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Journal of Memory and Language 48 (2003) 379–398
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The persistence of optional complementizer production:
Why saying ‘‘that’’ is not saying ‘‘that’’ at all
Victor S. Ferreira
Department of Psychology 0109, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0109, USA
Received 19 March 2002; revision received 10 July 2002
Abstract
What kinds of processing mechanisms determine the forms of spoken sentences? Three experiments (N ¼ 176)
measured whether the mention of an optional that in a sentence-complement structure (‘‘The mechanic mentioned
(that) the car could use a tune-up’’) can be primed by the prior production of a sentence that included a lexically or a
lexically and syntactically similar that, using a recall-based sentence-production task. Results showed that target thatmention was influenced by primes with lexically and syntactically similar thats (sentence-complement primes with
versus without thats), but not by primes with only lexically similar thats (transitive primes with determiner thats,
‘‘The company insured that farm for. . .,’’ or noun-complement primes with complementizer thats, ‘‘The theory
that. . .’’). Also, compared to neutral primes, sentence-complement primes without thats decreased target that-mention
more than sentence-complement primes with thats increased it. This suggests that complementizer-persistence specifically and sentence-production generally includes an autonomous, lexically independent syntactic processing
component.
Ó 2002 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.
Keywords: Psycholinguistics; Language production; Sentence processing; Syntactic processing; Syntactic priming; Complementizer
processing
The hallmark of linguistic ability is its creativity:
speakers and listeners process utterances they have never
encountered before. An important prerequisite for such
creativity is a separation between lexical content and
syntactic structure (see Bock, 1987a). Lexical content
denotes states, entities, and activities in the world, and
thereby communicates semantic information: who,
what, and whom. Syntactic structure determines how
the words in a sentence should be organized with respect
to one another, and thereby communicates relational
information: who did what to whom. Importantly, if
lexical content and syntactic structure are separate and
autonomous (even if mutually influential), then linguistic creativity could result from combining known lexical
E-mail address: [email protected]
content with known syntactic structures to create novel
linguistic utterances.1
That said, the abstractness of syntactic structure
raises questions about whether it is indeed processed
independently of lexical content. While the fields of
language comprehension and acquisition have at times
adopted approaches that give syntactic processes an
autonomous and independent role in language use
(e.g., Frazier & Fodor, 1978; Pinker, 1984), some
1
Note that for grammar to be productive—for language
users to be able to process an indefinite set of utterances—it
must be generative, so that a finite set of ÔrulesÕ can create an
indefinite set of utterances. For a generative grammar to even
get off the ground, however, language users must first represent
a separation between the syntax and the words in the language
they experience (i.e., between structure and content).
0749-596X/02/$ - see front matter Ó 2002 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 7 4 9 - 5 9 6 X ( 0 2 ) 0 0 5 2 3 - 5
380
V.S. Ferreira / Journal of Memory and Language 48 (2003) 379–398
recent proposals have argued that syntactic structures
are processed in a concrete and item-based manner,
dependent upon representations of individual words
and how they are used (e.g., MacDonald, Pearlmutter,
& Seidenberg, 1994; Tomasello, 2000). Importantly,
such lexically based approaches attempt to explain
much of the evidence for autonomous syntactic processing by assuming that syntactic influences, if operative at all, can be seen as derived from lexical
influences.
In the field of language production, evidence for an
autonomous syntax might come from a phenomenon
here termed structural persistence2 or syntactic priming.
This refers to speakersÕ tendency to repeat the general
forms of previously processed sentences. For example,
a speaker who hears or produces a passive prime sentence (e.g., ‘‘the dog was chased by the cat’’) is especially likely to then produce a passive target sentence
(‘‘the cow was kicked by the horse’’) rather than a
corresponding active (‘‘the horse kicked the cow’’; e.g.,
Bock, 1986a). To the extent that such persistence is due
to the repetition of lexically independent syntactic
structures, it would constitute evidence for autonomous
syntactic processing (see Pickering & Branigan, 1999,
for review).
Current evidence suggests that structural persistence
may reflect pure syntactic repetition. Some non-syntactic
factors that are correlated with differences in syntactic
structure have no effect on structural persistence (e.g.,
prosodic or thematic structure; Bock & Loebell, 1990;
Bock, Loebell, & Morey, 1992), whereas others have a
strictly additive effect (e.g., whether a subject argument
is animate or inanimate; Bock et al., 1992). Other nonsyntactic factors can influence the size of the structural
persistence effect (e.g., whether the task involves a dialogue between interlocutors; Branigan, Pickering, &
Cleland, 2000) or its longevity (e.g., whether production
is spoken or written; Branigan, Pickering, & Cleland,
1999), but since such factors are not correlated with
syntactic structure distinctions, they cannot explain the
syntactic repetition itself.
However, one non-syntactic influence on structural
persistence raises the possibility that syntactic repetition
may be lexically dependent. Pickering and Branigan
(1998) showed that the repetition of content words—
meaningful open-class nouns, verbs, and adjectives—
from prime to target sentences enhances structural
persistence. This influence of lexical repetition on
structural persistence may be a kind of lexical accessibility effect, whereby highly accessible words (e.g.,
2
In this paper, structural persistence is used to describe the
empirical effect whereby speakers tend to repeat sentence forms.
Representational bases for structural persistence are described
in terms of repetition, such as syntactic or lexical repetition.
recently produced or semantically primed words; Bock,
1986b; Perfetti & Goldman, 1975) tend to exert a
greater influence on sentence production than less accessible words.
Of course, the accessibility-driven repetition of
content words itself cannot underlie syntactic repetition. This is both because structural persistence has
been observed without content-word repetition (e.g.,
Bock, 1986a; Pickering & Branigan, 1998), and because
content-word distinctions are not correlated with syntactic-structure distinctions (e.g., an active and its corresponding passive do not contain different content
words, they only position those content words differently). However, an accessibility-driven repetition of
function words—short, high-frequency, closed-class
words like by, to, and that—might underlie syntactic
repetition. This is because function-word distinctions
are correlated with syntactic structure distinctions. For
example, a passive structure will tend to include the
same pattern of was and by (‘‘the dog was chased by the
cat’’) as another passive (‘‘the cow was kicked by the
horse’’), but not as a corresponding active (‘‘the horse
kicked the cow’’). Thus, the mention of the distinctive
function words in a prime sentence might enhance their
accessibility, leading to their increased likelihood of
mention, thereby causing speakers to produce a target
structure with those function words. Importantly, such
function-word repetition would constitute a lexically
based explanation of structural persistence (e.g., Hare
& Goldberg, 1998).
Current evidence about whether function-word
repetition can influence structural persistence is mixed.
On the one hand, structural persistence sometimes occurs independently of the repetition of distinctive
function words. For example, Bock (1989) found
equivalent priming of prepositional-dative targets
(‘‘The girl is handing a paintbrush to the man’’) over
double-object targets (‘‘The girl is handing the man a
paintbrush’’) from prepositional dative primes with the
same preposition (to, as in ‘‘A cheerleader offered a
seat to her friend’’) as from prepositional-dative primes
with a different preposition (for, as in ‘‘A cheerleader
saved a seat for her friend’’). Also, in Dutch, Hartsuiker, Kolk, and Huiskamp (1999) found that after inverted primes (e.g., ‘‘Een boek ligt op de plank,’’ ÔA
book lies on the shelfÕ) speakers produced more inverted targets than after non-inverted primes (e.g., ‘‘Op
de plank ligt een boek,’’ ÔOn the shelf lies a book,Õ),
despite the fact that the two kinds of primes do not
include distinctive function words. Finally, Pickering,
Branigan, and McLean (2002) found that after shifted
prepositional-dative primes (e.g., ‘‘The racing driver
showed to the mechanic the dirty overalls’’), speakers
were not more likely to produce prepositional dative
targets (shifted or otherwise) than after double-object
primes (‘‘The racing driver showed the mechanic the
V.S. Ferreira / Journal of Memory and Language 48 (2003) 379–398
dirty overalls’’), despite the distinct function words in
those two primes.
