The priming of word order in second language German

The present study investigates the priming and subsequent production of word order variation (adverb-verb-subject vs. subject-verb-adverb order) with temporal phrases (Experiment 1) and locative phrases (Experiment 2) among intermediate English-German second language learners. Participants exhibited comparable short-term priming for adverb-first word order in both experiments. In the initial baseline phase, participants produced adverb-first sentences with temporal phrases but not locative phrases, and only temporal phrases led to significant long-term priming, as measured in a postpriming phase. This suggests that at lower proficiency levels, long-term, but not short-term, priming may depend on the stability of specific semantically constrained constructions rather than more generalized syntactic representations and that such cumulative effects may be shaped by preferences for a particular construction in the native language.