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Cross-linguistic structural priming of innovations in Canadian French

Evidence from a language contact situation

ORCiD logo with link | RPTU University Kaiserslautern-Landau
ORCiD logo with link | University of Mannheim
ORCiD logo with link | RPTU University Kaiserslautern-Landau
Published online: 11 December 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.24100.kar
Abstract
Intra-individual language contact in bilinguals is considered a potential source for the emergence of structural innovations in a language, eventually leading to grammatical language change. This study investigates the psycholinguistic mechanisms involved in this process, focusing on cross-linguistic structural innovation priming. In a web-based self-paced reading experiment with production pre- and posttests, we tested Canadian French–English bilinguals on innovative French ditransitive and monotransitive structures primed by English sentences with the same structure or by control primes. No priming effect emerged for monotransitives. For ditransitives, however, reading times in the segment immediately following the innovation were significantly faster when primed by the corresponding English structure. In production, the proportion of innovative sentences did not significantly increase from pretest to posttest for either structure. Yet, production rates of innovative forms in both tasks were modulated by the individual degree of French contact. We discuss these differential outcomes with reference to theoretical accounts of the psycholinguistics of contact-induced change. Overall, these findings suggest that cross-linguistic priming can provide a pathway for structural innovations to enter bilingual grammars, potentially leading to language change. However, such processes are apparently constrained by the linguistic properties of the respective structure.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Previous studies on cross-linguistic priming of structural innovations
    • 1.2The present study
    • 1.3Research questions and hypotheses
  • 2.Methodology
    • 2.1Participants
    • 2.2Materials
    • 2.3Procedure
    • 2.4Data pre-processing and analyses
      • Pre- and posttest
      • Self-paced reading
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Production tasks (Pre- and Posttest)
      • 3.1.1Production of ditransitive innovations
      • 3.1.2Production of monotransitive innovations
      • 3.1.3Production of innovations and individual contact with French
    • 3.2Priming task (Self-paced reading)
      • 3.2.1RTs for ditransitive innovations
      • 3.2.2RTs for monotransitive innovations
      • 3.2.3RTs for innovations and individual contact with French
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1Cross-linguistic priming of innovations (RQ1)
    • 4.2Adaptation to the innovative structures during the experimental session (RQ2)
    • 4.3Production of innovations in pretest versus posttest (RQ3)
    • 4.4Processing of innovations and the influence of individual contact with French (RQ4)
    • 4.5Cross-linguistic innovation priming and contact-induced language change
  • 5.Summary and conclusion
  • Data availability statement
  • CRediT statement of author contributions
  • Ethics and informed consent statement
  • Notes
  • References
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