Syntactic Priming of Passives in Late Bilinguals. Evidence from Italian L1-Spanish L2 Speakers

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-directioninteraction was not statistically significant. These findings support the ‘separate-toshared syntax’ hypothesis, according to which highly proficient bilinguals progressively integrate syntactic representations across languages.