On the other hand, other evidence could be viewed as
consistent with an influence of function-word repetition
on structural persistence. Bock and Loebell (1990) found
equivalent priming of passive targets (e.g., ‘‘The boy was
awakened by the alarm clock’’) over actives (‘‘The alarm
clock awakened the boy’’) after non-passive locative
primes (e.g., ‘‘The 747 was landing by the control tower’’) as after passive primes (‘‘The 747 was landed by the
control tower’’). While Bock and Loebell interpreted
this as a syntactic repetition effect (under the assumption
that locatives and passives are not syntactically distinct),
a plausible alternative explanation is that the distinctive
function words in the locatives and passives (‘‘The 747
was landed/landing by. . .’’) led such primes to cause
equivalent increased passive target production (Hare &
Goldberg, 1998; see also Bencini, Bock, & Goldberg,
2002). It is worth noting in this regard that Potter and
Lombardi (1998) found that locatives primed less than
true passives (though they still primed significantly),
hinting that the (possibly) syntactically distinct locatives
prime differently from the syntactically identical passives. Furthermore, Levelt and Kelter (1982) found (in
Dutch) that when shopkeepers were asked questions
with particular prepositions (e.g., ÔAt what time do you
close?Õ) they were more likely to answer with a preposition (ÔAt 5:00Õ) than without (Ô5:00Õ), an effect they
interpreted as being due to the repetition of the preposition per se.
One reason for this inconsistent picture may be
that all structural persistence investigations conducted
to date have looked at structures that involve distinct
word orders. This may be important, as alternatives
such as prepositional datives versus double-object datives may be semantically or stylistically distinct, and
such distinctions may themselves prime (independently
of lexical or syntactic repetition) and thereby obscure
the influence of function-word repetition. Furthermore, passives specifically may have revealed an effect
of function-word repetition (Bock & Loebell, 1990),
because the distinctive function words in passives occur early and involve main-verb morphology, which
may be used when deciding upon the form of a sentence (e.g., F. Ferreira, 2000). In sum, whereas function-word repetition may not be necessary to get
structural persistence, it may be sufficient; in particular, function-word repetition may cause structural
persistence at least when syntactic repetition per se
seems evident.
An ideal way to definitively determine the role of
function-word repetition in structural persistence is to
look at a structural alternation that involves the simple
mention or omission of a function word with as few
other concomitant sentence changes as possible. One
such structural alternation arises with the production of
381
the sentence-complement structure, such as ‘‘The mechanic mentioned (that) the car could use a tune-up.’’
In such structures, a speaker can produce or omit a
function-word complementizer ‘‘that’’ after the main
verb but before the embedded clause, without any obvious accompanying word order, thematic, or semanticfeature changes. Thus, if speakers have any tendency to
repeat function words from one sentence to the next, it
should be evident when they produce sentence-complement structures: when speakers produce the word
that once, they should tend to produce the word that
again.
Of course, the mention of a that in a sentencecomplement structure may also be syntactic. That is, a
sentence-complement structure with versus without a
that may differ in how syntactic processes form the
lexically independent syntactic structure of each kind of
sentence. If so, any tendency to repeat thats from one
sentence to the next may be due to syntactic repetition
rather than to lexical repetition. Thus, to determine
whether speakers tend to repeat function words per se
from one sentence to the next, the three experiments
presented below had speakers produce sentence-complement structures in a standard prime–target structural-persistence paradigm, manipulating the properties
of the thats that speakers can repeat from one sentence
to the next. If the tendency to repeat thats is due to
lexical repetition, then speakers should repeat thats
from one sentence to the next whenever lexical properties of the that can be repeated. On the other hand, if
a tendency to repeat thats is due to syntactic repetition,
then speakers should only repeat thats whenever the
syntactic context of the that can also be repeated.
To elicit prime and target sentences with a sufficient
variety of sentence-complement-taking verbs and with
some constraint over the structures speakers produced, a
recall-based methodology was used, illustrated in Fig. 1
below. Speakers recalled and produced complete sentences shortly after encoding those sentences into
memory. Recall-based sentence-production tasks like
these exploit the fact that generally, a sentenceÕs meaning is remembered much better than its form (e.g., Sachs,
1967). This suggests that when speakers recall complete
sentences, the meaning of the recalled sentence will be
constrained by the meaning of the originally encoded
sentence (thereby providing control over content), while
the form of the recalled sentence will vary more freely.
Indeed, many experiments have shown that the forms of
produced sentences in recall-based tasks like these vary
in a manner that reflects the organization of knowledge
within the language production system (e.g., Bock &
Irwin, 1980; Bock & Warren, 1985; Ferreira & Dell,
2000; Fox Tree & Meijer, 1999; Lombardi & Potter,
1992; Potter & Lombardi, 1990, 1998). Furthermore,
such recall tasks only weakly involve formulating
propositional content; thus, any observed effects can be
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V.S. Ferreira / Journal of Memory and Language 48 (2003) 379–398
Fig. 1. Procedure for critical trials in Experiments 1 and 2. All screens separated by a 1 s interval. Speakers read each sentence out loud
upon initial presentation. At each prompt, speakers were instructed to remember as much of the sentence as possible that included the
prompted words.
ascribed to syntactic formulation rather than to processes that formulate propositional content.
Experiment 1
Speakers produced sentence-complement targets
(e.g., ‘‘The mechanic mentioned (that) the car could use
a tune-up’’) after they produced either sentence-complement primes with or without a complementizer that
(e.g., ‘‘The company insured (that) the farm was covered for two million dollars’’) or after transitive primes
with or without a determiner that (e.g., ‘‘The company
insured that/the farm for two million dollars.’’). If
complementizer mention is sensitive to priming at all,
then when speakers produce a complementizer that in a
sentence-complement prime, they should be likely to
produce another phonologically, lexically, and syntactically identical complementizer that in a sentencecomplement target. Furthermore, if such priming is due
at least partially to the repetition of the phonology of
the that, then when speakers produce a determiner that
in a transitive prime, they should also then be more
likely to produce a phonologically near-identical but
lexically and syntactically distinct complementizer that
in a sentence-complement target (i.e., this would show
that in the terminology of some theories of lexical
production—Cutting & Ferreira, 1999; Dell, 1986; Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999—producing a ‘‘that’’ lexeme is sufficient to get function-word repetition).
Phonological accessibility has been observed to affect
word order (e.g., Bock, 1987b; Pinker & Birdsong,
1979), so it may be that just the accessible phonology of
a function word (as determined by its use in a previous
sentence) could elicit function-word repetition and
thereby provide a lexical account of the structural
persistence effect.
Method
Speakers. Sixty-four members of the UCSD community participated for class credit or cash payment. All
reported learning English as their first language.
Apparatus. Stimuli were presented and responses
collected using PsyScope 1.2.5 (Cohen, MacWhinney,
Flatt, & Provost, 1993), run on Macintosh 6500/250
computers with 17-in. Applevision 750AV color
monitors set to a resolution of 832 624. Voice responses were collected with Shure SM10A unidirectional headworn microphones inputting to Marantz
PMD201 cassette recorders and PsyScope response
boxes. The voice key was calibrated separately for
each speaker.
Procedure. Speakers were tested individually. The
primed sentence-recall procedure is illustrated in Fig.
1. On each critical trial, speakers encoded first the
target sentence into memory (e.g., ‘‘The mechanic
mentioned the antique car could use a tune-up’’), and
then the prime (‘‘The company insured that the farm
was covered for two million dollars’’). Speakers then
produced the prime sentence when prompted by its
main subject and verb (‘‘company insured’’), and finally they produced the target when prompted similarly (‘‘mechanic mentioned’’). Note that this nested
V.S. Ferreira / Journal of Memory and Language 48 (2003) 379–398
pattern of encoding and recall maximizes recency for
production of the prime but minimizes recency for
production of the target; thus, speakersÕ prime
productions should be likely to accurately reproduce
the originally encoded sentence, while their target
productions should be more variable (so that production of the target can be influenced by production of
the prime). All stimuli were presented in bold Courier
14-point font, centered vertically and horizontally on
the screen. An equal number of filler trials were also
used with the identical trial structure as the criticals,
except that the sentences were prompted in the opposite order, so that across the entire experiment,
speakers could not anticipate which sentence they
would be prompted to produce first.
The main experiment was preceded by an instruction
session that included a sample sentence pair and a
practice block of five sentence pairs. Sample and practice
sentences were similar to the fillers. The entire experiment took about 40 min.
Materials and design. Forty-eight sentence-complement structures and matched transitive structures were
generated from verbs normed by Garnsey, Lotocky,
and McConkie (1992). Sentence-complement structures
were created by combining each verb with a unique
main subject and embedded clause, with and without
the optional complementizer that. A transitive sentence was created for each verb with the same main
subject as in the corresponding sentence complement,
followed by a direct object. One transitive version
included the determiner that after the verb, while the
other included the determiner the. The 48 sentence sets
of four sentences were paired into 24 meaning-unrelated pairs for prime–target presentation. All critical
materials for all experiments are reported in the Appendix.
