Lexical Effects in Syntactic Priming Alissa Melinger Syntactic priming studies demonstrate that prior exposure to a particular syntactic structure leads speakers to reproduce the same structure in subsequent utterances. Explanations for this phenomenon rely on either the retrieval of subcategorization frames associated with the verb in the prime sentence or the preservation of the syntactic configuration of the prime sentence. In this talk, I first provide an overview of the evidence for a mediating role of lexical elements, discussing, for example, the fact that prime sentences that share the verb with the target sentence produce larger priming effects than prime sentences that do not. I will then turn to new evidence that syntactic priming effects can be driven by lexical information in the absence of explicit structure in the prime. Specifically, I present evidence from a series of studies demonstrating that prior exposure to a single verb associated to a restricted set of subcategorization frames influences speakers' subsequent picture description preferences. The single verb method runs as follows: speakers are presented with drawings that can be described with one of two relevant structures, for example either a Double Object (e.g., "The boy gives the woman some flowers") or a Prepositional Dative structure ("The boy gives some flowers to the woman"). Before each drawing was presented, speakers read verbs that are incompatible with one of these structures. For example, a verb like "transfer" cannot be used in a Double Object sentence and a verb like "refuse" cannot be used in a Prepositional Dative sentence. If syntactic priming effects can be driven by the pre-activation of lexically associated subcategorization features, then speakers' descriptions should be influenced by the selectional restrictions of the verb primes. Three studies will be reported which support this prediction. A single verb prime is sufficient to influence the likelihood that speakers produce a particular sentence frame. For example, more Double Object sentences were produced following Double Object-only verb primes than following Prepositional Dative-only verb primes. A similar pattern was observed for the active/passive alternation. Unaccusative intransitive verbs like 'grow', which subcategorize for an internal argument, biased speakers to describe pictures using passive sentences more than unergative intransitive verbs, which subcategorize for an external argument. In sum, this talk presents evidence for a lexical locus of syntactic priming effects rather than a structural locus. Prior studies have established that lexical similarity between prime and target sentences can modulate the magnitude of the syntactic priming effect. The current studies demonstrate that the activation of lexically associated subcategorization frames is sufficient to drive syntactic priming effects, even in the absence of explicit syntactic structure.