1. Introduction
1.3 Theoretical background
1.3.3 Constraints on prosodic structures
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category words like determiners, complementizers, prepositions, auxiliary verbs, etc. ― in particular the monosyllabic versions of these ― are not [...] If instead of a general Match XP this correspondence constraint were limited to lexical categories, then, on the basis of the syntactic structure [VP Verb [FncP Fnc NP]], the F-domain structure (FVerb Fnc (FNP)) would be predicted [...]
Similar claims can be found in Selkirk (1984, 1995, 2011); Hale and Selkirk (1987);
Selkirk and Shen (1990); Truckenbrodt (2007); Chung (2003); Werle (2009); Selkirk and Lee (2015), among others. The common thread running through these works is that there is no impetus to parse function words as ωs. Yet the corollary of this ― that the phrasal projections of functional categories should not be parsed as Fs ― has been challenged. For instance, Elfner (2012) shows that small clauses and TPs in Irish, both of which are headed by a functional category, are preferentially mapped to ϕs.
Furthermore, in the same vein, Tyler (2018) argues that mapping at the word level indiscriminately demands that all syntactic heads, lexical and functional, be mapped to prosodic words. In doing so, the word-leveling is brought in line with its fellow the mapping at the phrase level, which Elfner has argued applies to the phrasal projections of both lexical and functional categories too. In this dissertation, I also adopt the same assumption that at either the word level or phrase level, mapping from morphosyntax to prosody does not distinguish between lexical categories and functional categories. In other words, the LCC is not assumed in this dissertation.
1.3.3. Constraints on prosodic structures
The last premise that distinguishes PCT is its implementation of interface
conditions on syntax-prosody correspondences, as well as purely prosodic conditions
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on the well-formedness of prosodic structures, as Optimality Theoretic (OT) constraints (Prince and Smolensky 1993). That is, these conditions are ranked and violable, and are assumed to comply with whatever parameters define well-formed OT constraints.
In addition to Non-recursivity (NRC) and Exhaustivity (EXH), the ALIGN and WRAP constraint schemata are proposed, which can be specified to apply to various types of prosodic constituents (P-cats) and syntactic categories (S-cats). The ALIGN
schema for prosodic structure determination (Selkirk 1995a) is essentially a renaming, in terms of Generalized Alignment (McCarthy and Prince 1993b), of the non-Optimality Theoretic end-based theory of prosodic structure determination (Selkirk 1986). The WRAP schema is argued by Truckenbrodt (1995, 1999) to be necessary to account for P-phrase construction in several languages.
(7) OT schemata for Prosodic Clitic Theory constraints a. NRC(p): a p-cat of level p doesn’t parse a p-cat of level p.
b. EXH(p, q): a p-cat of level p doesn’t parse a p-cat of level q, q < p–1.
c. WRAP(s, p): every s-cat of category s is contained in some p-cat of level p.
d. ALIGN(x, L/R, y, L/R): the left/right edge of every constituent of type x is aligned to the left/right edge of some constituent of type y.
Later on, Selkirk (2011) proposes a new version of constraints on the syntax-prosody mapping relation Match Theory, following Alignment Theory. In Selkirk's (2011: 451) original definition reproduced in (8), MATCH is actually not a new type of constraint, but simply two-sided Alignment.
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(8) Match Theory
a. MATCH(α,π) [= SP faithfulness]
The left and right edges of a constituent of type α in the input syntactic representation must correspond to the left and right edges of a constituent of type π in the output phonological representation.
b. MATCH(π,α) [= PS faithfulness]
The left and right edges of a constituent of type π in the output phonological representation must correspond to the left and right edges of a constituent of type α in the input syntactic representation.
This schemata of Match constraints has been revised at two dimensions, however. First, Elfner (2012: 28), in a move away from the gradient evaluation implied in the alignment-based conception of MATCH, proposes an all-or-nothing categorical version of MATCH-PHRASE given in (9). The subscript "T" indicates that the constraint is stated with reference to terminal nodes, which overcomes some problems with the version in (8).
(9) MATCH-PHRASE
Suppose there is a syntactic phrase (XP) in the syntactic representation that exhaustively dominates a set of one or more terminal nodes α. Assign one violation mark if there is no phonological phrase (ϕ) in the phonological representation that exhaustively dominates all and only the phonological exponents of the terminal nodes in α.
As a categorical constraint, this terminal-node-based version is easy to evaluate and is
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thus assumed in this dissertation.
The other revision is argued by Ito & Mester (2019). They point out that MATCH -constraints as in (8) or (9) create a serious redundancy within OT-phonology since the theory already contains not only the (semi-)equivalent edge Alignment constraints, but also a fully-worked-out subsystem of faithfulness constraints that militates against all conceivable kinds of input-output discrepancies, and syntax-prosody correspondence is just one kind of correspondence relation There is no need for MATCH constraints to duplicate their work. Accordingly, they suggest to replace the current conception of MATCH by a purely existential conception, and the constraints can thus be replaced by the familiar MAX/DEP constraints of General Correspondence Theory, as applied to the syntax-prosody relation. As such, SP: MAX/DEP constraints require nothing but the existence of a correspondent in the output, as defined in (10), whereas IDENT and other faithfulness constraints deal with detailed aspects of correspondence, together with the usual one-sided Alignment constraints.
(10) SP-Correspondence Constraints
Let S be an input syntactic representation and P its corresponding output phonological representation.
a. SP:MAX: A constituent of type α with phonological content in S corresponds to some constituent of type π in P.
b. PS:DEP: A constituent of type π in P corresponds to some constituent of type α in S.
This revised existential schemata is proved to be more precise and applicable, and thus it is also applied throughout this dissertation.
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