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The comprehension of anomalous sentences: Evidence from structuralpriming

Iva Ivanova a,b,⇑, Martin J. Pickering c, Holly P. Branigan c, Janet F. McLean c, Albert Costa b,d

a Departament de Psicologia Bàsica, Universitat de Barcelona, Spainb Departament de Tecnologies de la Informació i les Comunicacions, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spainc Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, UKd Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), Barcelona, Spain

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 16 March 2011Revised 22 October 2011Accepted 24 October 2011Available online 20 November 2011

Keywords:Anomalous sentencesLexically-independent syntacticrepresentationsLanguage comprehensionStructural priming

a b s t r a c t

We report three experiments investigating how people process anomalous sentences, inparticular those in which the anomaly is associated with the verb. We contrast twoaccounts for the processing of such anomalous sentences: a syntactic account, in whichthe representations constructed for anomalous sentences are similar in nature to the onesconstructed for well-formed sentences; and a semantic account, in which the representa-tions constructed for anomalous sentences are erroneous, or altogether missing, and inter-pretation is achieved on the basis of semantic representations instead. To distinguishbetween these accounts, we used structural priming. First, we ruled out the possibility thatanomaly per se influences the magnitude of the priming effect: Prime sentences with mor-phologically incorrect verbs produced similarly enhanced priming (lexical boost) to sen-tences with the same correct verbs (Exp. 1). Second, we found that prime sentences witha novel verb (Exp. 2) or a semantically and syntactically incongruent verb (Exp. 3) pro-duced a priming effect, which was the same as that produced by well-formed sentences.In accord with the syntactic account, we conclude that the syntactic representations ofanomalous sentences are similar to those constructed for well-formed sentences. Ourresults furthermore suggest that lexically-independent syntactic information is robustenough to produce well-formed syntactic representations during processing withoutrequiring aid from lexically-based syntactic information.

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1. Introduction

Studies of language comprehension are almost exclu-sively concerned with how people understand well-formedor grammatical sentences. Although they explore the com-prehension of difficult sentences that ‘‘garden-path’’ thereader (Frazier & Rayner, 1982) or involve unusual com-plexity (Gibson, 1998), their focus is on what this tells usabout the way people comprehend grammatical utter-ances. But in fact even casual observation of everyday

language use indicates that many utterances are notwell-formed. Such utterances can come from children,non-native speakers, or speakers with language disorders,but fully competent, native-speaking adults also producedisfluencies, repetitions and other speech errors. In addi-tion, people regularly encounter novel vocabulary such astechnical terms and borrowings from other languages.However, while it seems that the comprehension systemdoes not break down every time it encounters such anom-alies, it is unclear what kind of representation it constructsfor them. In this paper, we investigate this issue, and wefocus on the comprehension of sentences such as (1) and(2) in which the anomaly is associated with the verb, sincethe verb is an important carrier of syntactic information.

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⇑ Corresponding author. Address: 8950 Villa la Jolla Drive, Suite C129,La Jolla, CA 92037, USA. Tel.: 858 246 1278; fax: 858 246 1284.

E-mail address: iva.m.ivanova@gmail.com (I. Ivanova).

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1. The waitress brunks the book to the monk.2. The waitress exists the book to the monk.

We consider two ways in which comprehenders mightdeal with sentences with verb-related anomalies, after afirst encounter. In both accounts, comprehenders are as-sumed to draw on multiple sources of information to arriveat an interpretation of a sentence (whether anomalous ornon-anomalous). But the two accounts differ with respectto the role that syntactic information plays in this process,and thus with respect to the construction of syntactic rep-resentations during the comprehension of anomaloussentences.

On the one hand, comprehenders might be able, despitethe anomaly, to construct similar syntactic representationsfor anomalous sentences as they do for well-formed sen-tences (henceforth the syntactic account). On the otherhand, because of the lack of syntactic information comingfrom the verb, the syntactic representation for such sen-tences might be erroneous or altogether lacking, and com-prehenders might resort to alternative methods involvingsemantics to arrive at an interpretation (henceforth thesemantic account).

According to the syntactic account, people constructsyntactic representations for such sentences which aresimilar to the ones they construct for well-formed sen-tences. This might occur if the construction of syntacticrepresentations in general is driven by the building oflexically-independent structural frames rather than byverb subcategorization (the number and kinds of syntacticconstituents that occur with a verb). To obtain syntacticrepresentations for (1–2) which are similar to those con-structed for well-formed sentences, comprehenders mightfirst attempt to determine the grammatical category of therelevant constituents (V NP PP). Since in both examples itis clear that the anomalous words are verbs, they shouldhave little difficulty in doing so. This would then allowthem to access the appropriate syntactic rule (the preposi-tional object (PO) rule; traditionally, VP ? V NP PP), andconstruct the corresponding PO syntactic representation([V NP PP]VP) on the basis of this rule.

A slightly different version of the syntactic accountholds that verb subcategorization is accessed first (if it isavailable) but is then overridden by lexically-independentsyntactic information if they clash. This might occur if theconstruction of syntactic representations in general is dri-ven by verb subcategorization, but lexically-independentsyntactic information can take over in the absence ofappropriate subcategorization frames. That is, compreh-enders would first attempt to construct syntactic represen-tations for (1–2) on the basis of the syntactic component ofthe verbs’ lexical entries. However, in (1), the novel verbbrunks is not associated with any syntactic information,and in (2), the verb exists leads to a representation thatspecifies a verb with no complements, and thus does notprovide an accurate representation of all the sentence con-stituents. In such a case, comprehenders would resort to a‘‘recovery’’ route and construct a syntactic representationfor (1–2) on the basis of the grammatical categories ofthe sentence constituents. This would not be how theywould construct syntactic representations for well-formed

sentences, but a back-up strategy for processing anoma-lous sentences. Critically, both versions of the syntactic ac-count assume that comprehenders use the grammaticalcategories of the sentence constituents to assign syntacticrepresentations to anomalous sentences that are similarto those that they assign to well-formed sentences.

Note that this account does not preclude the influenceof other, non-syntactic information during comprehension(see Pickering and Van Gompel (2006), for a review). Be-cause it makes no predictions about the time-course ofprocessing, the syntactic account is compatible both withthe garden-path (two-stage) account of comprehension(e.g., Frazier, 1987), in which additional information isused after an initial syntactic analysis has been con-structed, and with the constraint-based (one-stage) ac-count, in which the initial choice of analysis makes use ofboth syntactic and non-syntactic information (e.g., Mac-Donald, Pearlmutter, & Seidenberg, 1994).

But an alternative semantic account is that compreh-enders are unable to construct syntactic representationsfor (1–2) that are similar to those constructed for well-formed sentences. This would be the case if the construc-tion of syntactic representations is necessarily driven byverb subcategorizations (i.e., syntactic information is ac-cessed exclusively via lexical representations, as is as-sumed by strong lexicalist accounts: see e.g. MacDonaldet al., 1994). This account therefore predicts that, if no sub-categorization is compatible with the constituents, thecomprehender cannot construct a syntactic representa-tion; and that no lexically-independent syntactic informa-tion exists upon which the comprehender could fall back.Thus, for (1), comprehenders would not be able toconstruct any syntactic representation, and, for, (2), theymight attempt to construct an intransitive representationbut realize that it is not compatible with the sentenceconstituents. After such failed attempts to process (1–2),comprehenders might abandon syntactic processingaltogether.

So how would people interpret such sentences underthe semantic account? One possibility is that they focuson other sources of information when they cannot use syn-tactic structure. For example, they could draw on themeanings of individual words and knowledge about thepragmatically likely relationships between entities, prop-erties, and events denoted by those words. They could alsomake use of syntactic information such as the category ofthe words (e.g., waitress is a noun), though they couldnot use that information to construct a complete syntacticanalysis. They could use this information to construct athematic representation for the sentence in which eachnoun phrase was assigned a role (e.g., the first noun phrasewould likely be assigned the agent role).

More specifically, comprehenders would realise that(1–2) consist of three nouns and a verb. They have encoun-tered many well-formed sentences with the same numberand type of constituents which describe an act of transfer,in which the first entity is the agent, the second the theme(the object of transfer), and the third the recipient. Thisinterpretation is compatible with the meanings of thenoun phrases: the waitress refers to a plausible agent;the book refers to an inanimate, transferable entity; and

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the monk refers to a plausible human recipient of such anentity in a transfer event. On this basis, they conclude thatthe waitress is performing an act of transferring the bookto the monk.

At first blush, studies of the comprehension of sen-tences with a verb-related anomaly seem to suggest thatcomprehenders do construct some sort of syntactic repre-sentations for such sentences, in accordance with the syn-tactic account. For example, Kaschak and Glenberg (2000,Experiment 2) showed that participants presented withnovel denominal verbs in a double-object (DO) construc-tion (e.g., Lynn crutched Tom the apple so he wouldn’t starve)or a transitive construction (Lynn crutched her apple so Tomwouldn’t starve) paraphrased the DO sentences as involvingtransfer more often than the transitive sentences. Also,participants were more likely to give definitions that in-volved transfer for the novel verbs in DO sentences thanin transitive sentences. Similarly, Fisher (1994) found thatparticipants tended to mention transfer in paraphrases ofsentences in which verbs not normally denoting transferevents occurred in structures associated with a transferevent (e.g., Jack thought the book to Anne). Furthermore,Kako (2006) found that participants who were presentedwith ‘‘jabberwocky’’ sentences, in which content wordswere replaced by pseudowords but function words andmorphological markers were retained (e.g., The rom gorpedthe blick to the dax) were able to derive some sort of mean-ing for these sentences. Such findings seem to imply thatparticipants are able to construct syntactic representationsfor sentences with novel verbs, even in the absence ofappropriate syntactic information coming from the verb.

