Prosody and recursion in coordinate structures and beyond
Michael Wagner
March 2009
 

This paper argues that generalizations about prosodic phrasing are recursive in nature. Initial evidence comes from the fragment of English consisting only of proper names and and and or. A sys- tematic relation between the semantics, the syntactic combinatorics, and the prosodic phrasing of these coordinate structures can be cap- tured by recursively combining the prosodies (represented as rela- tional metrical grids) of its parts, in tandem with assembling the compositional meaning of the expression. Alternative edge-based approaches to prosodic phrasing fail to capture the recursive na- ture of the generalization, a result independent of whether or not prosodic representation itself is assumed to be recursive. The pre- sented model is argued to generalize beyond the coordinate fragment, despite two types of apparent counterexamples: Structures that are prosodically flat but syntactically articulated, and structures with an apparent mismatch between prosody and syntax, as epitomized by the famous cat that chased the rat that stole the cheese (Chomsky, 1965, Chomsky and Halle, 1968). Closer inspection reveals that the syntax might actually be quite in tune with prosody in both cases.
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/000430
(please use that when you cite this article, unless you want to cite the full url: ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/000430)
Published in: To appear in NLLT
keywords: recursion, prosody, coordination, cycle, associativity, phrasing, combinatorics, phonology, syntax, semantics
previous versions: v2 [April 2007]
v1 [April 2007]
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