Waiting in the wings: The place of phonology in the study of multilingual grammars

Reviewed by: Phonological domains: Universals and deviations Judith Meinschaefer Phonological domains: Universals and deviations. Ed. by Janet Grijzenhout and Bariş Kabak. (Interface explorations 16.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2009. Pp. viii, 356. ISBN 9783110205404. $137 (Hb). This book contains a selection of articles originally presented at a workshop on phonological domains held in 2007 as part of the annual meeting of the German Linguistic Association. Their shared topic is the theory of prosodic phonology. The focus of the articles is on the basic principles constraining prosodic structure, particularly various aspects of the strict layer hypothesis, as well as on the precise nature of the prosodic hierarchy and its constituents. While the articles address a wide array of phenomena and languages, some aspects are especially salient: (i) the nature of the prosodic word as a domain, (ii) the question of whether prosodic structure is, like morphosyntactic structure, recursive and based on constituent boundaries, and (iii) questions about the general architecture of the interface of morphosyntactic and prosodic structure. The volume comprises an introduction by the editors and ten articles presenting original research. In the introduction, ‘Prosodic phonology: An appraisal’ (1–7), Janet Grijzenhout and Barış Kabak recapitulate the most important hypotheses and research questions that have guided research on prosodic domains in the last three decades and show how the articles relate to these issues. The first article, by Irene Vogel, ‘The status of the clitic group’ (15–46), reassesses the evidence for and against a prosodic domain that stands between the prosodic word and the phonological phrase. Such an intermediate domain was proposed more than two decades ago, but it has been discussed controversially in subsequent research. As pointed out by Vogel, phonological phenomena in various languages provide evidence for a domain between the word and the phrase, which cannot be reduced to either of the two. While in earlier work this domain was termed the clitic group (CG) and was invoked primarily to account for the prosodification of clitics, Vogel here proposes to rename it the composite group, since morphological compounds also display the phonological properties that motivate this domain. The alternative to postulating a separate domain between word and phrase is to allow for recursion at the level of the prosodic word, an approach taken by Bariş Kabak and Anthi Revithiadou in their chapter, ‘An interface approach to [End Page 201] prosodic word recursion’ (105–33). Adopting an optimality-theoretic approach to prosodic structure, they show that recursive prosodic constituents may be derived straightforwardly by drawing on the well-established constraints, Align and Wrap, with no need for additional constraints referring explicitly to recursivity. On the empirical side, based on the observations from Greek and Turkish compounds and host-clitic sequences, they claim that such structures, which are larger than prosodic words, nevertheless display the same phonological properties as these. At the same time, they are different from phonological phrases and are therefore best analyzed as recursive prosodic words. Arguments for prosodic recursion at the word level are likewise put forward in Junko Ito and Armin Mester’s article, ‘The extended prosodic word’ (135–94). The authors carefully discuss the phonological behavior of function-word complexes in English and German with regard to a variety of segmental and rhythmic alternations. They conclude that for both languages, a structure with the function word adjoined to its host’s prosodic word can best explain the phenomena. As for the question of how to derive prosodic word adjunction (i.e. recursivity), they propose a constraint requiring that prosodic heads be contained in lexical words, which, besides favoring prosodic adjunction of function words, provides a theoretical ground for the observation that function words are, in general, prosodically invisible. Adecidedly typological approach to the prosodic word is chosen in ‘The distribution of phonological word domains: A probabilistic typology’ (47–75) by Balthasar Bickel, Kristine A. Hildebrandt, and René Schiering. They investigate the prosodic domains of phonological alternations in more than sixty languages from different language families, concentrating on wordsize domains (defined as domains containing exactly one lexical stem) to examine whether crosslinguistically such alternations cluster on a...