In addition, 24 dative sentences were created (based
on materials in Ferreira, 1996) to serve as a basis of
comparison to previous studies of sentence-to-sentence
priming (e.g., Bock, 1986b; Pickering & Branigan,
1998). Seventy-two filler sentences were also created,
consisting of a variety of sentence structures. Datives
and fillers were also paired into meaning-unrelated
pairs.
Two factors of interest were manipulated, each with
two levels, counterbalanced across speakers and items:
prime-sentence type (primes were either sentence-complement structures or transitive structures) and whether
the prime included a that. For control purposes, whether
the encoded target sentence included a that was counterbalanced across speakers, items, and the factors of
interest.
Sixteen presentation lists were created. The form of
a given sentence on each list was determined by rotating it (in counterbalanced fashion across sentence pairs)
through (a) whether it was a prime or target sentence
383
(with its pairmate serving the other role), (b) whether
the target in its pair did or did not have a that, (c)
whether the prime in its pair was a sentence complement or a transitive, and (d) whether the prime in its
pair did or did not have a that. Note that the unit of
analysis for the items analyses was the item pair. Thus,
for the 24 critical item pairs on each list, speakers saw
six pairs in each priming condition (three with targets
with thats and three with targets without); hence, the
two prime-condition factors and the target that factor
were manipulated within list, counterbalanced across
item pair. Whether a particular sentence was prime or
target was manipulated between lists. The dative and
filler sentence pairs were added to each list, resulting in
72 prime–target pairs per list. Four speakers were tested
on each list, so that across the experiment, each sentence pair appeared 16 times in each priming condition.
The same fixed, randomly generated order of presentation was used for all lists, constrained so that no
more than two critical or filler trials were presented
consecutively.
Scoring and analysis. As can occur with the (relatively) free responses that are elicited in language-production tasks, a notable number of trials were excluded
because prime and target productions were not analyzable (a problem magnified here by the fact that
speakers produced two utterances per observation,
both of which had to satisfy certain criteria). Produced
primes were coded as one of the two kinds of prime
types (sentence-complement structures, where the main
verb was followed by an embedded clause that could
optionally be preceded by a that, or a transitive
structure, where the main verb was followed by a
simple noun-phrase), with or without a that after the
main verb (that or null-complementizer for the sentence-complements, a that or a the for the transitives).
Any prime that was not produced as one of these
structures was coded as other. Any trial where a
speaker produced a prime sentence that was coded into
a different prime category from what was originally
presented was excluded from the main analysis. Target
productions were also coded for whether they were
produced as sentence complements, and any trials in
which the target was not a sentence complement were
excluded from the main analysis. Prime and target
productions were coded as forgotten either if the
speaker said ‘‘I forgot’’ or if the speaker produced only
the prompt words. Performance on prime and target
sentences is reported in Table 1, and the percentages of
analyzed trials is reported in Fig. 2.
Because of these exclusions, 20 speakers were left
with missing values in at least one cell of their designs.
Rather than estimate those missing values or eliminate
those speakers, statistical analyses were conducted with
list instead of speaker as a random factor, thereby
combining the four speakers who saw the same list
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V.S. Ferreira / Journal of Memory and Language 48 (2003) 379–398
Table 1
Scoring of produced primes and targets (when originally presented with versus without that) in Experiment 1
Prime type
Primes
SC
That
No that
Transitive
That
No that
Targets presented with that
SC
That
No that
SC
Forgot
No that
314
157
54
202
0
0
3
7
6
12
7
6
10
4
2
2
190
3
145
327
28
34
9
14
129
118
27
39
0
0
14
15
7
3
15
17
45
46
0
0
16
12
9
8
10
17
49
66
1
0
9
10
7
8
13
16
61
71
1
0
15
14
5
8
15
24
95
75
That
Other
That
Transitive
That
112
No that
109
Targets presented without that
SC
That
113
No that
92
Transitive
That
No that
Transitive
No that
Note. ‘‘SC’’ stands for ‘‘sentence complement.’’
into a single ‘‘super-subject.’’ 3 Standard subject analyses were also conducted on the 44 speakers without
missing values; unless noted otherwise, the significance
or non-significance of the subject analysis was always
the same as the list analysis. Also, one item was excluded from the items analyses because of a missing
value.
The proportions of sentence-complement targets
produced with a that in each condition for each list
(across items) and for each item (across lists) were calculated and entered into analyses of variance (ANOVAs) using list (F1) and item (F2) as random factors.
That-mention was assessed with repeated-measures
2 2 2 ANOVAs, with prime-type and whether the
prime and the target included a that as factors. Priming
effects are evaluated separately for sentence complement and transitive primes with planned comparisons.
Variability is reported with 95% confidence-interval
halfwidths based on single degree-of-freedom compari-
3
Note that this means that the reported means and
confidence intervals can be generalized to new lists rather than
to new speakers. However, given that the speaker means and
confidence intervals can only be based on about two-thirds of
the tested participants, it is unclear that they would provide a
more representative measure of performance.
sons. All significant effects achieved the .05 level or
better. Reported means were calculated across list
means.
Results
Overall performance. The numbers of prime and
target sentences in each experimental condition that
were produced as the relevant sentence types are reported in Table 1. Speakers mostly produced primes
with the same structure as was originally presented.
When they did not, they produced sentence-complement primes without a that 54 times (14%) when originally presented with primes with one, whereas they
produced sentence-complement primes with thats 157
times (41%) when originally presented with primes
without one. This difference shows that in this experiment, speakers have a bias to mention thats overall.
Transitive primes originally presented with determiner
thats were produced as transitives with the determiner the instead 145 times (38%), showing that determiner thats were recalled relatively poorly, probably
because they are stylistically marked and unusual in the
context of an isolated sentence. Speakers produced
more other structures with transitive primes (62 total,
or 8%) than with sentence-complement primes (18 or
2.3%), because with transitive primes, the critical
V.S. Ferreira / Journal of Memory and Language 48 (2003) 379–398
385
Fig. 2. Percentages of target utterances produced with a that as a function of prime sentence-type and prime that-mention in
Experiment 1. Percentages of utterances scored in each condition are shown in parentheses. Error bars show 95% confidence interval
halfwidths by list.
immediate post-verbal determiner had to be accurately
produced, and sometimes it was recalled as an a, his,
and so forth. Target structures were most often produced as sentence-complement structures.
Priming effects. Across all conditions, 857 trials
(56%) satisfied the scoring criteria. For these scorable
trials, the percentages of sentence-complement targets
produced with thats in the different priming conditions
are shown in Fig. 2. The results show that sentencecomplement primes (top panel) with thats (shaded bars)
versus without (open bars) strongly affected target production, while transitive primes (bottom panel) were less
effective. Speakers produced more thats in sentence
complement targets after any kind of prime with a that
ðF 1ð1; 15Þ ¼ 28:7; CI ¼ 7:5%; F 2ð1; 22Þ ¼ 12:2; CI ¼
11:7%Þ, but this effect interacted (marginally by lists)
with the structure of the priming sentence ðF 1ð1; 15Þ ¼
3:8; p < :08; CI ¼ 12:1%; F 2ð1;22Þ ¼ 8:3; CI ¼ 11:6%Þ.
With the sentence-complement primes, speakers produced about 27% more thats in sentence-complement
targets after sentence-complement primes with thats
compared to after sentence-complement primes without,
a difference that was significant ðF 1ð1; 15Þ ¼
22:2; F 2ð1; 22Þ ¼ 30:9Þ. With transitive primes, speakers produced about 11% more thats in sentence-complement targets after transitive primes with determiner
thats compared to after transitive primes without, a
difference that was marginally significant only by
lists ðF 1ð1; 15Þ ¼ 3:8; p < :07; F 2ð1; 22Þ ¼ 2:2Þ. While
speakers produced more thats in target sentences that
were originally presented with thats ðF 1ð1; 15Þ ¼ 7:1;
CI ¼ 10:6; F 2ð1; 22Þ ¼ 12:0; CI ¼ 8:1Þ, this did not
interact with any other factor (all F s < 1).
Datives also showed a standard priming effect:
Speakers produced about 18% more double-object targets after double-object primes (53.4%) than after
prepositional dative primes (34.9%; F 1ð1; 15Þ ¼ 34:5;
CI ¼ 6:7%; F 2ð1; 11Þ ¼ 8:7; CI ¼ 11:3%). This difference is similar to that observed in other studies (e.g.,
Bock, 1986a, reported a 22% difference), suggesting that
the recall-based methodology used here is capable of
revealing the same kinds of priming effects as have been
observed with other tasks.
