Lexical and functional decomposition in syntax: A view from phonology

• Authors: Dragana Šurkalović
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

In recent years many lexical elements in the syntactic tree have been decomposed into formal features forming part of the functional sequence. This paper explores the effects of this change on the syntax-phonology interface, addressing two problems for language modularity and proposing that the Lexicon be the locus of communication between the two modules. The first issue is the sensitivity of prosody to edges of syntactic constituents and to lexical elements and projections but not to functional ones (cf. Selkirk 1995; Truckenbrodt 1999, 2007 inter alia). Lexicon subcategorisation is offered as the solution (cf. Bye 2006; Paster 2005). The second issue is the prosodic marking of Information Structure. In Prosodic Phonology, constraints (Align-F, Stress-Focus) "see" these syntactic features, which is undesirable if modularity is to be maintained. This paper uses the Nanosyntactic view that features are merged into the tree individually, and suggests that Lexical entries for e.g. F and CT features in English are suprasegmental affixes pairing a H* tone with F feature or a L+H*L-H% contour with a CT feature.

Keywords

EN

modularity; syntax-phonology interface; prosody; information structure; lexicon

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Journal: Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics
• Year: 2011
• Volume: 47
• Pages: 399

Dates

published

2011

received

2010-12-15

revised

2011-03-15

accepted

2011-03-16

online

2011-06-14

Contributors

author

Dragana Šurkalović

• Center for Advanced Study in Theoretical Linguistics (CASTL), University of Tromsø

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/psicl-2011-0023