The head constituent plays a key role in the lexical boost in syntactic priming

Accounts of language production make different predictions about the conditions under which structural priming should be enhanced by lexical repetition (the boost). Repetition head verb strongly enhances a sentence, but studies English have found contradictory results regarding effects noun repetition. In two experiments, Mandarin participants read prime sentence aloud and then produced target picture description dative event. Experiment 1, was printed on picture, we that (vs. no repetition) agent, theme, or recipient argument did not. 2, both agent were These indicate boost is restricted to in therefore support lemma-based residual activation accounts leads its associated grammatical construction.