Similar conclusions have been reached in child lan-guage acquisition studies. It has been shown that youngchildren seem to make use of structural information in or-der to deduce novel verbs’ meanings (e.g., Brown, 1957;Fisher, 1996; Fisher, Hall, Rakowitz, & Gleitman, 1994; Nai-gles, 1990). For example, Fisher (1996) demonstrated that3- and 5-year-old children were able to match novel verbsto one of two scenes depending on the kind of constructionthe verb had previously appeared in (e.g., She is pilking hervs. She is pilking). Such results have been interpreted as evi-dence that young children are capable of constructingsome sort of syntactic representations for sentences withnovel verbs, and that they use such representations as anaid in verb acquisition, in accordance with the syntacticbootstrapping hypothesis (Fisher & Gleitman, 2002; Gleit-man, 1990; Landau & Gleitman, 1985).

However, a conclusion that comprehenders constructwell-formed syntactic representations for sentences withverb-related anomalies might be premature. This is be-cause, in the adult studies, participants might have arrivedat sentence interpretations through reasoning about whatthe sentences could mean rather than through syntacticprocessing, thus supporting the semantic account. Such aconcern is aggravated by the fact that the interpretationswere obtained via paraphrasing or metalinguistic judg-ments of meaning, which are silent about the nature ofthe representations constructed in order to reach a specificinterpretation. Likewise, in the verb acquisition studies,children may actually have used non-syntactic strategies,such as semantic cues and knowledge about thematic

roles, to deduce verb meanings, also in accordance withthe semantic account. Thus, in effect we still do not knowenough about the nature of the representations con-structed for anomalous sentences.

Importantly, there is some evidence that semantic pro-cessing can overpower (if not completely substitute for)syntactic processing in the presence of difficulties. Accord-ing to the ‘‘good-enough’’ approach to comprehension(Ferreira, 2003; Ferreira, Bailey, & Ferraro, 2002), compre-hension is sometimes achieved by means of simple heuris-tics (such as plausibility and assuming that the first nounphrase is the agent) and is heavily influenced by schemasof situations and events stored in long-term memory. Thisis especially likely to happen in the case of implausible,ambiguous or otherwise difficult sentences, as well as innoise. For example, Ferreira (2003) found that compreh-enders often misinterpret passive sentences (e.g., The dogwas bitten by the man) for which the erroneous interpreta-tion (the man was bitten by the dog) would be plausible,and she argued that such interpretations are based on heu-ristics (plausibility considerations) rather than on syntacticalgorithms. Note that this approach does not presupposethat comprehenders make no attempt to construct syntac-tic analyses for difficult sentences. Rather, it claims thatsyntactic algorithms and simple heuristics work in parallel.However, constructing a syntactic analysis can be labori-ous and slow for difficult sentences, and given the exigen-cies of online language use, comprehenders sometimessettle for the outcome of the faster processing route (basedon heuristics). Here, we suggest that anomalous sentencesmight present comprehenders with another type of pro-cessing difficulty, and hence that they might similarly set-tle for an analysis based on heuristics rather than onelaborate syntactic algorithms.

We note that studying the processing of anomaloussentences such as (1–2) bears on the issue of how com-prehenders deal with verb neologisms, which are fairlycommon in everyday life (e.g., to email, to fax, to google,to youtube; see Clark & Clark, 1979). We have seen thatboth accounts we have outlined above allow for the suc-cessful interpretation of sentences with novel verbs (con-sistent with experimental and ample anecdotal evidencethat the comprehension system does not crash every timesuch verbs are encountered). The accounts differ, however,in the way interpretation of sentences with novel verbstakes place: via syntactic representations similar to theones constructed for well-formed sentences, in the syntac-tic account; and via non-syntactic processing, in thesemantic account.

To distinguish between the two accounts, we need amethod that taps into the syntactic representations con-structed for sentences in comprehension. We thereforeturn to the structural priming from anomalous sentences.

2. Structural priming from anomalous sentences

We propose that structural priming presents an appro-priate tool for distinguishing between the syntactic andsemantic accounts for the types of representation con-structed for anomalous sentences. Structural priming

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accounts for the finding that speakers tend to reuse a syn-tactic structure they have been exposed to. Bock (1986)showed that participants tended to describe pictures usingthe same structure that they had used in repeating a previ-ously encountered sentence. For example, they used aprepositional object (PO) structure in a target descriptionafter repeating the prime sentence The rock star sold somecocaine to an undercover agent, but a DO structure afterrepeating the sentence The rock star sold an undercoveragent some cocaine. This phenomenon occurs with a rangeof constructions (Branigan, Pickering, McLean, & Stewart,2006; Cleland & Pickering, 2003; Ferreira, 2003; Griffin &Weinstein-Tull, 2003; Hartsuiker & Westenberg, 2000), indifferent tasks (Branigan, Pickering, & Cleland, 2000; Pick-ering & Branigan, 1998; Potter & Lombardi, 1998), in differ-ent languages such as English (e.g., Bock, 1986), Dutch (e.g.,Hartsuiker & Kolk, 1998), and German (e.g., Scheepers,2003), between the languages of bilinguals (Bernolet,Hartsuiker, & Pickering, 2007; Hartsuiker, Pickering, &Veltkamp, 2004; Loebell & Bock, 2003; Schoonbaert,Hartsuiker, & Pickering, 2007), and in natural speech(Gries, 2005). Importantly, it is not contingent on lexicalrepetition, suggesting that the effect has an abstract(lexically unspecified) component, but the magnitude ofthe effect is enhanced by such repetition (the so calledlexical boost effect: Cleland & Pickering, 2003; Hartsuiker,Bernolet, Schoonbaert, Speybroeck, & Vanderelst, 2008;Pickering & Branigan, 1998). Moreover, participants instructural priming experiments are typically unaware ofthe experimental manipulations – the effects appear tobe implicit (e.g., Bock & Griffin, 2000) and even occur inpeople with amnesia (Ferreira, Bock, Wilson, & Cohen,2008).

There are several reasons why structural priming mightbe informative about the two accounts for the representa-tions constructed for anomalous sentences. Most impor-tantly, there is evidence that structural priming taps intosyntactic representation. That is, at least part of the struc-tural priming effect appears to be driven by repetition ofsyntactic structure and cannot be fully accounted for byrepetition of other representational levels (see Pickering& Ferreira, 2008). For example, the effect is not contingentupon repetition of content words (Pickering & Branigan,1998), function words (Bock, 1989), or prosody (Bock &Loebell, 1990).

Moreover, it appears that the structural priming effectcannot be fully accounted for by conceptual or thematicrole repetition (although semantic features such as anima-cy and thematic roles can themselves be primed; see e.g.,Bock, Loebell, & Morey, 1992; Griffin & Weinstein-Tull,2003). For example, Bock and Loebell (1990) showed thatlocative primes such as The wealthy widow drove her Merce-des to the church cause as much priming of the PO structureas PO primes such as The wealthy widow gave her Mercedesto the church. Hartsuiker and Westenberg (2000) foundpriming of auxiliary-final vs. participle-final word order,even though auxiliaries are not associated with conceptualor thematic information (see also Konopka and Bock(2009), for a comparable case). Similarly, Ferreira (2003)found that mention of the optional complementizer ‘‘that’’(whose conceptual underpinnings are at best unclear) can

be primed but the effect depended upon syntactic, notpurely lexical, repetition. Furthermore, Pickering, Branigan,and McLean (2002) demonstrated that shifted-POsentences (e.g., The racing driver showed to the mechanicthe extremely dirty and badly torn overall) did not primeDO sentences, even though there is complete overlap ofconceptual and thematic role order in the two sentencetypes (see also Salamoura & Williams, 2007). All theseresults suggest that conceptual representations orthematic role order per se do not drive the structural prim-ing effect.

Finally, there is evidence that structural priming cannotbe solely ascribed to information structure repetition,although such repetition may occur (Bernolet, Hartsuiker,& Pickering, 2009). Moreover, Scheepers (2003) found thatthere was no tendency to repeat a particular information(focus) structure when syntactic structure was not also re-peated. In all, evidence from a number of studies points toa syntactic component underlying the structural primingeffect.

Note also that an act of comprehension can prime a sub-sequent act of production. Levelt and Kelter (1982) foundthat participants tended to answer questions using thesyntactic form of the question. Potter and Lombardi(1998) found that the structure of a recalled sentencewas affected by primes that were only comprehended aswell as those that were produced. A number of studieshave had a participant and confederate take turns to de-scribe pictures to each other as part of a dialogue game,and showed that participants tended to repeat the confed-erates’ description structure (Branigan et al., 2000; Cleland& Pickering, 2003; Hartsuiker et al., 2004; Hartsuiker et al.,2008). Taken together with evidence that production of astructure can prime its subsequent comprehension (Brani-gan, Pickering, & McLean, 2005), these results suggest thatpriming taps into a level of representation that is commonto production and comprehension (Branigan, Pickering,Liversedge, Stewart, & Urbach, 1995), and hence can beinformative not only about production but also about com-prehension processes.

In particular, it seems that participants’ choice of struc-ture during production of a target sentence can be infor-mative about the way in which they comprehended apreceding prime sentence. Van Gompel, Pickering, Pearson,and Jacob (2006) exploited this possibility to study theactivation of alternative structures during comprehensionof garden path sentences. They found that the initial incor-rect (transitive) analyses of garden-path sentences (e.g.,While the man was visiting the children who were surpris-ingly pleasant and funny played outside) were not fully deac-tivated after disambiguation. Participants producedtransitive sentences more often after such temporarilyambiguous sentences than after disambiguated controlsentences, indicating that inappropriate analyses retainactivation even after disambiguation occurs.

