Abstract Syntactic priming is a language phenomenon that the same structure will be repeated in the following sentence after a syntactic structure used. Early studies of it mainly focused on syntactic priming during sentence production and managed to prove two facts. One is syntactic priming can not be simply explained lexically, thematically, or metrically and the other is there is cross-modal syntactic priming both between speaking and writhing and form production to comprehension.47808

By using paradigm of Spoken Picture Description, this paper extends the research of syntactic priming during sentence production with the active and passive sentence structures. Two variables were tested in one experiment. One was the age and the other was the abstractness of the nouns used in priming sentences. Participants (3- to 5-year-old children) were asked to listen to the priming sentence (either the active structure or the passive one) and then to described pictures in their own words. Their utterances were recorded. After the analysis of the utterances, two conclusions were made: (1)At 5-year-old would syntactic priming becomes a prominent phenomenon during children sentence production in the Chinese context. (2) The change of abstractness of nouns in priming sentence would not change the magnitude of syntactic priming effect.

Keywords: syntactic priming; sentence production; concrete nouns; abstract nouns; 3- to 5-year-old children 

 三至五岁儿童的句子产出中的句法启动：来自具体词汇和抽象词汇的证据

摘  要 句法启动是指在听过一种句子结构之后人们重复这种结构的一种语言现象。早期的句法启动研究主要是句子产出方面的。在这些研究的基础上，心理语言学家得出两个结论：一个是句法启动效应在一定程度上是纯粹的，另一个是跨通道的句法启动效应是存在的。

本研究采取的是图片描述范式。这一范式的实施扩展了人们对句子产出中的句法启动的认识。实验材料是主动句和被动句。本研究设计有两个变量，一个是年龄，另一个是启动句中名词的抽象程度。被试（3至5岁的儿童）首先会听到一句启动句（要么是主动句，要么是被动句），然后被试会被要求用自己的话来描述他们所看到的图片。他们描述所用的话语会被记录下来。通过对这些话语的分析，可以得出两个结论：(1) 在中国，至少得5岁儿童才可以被观察到明显的句法启动效应。(2) 启动句中名词的抽象程度不影响句法启动效应的强度。

毕业论文关键词：句法启动，句子产出，具体名词，抽象名词，3至5岁的儿童

Contents

1. Introduction 1

1.1 General Background of the Research 1

1.2 Research Questions 1

1.3 Layout of the Thesis 1

2. Literature Review 3

2.1 Definition of Syntactic Priming 3

2.2.1 Spoken Picture Description 3

2.2.2 Written Sentence Completion 4

2.2.3 Sentence Recall 4

2.3 Relevant Studies Abroad and Home 4

2.3.1 Studies Abroad 4

2.3.2 Studies Carried out at Home 6

2.4 Theories of Syntactic Priming 6

2.4.1 Theory of Implicit Study 6

2.4.2 Theory of Activation of Entry 7

2.5 The Significance of the Current Study