Syntax Prosody in Optimality Theory
Theory and Analyses
Edited by
Jennifer Bellik [+–]
University of California, Santa Cruz
Jennifer Bellik is a Laboratory Phonologist in the Department of Linguistics at theUniversity of California, Santa Cruz.
Junko Ito [+–]
University of California, Santa Cruz
Junko Ito is Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Nick Kalivoda [+–]
University of California, Santa Cruz
Nick Kalivoda is a Visiting Scholar at the Linguistics Research Center, University of California, Santa Cruz.
Armin Mester [+–]
University of California Santa Cruz
View Website
Armin Mester is Research Professor and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Optimality Theory has become the dominant approach to studying phonology, including analyses of the mapping from syntactic structure to prosodic structure. However, when both syntactic and prosodic structures are represented as trees, it is difficult, if not impossible, to systematically generate by hand all the possible candidates, i.e., all the possible prosodic parses that must be considered in an OT investigation for any given syntactic input. Consequently, most existing syntax-prosody analyses are in this way incomplete, compromising their very validity. This volume presents a series of studies of the syntax-prosody interface that are complete in this sense, thanks to their use of the SPOT application ( http://spot.sites.ucsc.edu ). This JavaScript application (developed by the editors) automates candidate generation and constraint evaluation, making a rigorous OT analysis of syntax-prosody possible. SPOT allows the user to test the typological predictions of the numerous proposed constraints on prosodic markedness and syntax-prosody mapping, so that researchers can make progress toward determining which formulations of the constraints should actually be part of the universal CON. A theme of the volume is comparing Match Theory (Selkirk 2011) with the older Align Theory of syntax-prosody mapping, with the finding that both are needed, at least in some languages.
Series: Advances in Optimality Theory
Table of Contents
Appendix
SPOT Tutorial [+–]
University of California, Santa Cruz
Jennifer Bellik is a Laboratory Phonologist in the Department of Linguistics at theUniversity of California, Santa Cruz.
University of California, Santa Cruz
Nick Kalivoda is a Visiting Scholar at the Linguistics Research Center, University of California, Santa Cruz.
This chapter contains a step-by-step guide to how to use SPOT to build violation tableaux, as well as information on how to further analyze these tableaux in OTWorkplace and other OT software.
Part 1: GEN Settings
1. Why SPOT? [+–]
University of California, Santa Cruz
Jennifer Bellik is a Laboratory Phonologist in the Department of Linguistics at theUniversity of California, Santa Cruz.
University of California, Santa Cruz
Nick Kalivoda is a Visiting Scholar at the Linguistics Research Center, University of California, Santa Cruz.
Optimality Theory requires the analyst to formally define the space of possible candidates, and to consider all the candidates in that space. However, it is impossible to do this by hand in the context of research in the syntax-prosody interface, due to the complexity of the inputs and outputs, which both take the form of trees. Consequently, we have developed the SPOT application, which automates this process, making it feasible to conduct rigorous OT analyses of issues on the syntax-prosody interface.
Independent Scholar
Max Tarlov is a recent graduate of UCSC with a major in Linguistics. During his time at UCSC, he was a research assistant for the SPOT project.
Much of Optimality-theoretic research is concerned with the interaction of constraints, but as the previous chapter lays out, OT analyses require a well defined GEN in addition to a well-defined CON and EVAL. This chapter shows how different definitions of GEN can interact with constraints in ways that are not immediately obvious. I will use different approaches to the analysis of Kinyambo and property analysis of the resulting typologies as a case study to this effect.
Part 2: Mapping Constraints
University of California, Santa Cruz
Jennifer Bellik is a Laboratory Phonologist in the Department of Linguistics at theUniversity of California, Santa Cruz.
University of California, Santa Cruz
Junko Ito is Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
University of California, Santa Cruz
Nick Kalivoda is a Visiting Scholar at the Linguistics Research Center, University of California, Santa Cruz.
University of California Santa Cruz
Armin Mester is Research Professor and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Irish phonological phrasing has been the subject of a number of analyses in recent years (Elfner 2012; Bennett, Elfner, McCloskey 2016, 2019). A ranking paradox noticed by Elfner 2012 remains unsolved in the context of parallel OT. We show that the problem can be solved by introducing a Match constraint sensitive only to non-minimal XPs.
University of California, Santa Cruz
Junko Ito is Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
University of California, Santa Cruz
Jennifer Bellik is a Laboratory Phonologist in the Department of Linguistics at theUniversity of California, Santa Cruz.
University of California, Santa Cruz
Nick Kalivoda is a Visiting Scholar at the Linguistics Research Center, University of California, Santa Cruz.