Table 2 shows target-production performance after
inaccurate primes for all experiments. In all cases, the
pattern was either similar to performance after accurately produced primes, or the numbers of observations are too small to interpret. Target performance
after inaccurately produced primes is not discussed
further.
Discussion
The results of Experiment 1 show that the mention of
an optional that in a sentence-complement target was
differentially sensitive to the mention of a that in the
immediately preceding prime, such that a complementizer that in a sentence-complement prime was effective,
but a determiner that in a transitive prime was less so.
Hence, that-mention is indeed primable—if speakers
produce a sentence with a that once, they are likely to
produce a sentence with a that again. However, the weak
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V.S. Ferreira / Journal of Memory and Language 48 (2003) 379–398
Table 2
Performance on target sentences after inaccurately produced primes in all experiments
Prime type
Experiment 1
Sentence complement
That
No that
Transitives
That
No that
Experiment 2
Sentence complement
That
No that
Noun complement
That
No that
Experiment 3
SC w/that
SC w/o that
Neutrals
Target Performance
That
No that
That%
Others
Forgotten
Total
125
19
14
24
89.9
44.2
19
6
13
9
171
58
1
72
1
53
50.0
57.6
1
16
0
14
3
155
107
13
23
9
82.3
59.1
26
3
19
5
175
30
4
2
5
0
44.4
100.0
0
1
3
5
12
8
95
7
4
20
7
5
82.6
50.0
44.4
6
0
0
4
3
1
127
17
10
Note. ‘‘SC’’ refers to sentence-complement structures.
priming effect observed with the determiner thats shows
that production of the phonology of the that is unlikely
to underlie the extent of such priming.
However, the mention of thats in the sentence-complement targets after transitive primes with versus
without determiner thats was in a direction consistent
with a priming effect (with a marginally significant
planned comparison by speakers). If indeed this difference reflects an influence of lexical repetition upon thatmention, it should be evident again in Experiment 2.
primes include a that that is phonologically and lexically
identical to the that in the sentence-complement targets
(unlike the determiner thats in Experiment 1), but occurs
in a different syntactic context (since the noun-complement complementizer is headed by a noun, while the
sentence-complement complementizer is headed by a
verb). Thus Experiment 2 assessed whether producing
the word that once causes speakers to produce the word
that again independent of syntactic structure (i.e., whether priming the ‘‘that’’ lemma and lexeme can cause
function-word repetition).
Experiment 2
Method
Speakers again produced sentence-complement
targets after one of the two kinds of primes: sentencecomplement primes as in Experiment 1, or noun-complement primes such as ‘‘The theory that penguins built
the igloos was completely false’’ (which were compared
to no-that controls like ‘‘The theory of the melting igloos
was completely false’’; note that in American English,
noun-complements without thats, like ‘‘The theory
penguins built the igloos was completely false’’ are at
best marginally grammatical4). Such noun-complement
Speakers. Sixty-four new speakers from the same
population as Experiment 1 were tested.
Apparatus and procedure. The apparatus and procedure were the same as in Experiment 1.
Materials, design, and analysis. The 48 sentencecomplement structures were paired into 24 new
meaning-unrelated prime–target pairs as in Experiment
1, except that the assignment of a sentence to a prime
or target role was fixed across all lists in Experiment
2. Twenty-four noun-complement primes (which included complementizer thats) and no-that controls
were created based on materials in Bock and Cutting
(1992). The noun-complement primes each included a
clause-taking subject-noun argument; this was followed by a clausal argument (introduced with a
complementizer that) or a prepositional phrase argu-
4
This is supported by the fact that though primes are
sometimes recalled inaccurately (see below), only one nouncomplement was produced without a that across the entire
experiment.
V.S. Ferreira / Journal of Memory and Language 48 (2003) 379–398
ment (without any kind of that) to create that and
no-that priming sentences respectively. Each nouncomplement sentence with its matched control was
randomly assigned to a sentence-complement prime
(with and without the that) to result in a set of four
priming sentences.
The design was as in Experiment 1, except the transitive primes were replaced with the noun-complement
primes. Eight presentation lists were constructed by
crossing the two prime factors and the target-structure
factor. Dative sentences were not tested in Experiment 2.
Twelve filler-sentence pairs were eliminated at random,
and the remaining 24 pairs were added to each list. The
48 trials in each list were presented in a fixed, randomly
generated order with the same sequential constraints as
in Experiment 1.
Sentence-complements were scored as in Experiment
1. Noun-complements were scored as accurately produced if they began with the correct subject noun and
continued with a complementizer ‘‘that’’ or with a
preposition in the ‘‘that’’ and ‘‘no that’’ conditions, respectively. Exclusions in Experiment 2 (reported in Table 3 and Fig. 3) left 16 subjects without an observation
in at least one cell of the design, so the same list-based
analyses were conducted as in Experiment 1. Four
items were excluded from the items analyses because of
387
missing values. Analysis techniques and reporting conventions were as in Experiment 1.
Results
Overall performance. Table 3 reports the numbers
of prime and target productions that were produced
with the relevant types of syntactic structures as a
function of priming condition. Primes were mostly
produced with the same structure as originally presented, though speakers produced thats in sentencecomplement primes originally presented without one
on 173 trials (45%), and they omitted thats from sentences originally presented with thats on 30 trials
(7.8%). Targets were produced mostly as sentencecomplement structures.
Priming effects. Overall, 836 trials (54.4%) satisfied
the scoring criteria. For these scorable trials, the percentages of sentence complement targets produced with
thats in the different priming conditions are shown in
Fig. 3. Sentence-complement primes (top panel) were as
effective as in Experiment 1, while noun-complement
primes (bottom panel) were ineffective. Speakers produced more thats in target sentences when the prime also
had a that (F 1ð1; 7Þ ¼ 18:5; CI ¼ 5:8%; F 2ð1; 19Þ ¼
8:8; CI ¼ 6:6%; the main effect was marginally
Table 3
Scoring of produced primes and targets (when originally presented with versus without that) in Experiment 2
Prime type
Primes
SC
That
No that
NC
That
No that
Targets presented with that
SC
That
No that
NC
That
No that
Targets presented without that
SC
That
No that
NC
That
No that
SC
NC
That
Other
Forgot
That
No that
336
173
30
189
0
0
0
0
12
16
6
6
2
0
1
0
355
12
8
351
13
14
5
7
120
101
13
28
0
0
0
0
35
35
24
33
105
108
17
26
0
0
0
0
41
22
29
36
99
84
39
54
0
0
0
0
32
36
22
18
79
98
40
33
0
0
0
0
38
32
35
29
Note. ‘‘SC’’ stands for ‘‘sentence complement,’’ ‘‘NC’’ for ‘‘noun complement.’’
No that
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V.S. Ferreira / Journal of Memory and Language 48 (2003) 379–398
Fig. 3. Percentages of target utterances produced with a that as a function of prime sentence-type and prime that-mention in
Experiment 2. Percentages of utterances scored in each condition are shown in parentheses. Error bars show 95% confidence interval
halfwidths by list.
significant in the standard subjects analysis, F ð1; 47Þ ¼
3:7; p < :07), but importantly, this interacted with the
type of prime sentence ðF 1ð1; 7Þ ¼ 25:9; CI ¼ 9:1%;
F 2ð1; 19Þ ¼ 27:1; CI ¼ 9:3%Þ. With sentence-complement primes, speakers produced 24% more thats in
sentence-complement targets after sentence complement
primes with thats, compared to without, yielding a significant difference ðF 1ð1; 7Þ ¼ 40:0; F 2ð1; 19Þ ¼ 33:6Þ,
whereas they produced 3% fewer thats after noun-complement primes with thats compared to after controls
without, a difference that was not significant ðF 1ð1; 7Þ ¼
0:77; F 2ð1; 19Þ ¼ 2:5Þ. Again, speakers produced more
thats in target sentences when it originally included one
ðF 1ð1; 7Þ ¼ 11:4; CI ¼ 11:9%; F 2ð1; 19Þ ¼ 14:7; CI ¼
7:4%Þ, but this factor did not interact with any other
factors (all ps > :1).
Discussion
Experiment 2 showed that sentence-complements
primed effectively while noun-complements did not.
These results thus show that producing the word that in a
prime sentence does not cause speakers to produce the
same word that again in a subsequent target sentence.