This paper focuses on prosodic adjunction at the Prosodic Word level in a polysynthetic language. I argue that recursion at a depth of more than two levels can only be generated by a theory which requires exact correspondence between certain syntactic phrases and Prosodic Words. Such a theory is similar to Phonological Phrase correspondence in Match Theory, suggesting there is an underlying shared property between correspondence at the Prosodic Word and Phonological Phrase levels. In addition, this theory must include a constraint which prohibits recursive prosodic constituents in order to generate the attested typology of clitics across languages. The empirical focus is the prosodic structure of the verbal complex in Blackfoot (Algonquian; ISO 639-3: bla). Using phonotactic evidence I argue that the vP phase corresponds to a Prosodic Word, and that each prefix to the stem is a Prosodic Word adjunct. I then compare several theories of the syntax-prosody interface, including versions of Alignment Theory, Wrap Theory, and Match Theory. A subset of schematic candidates with one or two prefixes to a stem are used to determine which theories generate the attested typology of clitics as well as a multiply recursive Prosodic Word structure.

Research in prosodic phonology, as well as experiments on adult speech production, suggest that segmental and suprasegmental processes in language are not governed directly by syntactic structure. Rather these processes reflect an independent prosodic structure, which includes prosodic categories such as metrical foot, prosodic word, and phonological phrase. Five experiments examined English-speaking two-year-olds' omissions of object articles in different prosodic structures. The data indicate that children omit unfooted syllables and that foot boundaries, in turn, are influenced by prosodic word and phonological phrase boundaries. Thus, it appears that children create prosodic structures remarkably similar to those proposed in theories of prosodic phonology.*

This article examines the constraints on Prosodic Word production in Spanish by three monolingual and three Spanish-German bilingual children from the beginning of word production until 2;2. It also considers the relationship between Prosodic Words and Phonological Phrases, and in the case of monosyllabic words, it takes into consideration syllable structure (i.e., presence or absence of codas), in order to ascertain the importance of foot binarity in early child speech. Although the preferred Prosodic Word shape is that of a trochee, there appear a few monosyllables, consisting of CVC (or CV), which are produced earlier by the bilinguals than by the monolinguals. The minimality constraint is violated by the production of CV forms. Maximality constraints are observed for a very short time, as unfooted syllables appear very soon, especially in the data of the monolinguals. However, it takes several more months until Spanish children are able to produce Prosodic Words containing two feet, whereas Phonological Phrases constituted by two disyllabic Prosodic Words are produced earlier by some children. It is proposed that such data can be optimally treated by means of constraints, and their relevance to the question of whether prosodic structure is acquired bottom-up is briefly discussed.

The Phonology of Turkish offers a comprehensive overview and analysis of the phonological structure of modern Turkish. While phenomena at both segmental and suprasegmental levels are discussed, the emphasis is on the latter, analyzing phonological processes extending over a number of different domains. Couched within a primarily constraint-based framework, lower-level prosodic constituents, including syllables, feet, and prosodic words, are incorporated into a general theory with higher-level constituents, the Phonological Phrase and the Intonational Phrase, assuming that phonological structure is hierarchical in nature and that phonological representations consist of more than a single linear sequence of segments. The approach employed here, thus, uses tools from both Prosodic Phonology and Autosegmental Phonology (theories of representation), as well as Optimality Theory (OT) (a theory of computation). More specifically, with regard to the representation of the internal structure of segments, Autosegmental Phonology, and in some cases a more refined variant, Feature Geometry, is used, while Prosodic Phonology is employed for levels of the Prosodic Hierarchy beyond the segment, such as feet, prosodic words and phonological phrases. The book strives to achieve two things; it provides a critical synthesis of research in Turkish phonology, as well as offering new analyses and data in a theoretically oriented approach. One repetitive and overarching theme emerging in every chapter throughout the book is that not only regular but also exceptional phonological forms demonstrate a systematic pattern, despite conveniently being referred to as “exceptional,” and can be captured by the same grammar as regular forms, be it a segmental process (Chapter 2), a syllable repair process (Chapter 3), vowel harmony (Chapter 4), word stress (Chapter 5), or phrasal prominence (Chapter 6). I maintain that exceptional information in phonology should be captured via prespecification, but of a special type that puts minimal information in underlying forms. Prespecification of the type defended here does not place language-specific restrictions on inputs/underlying representations; rather, inputs can have any shape, and all possible inputs are accounted for by the same grammar/phonology. Phonology on this view essentially acts as a filter to only give surface representations that are actually utterable by speakers of the Turkish language.

