Is the Lexical Boost Restricted to the Licensing Verb: Experimental Data, 2017-2022

In three structural priming experiments, participants read a prime sentence aloud, followed by a target fragment that they had to complete. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants had to complete the targets by using words for pictures that were simultaneously presented, whereas in Experiment 3, there were no pictures. We manipulated (1) the prime structure (prepositional object/PO or double object ditransitive/DO structure, e.g., the painter hesitated to lend the apprentice the ladder or the painter hesitated to lend the ladder to the apprentice) and (2) whether the matrix verb in the prime (e.g., hesitated) was repeated in the target (e.g., The farmer hesitated to show …). In Experiment 1, the prime and target verbs were relatively frequent, whereas in Experiments 2 and 3, they were less frequent. As the dependent variable, we scored whether participants completed the target fragments with a prepositional object or double object structure.