Overtly Headed XPs and Irish Syntax-Prosody Mapping

Analyses of Irish phonological phrasing (Elfner 2012 et seq.) have been influential in shaping Match Theory (Selkirk 2011), an OT approach to mapping syntactic to prosodic structure. We solve two constraint ranking paradoxes concerning the relative ranking of Match and StrongStart. Irish data indicate that while XPs with silent heads can fail to map to phonological phrases in certain circumstances, overtly headed XPs cannot. They also indicate that rebracketing due to the constraint StrongStart occurs only sentence-initially, contrary to predictions. We account for these puzzles by invoking Van Handel's (2019) Match constraint which sees only XPs with overt heads, and by positing a new version of StrongStart which only applies to material at the left edge of the intonational phrase. Our analysis is developed using the Syntax-Prosody in Optimality Theory application (SPOT) and OTWorkplace

Syntax Prosody in Optimality Theory (SPOT) app tutorial

SPOT (Syntax Prosody in Optimality Theory app; http://spot.sites.ucsc.edu) automates candidate generation and evaluation for work on the syntax-prosody interface. SPOT is intended to facilitate the creation and comparison of multiple versions of an analysis, in service of refining constraint definitions and theory development. The codebase is available at https://github.com/syntax-prosody-ot. This paper briefly explains the motivation for the SPOT app, then walks through the process of creating an analysis in SPOT. We show how to create input syntactic trees, either manually or automatically; how to select a constraint set; and how to generate tableaux with candidates, constraints, and violation counts. Finally, we show how to use the output of SPOT to calculate rankings and typologies using an OT application

Vowel-Length Contrasts and Phonetic Cues to Stress: An Investigation of their Relation

The functional load hypothesis of Berinstein (1979) put forward the idea that languages which use a suprasegmental property (duration, F0) contrastively will not use it to realise stress. The functional load hypothesis is often cited when stress correlates are discussed, both when it is observed that the language under discussion follows the hypothesis and when it fails to follow it. In the absence of a more wide-ranging assessment of how frequently languages do or do not conform to the functional load hypothesis, it is unknown whether it is an absolute, a strong tendency, a weak tendency or unsupported. The results from a database of reported stress correlates and use of contrastive duration for 140 languages are presented and discussed. No support for the functional load hypothesis is found

Oddities of Yidiɲ Stress Revisited

The Australian language Yidiɲ exhibits an unusual stress pattern: The penultimate syllable and every other syllable to the left bears stress, but penultimate lengthening occurs only in words containing an odd number of syllables. We propose that the lengthening is due to a rhythm-enhancing trade-off: Either the word begins with a stressed syllable or the penultimate syllable is lengthened. This approach is supported by the results of two perception studies. Specifically, it was found that test-strings without initial stress were significantly less likely to be correctly categorized as having rhythmic alternation than test-strings with initial stress. While it has been known that languages prefer words to begin with a stressed syllable these studies provide evidence that starting with a stressed syllable aids listeners in hearing a rhythmic pattern and, further, supports the proposed motivation for the distribution of penultimate lengthening in Yidiɲ

Adjunction and Branchingness Effects in Syntax-Prosody Mapping

Match Theory (Selkirk 2011) and approaches to syntax-prosody mapping involving alignment and Wrap(XP) (Truckenbrodt 1995, 1999) insist that syntatic phrases at least partially map onto phonological phrases. Each approach specifies that certain XPs are visible for mapping, while others are not. Both Truckenbrodt (1999) and Selkirk (2011) suggest that when an XP hosts an adjunct, only the lower segment of that XP is visible at the interface. We undertake several case studies of these theories' predictions, drawing primarily on data from phrasing in the Bantu language Kinyambo (Bickmore 1990), in order to address the proper interpretation of syntactic adjunction structures at the syntax-phonology interface. To do so, we employ a new JavaScript application which we have developed, Syntax-Prosody in Optimality Theory (SPOT; Bellik, Bellik, & Kalivoda 2016) allowing us to automatically generate and evaluate prosodic tree structures of arbitrary length and depth. We conclude that high segments of XP in syntactic adjunction structures must be visible to Match (pace Selkirk 2011) in order to predict attested prosodic phrasings in Kinyambo, and that treatments of adjunction which ignore the highest segment of a maximal projection make surprising and possibly problematic predictions

Match Theory : An overview

This paper introduces Match Theory, an Optimality-Theoretic approach to the syntax–phonology interface proposed by Selkirk (2011). The theory states that a family of Match constraints favor syntax–prosody isomorphism, but that these can be outranked by constraints on prosodic wellformedness and/or information structure, resulting in certain principled mismatches. We compare Match Theory to previous OT approaches involving edge-alignment, and discuss several outstanding issues for Match Theory such as the proper treatment of asymmetries in syntax–prosody matching