Finally, there is some evidence that verbs presented inisolation induce structural priming (Melinger & Dobel,2005; Salamoura & Williams, 2006). This is consistent withthe possibility that verbs that are incompatible with theirsentential context would influence the magnitude of prim-ing, as we suggest below.

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Given all these points, the structural priming paradigmseems very well suited to investigating the representationsconstructed for anomalous sentences in comprehension. Inparticular, it can help us determine whether the syntacticrepresentations constructed for such sentences are similarto those constructed for well-formed sentences, orwhether they are missing or erroneous, such that process-ing is ultimately carried out via semantic representations.If syntactic representations are constructed for anomaloussentences, these representations should be able to primethe production of subsequent utterances. Furthermore, ifthey are similar to the syntactic representations con-structed for well-formed sentences, anomalous and well-formed primes should prime to the same extent. Alterna-tively, if the syntactic representations for anomalous sen-tences are erroneous or are not constructed at all, suchsentences should produce less structural priming thanwell-formed primes (given that part of the structural prim-ing might be produced by non-syntactic sources such asanimacy or thematic role order), or no structural primingat all.

3. Overview of the experiments

In three experiments, we explored the nature of therepresentations constructed for a type of anomalous sen-tence, where the anomaly is associated with the verb. Wecontrasted two accounts about the construction of suchrepresentations. In a syntactic account, the syntactic repre-sentations for anomalous sentences are similar to the onesconstructed for well-formed sentences. In a semantic ac-count, the syntactic representations for anomalous sen-tences are missing or erroneous, and are ultimately takenover by semantic representations.

To tease apart these two accounts, we presented partic-ipants with ditransitive prime sentences. In each experi-ment, there were conditions in which the verb in theprime sentence was anomalous, as in (1–2), repeated hereas (3–4), as well as conditions in which the prime sentencewas well-formed (5).

3. The waitress brunks the book to the monk. (Exp. 2)4. The waitress exists the book to the monk. (Exp. 3)5. The waitress gives book to the monk.

Participants read the prime sentences and then decidedwhether they were accurate descriptions of subsequentlypresented pictures. They then described an unrelated tar-get picture that depicted a ditransitive event involvingthree entities (such as a dancer giving an apple to a sol-dier). We examined whether the structure of participants’target descriptions was affected by the prime sentences.We predicted that, in the syntactic account, there shouldbe no difference in the priming effect produced by sen-tences such as (3–4) and sentences such as (5), whereasin the semantic account, the priming effect for sentencessuch as (3–4) should be significantly smaller than thatfor sentences such as (5), or altogether absent.

In addition, all experiments contrasted priming follow-ing well-formed sentences in which the verb was the same

as the target verb with priming following well-formed sen-tences in which the verb differed from the target verb. Asdiscussed above, many studies have shown that head word(noun or verb) repetition enhances priming (the ‘‘lexicalboost’’ effect; Branigan et al., 2000; Cleland & Pickering,2003; Pickering & Branigan, 1998). Including this manipu-lation therefore allowed us to verify that our experimentswere sensitive enough to demonstrate differences in themagnitude of priming, if such differences occur.

Finally, before putting the syntactic and semantic ac-counts to test, we needed to demonstrate that the presenceof an anomaly in itself did not influence the magnitude ofpriming in addition to the predicted effects of the specifictypes of anomaly we examined, in other words, that thepresence of any anomaly influenced the processing of sen-tences in some way. For example, the conscious detectionof ungrammaticalities by participants could disrupt syn-tactic processing for reasons independent of our hypothe-ses. That is, it was possible that, when they detected anungrammaticality, participants would cease to processthe sentence in a natural manner, perhaps even giving upany attempt to comprehend the sentence (thus precludingpriming). To rule out this possibility, Experiment 1 com-pared priming following sentences with morphologicallyanomalous verbs, such as (6), to sentences with morpho-logically well-formed verbs such as (5).

6. The waitress gived the book to the monk.

Here, we predicted that such anomalous sentenceswould produce the same magnitude of priming as that pro-duced by well-formed sentences (5). This is because it hasbeen demonstrated that morphology does not affect thestructural priming effect (see Pickering & Branigan,1998). Thus, if we found comparable priming following(5) and (6), it would demonstrate that priming is not re-duced by the presence of anomaly per se. Furthermore, alexical boost of the same magnitude following (6) as fol-lowing (5) would also suggest that participants accessthe same lexical representation when processing (6) aswhen they process a correct sentence (5).

All experiments were disguised as a communicationgame with ‘‘another participant’’ via an automatic speechtranscriber. Participants were told that both they and theimaginary ‘‘other participant’’ were describing pictures or-ally but their descriptions appeared in writing on theother’s screen. In fact, participants were tested individuallyand the prime sentences were pre-generated. We opted forthis cover story for several reasons. Experiments carriedout with a confederate scripting paradigm (where the con-federate is physically present) may produce larger primingeffects than those carried out with methods such as writ-ten sentence completion experiments (see Pickering &Ferreira, 2008). However, using a real confederate wouldrequire the confederate to produce exceptionally strangeutterances. Our cover story therefore allowed us to intro-duce errors in the prime sentences but left open the possi-bility that these errors were the transcriber’s and not the‘‘other participant’s’’ fault. This setting turned out to becredible – across all experiments, there were very few par-ticipants who did not believe the cover story. We report

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the numbers of these participants separately for eachexperiment.

4. Experiment 1: dative priming with morphologicallyincorrect dative verbs

This experiment considered whether priming is re-duced following a sentence with an anomaly which is notexpected to influence the choice of syntactic structure.For this purpose, we used prime sentences that containedverbs with incorrect past-tense morphology (e.g., gived)that were otherwise the same as the target verb (gave)and compared them with conditions in which morpholog-ically correct prime and target verbs were the same or dif-ferent as the target verb. We reasoned that suchmorphologically anomalous verbs would not pose a partic-ular processing challenge since the underlying verb is eas-ily discernible. We predicted that priming would not bereduced in these circumstances, in keeping with evidencethat verbal morphology does not influence the magnitudeof priming (Pickering & Branigan, 1998).

Still, to increase the probability of detecting changes inthe priming effect, the morphologically anomalous verbwas also the same as the target verb. In this way, we coulddetect an effect of the presence of verb anomaly not onlyfor syntactic processing (indexed by a priming effect) butalso for lexical processing (indexed by the presence of alexical boost). Consequently, if the anomaly had no effecton processing, the prime condition with morphologicallyincorrect verbs (The waitress gived the book to the monk)should produce the same lexical boost as the correct,same-verb condition (The nun gave the book to the monk)compared to the different-verb condition (The nun chuckedthe book to the monk).

4.1. Method

4.1.1. ParticipantsTwenty-four participants from the University of Edin-

burgh community were paid to take part. All were nativespeakers of English and had normal or corrected-to-normalvision. Two additional participants were excluded afterdebriefing because they reported being aware of theirchoice of syntactic structure when describing the targetpictures.

4.1.2. MaterialsWe constructed 36 experimental items. Each item con-

sisted of a prime sentence, a picture to be verified againstthe prime sentence (henceforth match picture), and a targetpicture. The 36 target pictures depicted ditransitive events,each displaying persons or objects with the roles of agent,theme, and beneficiary (Fig. 1). The position of agent andbeneficiary was counterbalanced, such that, on half of thetarget pictures, the agent appeared on the left side andthe beneficiary on the right side, and on the other half ofthe target pictures these positions were reversed. Beloweach picture was a present-tense verb in capital letters(which participants were instructed to use in theirdescriptions). There were six pictures for each of six verbs(gives, lends, sells, sends, flings, and throws).

The 36 prime sentences occurred in six conditions(Examples 8–10), derived from the combination of thePrime Verb factor (same vs. different vs. morphologicallyincorrect verb) and the Prime Construction factor (PO vs.DO). The prime verbs were in the past tense, to allow themanipulation of past tense morphology. For a target pic-ture such as a dancer giving an apple to a soldier, the primesentence conditions were as follows:

7a. The waitress gave the book to the monk. (SameVerb, PO)7b. The waitress gave the monk the book. (Same Verb,DO)8a. The waitress chucked the book to the monk. (Differ-ent Verb, PO)8b. The waitress chucked the monk the book. (DifferentVerb, DO)9a. The waitress gived the book to the monk. (WrongMorph/Same Verb, PO)9b. The waitress gived the monk the book. (WrongMorph/Same Verb, DO)

There were three Prime Verb conditions. In the SameVerb condition (8a, b), the verb used in the prime sentencewas the same as the one written on the target picture. Allverbs in this condition had an irregular past tense. In theDifferent Verb condition (9a, b), the verbs used in theprime sentence (chucks,1 tosses, mails, hands, loans, andrents) were different from the verb written on the target pic-ture, and had a regular past tense. Each prime verb alwaysoccurred with the same (semantically dissimilar) target verb(e.g., give was always paired with chuck). In the WrongMorph/Same Verb condition (10a, b), the verbs were formedby adding the d or ed suffix to the verb stem and thus ‘‘reg-ularizing’’ their past tenses (producing gived, lended, selled,sended, flinged, and throwed). To make sure that peoplewould not use these forms in everyday speech, 12 additionalparticipants were asked to write the past tense for all 12verbs used in the experiment; these participants always pro-duced the correct past-tense form.

In addition, prime sentences occurred in two PrimeConstruction conditions: PO (8a, 9a, 10a), and DO (8b, 9b,

Fig. 1. An example of a target picture.

1 The colloquial verb to chuck (meaning ‘‘to throw’’) is frequent in BritishEnglish and thus perfectly acceptable in this context.

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10b). The entities used in the target pictures were differentfrom the entities that the prime sentences referred to.

As participants had to verify whether the prime sen-tences matched or mismatched subsequently presentedpictures, we selected 36 match pictures, also depictingditransitive events (Fig. 2). Half of the match pictures fol-lowing experimental prime sentences corresponded tothe event described in the preceding prime sentence (andthus required a ‘‘yes’’ response) and half did not corre-spond to the event in the preceding prime sentence (andthus required a ‘‘no’’ response). For those match picturesrequiring a ‘‘no’’ response, we varied the amount of overlapbetween the prime sentence and the match picture tomake the task more difficult and thus ensure that partici-pants carefully read the prime sentences. The amount ofoverlap varied from no overlap to a maximum of two over-lapping entities (or an entity and the action). The matchpictures were the same for all prime sentence conditions.

There were also 108 fillers with the same structure asthe experimental items, thus containing a sentence, amatch picture, and a picture to be described. Both the pic-tures for description and the sentences depicted mono-transitive events (e.g., a waitress chasing a monk or apirate lifting a banana) and made use of 18 monotransitiveverbs, each of which appeared 6 times in each of the sen-tence and picture sets. To lend credence to the cover storyof the automatic speech transcriber and to disguise theexperimental manipulation, 12 of the fillers had verbs lack-ing the past-tense suffix (e.g. The dancer kick the doctor), 12had a misspelt word (e.g., docter, polisman), and 12 had amissing article (e.g., The dancer kicks doctor, Pirate chasesthe nun); thus 1/3rd of the fillers were anomalous. Half ofthe filler match pictures required a ‘‘yes’’ response.

We constructed six lists of items, each containing oneversion of each item, and six items from each condition, to-gether with all the fillers. Order of presentation was ran-domized for each participant, with the constraint thatbetween two and four fillers separated experimental items,and also preceded the first item in the list.

4.1.3. ProcedureEach list of items was administered to four participants.

Participants were tested individually. Each participant was

seated in front of a PC and read written instructions, whichstated that they were participating in a communicationstudy and would be playing a picture-matching game withanother participant, located in another room. Their taskconsisted in describing pictures and verifying the descrip-tions of ‘‘the other participant’’. Participants were informedthey would be communicating with ‘‘the other participant’’via an automatic speech transcriber, and it was clarifiedthat this was a device which converted speech into writtentext. Thus, both they and ‘‘the other participant’’ would bespeaking in a headset but what they would get from eachother would just be written text on the screen. Participantswere additionally requested to use the verbs written underthe pictures in their descriptions.

An experimental trial had the following sequence(Fig. 3). (1) An array of white dots appeared on a blackbackground for either 4400 ms or 4600 ms for the first 40trials, and for either 3800 ms or 4200 ms for the rest ofthe trials. Different timings were used in order to simulatethe time during which ‘‘the other participant’’ was describ-ing a picture and the speech transcriber was converting itinto text. This time diminished after the first 40 trials tofurther convey the impression that ‘‘the other participant’’had got used to the task and was taking less time to de-scribe the pictures. (2) The prime sentence was presentedfor another 4500 ms, again in white on a black background.The prime sentence started with a small letter and lackedpunctuation (to strengthen the impression that spokenspeech was converted into written text). (3) A match pic-ture surrounded by a light green frame was shown, disap-pearing from the screen in 2500 ms or when a key-pressresponse was given. (The colour of the frame served to re-mind participants of the appropriate task.) Participantspressed the ‘‘M’’ key if the picture matched ‘‘the other par-ticipant’s’’ description which they had read before, and the‘‘N’’ key if the picture did not match the description. Theywere asked to perform this task as quickly as they could.(4) A target picture surrounded by a pink frame appearedfor 5000 ms. Participants were instructed that they had5 s to perform the task and requested to ensure they de-scribed the picture in this time. (5) An empty pink frameappeared for a random time between 1000 and 1400 msfor the first 40 trials, and between 800 and 1100 ms forthe following trials (this time, to simulate the time theother participant took to give a key-press response). (6)The next trial started.

Before the experiment, each participant completed sixpractice trials. The experiment was presented with theDMDX software (Forster & Forster, 2003), and participantsspoke in a headset microphone. The program recorded par-ticipants’ spoken responses.

At the end of the experimental session, participantsfilled in a debriefing questionnaire, to ensure they were na-tive speakers of English and were not aware of the experi-mental manipulation.

4.1.4. Scoring and data analysesAll participants’ responses were transcribed and manu-

ally coded as POs or DOs. A description was scored as a‘‘PO’’ if the theme of the action immediately followed theverb and was followed by the preposition ‘‘to’’ and the

Fig. 2. An example of a match picture, corresponding to the primesentences The waitress (gave/ gived/ chucked) the book to the monk/ themonk the book.

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beneficiary. A description was scored as a ‘‘DO’’ if the ben-eficiary immediately followed the verb and was followedby the theme. Responses not scored as either POs or DOswere scored as ‘‘Other’’. These included the small numberof trials on which participants did not produce a descrip-tion at all, as well as when they used a wrong verb in theirdescriptions. Five responses (0.6%) including the preposi-tion at instead of to (admitted by the experimental verbsthrow and fling) were also scored as Other, but analyseswith these responses scored as POs produced an identicalpattern of results.

The data in this and subsequent experiments were ana-lysed using ANOVAs on the arcsine-transformed propor-tions (Winer, Brown, & Michels, 1971) of DO responsesout of all PO and DO responses in each condition. SeparateANOVAs were run with subjects (F1) and items (F2) as ran-dom factors.

4.2. Results

Out of the 864 responses, 598 (69.2%) were scored asPOs, 236 (27.3%) were scored as DOs, and 30 (3.5%) werescored as Other. The number of Other responses ranged

from 4 (2.8%) to 7 (4.9%) per condition and did not signifi-cantly differ across the 6 priming conditions [both Fs < 1].For all 6 conditions, proportions of DO responses were cal-culated for each participant and item out of all PO and DOresponses in the respective condition (the choice of DO re-sponses was arbitrary). The mean proportion of DO targetresponses in each condition together with the priming ef-fect are reported in Table 1.

An examination of Table 1 reveals that there was apriming effect for all conditions. Furthermore, there wasa lexical boost effect, such that both the Same Verb condi-tion (.28) and the Wrong Morph/Same Verb condition (.29)produced a greater priming effect than the Different Verbcondition (.14).

These observations were confirmed by the statisticalanalyses. Two 3 � 2 ANOVAs on the mean arcsine-transformed proportions for each subject and item wereconducted with the factors Prime Verb (Same Verb,Different Verb, Wrong Morph/Same Verb) and PrimeConstruction (PO, DO). There was a main effect of PrimeConstruction [F1(1,23) = 20.08, MSE = .182, p < .001,g2

p ¼ :47; F2(1,35) = 89.53, MSE = .037, p < .001, g2p ¼ :72],

such that DO responses followed DO primes (.51) more

… … …

4600 ms

4500 ms

2500 ms

5000 ms

the waitress gave the book to the monk

1250 ms

Fig. 3. An example trial.

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often than PO primes (.19). There was also a significantinteraction between Prime Construction and Prime Verb[F1(1.37,31.57) = 3.73, MSE = .059, p = .05, g2

p ¼ :14;F2(2,70) = 4.79, MSE = .038, p < .05, g2

p ¼ :12], such thatthe priming effect differed between the different PrimeVerb conditions. A planned comparison of the priming ef-fect for the Same Verb and Wrong Morph/Same Verb con-ditions on the one hand, and the priming effect for theDifferent Verb condition, on the other, revealed an interac-tion [F1(1,23) = 4.46, MSE = .102, p < .05, g2

p ¼ :16;F2(1,35) = 9.55, MSE = .058, p < .005, g2

p ¼ :21], indicatingthat the priming effect was larger for the Same Verb andWrong Morph/Same Verb conditions than for the DifferentVerb condition (a lexical boost). Conversely, a plannedcomparison of the priming effect for the Same Verb condi-tion and the Wrong Morph/Same Verb condition showedno significant interaction [both Fs < 1], suggesting thatthe magnitude of priming did not differ for these two con-ditions. Simple main effects confirmed that priming oc-curred for all three Prime Verb conditions [Same Verb:F1(1,23) = 14.71, MSE = .099, p = .001, g2

p ¼ :39;F2(1,35) = 52.51, MSE = .041, p < .001, g2

p ¼ :60; DifferentVerb: F1(1,23) = 8.82, MSE = .063, p < .01, g2

p ¼ :28;F2(1,35) = 9.60, MSE = .043, p < .005, g2

p ¼ :22; WrongMorph/Same Verb: F1(1,23) = 18.45, MSE = .090, p < .001,g2

p ¼ :46; F2(1,35) = 35.16, MSE = .053, p < .001, g2p ¼ :50].2

4.3. Discussion

In this experiment, we obtained a priming effect in allthree conditions, a lexical boost effect when the correctverb was repeated between prime and target vs. when itwas not, and, most relevantly, an equivalent lexical boostfollowing a morphologically incorrect verb as following acorrect verb. These findings suggest that the presence ofmorphologically anomalous verbs did not disrupt eithersyntactic processing (since there was a significant primingeffect for the morphologically incorrect verb condition) or

lexical processing (since there was also a lexical boost forthis condition). In addition, the presence of a lexical boostindicated that our paradigm was sensitive enough to de-tect differences in the magnitude of priming betweenconditions.3

5. Experiment 2: dative priming with novel verbs

Having demonstrated that structural priming is not al-ways reduced following anomalous sentences (becauseanomaly in itself might disrupt processing), we now con-sider whether priming can help us shed light on the natureof the representations constructed for anomalous sen-tences, and in particular for those with an anomaly associ-ated with the verb. In Experiment 2, we included acondition in which prime sentences involved novel verbs(The waitress brunks the book to the monk), together withconditions in which the prime and target involved theSame or Different Verbs. Crucially, novel verbs do not haveentries in the lexicon and hence lack any subcategorizationspecifications. We were interested in whether this lackwould, or would not, pose a challenge for the constructionof syntactic representations for these sentences. In the syn-tactic account, comprehenders would manage to constructsyntactic representations for the anomalous sentencessimilar to those they construct for well-formed sentences,despite the lack of verb subcategorizations. Consequently,we should expect similar priming following sentences con-taining novel verbs as following sentences containingknown verbs that are different from the target verb (sincethe novel verbs are also different from the target verbs).

In contrast, in the semantic account, comprehenderswould not manage to construct syntactic representationsfor anomalous sentences, and they would resort to other,

Table 1Mean raw proportions of DO descriptions out of all PO and DO descriptions in each condition in all experiments.

Experiment Prime verb Prime Construction Priming effect

DO PO

Experiment 1 Same Verb .43 .15 .28Different Verb .35 .21 .14Wrong Morph/Same Verb .43 .14 .29

Experiment 2 Same Verb .50 .11 .39Different Verb .37 .25 .12Nonce Verb .35 .26 .09

Experiment 3 Same Verb .49 .16 .33Different Verb .36 .26 .10Intransitive Verb .42 .26 .16

Note. DO = double object; PO = prepositional object.

2 We did not exclude from the data we report the responses of the threeparticipants who did not believe they were interacting with anotherparticipant. This was because they were otherwise ignorant of the purposeof the experiment (i.e., were unaware of their choice of structure duringpicture description), and the belief about participation in dialogue was notcrucial for the hypotheses we were testing.

3 The findings from Experiment 1 may also be informative about therepresentation of the past tense, and specifically about the debate onwhether regular and irregular forms are computed by means of the sameprocesses (Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986), or regular forms are generatedvia the application of rules while irregular forms are exceptions stored inthe lexicon (e.g., Pinker, 1999). The fact that we found a lexical boostbetween an irregular past tense verb form and a present tense verb formsuggests that irregular past tense forms do not exist as independent lexicalentries. However, Experiment 1 did not include a well-formed regular pasttense verb condition, and so we cannot compare the lexical boost effectproduced by regular and irregular verbs.

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non-syntactic sources of information such as word mean-ings and plausibility to construct a thematic role represen-tation and arrive at an interpretation. Consequently, in thisaccount, we can expect reduced priming following primesentences containing novel verbs, relative to the primingfor sentences containing known verbs that are differentfrom the target verbs (given that part of the priming effectmight arise from non-syntactic sources such as animacy orthematic role order), or no priming effect altogether.

5.1. Method

5.1.1. ParticipantsThirty participants from the same population as Exper-

iment 1 were paid to take part. Two additional participantswere excluded after debriefing because they reportedbeing aware of their choice of syntactic structure whendescribing the target pictures.

5.1.2. MaterialsThe materials were identical to those in Experiment 1,

with the following exceptions. First, the Wrong Morph/Same Verb condition was replaced with a Nonce Verb con-dition (11a, b), in which the prime verbs were newlycoined (brunks, visses, taums, ralps, quans, and guths).

10a. The waitress brunks the book to the monk. (NonceVerb, PO)

10b. The waitress brunks the monk the book. (NonceVerb, DO)

These verbs followed the phonotactic and orthographicrules of English and were matched one-to-one to the verbsin the Different Verb condition in number of letters anddistribution of vowels and consonants, so that for examplebrunks was matched with chucks (recall that both theprime and target verbs were presented to participants astext). The Same Verb and Different Verb conditions werethe same as in Experiment 1, except that the verbs werein the present tense.

Second, none of the match pictures following experi-mental prime sentences corresponded to the event de-scribed in the preceding prime sentence (but see belowfor filler items). This was done to discourage specific inter-pretations of the nonce verbs. As in Experiment 1, theamount of overlap in all conditions varied from no overlapto a maximum of two overlapping entities (or an entity andthe action), but, importantly, there was never full overlap.In this way, participants could always see that the matchpicture did not correspond to the prime sentence. This al-lowed them to perform the task (i.e., give a ‘‘no’’ response)but not be tempted to assume that the nonce verb actuallymeant the same as the action depicted on the match pic-ture. The match pictures were the same for all prime sen-tence conditions.

Third, the verbs lacking the past-tense suffix in the 12respective erroneous filler sentences from Experiment 1were replaced with nonce verbs (e.g. The dancer mureansthe doctor instead of The dancer kick the doctor). Further-more, 78 of the filler match pictures required a ‘‘yes’’response, so that half of the match pictures in the

experiment required a ‘‘yes’’ response (recall that all theexperimental prime sentences required a ‘‘no’’ response).

5.1.3. Procedure, scoring, and data analysesThese were the same as in Experiment 1.

5.2. Results

Out of the 1080 produced responses, 703 (65.1%) werePOs, 323 (29.9%) were DOs, and 54 (5%) were Other (outof which 27 (2.5%) were POs containing the prepositionat). The number of Other responses ranged from 6 (3.3%)to 12 (6.7%) per condition and did not significantly differacross the 6 priming conditions [both Fs < 1]. Again, therewas a priming effect for all conditions and a lexical boosteffect, such that the priming effect for the Same Verb con-dition (.39) was larger than that for the Different Verb con-dition (.12). Importantly, the priming effects for theDifferent Verb condition (.12) and the Nonce Verb condi-tion (.09) were of very similar magnitude (see Table 1).

The analyses confirmed these observations. The 3 � 2ANOVAs revealed a main effect of Prime Construction[F1(1,29) = 48.63, MSE = .061, p < .001, g2

p ¼ :63;F2(1,35) = 59.62, MSE = .052, p < .001, g2

p ¼ :63], such thatDO responses followed DO primes (.42) more often thanthey followed PO primes (.22). There was also a significantinteraction [F1(2,58) = 15.40, MSE = .039, p < .001, g2

p ¼ :35;F2(2,70) = 11.13, MSE = .063, p < .001, g2

p ¼ :24], indicatingthat the different Prime Verb conditions produced differentpriming effects. A planned comparison of the priming ef-fect for the Same Verb condition on the one hand, andthe priming effects for the Different and Nonce Verb condi-tions on the other, revealed an interaction[F1(1,29) = 31.86, MSE = .057, p < .001, g2

p ¼ :52;F2(1,35) = 16.76, MSE = .126, p < .001, g2

p ¼ :32]. In otherwords, the priming effect was larger for the Same Verbcondition than for the Different and Nonce Verb conditions(a lexical boost effect). A planned comparison of the prim-ing effects for the Different Verb condition and the NonceVerb condition, however, showed no significant interaction[both Fs < 1], confirming that the magnitude of primingwas the same for these two conditions. Lastly, simple maineffects confirmed that priming occurred for all three PrimeVerb conditions [Same Verb: F1(1,29) = 58.41, MSE = .064,p < .001, g2

p ¼ :67; F2(1,35) = 48.14, MSE = .067, p < .001,g2

p ¼ :58; Different Verb: F1(1,29) = 7.60, MSE = .057,p = .01, g2

p ¼ :21; F2(1,35) = 5.58, MSE = .059, p < .05,g2

p ¼ :14; Nonce Verb: F1(1,29) = 7.63, MSE = .044, p = .01,g2

p ¼ :21; F2(1,35) = 6.63, MSE = .043, p < .05, g2p ¼ :16].4

5.3. Discussion

Experiment 2 showed a priming effect in all three con-ditions, a lexical boost effect (i.e., priming was greaterwhen the verb was repeated between prime and targetthan when it was not), and equivalent priming for sen-tences containing a novel verb and sentences containing

4 Three participants in this experiment did not believe that they wereinteracting with another participant.

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a known verb that was not repeated in the target. In otherwords, the inclusion of novel verbs in the primes did notproduce less priming than that observed for well-formedprimes with existing verbs. Our results therefore suggestthat the syntactic representations for anomalous sentencesare similar in nature to those constructed for well-formedsentences, and so provide support for the syntacticaccount.

6. Experiment 3: dative priming with intransitive verbs

In Experiment 3, we included ditransitive prime sen-tences with intransitive verbs, such as The waitress existsthe ball to the monk. Such sentences provide another testof the syntactic vs. semantic accounts. In the syntactic ac-count, comprehenders would manage to construct syntac-tic representations for such sentences, similar to the onesthey construct for well-formed sentences. This would bethe case despite possibly arriving first at an intransitiverepresentation constructed through the subcategorizationof the verb exists, which would not accurately capture allof the sentence constituents. In this account, such an erro-neous representation – if constructed – would be ulti-mately overridden by a PO representation arrived atindependently of the verb, possibly via the grammaticalcategory of the sentence constituents. The syntactic ac-count therefore predicts equivalent priming followingprime sentences containing intransitive verbs and sen-tences containing verbs different from the target verbs.However, in the semantic account, comprehenders wouldnot manage to build syntactic representations for suchsentences. After they arrive at an intransitive representa-tion and realize on the basis of the sentence constituentsthat it is incorrect, they would abandon syntactic process-ing and use semantic strategies to construct an interpreta-tion. Therefore, for prime sentences containing intransitiveverbs, the semantic account predicts either reduced prim-ing relative to prime sentences containing ditransitiveverbs that are different from the target verbs (and suchpriming would arise from non-syntactic sources), or nopriming at all.

