[Lingtyp] lit review: prosodic phonology and morphosyntactic structure

Sun Jun 21 19:52:27 UTC 2020

We just had an Abralin round table on prosody and corpora. My contribution
compared prosodic and syntactic constituent structure.

Marianne Mithun

[image: image.png]

On Sun, Jun 21, 2020 at 12:39 PM TALLMAN Adam <Adam.TALLMAN at cnrs.fr> wrote:

> 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>
> 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)
>>
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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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