Together with the small priming differences in Experiment
1 (a result corroborated by Experiment 2), this suggests
that speakers have little or no tendency to repeat function
words from one sentence to the next, implying that
function-word repetition is unlikely to underlie the
structural persistence effect.
On the other hand, Experiments 1 and 2 revealed
that that-mention was influenced when the preceding
prime involved the production of the same kind of
syntactic structure. This can straightforwardly be explained as syntactic repetition: when speakers produce
the syntactic structure of a sentence-complement
structure with a that—a full sentence-complement
structure—they are likely to produce a full sentencecomplement structure again, but if they produce the
syntactic structure of a sentence-complement without a
that—a reduced sentence-complement structure—they
are likely to produce a reduced sentence-complement
structure again.
One other aspect of the results from Experiment 2 is
of potential interest. The baseline level of that-mention
for the sentence-complement targets, as determined by
the Garnsey et al. (1992) norms, is 75% (which is reassuringly close to the 76% and 79% levels of thatmention in the ineffective noun-complement priming
conditions). When compared against this baseline, it
appears that omitting a that in a sentence-complement
prime decreases target that-mention more (about 16%)
than mentioning a that increases it (about 8%). This
suggests that a lexical item that speakers did not mention may have persisted more than a lexical item that
speakers did mention; if so, this would strongly suggest
that the structural persistence of full and reduced
sentence-complements observed here cannot be due to
the repetition of function words from one sentence to
the next.
V.S. Ferreira / Journal of Memory and Language 48 (2003) 379–398
Of course, it cannot be assumed that in this task,
baseline that-mention is accurately measured by the
offline norms of Garnsey et al. (1992) (or by the nouncomplement primes, since they were not designed to be
contrasted with the sentence-complement primes). To
provide a better estimate, in Experiment 3, the priming
effect from full and reduced (e.g., ‘‘The company insured (that) the farm was covered for two million dollars’’) sentence-complement primes was compared to
fully neutral primes—primes that started with the same
subject argument, but that included a verb that does
not take a clausal complement and thus did not involve
the mention or omission of a that at all (e.g., ‘‘The
company paid for the farm with two million dollars in
cash’’). If the absence of the that primes more effectively
than its presence, then Experiment 3 should reveal that
compared to neutral primes, sentence-complement
primes with thats should not cause speakers to produce
more thats in sentence-complement targets, while sentence-complement primes without thats should cause
speakers to produce fewer thats in sentence-complement
targets.
Experiment 3 was also designed to address two
methodological concerns from Experiments 1 and 2.
First, there was significant data loss, especially with
primes that tested sentence-complements without thats.
Second, because primes and targets were encoded and
recalled on the same trial, factors unrelated to production but required for task performance (e.g., sentence-comprehension or memory factors) may have
influenced prime–target interactions. To circumvent
these problems, primes and targets in Experiment 3
were presented on separate consecutive trials, each
paired with filler trials. On every trial, speakers encoded two sentences into memory, but were only
prompted to produce one of those sentences. On prime
trials, speakers were presented with a filler sentence
and then the prime sentence, and then they were
prompted to produce the prime. Thus, during prime
production, the other sentence within the trial (here, a
filler sentence) did not have to be maintained in
memory as the prime was produced, potentially increasing speakersÕ prime accuracy. On the next (target)
trial, speakers were presented with the target sentence
and then a filler sentence, and then they were prompted to produce the target. Thus, because primes and
targets are presented on separate trials, factors related
to the comprehension of or memory for primes are
unlikely to influence target production or vice versa.
One effect of this different methodology is that primes
and targets are now more distant from one another,
both in time and in the amount of intervening material
that is processed (i.e., the two filler trials that accompany primes and targets); thus Experiment 3 should
also provide some indication about the long-term stability of the that-priming effect.
389
Experiment 3
Method
Speakers. Speakers were 48 members from the same
population as Experiment 1.
Materials. The 48 sentence-complement structures
from Experiment 1 were used. For each, a neutral
priming sentence was created that had the same subject
noun-phrase and a similar overall meaning, but included a main verb that could not take a clausal argument. For many of the neutral sentences, additional
adverbs, adjectives, or adjunct phrases were used to
make their length comparable to the sentence-complement primes. Sentence-complements were rotated
through prime and target roles, as in Experiment 1. All
72 fillers from Experiment 1 were used in Experiment 3.
Forty-eight of the fillers were paired with primes and
targets for presentation on prime or target trials, and
the remaining 24 were paired with one another for
presentation on all-filler trials (which were individually
interspersed with critical trials to disguise the prime–
target sequences).
Apparatus and procedure. Apparatus and procedure
were the same as Experiments 1 and 2, except that
primes and targets were now presented on consecutive
trials. On prime trials, speakers were presented with a
filler sentence and then the prime sentence, and were
then prompted to produce the prime. On the immediately following trial, speakers were presented with the
target sentence and then a filler, and were prompted to
produce the target. On all-filler trials, speakers were
presented with two consecutive fillers, and on half the
trials were prompted to recall the first filler, and on the
other half were prompted to recall the second filler.
Details of presentation were the same as in Experiment
1, except that the trial ended after speakers attempted
recall of only one sentence. Instructions and practice
were the same as Experiment 1.
Design and analysis. One factor was counterbalanced
within speakers and items in Experiment 3: prime-type,
which was full sentence-complement, reduced sentencecomplement, or neutral. Whether the target included a
that was also manipulated in counterbalanced fashion.
Twelve presentation lists were created in the same way
as in Experiment 1. Each speaker saw eight trials in
each priming condition. Prime–target sequences and
all-filler trials were presented in a fixed randomly generated order.
Sentence-complement prime and target productions
were scored as in Experiment 1. Neutral-prime productions were scored as analyzable as long as they were
not forgotten nor produced with a sentence-complement taking verb. Performance on prime and target
trials is shown in Table 4, and the percentages of analyzable trials are shown in Fig. 4. To assess how the
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V.S. Ferreira / Journal of Memory and Language 48 (2003) 379–398
Table 4
Scoring of produced primes and targets (when originally presented with versus without that) in Experiment 3
Prime type
SC w/ that
SC w/o that
Other
Forgot
361
127
0
17
249
0
4
6
384
2
2
0
Targets presented with that
Full SC
161
Reduced SC
148
Neutral
151
20
32
19
3
6
10
8
6
12
Targets presented without that
Full SC
110
Reduced SC
90
Neutral
95
65
85
69
6
6
10
11
11
18
Primes
Full SC
Reduced SC
Neutral
Note. ‘‘SC’’ stands for ‘‘sentence complement.’’
full and reduced sentence-complement primes influenced target production, each sentence-complement
priming condition was compared to the neutral priming
condition with planned comparisons. Analysis techniques and reporting conventions were as in Experiments 1 and 2.
Results
Overall performance. The numbers of prime and
target sentences in each priming condition produced as
the critical structure types are reported in Table 4. Full
sentence-complement and neutral primes were produced
highly accurately, while reduced sentence-complement
primes were produced as full sentence-complements 127
times (33%). Targets were overwhelmingly produced as
sentence-complement structures.
Priming effects. Overall, 903 trials (78.4%) satisfied
the scoring criteria. Fig. 4 shows the mean percentages
of target sentence-complements produced with a that in
each of the priming conditions on scorable trials. Sentence-complement primes with versus without a that
yielded a priming effect comparable to those in Experiments 1 and 2, as speakers produced about 18% more
Fig. 4. Percentages of target utterances produced with a that as a function of prime sentence-type in Experiment 3. Percentages of
utterances scored in each condition are shown in parentheses. Error bars show 95% confidence interval halfwidths by list.
V.S. Ferreira / Journal of Memory and Language 48 (2003) 379–398
thats in sentence-complement targets after sentencecomplement primes with thats, compared to after sentence-complement primes without. This difference led to
a significant main effect of prime-type ðF 1ð2; 22Þ ¼ 11:6;
CI ¼ 8:3%; F 2ð2; 46Þ ¼ 12:5; CI ¼ 7:3%Þ. Most importantly, the neutral primes patterned with the full
sentence-complement primes: Speakers produced only
3.8% more thats in sentence-complement targets after
sentence-complement primes with thats, compared to
after neutral primes. This difference was not significant
ðF 1ð1; 22Þ ¼ 0:88; F 2ð1; 46Þ ¼ 1:3Þ. On the other hand,
speakers produced 14.5% fewer thats in sentence-complement targets after sentence-complement primes
without thats compared to after neutral primes, a
difference that was significant ðF 1ð1; 22Þ ¼ 13:2;
F 2ð1; 46Þ ¼ 13:3Þ. Speakers produced more thats in
target sentences originally presented with a that
ðF 1ð1; 22Þ ¼ 141; CI ¼ 5:4%; F 2ð1; 23Þ ¼ 90:4; CI ¼
6:7%Þ, but this factor did not interact with prime-type
ðF 1ð1; 22Þ ¼ 1:7; CI ¼ 8:1%; F 2ð2; 46Þ ¼ 0:94; CI ¼
11:4%Þ.
