A modular theory of the relation between syntactic and phonological constituency
Seunghun Lee, Elisabeth Selkirk
January 2021 

Patterns of prosodic-structure-sensitive high tone spread in the Bantu language Xitsonga reveal mismatches between syntactic and phonological/prosodic constituency. A modular account of these mismatches is proposed: Match constraints (Selkirk 2011) are re-construed as spell-out constraints relating the output representation of the morphosyntax to the input representation for the phonology. It’s argued that in Xitsonga the spell-out constraint MatchPhrase LEX relates only phrases with lexical category heads to phonological phrase in the phonological input representation. In the phonology per se, a novel class of prosodic structure faithfulness constraints interacts with prosodic structure markedness constraints to produce further constituency mismatches in the output phonological representation.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/005797 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	Prosody and Prosodic Interfaces, ed. by Kubozono, Ito & Mester. Oxford University Press
keywords:	syntax-phonology mismatches, phonological phrase structure, match constraints, spell-out vs. phonology, xitsonga, tone spread, tone/edge constraints, prosodic faithfulness constraints, prosodic markedness constraints, syntax, phonology
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