[Lingtyp] lit review: prosodic phonology and morphosyntactic structure

Sat Jun 20 15:48:54 UTC 2020

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>
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
> *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)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
> <https://nam05.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flistserv.linguistlist.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Flingtyp&data=02%7C01%7Cnatalie.weber%40yale.edu%7Cad95ec9f35614e6c4a5d08d807cb7e93%7Cdd8cbebb21394df8b4114e3e87abeb5c%7C0%7C0%7C637267917881543687&sdata=Yj%2BWJHt178cyO0dOb0LQo57zmT5kLlis30mKLltMV%2Fs%3D&reserved=0>
>
> --
>
> Natalie Weber
> (pronouns: *they/them*)
>
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Linguistics, Yale University
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>

-- 
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
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20200620/a795f20c/attachment.htm>