Error-Based Structure Prediction in Language Comprehension: Evidence From Verb Bias Effects in a Visual-World Structural Priming Paradigm for Mandarin Chinese

Structural priming studies in production have demonstrated stronger priming effects for unexpected sentence structures (inverse preference effect). This is consistent with error-based implicit learning accounts that assume learning depends on prediction error. Such prediction error can be verb-specific, leading to strong priming when a verb that is for instance biased toward the prepositional object (PO) structure occurs with an unexpected double object (DO) structure. However, it is unclear whether this mechanism also holds for language comprehension, especially for languages like Mandarin Chinese, which arguably depends strongly on semantics to predict syntax in comprehension. Experiment 1 was a norming study (N = 367) that measured the biases (DO vs. PO) of 48 Mandarin Chinese dative verbs. Experiment 2 (N = 72) crossed verb bias (DO-bias or PO-bias) and structure (DO or PO) of prime sentences in a visual-world paradigm, to examine whether Mandarin comprehenders show an inverse preference effect. The priming effect is expressed as the proportion of looks to the predicted referent (i.e., the recipient after a DO-prime, the theme after a PO-prime), for two critical time windows during target sentence processing: the verb and the first syllable of the first postverbal noun (which was identical in theme and recipient). There was priming in both time windows, even though the verb differed between prime and target. Importantly, there was an inverse preference effect (i.e., stronger priming after a DO prime with a PO-biased verb than with a DO-biased verb) in the second time window. These results provide evidence for an error-based structure prediction system in comprehension.