Phonological Phrases: Their Relation to Syntax, Focus, and Prominence
H. Truckenbrodt, 1995
This thesis investigates what forces relate phonological phrases to the syntactic representation, to focus, and to the representation of prominence.
The proposal that is defended is that there is a triangle of syntactic constituency, prosodic constituency, and phrasal prominence, in which the grammar places a simple demand on each pair in the triangle:
(a) Syntactic phrases must be contained in phonological phrases.
(b) Phonological phrases must have edgemost phrasal prominence.
(c) Syntactic phrases must contain phrasal prominence.
These demands are taken to interact with one another as ranked and violable constraints, where variation among languages is expressed in terms of constraint reranking.
Each relation is argued for separately.
The effects of (a) (previously analyzed as the role of government in phonological phrasing) will be investigated on patterns of phrasing in the three Bantu languages Chi Mwi:ni, Chichewa, and Kimatuumbi.
The effects of (b), it is argued, can be seen most clearly in the effects of focus on phrasing, where Chichewa and Japanese will be discussed as examples.
The effects of (c), finally, which have been discussed in different contexts as either a directionality parameter or the role of depth of embedding in the assignment of stress, will be argued to have desirable typological consequences that set (c) apart from some of its competitors.
Jointly the constraints will be seen to derive an end-based typology of the kind familiar from work by Lisa Selkirk.
Thesis Supervisors: Noam Chomsky, David Pesetsky
Titles: Institute Professor, Professor of Linguistics
Table of Contents
1 Overview of the Thesis 9
1 Overall structure 9
2 Chapter 3 9
3 Chapter 4 10
4 Chapter 5 10
5 Chapter 6 11
2 Theoretical Background 13
1 The prosodic representation 13
1.1 Phonological rules and syntax: an example 13
1.2 Direct access vs. phonological structure 16
1.3 The prosodic hierarchy 19
1.4 The hierarchical organization of prosodic constituents 23
1.5 Constraints on domination 25
1.6 The theory of metrical structure; prominence 25
2 Optimality Theory 29
3 Two theories of the phonological phrase 35
3.1 Selkirk’s end-based theory and Chi Mwi:ni 36
3.1.1 Vowel length, prominence, and phonological
phrases 36
3.1.2 Phrasing in Chi Mwi:ni 39
3.2 Nespor and Vogel relation-based theory and Italian 42
3.2.1 Phrasing in Italian 42
3.2.2 Ghini (1993) 46
3.2.3 Adnominal adjectives 48
3.2.4 An argument in favour of Unif/AW 54
3 On the Role of Government and Containment in the Syntax-Phonology
Mapping 57
1 Government and alignment in Tohono ‘O’odham 57
1.1 Background 57
1.2 Where lexical government makes a difference 61
1.3 Lexical vs. functional projections 64
1.4 Left-right asymmetries in Tohono ‘O’odham, and the
category-segment distinction 66
2 Three Bantu languages 70
2.1 Chichewa 72
2.1.1 The phonological rules sensitive to Æs in Chichewa 73
2.1.2 Phrasing in Chichewa 75
2.1.3 Analysis in terms of constraint-ranking 78
2.2 Recursion in Kimatuumbi 80
2.2.1 The domain of shortening 80
2.2.2 The domain of Phrasal Tone Insertion 84
2.2.3 An account in terms of recursion 88
2.3 The effects of focus on phrasing in Chichewa 94
2.4 Nonrecursivity in Chichewa 98
2.5 The typology of recursion 102
2.6 Summary: wrap-XP vs. government 103
3 Appendix 104
3.1 Alignment 104
3.2 Categories, segments, and domination 106
3.3 Align-XP and adjunction 108
3.4 Wrap-XP and adjunction 110
4 The Domain of Focus 113
1 The forces in the phonology of focus 113
2 The domain of a focus 117
3 The phonology of the scope 120
4 Maximizing the background 123
4.1 Minimal focus 123
4.2 Maximal domain 126
5 Focus, Prominence, and Phrasing 131
1 The idea 131
1.1 Introduction 131
1.2 Boundary-insertion by focus: the basic idea 134
1.3 Deletion by focus: the basic idea 135
1.4 Insertion by focus: deriving a typology 139
1.5 Deletion by focus: deriving a typology 143
1.6 What may not occur on this approach 147
2 Chichewa 148
3 Japanese 152
3.1 The intonational pattern 152
3.2 Focus and phrasing in Japanese 155
3.2.1 Left edges of Æ preceding a focus 155
3.2.2 Deletion of Æs after the last focus 157
3.3 Analysis 159
3.3.1 Focus and the left intermediate phrase boundary 160
3.3.2 Focus and the deletion of following intermediate
phrases 161
6 Prominence and Syntax 165
1 Two problems 165
2 Stress-XP 168
2.1 Stress-XP; formulation and placae in the mapping 168
2.2 The basic configuration 170
2.3 Edge-effects on a single XP 170
2.4 Solving the first problem 172
2.5 XP inside of XP 173
2.6 XP outside of XP 176
2.7 The ranking of Wrap-XP and Stress-XP: More than one
XP inside of XP 177
2.8 Focus and phrasing in Chichewa under the reformulation 181
3 Stress-XP and the second problem 184
7 Conclusion 187