Discussion
Experiment 3 verified the surprising result from Experiments 1 and 2. After neutral primes, in which a
speaker could neither mention nor omit a that, speakers
produced thats in targets 73% of the time. This reveals
speakersÕ bias to mention thats in targets more often
than they omit them independent of any effect of priming. After full sentence-complement primes—sentencecomplement primes with thats—speakers produced
targets with just 4% more thats above this baseline,
whereas after reduced sentence-complement primes—
sentence-complement primes without thats—speakers
produced nearly 15% fewer thats below this baseline.
The fact that compared to baseline, omitting a that in a
sentence-complement prime exerted a stronger priming
effect than producing one suggests that that-mention is
not influenced by lexical factors per se, since production
presumably cannot be affected by a lexical item that a
speaker did not mention. Rather, these results suggest
that that-mention is influenced by the syntactic processes
that accompany the (non-) production of the complementizer that. This point is further addressed in the
General discussion.
Furthermore, even though the procedure was different from that used in Experiments 1 and 2, a sentence-complement priming effect was still observed in
Experiment 3. This is important for three reasons. First,
the critical reduced sentence-complement priming condition in Experiment 3 included notably more trials
than the same conditions in Experiments 1 and 2, yet, a
very similar priming effect was observed. Second,
primes and targets were encoded and produced on
separate trials in Experiment 3, so that the observed
391
priming effects could not have resulted from comprehension- or memory-based influences upon prime–target interactions (e.g., the priming effect cannot be due
to an effect of target encoding on prime production).
Finally, even though more time and material separated
primes and targets in Experiment 3 than in Experiments
1 and 2, the priming effect (18%) was only a little
smaller (28% and 25%). Thus, the that-priming effect
does not decay quickly, but rather can survive over
longer intervals. This converges with other evidence
showing that structural persistence can be a very longlived effect (see Bock & Griffin, 2000, but see Branigan
et al., 1999; Levelt & Kelter, 1982, for evidence that
persistence effects sometimes decay rapidly).
It was still the case, however, that the reduced sentence-complement priming condition included fewer
analyzable trials than the other two priming conditions.
To ensure that some factor associated with the difference
in data loss between the sentence-complement priming
conditions was not responsible for the that-priming effect, whether such differences in data loss are related to
the size of the priming effect was explored on a speakerby-speaker basis (across all experiments). If the priming
effect comes from relative differences in lost observations
such that relatively fewer observations in the reduced
sentence-complement condition causes a greater priming
effect, then speakers who had many more observations
in the full than in the reduced sentence-complement
condition should also have showed the biggest full versus reduced sentence-complement priming effects.
However, if anything, the opposite is observed: priming
effects are smaller for speakers whose full sentencecomplement condition had many more observations
than their reduced sentence-complement condition. Indeed, this makes sense: speakers who lost most observations in the reduced sentence-complement condition
are ‘‘that-producers’’ generally, so that even if immediate memory causes them to omit a that on just one or
two prime trials, they are still very likely to mention a
that in the subsequent target (when short-term memory
is less influential), which would work against any
priming effect.
General discussion
The results of these experiments showed that when
speakers produced full or reduced sentence-complement
structures once, they were likely to produce full or reduced sentence-complement structures again. This generalizes the well-known structural persistence effect to a
new sentence type, namely the sentence-complement
structure. (This further implies that full and reduced
sentence-complement structures should be treated as
separate in the same way as, say, actives and passives.)
Importantly, the experiments show that this effect is
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V.S. Ferreira / Journal of Memory and Language 48 (2003) 379–398
unlikely to be due to lexical repetition, as producing
phonologically similar (Experiment 1Õs demonstrative
determiners) or lexically identical (Experiment 2Õs nouncomplement complementizers) thats in syntactically
distinct prime sentences did not lead to the increased
production of thats in subsequent sentence-complement
target sentences. This suggests that structural persistence
reflects the operation of lexically independent syntactic
processes. Finally, Experiment 3 showed that even
though sentence-complement primes with versus without thats caused significant priming, sentence-complement primes with thats did not exert a greater priming
influence than neutral primes, suggesting that the
priming effect comes from not producing a that rather
than from producing one.
Why was the asymmetry in the persistence of full
versus reduced sentence-complement structures observed? One possibility is that it is related to the bias
to produce full sentence-complement structures in the
first place. That is, one explanation of structural persistence generally (Chang, Dell, Bock, & Griffin, 2000)
is that it is due to small modifications of the cognitive
procedures that map messages (e.g., the intent to express some idea that includes a subordinated proposition) onto syntactic structures that can express those
messages (e.g., full or reduced sentence-complement
structures). Anytime a particular structure is chosen,
the cognitive procedures that are responsible are
modified so that that particular mapping is more likely
in the future (possibly as a reflection of the learning of
that message-to-structure mapping more generally).
Importantly, the easier a particular mapping is to
choose, the less that the responsible cognitive procedure need be modified, since easy selection implies that
the chosen mapping is already well in place (i.e., the
modification can be seen as error-based, so that the
degree of modification is proportional to the degree of
error involved in selecting that mapping). Thus, if a
particular mapping is biased, so that one structural
alternative (e.g., the full sentence-complement structure) is easier than another (e.g., the reduced sentencecomplement structure), then the degree of priming
should also be biased accordingly (less priming for the
full than the reduced sentence-complement-structure
mapping).
Some tentative support for this possibility comes
from exploring the full sentence-complement bias in a
verb-by-verb manner. That is, some verbs (e.g., reported) are strongly biased toward being produced with
full sentence-complement structures (according to the
Garnsey et al., 1992 norms), whereas others (e.g.,
knew) are less so. If the priming asymmetry is related
to the full sentence-complement bias, then more
strongly biased verbs should show a smaller priming
effect than more weakly biased verbs. This was explored by taking all scored target productions from
Experiments 1 and 3 (Experiment 2 used only half of
the verbs in target sentences), calculating the priming
effect from full versus reduced sentence complements
separately for each verb, and correlating the difference
between these with the degree of preference for that
verb to be produced with a full sentence-complement
structure (according to the Garnsey et al., 1992
norms).5 With all 48 verbs, the correlation is in the
predicted direction but is non-significant (r ¼ ).1). One
verb (knew) is a notable outlier in this analysis; however, if it is excluded, the correlation becomes marginally significant ðr ¼ :28; p < :06Þ. Thus, priming
may be related to degree of bias. If so, this would
provide support for the error-based explanation of
structure persistence (Chang et al., 2000). However,
given these analysesÕ post-hoc and fragile nature, further research is necessary to verify this point.
An alternative explanation of the asymmetry is that
full- and reduced-sentence-complement primes may
exert an equal and symmetric effect, but that an additional factor depressed that-mention after both kinds of
primes. One such possibility is that producing any
sentence-complement prime—full or reduced—makes
producing the complement part of the sentence-complement target easier (note that in all experiments,
sentence-complement targets generally were somewhat
more likely after sentence-complement primes than after other kinds of primes). If so, this may depress thatmention in target sentence-complements overall (see
Ferreira & Dell, 2000 for evidence), bringing thatmention after full-sentence-complement primes down
closer to baseline, and pushing that-mention after reduced sentence-complement primes even further from
baseline.6
Of course, these explanations assume that the
structural persistence observed here reflects syntactic
repetition, rather than the repetition of some conceptual correlate of the distinction between full and reduced sentence-complements. The latter seems unlikely,
however. While the complementizer that may communicate information about speakersÕ degree of analytic
mental activity, or their commitment to, endorsement
of, or distance between parts of the sentence content
(Thompson & Mulac, 1991; Underhill, 1988; Yaguchi,
2001), generally, the conceptual underpinning of the
optional that in the sentence-complement structure is
unclear. Furthermore, whatever conceptual content is
carried by the that in sentence-complement structures
seems also to be carried by the that in the noun-complement structures tested in Experiment 2 (or even the
determiner thats tested in Experiment 1; Yaguchi,
5
I thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this
analysis.
6
I thank Martin Pickering for pointing out this alternative.
