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The role of cross-linguistic structural priming in contact-induced language change

Ungrammatical comparative priming in Turkish–German bilinguals

ORCiD logo with link | University of Mannheim
ORCiD logo with link | University of Mannheim
ORCiD logo with link | University of Mannheim
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

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

This article was made Open Access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license through payment of an APC by or on behalf of the authors.

Published online: 5 August 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.24055.jac
Abstract
Research investigating the psycholinguistic foundations of contact-induced grammatical language change suggests that new structures may enter a language through cross-linguistic priming in bilinguals. However, this assumes that priming effects can emerge even for structures which are ungrammatical in the target language. In the present study, we test this assumption by investigating cross-linguistic ungrammatical priming for analytic comparatives between Turkish and German. In a self-paced reading experiment, Turkish–German bilinguals read German target sentences with grammatically incorrect analytic comparatives (e.g., *mehr interessant). These were preceded by a Turkish prime sentence which included a Turkish analytic comparative (daha konforlu) or an otherwise identical indicative control prime (konforlu). The results showed significantly faster reading times for ungrammatical German comparatives following Turkish comparative primes than following indicative primes. In an additional grammaticality-judgement task, Turkish–German bilinguals rated sentences with ungrammatical German analytic comparatives as significantly more acceptable than monolingually-raised German participants. These results suggest that cross-linguistic priming can even occur for ungrammatical structures. We conclude that cross-linguistic ungrammatical priming constitutes a candidate for a mechanism driving contact-induced language change in bilingual individuals.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Bilingual communities and contact-induced language change
    • 1.2Cross-linguistic structural priming and language change
    • 1.3Cross-linguistic ungrammatical priming
  • 2.The present study
  • 3.Experiment 1: Self-paced reading
    • 3.1Method
      • Participants
      • Items
      • Procedure
    • 3.2Results
      • Reading times
    • 3.3Preliminary summary and discussion
  • 4.Experiment 2: Grammaticality judgements
    • 4.1Method
      • Participants
      • Items
      • Procedure
    • 4.2Results
  • 5.General discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Data availability statement
  • CRediT statement of author contributions
  • Ethics and informed consent statement
  • Notes
  • References
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