Structural facilitation: Mere exposure eVects for grammatical acceptability as evidence for syntactic priming in comprehension

In Wve experiments, participants Wrst read grammatical sentences of English and later rated identical, structurally similar, or novel sentences for grammatical acceptability. The experimental method was modeled after “mere exposure” and artiWcial grammar learning paradigms in which preference ratings are enhanced by prior experience with the material. Participants rated sentences as more grammatical if they had read them earlier. Increased grammaticality ratings were also observed for sentences that shared syntactic structure, but not content words, with those read earlier. A single prior exposure to a similar sentence was suYcient to induce this structural facilitation eVect, although more exposures enhanced the eVect. We interpret the results with respect to frequency sensitive models of parsing and to syntactic priming observed in language production, and we consider the available evidence for shared representations or mechanisms for language production and comprehension.  2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.