Priming dissimilar L2 structures in the presence of similar L1–L2 structures: Examining effects of L2 proficiency

Abstract We investigated priming of Dutch prepositional phrase (PP)‐final and ‐medial passives in a within‐Dutch structural priming experiment in French–Dutch bilinguals. Unlike Dutch, French allows only the PP‐final passive. We asked whether L2 learners can be primed to produce structures that are dissimilar to their L1 (i.e., PP‐medial passive) and whether this depends on L2 proficiency. We observed an unexpected production preference for the PP‐medial passive, which we traced to explicit classroom instruction form preferences. This instructional history, interacting with learners' age of L2 acquisition and evolving implicit expectations about the two passive variants, shaped both production biases and priming effects: Lower proficiency learners mostly produced PP‐medial passives and showed strong PP‐final priming, whereas higher proficiency learners produced both forms, creating room for PP‐medial priming. We conclude that proficiency effects in L2 structural priming likely reflect the interplay between acquisition history, instruction, and implicit expectation adaptation rather than proficiency alone.