[Lingtyp] lit review: prosodic phonology and morphosyntactic structure

Sun Jun 21 19:39:06 UTC 2020

Thanks Natalie - works like your diss are what I was looking for. I was just fishing for sources not trying to imply that I had some hidden standard of what the morphosyntactic evidence should be. Generally (perhaps your thesis is a special exception), works in prosodic phonology provide no evidence for their syntactic parses - and that's true of all the sources you cited apart from your dissertation. Perhaps with Nespor and Vogel its not so bad because everyone agreed [!?] what the correct formal syntactic analysis of Italian, Greek etc. should be at the time of writing. For Selkirk's analysis of Xitsonga, I'm less sure - syntactic parses of sentences are given, but it would have been nice to have some account of how clause boundaries, words etc. are defined or identified (a few years ago there was a long unresolved discussion on lingtyp about how to define a word / X0).

Any source that defines something like an X0 (a la Bruening for example) would have been what I was looking for (but more precise definitions would obviously be preferable).

best,

Adam

best,

Adam

Adam James Ross Tallman (PhD, UT Austin)
ELDP-SOAS -- Postdoctorant
CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596)
Bureau 207, 14 av. Berthelot, Lyon (07)
Numero celular en bolivia: +59163116867
________________________________
De : Lingtyp [lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org] de la part de Larry M. HYMAN [hyman at berkeley.edu]
Envoyé : samedi 20 juin 2020 17:48
À : Natalie Weber
Cc : LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Objet : Re: [Lingtyp] lit review: prosodic phonology and morphosyntactic structure

Thanks for your comments on prosodic phonology and syntax (and for the link to your Blackfoot!). I wonder if you see one of your first two parts as prior to the other, either logically, temporally, or practically?

  *   1. Independent phonological evidence for prosodic constituents
  *   2. Independent syntactic evidence for syntactic constituents

The reason I ask is that I find that the interface is best studied by language specialists who let the phonological facts of the language drive the "interface", rather than starting with preconceived notions of abstract syntax (which can/should come in later, once you have a handle on the complexities). Having worked extensively on the syntax-phonology interface in a number of Bantu languages, I can tell you that none of them have prosodic facts that provide a perfect correlation to pre-existing views of abstract syntax. In current work I am doing on Runyankore and related Rutara Bantu languages, there are distinct differences between the prosodic effects on the head noun vs. on the verb, despite X-bar theory, which appear to follow their own "logic". Digging into the details to discover the wide range of surprising facts that speakers/languages exploit has been very rewarding, if not producing quite a bit of humility. I find myself in agreement with some wise remarks made by Akinlabi & Liberman (2000) several years ago:

"Whether formal modeling is treated simply as programming for some practical purpose, or as a method of investigating the properties of the cognitive systems involved, it can and should be separated in most cases from the problem of determining the facts and the descriptive generalizations." (p.60)

"The documentation of... descriptive generalizations is sometimes clearer and more accessible when expressed in terms of a detailed formal reconstruction, but only in the rare and happy case that the formalism fits the data so well that the resulting account is clearer and easier to understand than the list of categories of facts that it encodes...." (p.54)

While I cannot argue against the wisdom of phonologists and syntacticians working together, which is happening, and linguists knowing both phonology and syntax, the main problem in the syntax-phonology interface area is that there are still so few exhaustive studies of "the facts". Linguists on both "persuasions" have been too content to stop short.

Akinlabi, Akinbiyi & Mark Liberman. 2000. The tonal phonology of Yoruba clitics. In B. Gerlach & J. Grizjenhout (eds), Clitics in phonology, morphology, and syntax, 31-62. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

PS If anyone is interested I have a recent paper that I could send that will give a hint of the complexities and non-isomorphisms I refer to above: "Prosodic asymmetries in nominal vs. verbal phrases in Bantu".

