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Abstract

Multiple syntactic alternatives are often available to express one message. One of the factors driving the
choice for a syntactic frame is verb bias. This study focuses on the role of verb bias in the process of selecting
a syntactic frame for dative sentences. While some verbs are typically used with one structure (e.g.,
voorleggen [submit] and the prepositional object dative in Dutch), other verbs have a weaker bias towards one
syntactic frame (e.g., voorstellen [propose]): the latter can be used interchangeably in the prepositional object
dative (PD) and double-object dative (DO) construction, and thus allows for some degree of syntactic flexibility
during production. On one view, syntactic flexibility may facilitate production because it enables speakers to fill
the post-verbal sentence slots with either a direct object or an indirect object (the incremental view), while on a
different view, flexibility can lead to competition between structural alternatives, delaying the production of the
sentence until this competition is resolved (the competition view)1. The two views make opposite predictions
regarding the production of sentences featuring verbs with different biases. The incremental view predicts
shorter verb onsets for sentences featuring weak-bias verbs than strong-bias verbs, while the competition view
predicts shorter onsets for sentences with strong-bias verbs. In addition, if the competition view holds,
sentence production may benefit from a mechanism that helps resolve competition between two syntactic
frames by suppressing one frame to enable fast selection of the other frame. We hypothesized that executive
control (EC) can mediate this selection process, facilitating structure selection in the weak verb bias condition.