University of California Santa Cruz
Armin Mester is Research Professor and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Japanese phonological phrasing displays a remarkable asymmetry: four-word left-branching structures [[[a b] c] d] undergo prosodic rebracketing to ((a b) (c d)), while all other three- and four-word syntactic trees are perfectly matched, as in [a [b [c d]]] → (a (b (c d))) (Kubozono 1989). The syntax-prosody mapping constraints of Match Theory (MT; Selkirk 2011) are symmetric, and equally disfavor rebracketing of left and right-branching structures. Thus, within MT, the Japanese rebracketing asymmetry must be due to an asymmetric markedness constraint. But no existing markedness constraint makes the relevant distinction. We show that a hybrid theory combining Match and Align constraints is needed to account for these mappings, and that neither a pure Match or pure Align system can do so. In Japanese, both Match(XP,φ) and Align(XP,L,φ,L) are active.
PhD student, University of California, Santa Cruz
Richard Bibbs is a PhD student at UC Santa Cruz whose research interests lie primarily in phonetics, phonology, psycholinguistics and fieldwork. He focuses on the interface between phonetics and phonology, and the syntax-prosody interface.
Many languages allow clitic movement to certain positions, and in most cases this movement is syntactically driven. However, there are cases where this movement is prosodically motivated, most notably Chamorro (Chung 2003) and Irish (Bennett, Elfner, McCloskey 2016). Previous work has demonstrated that clitic movement may be driven by prosodic subcategorization (Chung 2003), or via constraints on prosodic well-formedness (Bennett, Elfner, McCloskey 2016). For Chamorro, I demonstrate that clitic movement does not require prosodic subcategorization, and instead can be motivated through the interaction of syntax-prosody mapping constraints and markedness constraints on prosodic well-formedness. It will be shown that only Align constraints on syntax-prosody can motivate clitic movement, with Match constraints being insufficient.
PhD student, University of California, Santa Cruz
Nicholas Van Handel is a PhD student at UC Santa Cruz whose research interests lie primarily in psycholinguistics and phonology, with a focus on the syntax-prosody interface.
An important question in Match Theory concerns which syntactic constituents are visible to Match constraints. On the basis of data from Italian, I argue that Match constraints must be defined so as to match all and only those syntactic XPs with a phonologically overt head. I demonstrate how this definition is necessary to derive the prosodic phrasing of ditransitive structures and subject + verb sequences. This definition of Match stands in contrast to Elfner’s (2012) implementation for Irish, in which all XPs are visible to Match, suggesting that visibility of syntactic XPs for Match is subject to cross-linguistic variation.
Part 3: Prosodic Well-formedness Constraints
University of California, Santa Cruz
Jennifer Bellik is a Laboratory Phonologist in the Department of Linguistics at theUniversity of California, Santa Cruz.
University of California, Santa Cruz
Nick Kalivoda is a Visiting Scholar at the Linguistics Research Center, University of California, Santa Cruz.
PhD student, University of California, Santa Cruz
Nicholas Van Handel is a PhD student at UC Santa Cruz whose research interests lie primarily in psycholinguistics and phonology, with a focus on the syntax-prosody interface.
Constraints on Binarity are commonly used to capture size effects: the tendency for longer strings to be parsed into more prosodic constituents. In some implementations, binarity is assessed locally by counting immediate children (= branch-counting); in others, binarity is assessed by globally by counting all descendants of some category (= leaf-counting). In this chapter, we explore the consequences for these two versions of binarity for the predicted typology and their relevance to the observed typology, and argue that locally-assessed branch-counting binarity is both necessary and superior to leaf-counting binarity. In cases where branch-counting binarity is inadequate, we show that prosodic markedness constraints can replace leaf-counting, to better effect. This is illustrated with a case study of rebracketing in Japanese.
University of California, Santa Cruz
Jennifer Bellik is a Laboratory Phonologist in the Department of Linguistics at theUniversity of California, Santa Cruz.
University of California, Santa Cruz
Nick Kalivoda is a Visiting Scholar at the Linguistics Research Center, University of California, Santa Cruz.
Analyses of syntax-prosody mapping hinge on the interaction of mapping constraints with prosodic well-formedness constraints. Even though every analysis relies on notions of purely phonological well-formedness, the constraints defining this well-formedness are not as clearly defined as the mapping constraints, in part because the space of possible prosodic mismatches has not been fully explored. Here we examine several different ways to define the prosodic well-formedness constraints EqualSisters (Myrberg 2010, 2013) and StrongStart (Elfner 2012, Bennett, Elfner, McCloskey 2016), and the consequences of these definitions for the predicted typology.
University of California, Santa Cruz
Jennifer Bellik is a Laboratory Phonologist in the Department of Linguistics at theUniversity of California, Santa Cruz.
University of California, Santa Cruz
Nick Kalivoda is a Visiting Scholar at the Linguistics Research Center, University of California, Santa Cruz.
This chapter explores the interactions of two of the interpretations of StrongStart and EqualSisters, with each other and with Match constraints, highlighting the role that the space of syntactic inputs plays in shaping the nature of these interactions. In particular, we examine the consequences of treating the X′ level of syntax as (in)visible to Match constraints.
