Abstract
This paper addresses the syntactic and rhythmic conditions on prosodic restructuring in iGeneration Taiwanese. The iGeneration, who grew up with an iPhone, or a smartphone, in hand, is loosely referred to people born between 1995 and 2005. The speakers of iGeneration Taiwanese tend to parse them into short fragments, which correspond to smaller phonological phrases. The categorical distinction between lexical and functional projections plays a role in phonological phrasing. Rhythmic restrictions then serve to avoid an oversized phonological phrase. In this paper, I posit a series of alignment and rhythm constraints, and offer an analysis through constraint interaction.
Highlights
The syntactic influence on phonology has been widely observed
This paper presents a clear case of the competition between syntax and rhythm on prosodic restructuring, drawing on evidence from iGeneration Taiwanese
General Taiwanese displays a distinction between lexical projection and functional projection; the former but not the latter ends in a phonological phrase break
Summary
The syntactic influence on phonology has been widely observed. This paper presents a clear case of the competition between syntax and rhythm on prosodic restructuring, drawing on evidence from iGeneration Taiwanese. Speakers of iGeneration Taiwanese (iGT) seldom utter long expressions of this language; they tend to break a long string into short fragments and match them with smaller prosodic junctures. This tendency is reflected in the examples above. The constraints ALIGN-R(XPLEX, j) and ALIGN-R(XPFUN, j) requires every lexical projection and functional projection respectively to be right-aligned with a phonological phrase. The top-ranking of ALIGN-R(XPLEX, j), j-MAX ensures that every lexical projection is jmarked, and that every phonological phrase is limited within four syllables.
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