Yukatek Maya has two phonological phenomena, allophonic aspiration and [h]-epenthesis, which insert the feature [spread glottis] at the right edge of the prosodic word and phonological phrase respectively. Providing an OT analysis, then, requires constraints which privilege [s.g.] in certain `weak' positions. This sort of constraint, however, conflicts with many theories of positional privilege since it prefers a marked form in a ‘weak' position. Despite this, we show that a limited class of such constraints are necessary to account for aspiration and [h]-epenthesis in Yukatek Maya. Furthermore, these processes are argued to instantiate a cross-linguistic pattern favoring certain laryngeal features at the right edge of larger prosodic constituents. This pressure, which we term Final Laryngeal Strengthening, is argued to be the phonologization of a gradient phonetic pressure: the articulatory effort required to maintain persistent voicing throughout longer prosodic units.

In this article, a prosodic domain located between the prosodic word and the phonological phrase is argued for (the prosodic word group - PWG). This constituent groups the members of several types of compound-like expressions, but does not play a special part in the prosodic organization of clitics, and thus is argued to be (partially) distinct from the old clitic group (Hayes 1989; Nespor and Vogel 1986). The PWG is shown to play a role in the phonology of compound-like expressions in a great number of languages, belonging to different linguistic families. Evidence is multifarious, coming from segmental, tonal, duration and prominence related phenomena. Crucially, evidence is also offered against an analysis resorting to recursive prosodic words - e.g., prominence patterns at the levels of the Prosodic Word (PW) and PWG may be reversed; phonological phenomena distinguishing the two domains show a difference in kind and not just in strength (Ladd 1996/2008; Frota 2000).

Prosodic filters on syntax: an interface account of second position clitics

The goal of this paper is to present findings about vowel lengthening at morpho-syntactically defined prosodic boundaries. The data come from a corpus of spontaneous speech from Vimeu Picard, a Gallo- Romance language. A total of 10 672 vowel durations are measured, and 5336 vowel ratios are calculated, providing data for the prosodic word, clitic group, phonological phrase, intonational phrase, and the utterance. A general increase in vowel duration is observed as one ascends the prosodic hierarchy, without adjusting for rate of speech. Significant differences in vowel ratio are found between the clitic group and all other phrases, the prosodic word and the intonational phrase, the phonological phrase and the intonational phrase, and the intonational phrase and the utterance. Contrary to what was expected, vowel ratios at the utterance edge were found to be significantly shorter than vowel ratios at the intonational phrase edge. This may be because pauses are greater for the utterance than for the intonational phrase.

Most of the phonological processes that will be discussed in the following sections have figured prominently in the establishment of the theory of prosodic phonology (e.g. Selkirk 1980; 1984; Nespor and Vogel 1986; 1989). For example, intervocalic s-voicing was crucially seen as limited by the Prosodic Word (or phonological word), applying only to /s/ between two vowels which are both inside the same prosodic word (Nespor and Vogel 1986). Raddoppiamento sintattico was considered by Nespor and Vogel as applying within the Phonological Phrase, which, to a large extent, is determined via syntactic organization. In later work, Vogel (1997) considered the possibility that raddoppiamento sintattico actually applies within the Intonational phrase.

The analysis in this paper deals with the prosodic cues that were present in a one-hour lecture by a native signer of American Sign Language (ASL). Special attention is paid to the interaction of the dominant hand (H1) and the nondominant hand (H2), as well as to facial expressions articulated on the lower face. In our corpus, we found that H1 and H2 interact in several prosodic contexts; we analyze four of them here: Single Prosodic Word, Multiple Prosodic Words in an Intermediate Phrase, Parenthetical, and Forward- Referencing. Our main finding is that, while the spread of the nondominant hand (H2-Spread) is an important redundant cue to prosodic structure, the primary cue is on the lower face. Our findings also confirmed positional cues and domain effects of H2-Spread in Prosodic Words and Phonological Phrases that were previously found in Israeli Sign Language.

