The production of coerced expressions: Evidence from priming

• Four experiments investigated production of coerced and full-form sentences.
• Participants showed priming for both coercion and constituent structure.
• Repetition of the coercing verb and coerced action affected priming.
• Coerced and full-form sentences use different semantic-to-syntactic mappings.

We report four structural priming experiments investigating the syntactic and semantic processes involved in producing coerced and full-form sentences (e.g., The bricklayer began the wall vs. The bricklayer began building the wall). Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated priming for syntactic structure across sentences that involved the same coercing verb (e.g., began). Experiment 1 (and the combined analysis of Experiments 1 and 2) further demonstrated priming for semantic structure when syntactic structure was controlled. Experiment 3 demonstrated repetition of coerced sentences when prime and target used the same coercing verb but not different coercing verbs. Experiment 4 demonstrated repetition of coerced sentences both when the prime and target involved the same (lexically unrealized) coerced action (e.g., building) and when they did not, although repetition was stronger when they did. We argue that speakers use distinct mappings from semantic to syntactic structure when producing coerced and full-form sentences, and propose an account of how a model of language production might incorporate these mappings.