Mapping concepts to syntax: Evidence from structural priming in Mandarin Chinese

Theories of how people construct linguistic form during production are largely based on English and closely related languages. We report three experiments that used a structural priming paradigm to investigate grammatical encoding in Mandarin Chinese, in particular the way conceptual information is mapped onto grammatical structure. The results show that, in addition to persisting in using the same syntactic form across utterances, speakers of Mandarin persisted in their mappings from conceptual elements to syntactic elements, including both grammatical functions and linear surface word order positions. The results thus argue against a two-stage model where conceptual representations are first mapped onto grammatical functions, which are then in turn mapped onto surface linear positions. Instead, the results support a one-stage model where the processor computes in a single stage a structure that specifies both the linear order and the grammatical functions of its constituents.

► We explored the mapping from conceptual information to grammatical structure.
► Thematic roles are mapped onto both grammatical functions and linear positions.
► Constituent structure encodes both the functions and order of its constituents.
► Grammatical structure is computed in one stage.