V.S. Ferreira / Journal of Memory and Language 48 (2003) 379–398
2001), yet the latter proved to be ineffective. On the
other hand, the syntactic constitution of the complementizer that is well established in terms of its role in
the syntactic structures of sentences and its participation in certain patterns of grammatical judgments (e.g.,
Doherty, 1993; Stowell, 1981). Indeed, evidence that an
element as semantically unspecified yet syntactically
relevant as the complementizer that exhibits robust
structural persistence effects could be taken to support the claim that structural persistence generally
comes from syntactic representations and not conceptual ones.
That said, lexical accessibility does affect sentence
production. If the form of a sentence is not determined by
lexical factors, how are syntactic structures used that allow highly accessible words to be mentioned earlier and
less accessible words later? One possibility is that lexical
accessibility may not affect production directly through
the selection of highly accessible lexical items, but rather
through the influence of those highly accessible lexical
items upon the selection of syntactic representations
(Ferreira, 1996; Ferreira & Dell, 2000; Pickering &
Branigan, 1998). That is, highly accessible lexical representations may influence production by promoting the
selection of a syntactic structure that allows for the early
mention of those highly accessible lexical items. Ferreira
and Dell (2000) termed this lexical–syntactic interactionism (see Bock, 1982, for a cognitively motivated account
of the same general idea).
This raises a puzzle, however. If lexical accessibility
can influence the selection of syntactic structures, then
why in the present experiments did a highly accessible
that—one that had just been produced in the previous
sentence (even in a distinct structure)—fail to influence
the selection of a syntactic structure for a full or reduced
sentence-complement? Here, the distinction between
function and content words is likely to be relevant. Interestingly, nearly all reported lexical accessibility effects
have revealed an influence of the accessibility of content
words, not of function words (with the exception of the
Levelt & Kelter, 1982 result, discussed more below).
Indeed, function words may be unable to support lexical
accessibility effects, either because they are short and
high frequency and are thus highly accessible under any
circumstance (e.g., Dell, 1990), or because they are accessed in an informationally (Dell & Gordon, 2001) or
architecturally different manner (Garrett, 1975, 1982)
from content words such that the vagaries of memory
retrieval that cause lexical accessibility effects are circumvented. Regardless of the processing reason, this
would explain the lack of effect of lexical accessibility in
the present experiments: a that produced in a previous
sentence is unable to influence the production of a that
in a current sentence because as a function word, it is not
able to support lexical accessibility effects. It is worth
noting that Ferreira and Dell (2000) and Ferreira and
393
Firato (in press) showed that the mention of an optional
that in a sentence-complement structure is influenced by
manipulations of lexical accessibility of the (contentword) material that follows the that. Together with the
present evidence, this suggests that that-mention is influenced by the lexical accessibility not of the functionword that itself, but of the content-word material that
follows the that.
Levelt and Kelter (1982) did show that speakers
were more likely to produce a particular preposition
when an eliciting question also had that preposition.
This effect might be explained, however, by claiming
that function-word repetition can be supported by
syntactic repetition—speakers heard the preposition in
a prepositional phrase, and repeated that preposition in
another prepositional phrase. Perhaps when structural
persistence occurs, it makes a lexical persistence effect
more likely. In fact, the results of the present experiment could be interpreted in this way: the persistence
of full versus reduced sentence-complement syntactic
structures may have led to the repetition of the word
that from sentence to sentence.7 Importantly from a
theoretical perspective, however, is that even with this
explanation, it is syntactic repetition that leads to lexical repetition rather than the other way around, arguing against the idea that lexical repetition causes
structural persistence.
Overall, these experiments reveal that the mention of
just a single word—the optional complementizer that—is
syntactic in nature and not lexical. This highlights the
autonomy of syntactic processes: Speakers know the
words in their language, and independently, they know
how to use those words in sentences. Together, the
combination of these provides a basis for the creativity
of language.
Acknowledgments
Portions of this work were presented at AMLaP Õ99
and at the 14th Annual CUNY Conference on Human
Sentence Processing. I thank Kay Bock, Gary Dell,
Fernanda Ferreira, Zenzi Griffin, Martin Pickering, the
members of the language production group at UCSD,
and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments,
and Carla Firato, Janet Lee, Melanie Hudson, and
Hiromi Yoshita for assistance collecting data. This research was supported by National Institute of Health
grant R01 MH64733.
7
This shows that the present data do not mediate between
theories of sentence-production that argue that function words
are selected as parts of syntactic structures (e.g., Garrett, 1975,
1982) or are selected directly from the lexicon (e.g., Levelt,
1989).
394
V.S. Ferreira / Journal of Memory and Language 48 (2003) 379–398
Appendix A. Experimental materials
Immediately below are all sentence-complement materials, the transitives from Experiment 1, and the neutrals
from Experiment 3. ‘‘SC’’ denotes sentence complement.
For sentence-complements, no-that conditions were gener-
Number
Structure
Sentence
1A
1A
1A
1B
1B
1B
2A
2A
2A
2B
2B
2B
3A
3A
3A
3B
3B
3B
4A
4A
4A
4B
4B
4B
5A
5A
5A
5B
5B
5B
6A
6A
6A
6B
6B
6B
7A
7A
7A
7B
7B
7B
8A
8A
8A
8B
8B
8B
9A
9A
9A
9B
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
ated by deleting the complementizer that after the verb.
For transitives, no-that conditions were generated by replacing the determiner that with a the. A and B items
formed prime–target pairs (e.g., each 1A sentence served as
primes for the 1B sentence-complement structure and vice
versa).
director announced that HollywoodÕs hottest actor would be playing the part
director announced that casting decision last week
director enticed HollywoodÕs hottest actor to play the part
teacher noticed that the failing student skipped class
teacher noticed that student because he kept skipping class
teacher scowled at the failing student at the back of class
applicant surmised that the company had already hired someone
applicant surmised that decision by the hiring committee
applicant contacted the company before they hired someone
paramedic explained that the old woman had fainted
paramedic explained that possibility before moving the injured woman
paramedic arrived before the old woman fainted
accountant estimated that the wealthy widow would pay a lot of taxes
accountant estimated that profit after looking at the sales figures
accountant consulted with the wealthy widow about her hefty taxes
contest official pronounced that the original winner had been disqualified
contest official pronounced that winner on Tuesday
contest official yawned when the winner was disqualified
gambler guessed that the lucky newcomer had bluffed on the previous hand
gambler guessed that winning horse before the race
gambler exploded after the lucky newcomer bluffed on the previous hand
plumber confessed that some customers had been overcharged
plumber confessed that fraudulent behavior when he got caught
plumber swindled some customers by overcharging them
chiropractor observed that the suffering patient could not stand up straight
chiropractor observed that painful damage to the personÕs back muscles
chiropractor hesitated when the suffering patient did not stand up straight
jury believed that the young witness told the truth
jury believed that witness after her honest testimony
jury nodded together when the young woman told the truth
flashing light indicated that the car was nearly out of gas
flashing light indicated that location where the space shuttle disappeared
flashing light pulsed when the car ran out of gas
doctor suggested that the worried mother consult a specialist
doctor suggested that medication in high dosage
doctor coerced the worried mother to see a specialist
librarian noted that the frequent visitor had an overdue book
librarian noted that book because of the extensive damage
librarian named the frequent visitor with the overdue book
mayor declared that the brave firefighter acted heroically
mayor declared that extra income on his income tax reports
mayor praised the brave firefighter for acting heroically
boss remembered that most of his staff had a vacation coming
boss remembered that job applicant from the first time she applied
boss gave most of his staff a surprise vacation
security guard demanded that the known shoplifter leave the store immediately
security guard demanded that weapon from the subdued criminal
security guard encouraged the known shoplifter to leave the store immediately
inspector doubted that the landlord repaired the fire escape properly
inspector doubted that report about the broken elevator
inspector admonished the landlord because of the faulty fire escape
massage therapist felt that the client was too tense
V.S. Ferreira / Journal of Memory and Language 48 (2003) 379–398
Appendix A. (continued)
Number
Structure
Sentence
9B
9B
10A
10A
10A
10B
10B
10B
11A
11A
11A
11B
11B
11B
12A
12A
12A
12B
12B
12B
13A
13A
13A
13B
13B
13B
14A
14A
14A
14B
14B
14B
15A
15A
15A
15B
15B
15B
16A
16A
16A
16B
16B
16B
17A
17A
17A
17B
17B
17B
18A
18A
18A
18B
18B
18B
19A
19A
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
