocations in French–English bilingual children: An elicitation study. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 19(05), 987–1000. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hsin, L., Legendre, G., & Omaki, A. (2013). Priming cross-linguistic interference in bilingual children. BUCLD 37: Proceedings of the 37th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, September 2016, 165–177.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jackson, C. N., & Ruf, H. T. (2017). The priming of word order in second language German. In Applied Psycholinguistics, 38(2). Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jaeger, T. F., & Snider, N. E. (2013). Alignment as a consequence of expectation adaptation: Syntactic priming is affected by the prime’s prediction error given both prior and recent experience. Cognition, 127(1), 57–83. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kaan, E., & Chun, E. (2018). Priming and adaptation in native speakers and second-language learners. Bilingualism, 21(2), 228–242. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kantola, L., & van Gompel, R. P. G. (2011). Between- and within-language priming is the same: evidence for shared bilingual syntactic representations. Memory & Cognition, 39(2), 276–290. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kaschak, M. P., Kutta, T. J., & Coyle, J. M. (2015). Long and short term cumulative structural priming effects. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 29(6), 728–743. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kidd, E. (2012). Individual differences in syntactic priming in language acquisition. Applied Psycholinguistics, 33(02), 393–418. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kootstra, G. J., & Doedens, W. J. (2016). How multiple sources of experience influence bilingual syntactic choice: Immediate and cumulative cross-languaage effects of structural priming, verb bias and language dominance. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 19(4), 710–732. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kootstra, G. J., van Hell, J. G., & Dijkstra, T. (2010). Syntactic alignment and shared word order in code-switched sentence production: Evidence from bilingual monologue and dialogue. Journal of Memory and Language, 63(2), 210–231. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kuperman, V., Stadthagen-Gonzalez, H., & Brysbaert, M. (2012). Age-of-acquisition ratings for 30 thousand English words. Behavior Research Methods, 44(4), 978–990. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lanza, E. (1992). Can bilingual two-year-olds code-switch? Journal of Child Language, 191, 633–658. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lemmerth, N., & Hopp, H. (2019). Gender processing in simultaneous and successive bilingual children: Cross-linguistic lexical and syntactic influences. Language Acquisition, 26(1), 21–45. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levelt, W. J. M., Roelofs, A., & Meyer, A. S. (1999). A theory of lexical access in speech production. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 221, 1–75. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lüdecke, D. (2021). sjPlot: Data visualization for statistics in social science. (R package). [URL]
Meisel, J. M. (2007). On autonomous syntactic development in multiple first language acquisition. In H. Caunt-Nulton, S. Kulatilake, & I.-H. Woo (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31st Boston University conference on language development (pp. 26–45).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Messenger, K. (2021). The Persistence of Priming: Exploring Long-lasting Syntactic Priming Effects in Children and Adults. Cognitive Science, 45(6). Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Montero-Melis, G., & Jaeger, T. F. (2020). Changing expectations mediate adaptation in L2 production. Bilingualism, 23(3), 602–617. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Muylle, M., Bernolet, S., & Hartsuiker, R. J. (2021). The role of L1 and L2 frequency in cross-linguistic structural priming: An artificial language learning study. Bilingualism, 24(4), 767–778. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Myers-Scotton, C. (1993). Social motivations for codeswitching: Evidence from Africa. Carendon Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nicoladis, E. (2006). Cross-linguistic transfer in adjective–noun strings by preschool bilingual children. Bilingualism, 9(01), 15. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2012). Cross-linguistic influence in French–English bilingual children’s possessive constructions. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15(02), 320–328. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nieuwenhuis, R., te Grotenhuis, M., & Pelzer, B. (2012). Influence.ME: Tools for detecting influential data in mixed effects models. R Journal, 4(2), 38–47. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
O’Connor, C., Maling, J., & Skarabela, B. (2013). Nominal categories and the expression of possession. In K. Börjars, D. Denison, & A. Scott (Eds.), Morphosyntactic categories and the expression of possession (pp. 89–121). John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Paradis, J., & Genesee, F. (1996). Syntactic Acquisition in Bilingual Children. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18(1), 1–25. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pickering, M. J., & Branigan, H. P. (1998). The representation of verbs: Evidence from syntactic priming in language production. Journal of Memory and Language, 391, 633–651. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Reitter, D., Keller, F., & Moore, J. D. (2011). A Computational Cognitive Model of Syntactic Priming. Cognitive Science, 35(4), 587–637. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rosenbach, A. (2014). English genitive variation – the state of the art. English Language and Linguistics, 18(2), 215–262. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rowland, C. F., Chang, F., Ambridge, B., Pine, J. M., & Lieven, E. V. M. (2012). The development of abstract syntax: Evidence from structural priming and the lexical boost. Cognition, 125(1), 49–63. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Runnqvist, E., Gollan, T. H., Costa, A., & Ferreira, V. S. (2013). A disadvantage in bilingual sentence production modulated by syntactic frequency and similarity across languages. Cognition, 1291, 256–263. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schoonbaert, S., Hartsuiker, R. J., & Pickering, M. J. (2007). The representation of lexical and syntactic information in bilinguals: Evidence from syntactic priming. Journal of Memory and Language, 561, 153–171. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Serratrice, L. (2013). Cross-linguistic influence in bilingual development. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 3(1), 3–25. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2022). What can syntactic priming tell us about crosslinguistic influence? In K. Messenger (Ed.), Syntactic priming in language acquisition: Representations, mechanisms and applications (pp. 129–156). John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Serratrice, L., Hesketh, A., & Ashworth, R. (2015). The use of reported speech in children’s narratives: A priming study. First Language, 35(1), 68–87. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Skarabela, B., & Serratrice, L. (2009). “The doctor’s mother” or “the mother of the doctor”?: Syntactic priming of possessive noun phrases in English preschoolers. In J. Chandlee, M. Fanchini, S. Lord, & M. Rheiner (Eds.), BUCLD 33 Online Proceedings Suppplement. Cascadilla Press. [URL]
Snedeker, J., & Huang, Y. T. (2015). Sentence processing. In E. L. Bavin & R. Naigles Letitia (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of child language (pp. 409–437). Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Team, Rs. (2020). RStudio: Integrated development for R. RStudio, PBC.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Unsworth, S. (2013). Assessing the role of current and cumulative exposure in simultaneous bilingual acquisition: The case of Dutch gender. Bilingualism, 16(1), 86–110. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Unsworth, S., Chondrogianni, V., & Skarabela, B. (2018). Experiential Measures Can Be Used as a Proxy for Language Dominance in Bilingual Language Acquisition Research. In Frontiers in Psychology. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Van Bergen, G. (2011). Who’s first and what’s next? Animacy and word order variation in Dutch language production. Radboud University, The Netherlands.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van Dijk, C., Dijkstra, T., & Unsworth, S. (2022). Cross-linguistic influence during online sentence processing in bilingual children. Bilingualism, 25(4), 691–704. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van Dijk, C. N., van Wonderen, E., Koutamanis, E., Kootstra, G. J., Dijkstra, T., & Unsworth, S. (2021). Cross-linguistic influence in simultaneous and early sequential bilingual children: a meta-analysis. Journal of Child Language. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Van Gompel, R. P. G., & Arai, M. (2018). Structural priming in bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 21(3), 448–455. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van Kampen, J., & Corver, N. (2006). Diversity of possessor marking in Dutch child language and Dutch dialects. In M. Vliegen (Ed.), Variation in Sprachtheorie und Spracherwerb (pp. 385–398). Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van Wonderen, E., & Unsworth, S. (2020). Testing the validity of the Cross-Linguistic Lexical Task as a measure of language proficiency in bilingual children. Journal of Child Language. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vasilyeva, M., Waterfall, H. R., Gámez, P. B., Gómez, L. E., Bowers, E. P., & Shimpi, P. M. (2010). Cross-linguistic syntactic priming in bilingual children. Journal of Child Language, 37(05), 1047–1064. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wolleb, A., Sorace, A., & Westergaard, M. (2018). Exploring the role of cognitive control in syntactic processing. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 8(5), 606–636. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (14)

Cited by 14 other publications

Arizmendi, Genesis D., José R. Palma & Doris L. Baker
2025. Predicting Science and Social Studies Vocabulary Learning in Spanish–English Bilingual Children. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 56:4 ► pp. 1069 ff. DOI logo
Barking, Marie, Maria Mos & Ad Backus
2025. Individual variation in contact effects – stability, convergence, and divergence. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 15:3 ► pp. 370 ff. DOI logo
Baroncini, Ioli, Anna Michelotti & Helen Engemann
2025. Priming motion events in Italian heritage language speakers. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism DOI logo
Baroncini, Ioli & Jacopo Torregrossa
2025. Language and structure activation explain cross-linguistic influence in bilingual language production: Evidence from within- and across-language priming. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Hervé, Coralie & Laurel Lawyer
2025. Bilinguals’ sensitivity to specificity and genericity: evidence from implicit and explicit knowledge. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 28:2 ► pp. 522 ff. DOI logo
Hurtado, Irati & Silvina Montrul
2025. Does structural priming lead to contact-induced language change?. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism DOI logo
Jacob, Gunnar, Hanife Ilen & Helen Engemann
2025. The role of cross-linguistic structural priming in contact-induced language change. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism DOI logo
Liang, Yuqing & Ziyin Mai
2025. Grammatical development of the native L1 in Cantonese–English bilingual children: early costs and long-term gains. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Serratrice, Ludovica, Marta Wesierska, Vanessa Cieplinska & Katherine Messenger
2025. Teenage kicks: Exploring shared syntax through bidirectional crosslinguistic priming. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism DOI logo
Vaks, Adele & Virve-Anneli Vihman
2025. Bilingual Acquisition of Morphology: Norwegian and Russian Influence on Children’s Sentence Repetition in Estonian. Language and Speech DOI logo
Acar, Selcuk, Bhoj Balayar, Hatice Nur Ozcelik & Anatoliy V. Kharkhurin
2024. Are Bilinguals More Creative Than Monolinguals? A Meta‐Analysis. The Journal of Creative Behavior 58:4 ► pp. 755 ff. DOI logo
Pontikas, George, Ian Cunnings & Theodoros Marinis
2024. Sentence processing in bilingual children. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 14:4 ► pp. 476 ff. DOI logo
van Dijk, Chantal, Jasmijn Bosch & Sharon Unsworth
2024. Language processing in bilingual children. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 14:4 ► pp. 435 ff. DOI logo
Xu, Kexin, Tao Zeng & Claudia Felser
2024. Cross-linguistic syntactic priming as rational expectation for syntactic repetition in the bilingual environment. PLOS ONE 19:7 ► pp. e0307504 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue