Syntactic Priming of Passives in Late Bilinguals
Evidence from Italian L1-Spanish L2 Speakers
Abstract
This study investigates the degree of integration of passive constructions in Italian L1-Spanish L2 late bilinguals using a syntactic priming paradigm. Patient animacy, L2 proficiency, and priming direction were considered. Results revealed a significant syntactic priming effect, stronger within language (Spanish-Spanish) than across languages (Italian-Spanish). Cross-linguistic priming showed a descriptively steeper increase at higher proficiency levels, although the proficiency-by-priming-direction interaction was not statistically significant. These findings support the ‘separate-to-shared syntax’ hypothesis, according to which highly proficient bilinguals progressively integrate syntactic representations across languages.
Presentato: 03 Agosto 2026 | Accettato: 07 Agosto 2026 | Pubblicato 12 Ottobre 2026 | Lingua: en
Keywords L2 proficiency • Passive constructions • Italian-Spanish bilinguals • Cross-linguistic priming • Late bilingualism • Syntactic priming
Copyright © 2026 Letizia Micheletti, Alice Suozzi, Gianluca Lebani. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.