Prosodic Constituents Research Articles

L’amas verbal au cœur d’une modélisation topologique du français

This article aims at two objectives : We want to show that principal word order phenomena can be described in a topological approach to linearization, i.e. a linking of an (unordered) dependency tree and a ordered structure, the topological constituent tree. Moreover, we want to put forward the importance and naturalness of a particular constituent in the modeling of French word order, the verb cluster (amas verbal) : It is composed of one or more verbs, of necessary functional words (prepositions and complementizers), and of very constraint lexical elements other than the verbs as for example clitics and certain adverbs. The work is based on a rigorous formalization of the dependency-topology link in Gerdes & Kahane 2001. The verb cluster in the topological structure remains to be shown to be closely related to a prosodic constituent.

An interaction between prosody and statistics in the segmentation of fluent speech

Sensitivity to prosodic cues might be used to constrain lexical search. Indeed, the prosodic organization of speech is such that words are invariably aligned with phrasal prosodic edges, providing a cue to segmentation. In this paper we devise an experimental paradigm that allows us to investigate the interaction between statistical and prosodic cues to extract words from a speech stream. We provide evidence that statistics over the syllables are computed independently of prosody. However, we also show that trisyllabic sequences with high transition probabilities that straddle two prosodic constituents appear not to be recognized. Taken together, our findings suggest that prosody acts as a filter, suppressing possible word-like sequences that span prosodic constituents.

The Syllable in Optimality Theory (review)

Reviewed by: The syllable in Optimality Theory Marc Pierce Caroline Féry and Ruben van de Vijver, eds. The syllable in Optimality Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2003. Pp. ix + 415. $100.00. (hardcover). This book contains 14 thematic chapters addressing various syllable-related issues from an Optimality Theory (OT) perspective, as well as an introductory overview. As the limitations of this forum preclude an exhaustive discussion of each analysis, I shall instead briefly outline the contents of the volume and then offer some general discussion. The first section consists of an introductory "Overview" by the editors. This chapter first sketches the role of the syllable in phonology and then examines its treatment within OT. The editors suggest that OT is particularly well-suited to capture the typology of the syllable (a claim accepted even by some opponents of OT, e.g., McMahon 2000). An overview of the contents of the book is then given. The second part, "Syllable Structure and Prosodic Structure", contains four papers. John J. McCarthy's "Sympathy, cumulativity, and the Duke-of-York gambit" examines Duke-of-York (DY) derivations (Pullum 1976), that is, derivations which "have the general form A → B → A, where underlying A passes through a B stage before returning to surface A again" (p. 24), within OT. McCarthy argues that there are two different types of such derivations, "vacuous" and "feeding"; in the first type, the B stage is motivated solely by "theory-internal assumptions of strict serialism" (p. 24), while in the second type, the B stage is "crucial for conditioning some further process" (p. 24). McCarthy reviews the evidence for a number of vacuous DY derivations, and concludes that such derivations are not problematic for OT, as they are "an expected consequence of the core premises of OT, constraint ranking and constraint violation under domination" (p. 32). As to feeding DY derivations, McCarthy contends that they do not exist, and that better analyses are available for any putative feeding DY derivations. In McCarthy's view, the problem of opacity in OT is best resolved by means of Sympathy Theory (McCarthy 1999), and the chapter concludes with an eloquent review of the applications of Sympathy Theory to opacity. The second paper in this section is "The Controversy over Geminates and Syllable Weight", by Stuart Davis, which takes up the problem of the representation of geminate consonants: are they consonants that are underlyingly moraic, or consonants underlyingly linked to two root nodes, or consonants linked to two skeletal slots? Based largely on the behaviour of geminates in Sinhala, Davis argues that geminates are underlyingly moraic, and suggests that alternative views of geminates fail to account for the Sinhalese material. Davis then discusses evidence from other languages, which has been raised in support of alternative views of geminates, and he concludes that this evidence does not in fact conclusively support alternative views. The next paper in this section is "The syllable as a unit of prosodic organization in Japanese", by Haruo Kubozono. While Japanese is normally considered a [End Page 75] mora language, rather than a syllable language, Kubozono argues persuasively that a number of phonological phenomena in Japanese, including mother-child language, emphatic mimetics, and the truncation of loanwords, can best be accounted for in terms of the syllable. Kubozono therefore concludes that "the syllable is no less indispensable than the mora is in Japanese" (p. 118). The final paper in this section is "Prosodic weight", by Draga Zec, which takes up the problem of describing syllable weight. Zec argues that "syllable weight in terms of mora count is the sole weight mechanism associated with the syllable as a prosodic constituent" (p. 123), but that higher level prosodic constituents like the foot and the prosodic word can "impose their own minimal sonority thresholds" (p. 124). Data from English, Mordvin, Old Church Slavonic, and Asheninca are adduced in support of Zec's claims. The third part, "Nonmoraic syllables and syllable edges", begins with Paul Kiparsky's "Syllables and moras in Arabic"; a more extensive treatment of this data can be found in Kiparsky (forthcoming). This chapter focuses on syllable-based phenomena in three groups of Arabic dialects (VC-dialects, C-dialects, and CV...