6.1. Method

6.1.1. ParticipantsThirty further participants from the same population as

in Experiment 1 took part. One additional participant wasexcluded due to an equipment failure.

6.1.2. MaterialsThe materials were identical to those in Experiment 1,

with the exception that the Wrong Morph/Same Verb con-dition was replaced with an Intransitive Verb condition(12a, b). The Same Verb and Different Verb conditions werethe same as in Experiment 1, but with present-tense verbs.

11a. The waitress exists the book to the monk. (Intransi-tive Verb, PO)

11b. The waitress exists the monk the book. (IntransitiveVerb, DO)

The 6 intransitive verbs (remains, exists, dwells, stays,peeks, and dozes) were carefully chosen so that none al-lowed a direct object (not even a cognate object as in diea horrible death). Furthermore, we made sure they wereof relatively frequent usage in the language and werematched for length with the verbs in the Same Verb andDifferent Verb conditions (Same Verb: M = 4.33; DifferentVerb: M = 4.33; Intransitive Verb: M = 4.67 [t = -.85,p = .42]). The 6 verbs were selected out of 12 initially short-listed verbs (see below), which were deliberately heteroge-neous (e.g., verbs of existence; lodge verbs, verbs ofperception, etc.; see Levin, 1993), in order to make surethat any effects would not be limited to a single verb class.

To ensure that the sentences in the Intransitive Verbcondition had no meaningful interpretation, 24 additionalparticipants rated on a scale from 1 to 7 how much senseeach of 48 sentences made (1 meant ‘‘makes no sense atall’’ and 7 meant ‘‘makes perfect sense’’). These 48 sen-tences included 12 sentences with an intransitive verbused ditransitively (each occurring in a PO form for halfof the participants and in a DO form for the other half),12 correct prime sentences from Experiment 1 (6 fromthe Same Verb condition and 6 from the Different Verbcondition, again occurring as POs for a half of the partici-pants and as DOs for the other half), 12 filler (monotransi-tive) sentences from Experiment 1, and 12 completelymeaningless sentences with various semantic and syntac-tic violations (e.g. The plastic thought leaves huskily andthe box.). The intransitive verb sentences (M = 1.78,SD = 1.13) received lower ratings than the correct primesentences (M = 5.98, SD = 1.35) [t1(23) = �20.36, p < .001;t2(22) = �4.14, p < .001] but similar ratings to the com-pletely meaningless sentences (M = 1.85, SD = 1.34) [bothts < 1]. Out of the 12 pretested intransitive verbs, we se-lected 6 with comparatively low means and standard devi-ations (M = 1.70, SD = 1.06). The ratings of these 6 verbsalone also significantly differed from those of the correctprime sentences [t1(23) = �21.26, p < .001; t2(16) =�26.88, p < .001] but did not differ from those of the mean-ingless sentences [t1(23) = �1.20, p = .24; t2 < 1].

The match pictures in this experiment were the same asin Experiment 2 (rather than Experiment 1). Lastly, the 12filler sentences from Experiment 1 that contained verbswithout the past-tense suffix were replaced with 12 fillersentences that contained intransitive verbs but wereotherwise identical (e.g., The dancer goes the doctor insteadof The dancer kick the doctor). The other fillers (except fortheir match pictures) were identical to those ofExperiment 1.

6.1.3. Procedure, scoring, and data analysesThese were the same as in Experiment 1.

6.2. Results

Out of the 1080 responses, we scored 685 (63.4%) asPOs, 343 (31.8%) as DOs, and 52 (4.8%) as Other (of which34 (1.7%) were POs containing the preposition at). Thenumber of Other responses ranged from 6 (3.3%) to 12(6.7%) per condition and did not differ across the 6 primingconditions [both Fs < 1]. Again, the proportions of DO

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responses were calculated for each participant and item(see Table 1). Similarly to Experiment 1, there was a prim-ing effect for all conditions and a lexical boost effect.Importantly, the priming effect for the Intransitive Verbcondition (.16) was not smaller than that for the DifferentVerb condition (.10).

The relevant analyses confirmed these observations.The 3 x 2 ANOVAs showed a main effect of Prime Construc-tion [F1(1,29) = 38.36, MSE = .061, p < .001, g2

p ¼ :57;F2(1,35) = 51.16, MSE = .051, p < .001, g2

p ¼ :59], indicatingthat DO responses followed DO primes (.48) more oftenthan PO primes (.25). There was also a significant interac-tion [F1(2,58) = 10.49, MSE = .037, p < .001, g2

p ¼ :27;F2(2,70) = 6.91, MSE = .051, p < .005, g2

p ¼ :17], suggestingthat the priming effect was different for the different PrimeVerb conditions. A planned comparison of the priming ef-fect for the Same Verb condition on the one hand, andthe priming effects for the Different and Intransitive Verbconditions on the other, revealed a significant interaction[F1(1,29) = 17.49, MSE = .063, p < .001, g2

p ¼ :38;F2(1,35) = 12.94, MSE = .077, p = .001, g2

p ¼ :27], indicatingthat the priming effect was greater for the Same Verb thanfor the Different and Intransitive Verb conditions (a lexicalboost effect). Conversely, a planned comparison betweenthe Different Verb and Intransitive Verb conditions re-vealed no significant interaction [both Fs < 1]; in otherwords, the magnitude of priming did not differ betweenthese two conditions. Simple main effects confirmed thatpriming occurred for all three Prime Verb conditions [SameVerb: F1(1,29) = 36.68, MSE = .068, p < .001, g2

p ¼ :59;F2(1,35) = 56.70, MSE = .050, p < .001, g2

p ¼ :62; DifferentVerb (the effect was marginal by items): F1(1,29) = 4.88,MSE = .046, p < .05, g2

p ¼ :14; F2(1,35) = 3.79, MSE = .057,p = .06; g2

p ¼ :10; Intransitive Verb: F1(1,29) = 13.40,MSE = .048, p = .001, g2

p ¼ :32; F2(1,35) = 10.94, MSE =.052, p < .005, g2

p ¼ :24].5

6.3. Discussion

Experiment 3 revealed a priming effect for all three con-ditions, a lexical boost effect, and the same magnitude ofpriming following anomalous prime sentences containingan intransitive verb as following well-formed prime sen-tences containing a dative verb that was different fromthe target verb. That is, the presence of prime verbs seman-tically and syntactically incongruent with the sentenceframe in which they occurred did not reduce the primingeffect relative to that produced by well-formed sentences.Hence, this experiment provides further support for thesyntactic account.

7. General discussion

In this study, we considered the nature of the represen-tations constructed for anomalous sentences, focusing onsentences in which the anomaly is associated with theverb. We contrasted two accounts for the nature of such

representations. In a syntactic account, syntactic represen-tations for anomalous sentences similar to those of well-formed sentences are constructed independently of themissing or incongruent verb subcategorizations. In asemantic account, the syntactic representations for anom-alous sentences are erroneous or not constructed at all, andinterpretation is carried out on the basis of non-syntacticsources such as word meaning and knowledge of the plau-sible relations between the entities the words denote, andof the respective thematic roles these words might assumein a sentence. We reasoned that, in the syntactic account,anomalous sentences used as primes should have no effecton structural priming, whereas in the semantic account,they should reduce or eliminate the priming effect.

In three structural priming experiments, we found thatanomalous sentence primes did not reduce the magnitudeof priming in comparison to that of primes with correct,known, and appropriate verbs. Specifically, Experiment 1ruled out the possibility that the mere presence of ananomaly could reduce the priming effect. In this experi-ment, sentences with morphologically anomalous verbs(The waitress gived the book to the monk) primed target pic-ture descriptions, and moreover produced a lexical boostequivalent to that of sentences with correct verbs. Experi-ment 2 then showed that sentences with novel verbs (Thewaitress brunks the book to the monk) primed targetdescriptions to the same extent as sentences with knownverbs (e.g., The waitress chucks the book to the monk); andExperiment 3 demonstrated that sentences that inappro-priately used intransitive verbs (e.g., The waitress existsthe book to the monk) also primed target picture descrip-tions to the same extent as sentences with appropriateverbs. In addition, all three experiments showed a lexicalboost effect with well-formed sentences, suggesting thatour design was sensitive enough to discover differencesamong priming conditions, if such differences existed.

These results have several implications. Firstly, theyprovide support for a syntactic account of the comprehen-sion of anomalous sentences. That is, they suggest that thesyntactic representations constructed for sentences withverb-related anomalies are unaffected by missing or inap-propriate syntactic information associated with the verb,and that they are similar in nature to the representationsconstructed for well-formed sentences. The representa-tions for the anomalous sentences (e.g., [V NP PP]VP) aremost likely constructed by determining the grammaticalcategory of the sentence constituents, and, on the basisof this information, accessing the relevant syntactic rules(e.g., VP ? V NP PP).

Secondly, our findings are potentially informative aboutthe nature of the representations constructed for well-formed sentences. Our results show that people use struc-tural frames in the processing of anomalous sentences(either during initial processing or after consideringlexically-based syntactic information). Unless the process-ing of anomalous sentences is completely unrelated to theprocessing of well-formed sentences, our results implythat structural frames play an important role in the pro-cessing of well-formed sentences. Such a claim would beincompatible with a strongly lexicalist account, in whichthe process of constituent structure formulation would

5 All participants in this experiment believed that they were interactingwith another participant.

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be driven entirely by the syntactic information stored inlexical entries (e.g., MacDonald et al., 1994). However, weassume that, if lexical information is available and compat-ible with the syntactic analysis, it is incorporated into thesyntactic representation (which has been constructed in alexically-independent way), as is implied by the existenceof the lexical boost (observed in all our experiments).

