[Lingtyp] lit review: prosodic phonology and morphosyntactic structure

[Natalie Weber]

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
*v*P 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>
Date: Wed, Jun 3, 2020, 6:07 AM
Subject: [Lingtyp] lit review: prosodic phonology and morphosyntactic
structure
To: <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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