Extrasyllabicity, transparency and prosodic constituency in the acquisition of Polish

This paper investigates the acquisition of extrasyllabic consonants in Polish on the basis of the body of longitudinal data from a Polish speaking child, 3;8–5;1. The data reveal several strategies adopted by the child to deal with the problematic consonants: deletion, vowel insertion and adjunction, each characterising a different stage of development. Shifting from one strategy to another seems to reflect a slow and gradual process of learning the intricate relationship between extrasyllabicity, prosodic affiliation and transparency vis-à-vis voicing processes found in adult Polish. The discernible reorganisation in the child's grammar seems to affect both underlying representations and phonological processes. The child's underlying representations are argued to be essentially adult-like in the sense that they are based on alternations rather than directly on adult surface forms. The shift in the processing strategies, analysed within Optimality Theory [henceforth, OT; Prince, A.S., Smolensky, P., 1993. Optimality Theory: constraint interaction in generative grammar. Unpublished manuscript, University of Rutgers, Rutgers, University of Colorado, Boulder; McCarthy, J., Prince, A.S., 1995. Faithfulness and reduplicative identity. Unpublished manuscript, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Rutgers University, Rutgers], is argued to be best motivated by developing units of prosodic organisation. The claim is that at the stages of development under discussion, the prosodic hierarchy is not fully activated in the child's output structure. Specifically, the child's outputs are organised into syllables but not into prosodic words. This explains not only why, in contradistinction to adult Polish, extrasyllabic segments exhibit no transparency effects at the adjunction stage but also why extrasyllabicity is initially resolved by deletion.

The Pausal Phrase in Tiberian Aramaic and the Reflexes of *I

The expected reflex of short *i in Tiberian phonology is s[es], when bearing an accent; however, in Tiberian Aramaic a second, more conservative reflex [i] often obtains. Bauer and Leander (1927) draw attention to the phenomenon, in a general discussion of pause. They offer a weak generalization, noting that when [i] does appear, it appears in pause; but their observations do not amount to an explanation. This study ejects free variation, and proceeds as if the alternation is rule-governed. Methodological controls limit the database initially to 49 tokens. The conclusion is that there is in fact a configurational, prosodic distinction, and the prosodic constituent 'pausal phrase' is consequently posited as the explanation.

Eliminating the Segmental Tier: Evidence from Speech Errors

The dominant viewpoint regarding phonologically driven speech errors is that segments are the units responsible behind the errors. The goal of this paper is to illustrate the point that other potential candidates for explaining these speech errors, which have gone largely unnoticed, provide a better explanatory framework for speech errors than do segments. By looking at unambiguous cases and patterns of markedness, it can be shown that there exists good evidence for features and prosodic constituents in speech errors, but never any positive evidence for segments. All of these considerations taken into account together lend strong support to the argument that there is no need for a segmental level of analysis in phonology.