On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 8:09 AM Natalie Weber <natalie.a.weber at gmail.com<mailto:natalie.a.weber at gmail.com>> wrote:
I agree. This is a failing of a lot of prosodic phonology literature, although perhaps for good reason. Ideally, a study of the correspondence between prosodic and syntactic structure would have three parts:

  1.  Independent phonological evidence for prosodic constituents
  2.  Independent syntactic evidence for syntactic constituents
  3.  Explicit characterization of the mapping between the two

But in practice you will often only see 2 out 3 of those, because it's uncommon for phonologists to be well-versed in syntax enough to study the syntax side of things, and vice versa. Personally, I'm hoping to encourage more cross-subfield collaborations.

My dissertation discusses correspondences between syntactic, prosodic, and metrical constituents in Blackfoot (Algonquian), and I address each of the three points above. I discuss independent syntactic evidence for the CP and vP constituents, independent phonological evidence for the PPh and PWd constituents, and then discuss some of the implications for mapping between them. It was a huge undertaking (hence why I think we need co-authored studies), but it's also one of the only studies of prosodic phonology I know of that attempts to address all three points. You can download it at http://hdl.handle.net/2429/74075 if you are interested.

Regarding some of the recent and seminal papers in prosodic phonology:

The mentions of syntactic 'words' (X0) and 'phrases' (XP) have increased since Selkirk's (2011) "The syntax-phonology interface" paper on Match Theory. In her earlier work, she was more explicit about relating the syntactic definitions to X-bar theory. In my interpretation, that means that X0 is a minimal phrase (not a syntactic "word", which is not a primitive type). In theory, then, these papers could use typical tests for phrasal constituency, such as movement, uninterruptibility, etc. Like you, I've found that they don't, but it's good to remember that it should in principle be possible to show this.

There is also work like Nespor and Vogel (1986/2007) which has explicit mapping algorithms that rely on morphological units like the "stem", or "affix". Much of the time, these constituents are also not defined with a universal morphosyntactic definition, but at least they are usually well-supported on language internal facts.

There's other recent work that does pretty decently though, depending on what you'll count as sufficient empirical evidence... maybe if you give us an idea of the sorts of papers you've already considered and rejected, we could fill in the gaps? (Basically, I started typing a lot more, but I wasn't sure if it was the kind of thing you are looking for.)

I'd be super happy to start a shared list of prosodic phonology literature (a reading group?), if you're interested! It would be pretty useful to tag papers for how well they address the syntax side of things via empirical generalizations.

Best,
--Natalie

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Adam James Ross Tallman <ajrtallman at utexas.edu<mailto:ajrtallman at utexas.edu>>
Date: Wed, Jun 3, 2020, 6:07 AM
Subject: [Lingtyp] lit review: prosodic phonology and morphosyntactic structure
To: <LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org>>

Hello all,

I've been doing a lit. review (again) in prosodic phonology. Advocates of
the prosodic hierarchy claim that prosodic levels map from specific
morphosyntactic constituents like 'words' or 'phrases' or X0 and XP etc.

However, I have been unable to find a single example of a paper that
relates its analysis to the prosodic hierarchy that actually provides
evidence for or defines the morphosyntactic categories that the prosodic
domains relate to in the language under study.

Of course, the fact that no evidence or definitions for X0 / XP and the
like are provided does not mean there is no evidence - but the "phonology
evidence only please" character of the literature makes it very difficult
to come up with global assessment of how the quest for mapping rules has
faired (the discussion in Scheer 2010 suggests it has been a total failure)
or to distill some sort of testable hypothesis from the literature. I'm
wondering if anyone has any examples at hand where such categories are
provided with explicit empirical definitions. Perhaps this is just an
oversight on my part.

best,

Adam

--
Adam J.R. Tallman
PhD, University of Texas at Austin
Investigador del Museo de Etnografía y Folklore, la Paz
ELDP -- Postdoctorante
CNRS -- Dynamique Du Langage (UMR 5596)

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--

Natalie Weber
(pronouns: they/them)

Assistant Professor
Department of Linguistics, Yale University
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--
Larry M. Hyman, Professor of Linguistics & Executive Director, France-Berkeley Fund
Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley
http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/people/person_detail.php?person=19
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