In fact, a similar conclusion was reached by Konopkaand Bock (2009) for language production. These authorscompared the magnitude of structural priming from sen-tences with idiomatic and non-idiomatic phrasal verbs(production-to-production priming). They assumed that,in a view assigning primary importance in processing tothe syntactic information contained in lexical items, idi-oms are non-compositional entities with lexical, semantic,and syntactic representations separate from those of theindividual lexical items composing them. Conversely, in aview assigning primary importance in processing tolexically-independent syntactic frames, idioms are struc-turally represented similarly to non-idioms. Thus, if theconstruction of syntactic structure is driven by the retrie-val of information from the lexicon, the specific syntacticinformation associated with the lexical representations ofidioms should not generalise to the production of non-idi-omatic sentences, and hence idioms would be less effectiveprimes than non-idioms. But if sentence production reliescrucially on the retrieval of lexically-independent repre-sentations, idiomatic and non-idiomatic primes should beequally effective. Konopka and Bock found equal primingin sentences with idiomatic and non-idiomatic phrasalverbs, and interpreted these results as evidence thatsentence production is carried out via the generation ofabstract, lexically-independent syntactic frames ratherthan lexically-bound structural representations. Thesefindings are clearly compatible with our results and thesyntactic account.

An implication of our finding concerns language use inconversation. In dialogue, people tend to align with eachothers’ linguistic choices at many levels of linguistic repre-sentation (Bortfeld & Brennan, 1997; Garrod & Anderson,1987; Pardo, 2006), which facilitates communication (Kra-ljic, Siu, & Ferreira, 2008). Our findings imply that interloc-utors would align with each other at some levels ofstructure even when one (or both) of them producesanomalous utterances (without necessarily producinganomalous utterances themselves; see Costa, Pickering, &Sorace, 2008).

We now briefly consider some alternative explanationsfor our findings. There is some evidence that structuralpriming may be sensitive to repetition of conceptual repre-sentations, thematic roles, or information structure (e.g.,Bernolet et al., 2009; Bock et al., 1992; Chang, Bock, &Goldberg, 2003; Griffin & Weinstein-Tull, 2003). Thesesources of information might have contributed to thepriming effects we observed in our experiments, althoughwe cannot specify the extent of this contribution. In this re-spect, our results suggest that the locus of priming is a lex-ically-independent, and not lexically-dependent, structuralrepresentation. It is, however, possible that such arepresentation includes e.g. order of thematic roles(Actor–Action–Beneficiary–Theme vs. Actor–Action–

Theme–Beneficiary). In any case, we wish to stress theample evidence that structural priming cannot be ex-plained solely by repetition of conceptual, thematic, orinformation structure representations (Bock & Loebell,1990; Bock et al., 1992; Carminati, Van Gompel, Scheepers,& Arai, 2008; Hartsuiker & Westenberg, 2000; Pickeringet al., 2002; Salamoura & Williams, 2006; Scheepers,2003; see Pickering & Ferreira, 2008). We thus contendthat, although not all of the structural priming effect needhave a syntactic locus, there is necessarily a syntactic com-ponent to it, and, therefore, that our results are informativeabout the syntactic representations constructed for anom-alous sentences.

Another possibility is that anomalous sentences wereprocessed differently from well-formed sentences in ourexperiments, and produced the same priming effect for dif-ferent reasons. For example, comprehenders might nothave constructed syntactic representations for anomaloussentences and priming for these sentences might reflect arepetition of thematic role order instead. Such a possibilityis, however, unlikely because the well-formed sentencesought to have led to both syntactic- and thematic-orderpriming, yielding a stronger priming effect than anomaloussentences (contra our findings). For the same reason, itseems unlikely that the priming effect for the anomaloussentences reflects only word order repetition, while the ef-fect for well-formed sentences reflects both constituentstructure and word order repetition (see also the next par-agraph). In other words, the fact that priming for anoma-lous and well-formed sentences was equivalent renders itunlikely that priming came from fundamentally differentsources for these two types of sentence.

A separate question is whether the priming effects weobserved across all conditions reflect repetition of word or-der rather than of constituent structure. In particular, someresearchers have proposed that sentence formulation in-volves a separate stage concerned with linearization (Har-tsuiker, Kolk, & Huiskamp, 1999; Hartsuiker & Westenberg,2000; see also De Smedt, 1990; Kempen & Hoenkamp,1987), and it is possible that our experiments tapped onlyinto this level, leaving open the possibility that a constitu-ent structure representation is not constructed at all foranomalous sentences. However, note that the linearizationproposal has difficulty explaining the lack of evidence forpriming across versions of a construction involving differ-ent word orders (Pickering et al., 2002; Salamoura & Wil-liams, 2006). Furthermore, given evidence that structuralpriming taps into constituent structure representations(e.g., Bock & Loebell, 1990; Scheepers, 2003), there seemsto be no reason to assume that the well-formed prime sen-tences in our experiments (producing equivalent primingto the anomalous primes) primed only word orderrepetition.

Our findings can also be reconciled with evidence thatpresentation of single verb primes can induce a small syn-tactic priming effect (Melinger & Dobel, 2005). Our claim isthat the syntactic representations built for anomaloussentences are based on syntactic rules that are accessedindependently of lexical items, and that such representa-tions are sufficient for syntactic processing if lexical infor-mation is missing, and override lexical information if this

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information is incongruent. But we assume that lexicalinformation is always accessed in processing (or at least at-tempts are made to do so), and the processor relies on thisinformation when there is no sentence context. In fact,there is ample evidence that lexical information is activelyused in the process of constructing syntactic representa-tions (e.g., Mitchell & Holmes, 1985; Trueswell & Kim,1998; Trueswell, Tanenhaus, & Kello, 1993). Indeed, com-prehenders experience processing difficulty with sen-tences in which the verb is incompatible with thenumber of arguments in its context, for instance when anoun phrase immediately follows an intransitive verb(Mitchell, 1987; Van Gompel & Pickering, 2001).

Another potential concern is that, when participantsencountered the novel or incongruent verbs in our primesentences, they might simply have substituted them withspecific known and congruent verbs. That is, they mightinitially have used semantic (e.g., plausibility) informationfrom the sentence constituents and reached the conclusionthat, when brunk or exist were used, give was actually in-tended. Having carried out such a substitution, syntacticprocessing could proceed as normal following the semanticaccount, since give is an established lexical entry and itssubcategorization is compatible with the remaining sen-tence constituents. There are two reasons, however, to re-ject such a possibility. First, while it might hold for theprocessing of sentences with novel verbs, it is less likelyfor sentences with incongruent verbs, as those verbs haveestablished lexical representations. In other words, whilecomprehenders may have readily assumed that brunkmeant give, as brunk is devoid of any meaning, it wouldhave been more difficult for them to assume, on the fly,that exist meant give. Second and more important, thereseems to be little justification for participants’ substitutionof novel or incongruent verbs with a specific verb (e.g.,give). That is, participants might have arrived at a generalmeaning of transfer for the novel or incongruent verbs,but they did not have any way of knowing the specificitiesof the action denoted by these verbs. Importantly, a gen-eral transfer meaning would not have allowed participantsto access syntactic rules via a specific lexical representa-tion as the semantic account would require.

In sum, our results suggest that the syntactic represen-tations of anomalous sentences in which the anomaly isassociated with the verb are similar in nature to those con-structed for well-formed sentences. In our experiments, wehave shown cases of syntactic representation buildingwithout possible aid from verbs’ lexical entries, other thancategorical information. Thus, it seems that lexically-independent syntactic frames are sufficiently robust inprocessing to be able to produce fully well-formedsyntactic representations without any aid from verbsubcategorizations.

7.1. Implications for models of structural priming

Our study also bears on extant models of structuralpriming, in particular the residual activation model ofPickering and Branigan (1998) and the connectionist,implicit-learning model of Chang, Dell, and Bock (2006).According to the original formulation of the residual

activation model, structural priming comes about as a re-sult of the residual activation of combinatorial nodes. Togive an example, lemmas of verbs denoting ditransitiveevents (e.g., GIVE or THROW) are linked to two structuralnodes, representing the argument structures they allow:one consisting of two noun phrases (NP,NP) and anotherconsisting of a noun phrase and a prepositional phrase(NP,PP). Thus, when a speaker is exposed to a PO sentence(e.g., The nun throws the ball to the boxer), the verb lemmaTHROW is activated, and activation spreads to the NP,PPcombinatorial node. When subsequently this speakerwishes to express another ditransitive event (a waitressgiving a gun to a monk), the NP,PP structural node has ahigher probability of selection because of its prioractivation.

According to the implicit-learning model, lexical-semantic representations are separated from form repre-sentations and, in this way, message-level representationsare mapped directly onto lexically-independent structuralrepresentations (e.g., a message involving a transfer eventis mapped onto a PO and a DO structure). When speakersprocess a given message with a given structure, the pro-cesses mapping the message to the structure are strength-ened and the linguistic system becomes more prone toexpressing similar messages with the same structure,resulting in structural priming.

Overall, our findings appear more consistent with thelatter of these models and less consistent with the former.This is because the construction of syntactic representa-tions in Chang et al.’s (2006) model occurs independentlyof lexical entries (as we show to occur in our experiments),whereas structural nodes in Pickering and Branigan’s(1998) model are accessed only via lexical representations(missing in our anomalous sentences). However, our re-sults would be compatible with a version of the residualactivation model in which structural nodes can be acti-vated directly from a sentence, without mediation from alexical entry.