In this paper, syllable duration (Vowel-to-Vowel unit) and F0 variation are analyzed as cues to distinguish the prosodization of prepositional clitic-host sequence from a syllable within a prosodic word in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). A production task was created to assess 1) whether the syllable production time helps to identify a clitic boundary and a word boundary and 2) whether the F0 configuration aligned to a clitic syllable differs from the F0 configuration aligned to a syllable in a word boundary. The results show that: 1) the syllable duration measurement supports the hypothesis that there is no distinction between prepositional clitics and a syllable which is part of a prosodic word (PW); 2) the pitch range of tonal events associated to the syllable that bears the PW boundary differs from that associated to the syllables that bear a clitic-host sequence boundary. Based on these results we argued that the prepositional clitics are prosodized as a syllable adjoined to its host. This interpretation leads us to suggest that the relevant domain for prepositional clitic prosodization is between PW and PPh (Phonological Phrase) in BP.

This paper proposes that the presence/absence of the Foot is parametric; that is, contra much previous research (see e. g. Selkirk, Elisabeth (1995). Sentence prosody: intonation, stress and phrasing. In J. Goldsmith (ed.)The handbook of phonological theory. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. 550–569., Vogel, Irene (2009). Universals of prosodic structure. In S. Scalise, E. Magni, & A. Bisetto (eds.)Universals of language today. Dordrecht: Springer. 59–82.), it is argued here that the Foot is not a universal constituent of the Prosodic Hierarchy; rather, some languages, such as Turkish and French, as well as early child languages, are footless. Several types of evidence are presented in support of this proposal, from both Turkish and French, as well as child English. A comparison of regular (word-final) and exceptional stress in Turkish reveals, for example, that regular “stress” is intonational prominence falling on the last syllable of prosodic words in the absence of foot structure. Both acoustic and formal evidence are presented in support of this proposal, as well as evidence from syntax-prosody interface. The paper also presents evidence for the footless status of French, which, unlike Turkish, is proposed to be completely footless. Several arguments are presented in support of this position, such as the fact that, in French, the domain of obligatory prominence is the Phonological Phrase (PPh), not the Prosodic Word (PWd); in a PPh consisting of several PWds, therefore, nonfinal PWds can surface without any kind of stress or prominence, suggesting that, at least for non-final PWds, one cannot assume stress or foot structure. Finally, the proposal is extended to additional languages, such as those demonstrating Default-to-Opposite Edge stress.

Use of a trochaic template (S-w) stress pattern in early words and phrases has been documented in both normal and disordered populations. The purpose of this multiple baseline study was to determine the effectiveness of a prosodic intervention focusing on w-S stress patterns in phonological phrases and prosodic words, and its generalization to w-S patterns in untrained multi-syllabic words and phrases. Two children with speech and language impairments participated in a three-phase experimental treatment that focused on the article ‘the’ in phrases. Generalization probes designed to examine all phases of the therapy sequence and untrained stimuli were administered throughout therapy. Results indicate that the intervention procedures facilitated change in both children’s productions of w-S stress patterns in untrained multisyllabic words, although less so in untrained phrases.

Introduction Sign languages share a common inventory of properties that are used to mark prosodic constituents (e.g., nonmanuals of the face or properties of movement and rhythm; see Quer and Pfau, this volume). This chapter investigates whether there is crosslinguistic variation in the use of one prosodic cue – eye blinks – to mark prosodic constituents in sign languages. We will compare the prosodic use of blinks across four sign languages – Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL), Japanese Sign Language (JSL), Swiss German Sign Language (DSGS) and American Sign Language (ASL). In the last fifteen years there has been significant work done in sign language phonology with regard to prosodic structure. Miller (1996), Wilbur (1994a), Boyes Braem (1999), Wilbur and Patschke (1999), Nespor and Sandler (1999), Sandler (1999a, 1999b), Brentari and Crossley (2002), Sandler and Lillo-Martin (2006) and Eccarius and Brentari (2007) have worked on various prosodic constituents, including the Intonational Phrase, the Phonological Phrase and the Prosodic Word (also called “Phonological Word” in Nespor & Vogel 1986). The studies presented here are built upon these earlier analyses, expanding our knowledge of crosslinguistic variation of the blinks. The following research questions are addressed in this chapter. First, how much variation exists among sign languages in their use of a prosodic cue, such as blinks? Second, if crosslinguistic variation exists, what factors condition it? Third, are blinks always associated with intonational phrases crosslinguistically?