D.Reitter.JD.Moore/Joumal of Memory and Language 76(2014)29-6 31 Most of the results on priming and alignment come t designs i tion models and established ad hoc conventions e by pa atural ve b-argument preferer s in experimental conditions d nte active alignment and structural priming in dialogue experiments fail to faithfully reproduce real-wo rld lar Structural priming is a special case of adaptation.eithe between or within peakers.Language production and ctors tha hending language.or whether they were used in one's Such criticisms are addressed by work on language elic mented and known to between questions and ,200 Levelt roborate theabor eriments and also show that structu Bock (19)established the experimental paradigm that contrasts the use of alternative svntactic choices sha same seman ics (She picks up the book vs.She tactic structure independent of semantics and metrical or studies as well as lab experiments to 三世 ra()ound sym and sentence completion task vs.passive olaeoraotbleobjet(Dosp position lab i r ev This de object that active and passive constructions.for instance the experin wor in structural priming In th are not se tic alternations mark syntactic choice points,i.e.where ds laid out in ro e m mus con of th doe s not require altemations to define or even measure Garrod (200)argue that if the main rea was used (e.g.the c y giving the clown a balloon priming effects occur is to facilitate alignment provide an。 enced the syntactic structure of the subject's description spontane ous processe es and the interaction between lin The next section wi slo ()st shor-termd Methodology:mea suring short-term priming in corpora workhas proposed models that explain the mechanisms ng or to tes The Switch 2011)within the context of lang age acquisition versations:the HCRC Map Task corpus l.1 cle will address short-term syntactic priming first and priming of assive constructions.we can do so with a exposure, persistently increasing the availability of syntac￾tic structures. Alignment is a cascade of adaptation pro￾cesses between speakers at different linguistic levels postulated by the IAM. Alignment culminates in assimi￾lated situation models and established ad hoc conventions between speakers. Interactive alignment and structural priming in dialogue Structural priming is a special case of adaptation, either between or within speakers. Language production and comprehension are biased by recent experience, regardless of whether the structures were observed while compre￾hending language, or whether they were used in one’s own speech. Alignment at the syntactic level is well-docu￾mented and known to occur in a variety of contexts: between questions and answers (Levelt & Kelter, 1982), in comprehension and production. It can be specific to dia￾logue partners (Brennan & Hanna, 2009) or to the per￾ceived abilities of an interlocutor (Branigan, Pickering, Pearson, McLean, & Brown, 2011). Bock (1986) established the experimental paradigm that uncovered structural priming in speech. Bock and Loebell (1990) demonstrated evidence for priming of syn￾tactic structure independent of semantics and metrical or event structure. Pickering and Branigan (1998) found syn￾tactic priming in written language production using scripted situations and a sentence completion task. Branigan, Pickering, and Cleland (2000) found clear evi￾dence for syntactic alignment in dialogue-like lab interac￾tions. Their experimental design is prototypical of much of the experimental work in structural priming. In their experiments, dialogue partners took turns describing pic￾tures to one another to enable their partner to identify the card containing the described picture from a set of cards laid out in front of them. One of the speakers was a confederate and produced descriptions based on a script that manipulated syntactic choice, in particular whether a double object or a prepositional object construction was used (e.g., the cowboy giving the clown a balloon vs. the cowboy giving a balloon to the clown). The syntactic structure of the confederate’s description strongly influ￾enced the syntactic structure of the subject’s description in the turn immediately following. Two adaptation effects occur: (a) fast, short-term and short-lived priming, and (b) slow, long-term adaptation that persists and is likely to be a result of implicit learning (see Ferreira & Bock (2006) and Pickering & Ferreira (2008) for reviews). Long-term adaptation is a learning effect that can persist over several days (Bock, Dell, Chang, & Onishi, 2007; Kaschak, Kutta, & Schatschneider, 2011). Recent work has proposed models that explain the mechanisms of the effects (Bock & Griffin, 2000; Kaschak, Kutta, & Jones, 2011) within the context of language acquisition (Chang, Dell, & Bock, 2006) and general memory retrieval (Reitter, Keller, & Moore, 2011). The remainder of this arti￾cle will address short-term syntactic priming first, and then discuss experiments with long-term syntactic and lexical alignment. Most of the results on priming and alignment come from controlled experiments. We caution that designs in which subjects do a task constructed to elicit linguistic tar￾get constructions many times may not be a true reflection of linguistic choices made by participants in natural, spon￾taneous real-life dialogue. For instance, findings regarding verb-argument preferences in experimental conditions do not always correlate well with corpus studies (Roland & Jurafsky, 2002). One reason why some linguistic laboratory experiments fail to faithfully reproduce real-world lan￾guage use may be the complexity of linguistic choice as evidenced by models derived from corpora. Gries (2005) argues that experimental designs may effectively control only some confounds, but not the variety of factors that influence linguistic decision-making. Such criticisms are addressed by work on language elic￾ited outside of artificially created situations, often in the context of spoken dialogue (Bock & Kroch, 1989; Dubey, Keller, & Sturt, 2005; Estival, 1985; Gries, 2005; Levelt & Kelter, 1982; Szmrecsanyi, 2006, 2005). These studies cor￾roborate the laboratory experiments and also show that structural priming occurs in spontaneously produced lan￾guage. However, these studies employ a design pattern that contrasts the use of alternative syntactic choices shar￾ing the same semantics (e.g., She picks up the book vs. She picks the book up). Typically, such use of explicit alterna￾tions limits corpus studies as well as lab experiments to a small set of predetermined syntactic rules or construc￾tions, such as particle placement as in the example, active vs. passive voice, or double object (DO) vs. prepositional object (PO) use for arguments to verbs. This design also hinges on a very simple notion of semantics. One could object that active and passive constructions, for instance, are not semantically equivalent and carry different conno￾tations and information statuses (Steedman, 2000). Syntac￾tic alternations mark syntactic choice points, i.e., where a speaker must choose a construction to use. The corpus￾based approach we follow refers to syntactic choices, but does not require alternations to define or even measure priming. Pickering and Garrod (2004) argue that if the main rea￾son that priming effects occur is to facilitate alignment, they will be particularly strong during natural interactions. Corpora provide an opportunity to quantify and contrast spontaneous processes and the interaction between lin￾guistic choices and cognitive tasks. The next section will describe this methodology in detail. Methodology: measuring short-term priming in corpora What we describe in the following is a method to quan￾tify and contrast priming levels in datasets. They contain language spontaneously produced in contexts not designed to elicit syntactic priming or to test the IAM. The Switch￾board corpus (Marcus et al., 1994) is a set of spontaneous telephone conversations; the HCRC Map Task corpus (Anderson et al., 1991) contains task-oriented dialogues. Consider the following example. If we were to detect priming of passive constructions, we can do so with a range of different verbs and semantics by counting occur￾rences of passives, and contrasting the counts under two D. Reitter, J.D. Moore / Journal of Memory and Language 76 (2014) 29–46 31