What Sort Of Trees Do We Speak? A Computational Model Of The Syntax-Prosody Interface In Tokyo Japanese

What is the relationship between syntax, prosody and phonetics? This paper argues for a declarative constraint-based.theory, in which each step in a derivation adds diverse constraints to a pool. Some of these describe well formed objects in the feature structure domain, in terms of both syntactic and prosodic features. Some characterise the relative prominence of constituents as a partial order over some discrete domain (playing the role of metrical grid). Some are simultaneous equations in the reals, whose solutions represent the pitch level of phonetic objects - high and low tones. The elements of such a theory are illustrated with a treatment of prosodic phrasing and tone scaling in Tokyo Japanese, and the theory is compared to Selkirk and Tateishi's analysis based on the Strict Layer Hypothesis