When intake exceeds input: Language specific perceptual illusions induced by L1 prosodic constraints

In this paper we argue that the prosodic well-formedness conditions of a learner's native language phonology interfere with accurate perception of non-native segmental sequences. This interference induces a perceptual illusion effect due to which learners perceive an illusory vowel that, in fact, does not exist in the acoustic signal. In this way, a learner's percept of the L2 input, or L2 intake, actually includes more segmental material than is physically present. As a product of the native language phonology, these perceptual illusions are shown to occur only in environments where L2 segmental sequences cannot be licensed by L1 prosodic constituents. In addition, the quality of the perceived illusory vowel is shown to coincide with the vowel category inserted by a learner's native language phonology in environments conditioning epenthesis. Finally, by varying the duration of interstimulus intervals in an AX discrimination task, we reveal latent capacities to overcome the perceptual illusion effect when finer grained acoustic representations are made accessible. We conclude that perception of illusory segments is a direct result of a learner's native language phonology generating a phonological representation that abides by the prosodic constraints of the learner's native language.

Learning new segments and reducing domains in German L2 phonology: The role of the Prosodic Hierarchy

This paper investigates interactions between the prosodic structures of L1 and L2 in second language acquisition. We focus here on a case in which the L1 and L2 are quite different with regard to the role played by the prosodic structures: the acquisition of German by speakers of Spanish. “Demarcating languages” such as German tend to phonologically mark the beginnings and/ or ends of relatively small prosodic constituents, while “Grouping languages” such as Spanish tend to favor the application of phonological phenomena throughout relatively long constituents. The subset-superset relationship inherent in current views of L2 acquisition, in particular the Asymmetry Hypothesis, predicts that reducing the domain of application of a process should be impossible to learn. In this light, we examine data (spontaneous and read speech of 11 Spanish speakers learning German) involving phonological processes which differ both in their segmental content and in their domains of application in the two languages. Our results are different from those predicted, that is, the pattern of acquisition cuts across the categories that would be established in such framework. Our findings thus demonstrate that the Asymmetry Hypothesis cannot be maintained as a model of L2 phonological acquisition, at least in its present form.

Resyllabification of laterals in Brazilian Portuguese

Lateral sounds in Brazilian Portuguese have received some amount of attention, both from quantitative studies and from dialectology. In this paper we will study the variable pronunciation of /l/ as either consonantal or vocalic, relating it to the possibility of resyllabification across different types of prosodic boundaries. We examine the patterns of vocalization/non-vocalization in a sample of speakers from Porto Alegre, the capital of the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, using quantitative analysis. Our results provide empirical support for the role of prosodic constituents in Brazilian Portuguese phonology.

Variable and Stable Clusters: Variation in the Realisation of Consonant Clusters

AbstractThis article reports on between-individual and within-individual variation in consonant cluster reduction strategies (where C1C2is realised as C(or C2) among young children. The empirical base of the study is a Dutch database with over 9,000 instances ofC1and C2realisations of 23 word-initial consonant clusters from 45 children aged between two and three years old. The study finds that within-child variation is very limited, whereas between-child variation occurs. It is also shown that there are typological implications; that is, realising C2in clustery, implies realising C2in cluster y, but not vice versa. The data provide support for the position that variation can be accounted for by a finer grained notion of sonority where the sonority distance between the two consonants in a cluster plays a crucial role in establishing prosodic constituency.

The Syntax and Prosody of Weak Pronouns in Chamorro

In the modular linguistic theory assumed by many generative linguists, phonology and syntax are interconnected but fundamentally independent components of grammar. The effects of syntax on phonology are mediated by prosodic structure, a representation of prosodic constituents calculated from syntactic structure but not isomorphic to it. Within this overall architecture, I investigate the placement of weak pronouns in the Austronesian language Chamorro. Certain Chamorro pronominals can be realized as prosodically deficient weak pronouns that typically occur right after the predicate. I showthat these pronouns are second-position clitics whose placement is determined not syntactically, but prosodically: they occur after the leftmost phonological phrase of their intonational phrase. My analysis of these clitics assumes that lexical insertion is late and can affect and be affected by prosodic phrase formation-assumptions consistent with the view that the mutual interaction of phonology and syntax is confined to the postsyntactic operations that translate syntactic structure into prosodic structure.

