Cross-linguistic priming in comprehension facilitates change in adjective-noun order

Fri, 14 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Cross-linguistic priming has recently been shown to play a role in language change in production, but there are no studies to date demonstrating its possible role in comprehension. In the present study, we test whether a facilitating effect of cross- linguistic priming also occurs in comprehension. We focus on the order of adjectives and nouns by comparing two groups of Vlax Romani speakers (Indic branch of the Indo-European language family), Gurbet and Kalderash, who have been in century-long contact with two different languages exhibiting different adjective-noun orders: Serbian (Slavic branch), with a dominant ADJ-N order, and Romanian (Romance branch), with a dominant N-ADJ order. Prior research has shown that Gurbet speakers from Serbia, in contact with Serbian, use ADJ-N order as the default whereas Kalderash speakers from Romania, in contact with Romanian, use a N-ADJ order. We administered an eye-movement monitoring and a behavioural judgment experiment to 30 Gurbet Romani-Serbian and 25 Kalderash Romani-Romanian early bilinguals. Participants listened to 72 prime-target pairs of adjectival phrases in two possible orders (e.g., ‘hen green’, ‘green hen’), with the prime in their simultaneously early-acquired language (Serbian or Romanian) and the target in their primary L1 Romani variety. Results show that the dominant N-ADJ order in Romanian led to significant cross-linguistic priming effects in the Kalderash-Romanian group. In comparison, Gurbet participants showed a small, temporary priming effect when prime-target pairs matched the unmarked ADJ-N order. We conclude that cross-linguistic priming effects facilitate comprehension for the dominant/unmarked word orders. We propose that a combination of cross-linguistic priming effects in both production and comprehension shapes the structural convergence that takes place between two languages in contact.

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Cross-linguistic priming in comprehension facilitates change in adjective-noun order