Note, however, that another aspect of our data is lesscompatible with the implicit learning model. Namely, wefound a lexical boost in all of our experiments, which isnot straightforwardly explained in that model, since, in it,lexical-semantic representations are separated from formrepresentations. The lexical boost must be accommodatedin the implicit learning model by the additional assump-tion of an explicit memory trace of the prime sentence’sstructure that also contributes to the priming effect, withthe effect being larger when the verb is repeated sincethe verb acts as a cue facilitating the retrieval of the sen-tence structure. Conversely, the residual activation modelprovides a straightforward account of the lexical boost.This is because, when the verb is repeated between primeand target, not only the structural node itself has prior acti-vation but also the link between the verb lemma and thestructural node, resulting in an even higher probability ofselection of that node. Furthermore, the model presup-poses that structural information is represented with re-spect to a featurally unspecified form of the verb. Thismeans that morphologically correct (gave) and incorrect(gived) forms of the verb can be associated with the samelemma node (GIVE), and it is this node which is linked to

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the structural node (NP,PP). Hence, morphologicallycorrect and incorrect forms lead to the same lexical boost,exactly as we found in our Experiment 1. The same holdstrue of the alternative version of the residual activationmodel in which structural nodes can be activated directlyfrom a sentence; in this case, temporal co-activation ofthe lemma and combinatorial node would yield activationof the link between them (resulting in the lexical boost).

In sum, both the residual activation model of Pickeringand Branigan (1998) and the implicit-learning model ofChang et al. (2006) capture different aspects of our data,suggesting the need for a multi-factorial account of struc-tural priming, combining features from the two models.In fact, such a conclusion was reached in a recent studyby Hartsuiker et al. (2008; but note that their proposalwas in fact based on the implicit-learning model).

7.2. Conclusion

Our study provides an explanation of why people areable to understand many ungrammatical utterances(while having good knowledge of which utterances aregrammatical). We have shown that they do that on thebasis of lexically-independent syntactic information. Spe-cifically, our experiments demonstrated that three typesof anomalous dative sentence caused equivalent structuralpriming to well-formed dative sentences. These findingssuggest that the syntactic representations constructedfor anomalous sentences with a verb-related anomaly incomprehension are similar in nature to the ones con-structed for well-formed sentences, and that lexically-independent syntactic information is robust enough inprocessing to produce well-formed syntactic representa-tions without any possible aid from lexically-based syn-tactic information.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by two Grants from theSpanish Government (PSI 2008-01191/PSIC and ConsoliderIngenio 2010, CE-CSD2007-00121), a grant from theCatalan Government (SGR 2009-1521) and ESRC GrantRES-062-23-0376. Iva Ivanova was supported by a pre-doctoral scholarship (FPU: AP2005-4496) from the SpanishGovernment. We would like to thank Masaya Yoshida forhelpful discussions on portions of this manuscript.

Appendix A

A1. Experimental items

The prime sentences in the PO condition are before theslash and in the DO condition, after the slash. The primeverbs in all three experiments are given in brackets inthe following order: Experiment 1, Same Verb/ Experiment1, Different Verb/ Experiment 1, Wrong Morph/Same Verb/Experiments 2 and 3, Same Verb/ Experiments 2 and 3, Dif-ferent Verb/ Experiment 2, Novel Verb/ Experiment 3,Intransitive Verb. The target picture is described in the or-der agent, verb, beneficiary, theme (e.g., NUN GIVE DOC-

TOR CAKE is designed to elicit the descriptions the nungives the cake to the doctor and the nun gives the doctorthe cake).

1. the prisoner (flung/ loaned/ flinged/ flings/ loans/quans/ peeks) the cake to the burglar/ the burglarthe cake/ TEACHER FLING SAILOR BOOK

2. the chef (flung/ loaned/ flinged/ flings/ loans/ quans/peeks) the cup to the soldier/ the soldier the cup/DANCER FLING BOXER BALL

3. the waitress (flung/ loaned/ flinged/ flings/ loans/quans/ peeks) the gun to the dancer/ the dancerthe gun/ POLICEMAN FLING MONK HAT

4. the monk (flung/ loaned/ flinged/ flings/ loans/quans/ peeks) the ball to the cowboy/ the cowboythe ball/ ARTIST FLING WAITRESS CAKE

5. the policeman (flung/ loaned/ flinged/ flings/ loans/quans/ peeks) the apple to the sailor/ the sailor theapple/ PRISONER FLING DOCTOR JUG

6. the pirate (flung/ loaned/ flinged/ flings/ loans/quans/ peeks) the hat to the clown/ the clown thehat/ NUN FLING BURGLAR BANANA

7. the artist (gave/ chucked/ gived/ gives/ chucks/ bru-nks/ remains) the cake to the swimmer/ the swim-mer the cake/ DANCER GIVES SOLDIER APPLE

8. the teacher (gave/ chucked/ gived/ gives/ chucks/brunks/ remains) the ball to the nun/ the nun theball/ MONK GIVE BURGLAR BOOK

9. the pirate (gave/ chucked/ gived/ gives/ chucks/ bru-nks/ remains) the cup to the boxer/ the boxer thecup/ TEACHER GIVE CLOWN GUN

10. the waitress (gave/ chucked/ gived/ gives/ chucks/brunks/ remains) the book to the monk/ the monkthe book/ PRISONER GIVE SWIMMER BALL

11. the chef (gave/ chucked/ gived/ gives/ chucks/ bru-nks/ remains) the jug to the burglar/ the burglarthe jug/ COWBOY GIVE NUN CAKE

12. the policeman (gave/ chucked/ gived/ gives/ chucks/brunks/ remains) the banana to the dancer/ the dan-cer the banana/ ARTIST GIVE DOCTOR HAT

13. the burglar (lent/ tossed/ lended/ lends/ tosses/ vis-ses/ exists) the apple to the waitress/ the waitressthe apple/ NUN LEND DOCTOR BANANA

14. the nun (lent/ tossed/ lended/ lends/ tosses/ visses/exists) the gun to the pirate/ the pirate the gun/BURGLAR LEND BOXER HAT

15. the teacher (lent/ tossed/ lended/ lends/ tosses/ vis-ses/ exists) the banana to the swimmer/ the swim-mer the banana/ DANCER LEND PIRATE BOOK

16. the prisoner (lent/ tossed/ lended/ lends/ tosses/ vis-ses/ exists) the cake to the clown/ the clown thecake/ POLICEMAN LEND WAITRESS GUN

17. the artist (lent/ tossed/ lended/ lends/ tosses/ visses/exists) the jug to the cowboy/ the cowboy the jug/BURGLAR LEND SAILOR CUP

18. the monk (lent/ tossed/ lended/ lends/ tosses/ visses/exists) the hat to the soldier/ the soldier the hat/CHEF LEND NUN APPLE

19. the dancer (sold/ mailed/ selled/ sells/ mails/ taums/dwells) the cup to the monk/ the monk the cup/COWBOY SELL WAITRESS JUG

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20. the cowboy (sold/ mailed/ selled/ sells/ mails/taums/ dwells) the gun to the sailor/ the sailor thegun/ ARTIST SELL CLOWN BALL

21. the prisoner (sold/ mailed/ selled/ sells/ mails/taums/ dwells) the apple to the boxer/ the boxerthe apple/ BURGLAR SELL SOLDIER CAKE

22. the policeman (sold/ mailed/ selled/ sells/ mails/taums/ dwells) the book to the doctor/ the doctorthe book/ MONK SELL PIRATE APPLE

23. the artist (sold/ mailed/ selled/ sells/ mails/ taums/dwells) the hat to the nun/ the nun the hat/ CHEFSELL COWBOY BANANA

24. the waitress (sold/ mailed/ selled/ sells/ mails/taums/ dwells) the jug to the swimmer/ the swim-mer the jug/ TEACHER SELL DANCER CUP

25. the monk (sent/ handed/ sended/ sends/ hands/ ral-ps/ stays) the book to the boxer/ the boxer the book/PIRATE SEND COWBOY CAKE

26. the nun (sent/ handed/ sended/ sends/ hands/ ralps/stays) the jug to the dancer/ the dancer the jug/WAITRESS SEND CLOWN CUP

27. the pirate (sent/ handed/ sended/ sends/ hands/ ral-ps/ stays) the cup to the doctor/ the doctor the cup/CHEF SEND MONK GUN

28. the chef (sent/ handed/ sended/ sends/ hands/ ralps/stays) the ball to the pirate/ the pirate the ball/POLICEMAN SEND SWIMMER HAT

29. the cowboy (sent/ handed/ sended/ sends/ hands/ralps/ stays) the gun to the burglar/ the burglar thegun/ TEACHER SEND DOCTOR APPLE

30. the artist (sent/ handed/ sended/ sends/ hands/ ral-ps/ stays) the banana to the soldier/ the soldier thebanana/ PRISONER SEND SAILOR JUG

31. the chef (threw/ rented/ throwed/ throws/ rents/guths/ dozes) the banana to the clown/ the clownthe banana/ POLICEMAN THROW NUN CUP

32. the nun (threw/ rented/ throwed/ throws/ rents/guths/ dozes) the ball to the sailor/ the sailor theball/ WAITRESS THROW PIRATE BANANA

33. the policeman (threw/ rented/ throwed/ throws/rents/ guths/ dozes) the book to the soldier/ the sol-dier the book/ PRISONER THROW DANCER BALL

34. the burglar (threw/ rented/ throwed/ throws/ rents/guths/ dozes) the apple to the swimmer/ the swim-mer the apple/ COWBOY THROW CLOWN BOOK

35. the teacher (threw/ rented/ throwed/ throws/ rents/guths/ dozes) the hat to the waitress/ the waitressthe hat/ CHEF THROW BOXER GUN

36. the dancer (threw/ rented/ throwed/ throws/ rents/guths/ dozes) the cake to the doctor/ the doctorthe cake/ PIRATE THROW SOLDIER JUG

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