An acoustic phonetic analysis of intonational prominence in two Australian languages

The intonational typology of two Northern Australian languages, Dalabon and the Kundedjnjenghmi dialect of Bininj Gun-wok, suggests that these languages can be analyzed within the autosegmental-metrical framework of intonation as having two kinds of intonational events that serve to demarcate the boundaries of intonational phrases: pitch accents and boundary tones. Both languages have also previously been described as having lexical stress. In this study, the acoustic correlates of syllables associated with intonational pitch accents, were measured, namely, F0, duration, RMS amplitude and vowel quality, in one lengthy narrative text from each language. The duration of intonational phrase-final syllables was also measured. Results indicate that syllables associated with pitch accents are phonetically lengthened and have marginally higher RMS amplitude. However, there is little variation in vowel quality due to the presence of a pitch accent or intonational prominence. Final syllables are also lengthened at intonational phrase edges, indicating that duration is a cue to this level of prosodic constituency in these languages.

Relations between segmental and prosodic structure in first language acquisition

In this paper, I discuss a number of relations that take place between melodic content and higher prosodic structure in first language phonological development. I explore acquisition patterns found in data on the acquisition of Québec French. Starting with the observation that prosodic structure and, more specifically, stressed syllables, play a central role in phonological acquisition, I hypothesize that the inter-relations between prosodic and segmental structure posited by formal models of phonological organisation should be witnessed within and across developmental stages. I support this hypothesis through two findings from the French data. First, complex onsets emerge in stressed syllables before unstressed ones. Second, different types of consonants (placeless versus place-specified) emerge in word-final position at different stages. From these observations, I argue that the phenomena observed in these data are best captured in an analysis based on constituent structure and relationships between feature specification and prosodic constituency, which are governed by universal markedness.

Upstep and embedded register levels

This article is concerned with an interesting upstep phenomenon in the intonation of some speakers of Southern dialects of German. It experimentally establishes the main properties of this upstep phenomenon, and discusses the theoretical consequences. The upstep occurs on the nuclear pitch accent of a non-final intonation phrase. It targets the phonetic height of the utterance-initial peak, regardless of downstepped peaks that intervene between the initial peak and the upstepped peak. The findings are argued to provide unexpected support for a model of intonation in which downstep among accents can be embedded inside downstep among larger prosodic domains (Ladd 1988, van den Berg et al. 1992). In a combination of that model with an extension of Pierrehumbert & Beckman (1988), it is suggested that the choice between downstep and upstep is conditioned by association to higher prosodic constituents in a systematic way.

The acquisition of compound vs. phrasal stress: the role of prosodic constituents.

This paper investigates the acquisition of compound vs. phrasal stress (hót dog vs. hot dóg) in English. This has previously been shown to be acquired quite late, in contrast to recent research showing that infants both perceive and prefer rhythmic patterns in their own language. Subjects (40 children in four groups the averages ages of which are 5;4, 7;2, 9;3 and 11;6 and 10 adults) were shown pairs of pictures representing a compound word and the corresponding phrase. They heard a prerecorded tape with the names of the items, and were asked to indicate which one they heard. In addition to 9 real compounds and corresponding phrases, 9 novel compounds were presented (rédcup = invented type of flower vs. red cúp). A gradual increase in overall correct scores until age twelve was found along with a significant effect of real vs. novel compounds (p < 0.001), and an overwhelming tendency for the younger children to prefer compounds regardless of stress. We conclude that the results are due to the slow development of the ability to use prosodic information to override a strong lexical bias.

Eric Raimy (2000). The phonology and morphology of reduplication. (Studies in Generative Grammar 52.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Pp. viii+200.

