Abstract

The authors argue that Ambridge’s radical exemplar account of language cannot clearly explain all syntactic priming evidence, such as inverse preference effects, and the contrast between short-lived lexical boost and long-lived abstract priming. Moreover, without recourse to a level of abstract syntactic structure, Ambridge’s account cannot explain abstract priming in amnesia patients or cross-linguistic priming. Instead, the authors argue that abstract representations remain the more parsimonious account for the wide variety of syntactic priming phenomena.