Syntactic priming in German-English bilinguals during sentence comprehension: RT and fMRI studies

During reading we have to process the syntactic structure of the sentences in front of us. Thus, if we process sentences in two different languages, for example German and English, do we access and use the same syntactic information for both languages if the structures are similar? In this study we show that on the neural level sentences in the first and in the second language (L1 and L2) are processed in the same neural areas in left inferior frontal and left temporal regions indicating a shared sentence processing system. Moreover, we use a syntactic priming paradigm in comprehension to establish interaction between the L1 and L2. We find behavioural evidence of syntactic priming in comprehension within the L2 as well as a possible wordorder effect from L2 into L1. At the neural level we are not able to demonstrate syntactic priming. Possible implications of this negative finding are discussed.