We examine whether L2 speakers' individual differences in attention, motivation and proficiency affect syntactic alignment and the resulting learning in interactions with and without lexical overlap. Our interactive alignment task fostered language learning for two different syntactic structures, but immediate alignment only occurred for the least syntactically complex structure. Overall, alignment was influenced by individual differences in attention and motivation but not in proficiency.
Second language (L2) speakers experience syntactic alignment, as they tend to re-use the syntax of recently experienced sentences to formulate their own sentences, and this alignment can lead to L2 learning [1]. While there is large within-group variation in L2 syntactic alignment and the resulting learning, our understanding of why this is the case remains limited. In this study, we investigated the effect of task and individual characteristics. We compared alignment on two syntactic structures and in conditions with and without lexical overlap. We also examined the effect of individual differences in attention, motivation and proficiency.
Using a confederate priming paradigm, we investigated English L2 French learners' primed production of fronted temporal adverbial phrases and passive sentences. For both alternations, we manipulated between-subjects whether there was lexical overlap between prime and target sentences. We measured immediate priming (repeating a syntactic structure after a prime) and long-term priming (increase in target structures production in post-tests without primes relative to pre-tests). We assessed attention, motivation and proficiency with questionnaires.
Without overlap, the learners experienced long-term effects of priming on their production of fronted and passive sentences. This showed that L2 speakers can learn to produce different syntactic structures when interacting with a confederate. However, the learners showed significant immediate priming for fronted sentences but not for passives, which suggests that whether L2 speakers repeat a native speaker's syntactic structure in their immediate turn may depend on the syntactic complexity of the targeted structure. Lexical overlap boosted immediate priming of both structures and, surprisingly, it also increased long-term priming of passives. The degree of priming varied with individual differences in attention and motivation but not with proficiency. These results have important implications for models of priming and alignment. [1] Jackson, 2018, Second Language Research.