massage therapist felt that muscle which the customer complained about
massage therapist sat beside the client until he became less tense
dentist asserted that people need to floss more often
dentist asserted that privilege before he testified in court
dentist educated people about the benefits of flossing more often
salesman guaranteed that his customers would be completely satisfied
salesman guaranteed that workmanship for the life of the car
salesman worked to his customerÕs complete satisfaction
secretary recalled that the annoying client had been there before
secretary recalled that annoying client from his previous visit
secretary despised the annoying client who had been there before
ticket agent feared that the flight would be cancelled
ticket agent feared that new state law because it hurt her business
ticket agent cursed when the flight got cancelled
catcher protested that the base runner should have been called out
catcher protested that call until he was thrown out of the game
catcher punched the base runner before he was called out
pirate suspected that the stow-away had hidden the treasure
pirate suspected that stow-away as soon as he was discovered
pirate looked behind the stow-away for the hidden treasure
hobbyist maintained that the antique cars were one of a kind
hobbyist maintained that old car in perfect working order
hobbyist prospered because of his one-of-a-kind antique cars
wedding planner proposed that the brideÕs family visit the chapel
wedding planner proposed that pattern for the table cloths at the reception
wedding planner met with the brideÕs family at the chapel
receptionist denied that the pushy patient had an appointment
receptionist denied that accusation about her stealing from petty cash
receptionist persuaded the pushy patient to wait for his appointment
landlord discovered that the dishonest tenant had a cat
landlord discovered that damage after moving the fridge
landlord reacted when the dishonest tenant lied about the cat
travel agent confirmed that the honeymooning couple had a hotel reservation
travel agent confirmed that flight for tomorrow
travel agent informed the honeymooning couple of their hotel reservation
coach knew that his starting quarterback missed practice
coach knew that player because of his loud mouth
coach blew up when his starting quarterback missed practice
attorney argued that his defendant had done nothing wrong
attorney argued that insanity defense perfectly every time
attorney instructed his defendant to say nothing at all
handwriting analysis revealed that the mafia boss had signed the contract
handwriting analysis revealed that forged signature to the police
handwriting analysis arrived after the mafia boss signed the contract
company insured that the farm was covered for two million dollars
company insured that farm for two million dollars
company paid for the farm with two million dollars in cash
mechanic mentioned that the antique car could use a tune-up
mechanic mentioned that price estimate before fixing the car
mechanic worked under the antique car to give it a tune-up
professor realized that only some students studied the material
professor realized that dream by publishing a book
professor pushed only some students to study the material
surgeon promised that the injured goalie would heal soon
surgeon promised that procedure for the sickest patient
surgeon treated the injured goalie to make him heal soon
psychic predicted that the desperate woman would win the state lottery
psychic predicted that set of winning numbers in the state lottery
395
396
V.S. Ferreira / Journal of Memory and Language 48 (2003) 379–398
Appendix A. (continued)
Number
Structure
Sentence
19A
19B
19B
19B
20A
20A
20A
20B
20B
20B
21A
21A
21A
21B
21B
21B
22A
22A
22A
22B
22B
22B
23A
23A
23A
23B
23B
23B
24A
24A
24A
24B
24B
24B
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
SC
Transitive
Neutral
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
psychic exploited the desperate woman with the gambling problem
investigator learned that the suspect was at the scene of the crime
investigator learned that new technique for interrogating criminals
investigator harassed the suspect at the scene of the crime
X-ray proved that the hurt child had broken a bone
X-ray proved that doctorÕs theory beyond a reasonable doubt
X-ray given to the hurt child revealed a broken bone
police officer warned that the aggressive driver would get a ticket
police officer warned that woman before she entered the line of fire
police officer rewarded the aggressive driver with a ticket
dog sensed that his owner might be in danger
dog sensed that danger before he started growling
dog growled when his owner was in danger
article emphasized that the rookie fisherman caught the biggest fish
article emphasized that strong public support for the scandalized politician
article challenged the rookie fishermanÕs claim about the big fish
taxi driver anticipated that the tourist would turn left
taxi driver anticipated that robbery attempt before it happened
taxi driver veered near the tourist when he turned left
reporter heard that the rich tycoon made a large donation
reporter heard that story from a White House source
reporter profiled the rich tycoon after he made a large donation
power company acknowledged that the power outage was caused by sabotage
power company acknowledged that big problem after the sabotage
power company prevented the power outage despite the sabotage
prosecutor concluded that the detectives should gather more evidence
prosecutor concluded that case with a strong closing argument
prosecutor instructed the detectives to gather more evidence
broker advised that low risk investors sell their stock
broker advised that investor before realizing he was a crook
broker escaped before the low risk investors could sell their stock
newspaper reported that three elderly couples had been robbed
newspaper reported that news item on the front page
newspaper called three elderly couples about the robbery
Immediately below are the noun-complement primes from
Experiment 2. ‘‘Co-prime’’ and ‘‘target’’ indicate the sentencecomplement (from above) prime and targets that were paired
Co-prime
Target
Comp
Sentence
20A
20A
16B
16B
3B
3B
4A
4A
3A
3A
14B
14B
10B
10B
8B
8B
8A
8A
1A
1A
15A
15A
11A
11A
7A
7A
19A
19A
9B
9B
19B
19B
That
No-that
That
No-that
That
No-that
That
No-that
That
No-that
That
No-that
That
No-that
That
No-that
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
with that noun-complement structure (e.g., ‘‘The assumption
that. . .’’ and ‘‘The X-ray proved that. . .’’ [20A] served as primes
for ‘‘The boss remembered that. . .’’ [8A]).
assumption that the rain caused the problem was unlikely to be true
assumption in the philosophy problem was unlikely to be true
belief that aliens invaded the planet drove Fox Mulder crazy
belief about the unusual planet drove Fox Mulder crazy
claim that wolves had raised the baby was reported in the news
claim about the newborn baby was reported in the news
concept that a comet concealed the satellite was considered original
concept behind the secret satellite was considered original
conclusion that the runner lost the race required a photo-finish
conclusion of the exciting race required a photo-finish
custom that they film the reunion was forgotten
custom at the family reunion was forgotten
dream that the prince inherited the castle surprised the princess
dream about the mystifying castle surprised the princess
fact that Gwynn caught the ball seemed hard to believe
fact about the home-run ball seemed hard to believe
V.S. Ferreira / Journal of Memory and Language 48 (2003) 379–398
397
Appendix A. (continued)
Co-prime
Target
Comp
Sentence
13A
13A
18A
18A
21A
21A
11B
11B
5B
5B
15B
15B
13B
13B
24B
24B
22A
22A
1B
1B
22B
22B
14A
14A
5A
5A
17A
17A
23A
23A
12A
12A
2B
2B
16A
16A
20B
20B
9A
9A
6A
6A
2A
2A
18B
18B
4B
4B
12B
12B
7B
7B
6B
6B
17B
17B
23B
23B
21B
21B
10A
10A
24A
24A
That
No-that
That
No-that
That
No-that
That
No-that
That
No-that
That
No-that
That
No-that
That
No-that
That
No-that
That
No-that
That
No-that
That
No-that
That
No-that
That
No-that
That
No-that
That
No-that
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
The
fallacy that the earth is flat is sometimes believed by children
fallacy of the earth being flat is sometimes believed by children
fantasy that they might buy a new house kept the couple awake at night
fantasy of the ancient haunted house kept the couple awake at night
fear that the prisoners hid the weapons kept the police from attacking
fear of the stolen powerful weapons kept the police from attacking
hope that the coast guard might find the victims was easy to understand
hope of the wet and hungry victims was easy to understand
idea that the patient sue the doctor pleased the lawyer
idea of the wise and wealthy doctor pleased the lawyer
illusion that the explorer sighted the island got the crewÕs hopes up
illusion of the exotic tropical island got the crewÕs hopes up
message that they expelled the student surprised the parents
message from the excited student surprised the parents
opinion that he should find a donor was ignored
opinion of the mysterious donor was ignored
proposal that they buy the equipment was impressive
proposal for the expensive equipment was impressive
regulation that police examine the trucks angered the drivers
regulation about the delivery trucks angered the drivers
report that they started the fires was fabricated
report of the destructive fires was fabricated
statement that the intern framed the president was made in error
statement about the unpopular president was made in error
suspicion that they killed the terrorist was reported in the newspaper
suspicion of the foreign terrorist was reported in the newspaper
theory that penguins built the igloos was completely false
theory about the melted igloos was completely false
thought that they forgot the bill disturbed the woman
thought of the late power bill disturbed the woman
view that the river created the canyon was unbelievable
view of the deep enormous canyon was unbelievable
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