Competing syntactic and phonological constraints in Hebrew prosodic phrasing
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Amit Shaked
Abstract
This study brings empirical data from Hebrew to support Selkirk's claim that prosodic phrasing is the result of an interaction of syntactic and phonological constraints. Employing a recently devised protocol, a production experiment elicited contextually disambiguated utterances of the relative clause attachment ambiguity construction. Satisfying the syntactic alignment constraint (AlignRXP) and the phonological length constraints (BinMin and BinMax) would result in different prosodic phrasings for this syntactically ambiguous construction, permitting a test of the ranking of these constraints. Two types of data analysis suggest that in Hebrew the syntactic and phonological constraints are strictly ranked: In a context where the two types of constraints are in conflict, the alignment constraint is dominant; when the alignment constraint is vacuously satisfied, effects of the lower-ranked length constraints come into play. Together, these experimental findings illustrate the descriptive value of the constraint ranking hypothesis for prosodic phrasing.
© Walter de Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- Phase theory and prosodic spellout: The case of verbs
- Major Phrase, Focus Intonation, Multiple Spell-Out (MaP, FI, MSO)
- Competing syntactic and phonological constraints in Hebrew prosodic phrasing
- Effects of phonological phrasing on syntactic structure
- Phonological phrasing in Northern Sotho (Bantu)
- Global and local durational properties in three varieties of South African English
- The relationship between prosodic structure and pitch accent distribution: Evidence from Egyptian Arabic
- Pitch accent type matters for online processing of information status: Evidence from natural and synthetic speech
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- Phase theory and prosodic spellout: The case of verbs
- Major Phrase, Focus Intonation, Multiple Spell-Out (MaP, FI, MSO)
- Competing syntactic and phonological constraints in Hebrew prosodic phrasing
- Effects of phonological phrasing on syntactic structure
- Phonological phrasing in Northern Sotho (Bantu)
- Global and local durational properties in three varieties of South African English
- The relationship between prosodic structure and pitch accent distribution: Evidence from Egyptian Arabic
- Pitch accent type matters for online processing of information status: Evidence from natural and synthetic speech
