CROSS-LINGUISTIC PRIMING EFFECTS DURING THE COMPREHENSION OF THE PASSIVE VOICE: TWO PRIMES ARE ENOUGH

The present study investigated cross-linguistic structural priming effects from L1 to L2 during the comprehension of the passive voice in a group of 35 Brazilian Portuguese-English (BP-EN) late bilinguals. A 4 x 2 experimental design was implemented that included a four levels withinsubjects Condition variable and a between-subjects Proficiency variable (Intermediate vs. Advanced). Results show that, regardless of proficiency, participants read target sentences faster in both experimental conditions when compared to the control conditions. Noticeably, cross-linguistic structural priming effects were observed even in the absence of translation equivalents. That is, both abstract and lexically mediated structural crosslinguistic effects were observed. These findings indicate that late bilinguals at intermediate and advanced levels of proficiency have a shared syntactic system between their L1 and L2.