The theory of reduplication developed in this book distinguishes itself from most recent work in reduplication in important ways. First of all, it adopts the Distributed Morphology framework (Halle &amp; Marantz 1993, 1994, Noyer 1997) and a derivational, rule-based approach to reduplication (and to phonology in general). It explicitly argues against parallel, surface-based models of prosodic morphology, like Optimality Theory (McCarthy &amp; Prince 1993, Prince &amp; Smolensky 1993, etc.). Further, the analyses proposed in the book reject the proposal, current since McCarthy &amp; Prince (1986), that the shape of reduplicative morphemes (like other fixed-shape morphemes) is constrained to be (roughly) equivalent to a prosodic constituent, syllable or foot. The book is organised as follows. After a brief introduction in Chapter 1 outlining the goals of the book, Chapter 2 introduces enough of the theory to show how backcopying in reduplication, argued since Wilbur (1973) to be impossible to account for without reference to reduplicative surface-identity effects, can be handled in a derivational framework. Chapter 3, the longest chapter, discusses the technical details of the theory in more detail and goes on to show how the fixed shape and unmarked featural and prosodic structure typical of reduplicative morphemes can be accounted for without reference to either prosodic structure or general markedness. The fourth and final chapter discusses in more detail theoretical issues raised in earlier chapters, like how this approach defines markedness of reduplication patterns and avoids reduplication-specific mechanisms. The review discusses each of these points in turn.

Phonological theory and the development of prosodic structure

This article presents a model of prosodic structure development that takes account of the fundamental continuity between child and adult systems, the surface level divergence of child forms from their adult target forms, and the overall developmental paths of prosodic structure. The main empirical base for the study comes from longitudinal data collected from three Japanese-speaking children (1; 0–2; 6). Evidence for word-internal prosodic constituents including the mora and the foot is found in compensatory lengthening phenomena, syllable size restrictions and word size restrictions in early word production. By implementing the representational principles that organize these prosodic categories as rankable and violable constraints, Optimality Theory can provide a systematic account of the differences in the prosodic structure of child and adult Japanese while assuming representational continuity between the two. A constraint-based model of prosodic structure acquisition is also shown to demarcate the learning paths in a way that is consistent with the data.

Phonation types: a cross-linguistic overview

Differences in phonation type signal important linguistic information in many languages, including contrasts between otherwise identical lexical items and boundaries of prosodic constituents. Phonation differences can be classified along a continuum ranging from voiceless, through breathy voiced, to regular, modal voicing, and then on through creaky voice to glottal closure. Cross-linguistic investigation suggests that this phonation continuum can be defined in terms of a recurring set of articulatory, acoustic, and timing properties. Nevertheless, there exist several languages whose phonation contrasts do not neatly fall within the phonation categories defined by other languages.

Ungeneralizable minimality in Ndebele

A body of work in Prosodic Morphology clearly establishes the importance of prosodic constituents like the foot as templates conditioning morpheme size. A striking finding of this research is that morphological footing is independent of metrical footing in many languages, as the footing required for particular morphological processes is often not identical to that required for phonological processes like stress assignment. However, recent OT research on Prosodic Morphology has made the opposite claim. Within this theory, the Generalized Template Hypothesis (GTH) proposes that no morpheme-particular templates defining minimal and maximal size are necessary. Instead, templates are always derivable from general principles of the grammar, like independently motivated metrical footing. This paper presents evidence from Ndebele showing that the GTH is too strong. In Ndebele, several different verb forms are subject to a minimality condition. In some cases, the minimality condition can be derived through independent metrical footing, as the GTH predicts. However, in several cases it cannot, showing that morpheme-particular size constraints are still a necessary part of the grammar.

Articulatory properties of initial segments in several prosodic constituents in French

This study reports on how what is usually called “segmental” articulation may be affected by prosodic structure. Articulatory properties of segments of various types are compared in initial position of four prosodic constituents in French: an Intonational Phrase, an Accentual Phrase, a Word and a Syllable. Modification of linguopalatal contact, nasal flow, acoustic measures of glottal articulation, as well as durational properties of segments are examined depending on these prosodic positions. Results show that the articulation of initial segments varies according to the prosodic level of the constituent. Initial segments in higher prosodic domains tend to have more linguopalatal contact, somewhat less nasal flow for nasals, and vowels tend to be more frequently glottalized than in initial position in lower domains. The magnitude and the realization of the articulatory modification observed in these positions is found to depend on speakers, articulators, and segment types. However, the regular trend observed suggests that these articulatory properties can reflect the prosodic encoding of constituents of various levels within utterances.