"Though centered on Italian, cross-linguistic analysis is extensively provided: data from languages as diverse as English, Hungarian, Modern Greek, Hausa, Chichewa, Serbo-Croatian and Somali are used to show that despite surface variations, the interface interpretation of Focus and Topic lies in the interaction between base-generated extraposition and feature-checking." "This book targets scholars and researchers in linguistics who are interested in syntactic and/or phonological analysis of discourse-related categories within the Minimalist approach."--BOOK JACKET.

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book centers on theoretical issues of phonology-syntax interface based on tone sandhi in Chinese dialects. It uses patterns in tone sandhi to study how speech should be divided into domains of various sizes or levels. Tone sandhi refers to tonal changes that occur to a sequence of adjacent syllables or words. The size of this sequence (or the domain) is determined by various factors, in particular the syntactic structure of the words and the original tones of the words. Chinese dialects offer a rich body of data on tone sandhi, and hence great evidence for examining the phonology-syntax interface, and for examining the resulting levels of domains (the prosodic hierarchy). Syntax-Phonology Interface: Argumentation from Tone Sandhi in Chinese Dialects is an extremely valuable text for graduate students and scholars in the fields of linguistics and Chinese.

Displacement is a fundamental property of grammar. Typically, when an occurrence moves it is pronounced in only one environment. This was previously viewed as a primitive/irreducible property of grammar. Recent work, however, suggests that it follows from principled interactions between the syntactic and phonological components of grammar. As such, the phonetic character of movement chains can be seen as both a reflection of and probe into the syntax-phonology interface. This volume deals with repetition, an atypical outcome of movement operations in which displaced elements are pronounced multiple times. Although cross-linguistically rare, the phenomenon obtains robustly in Nupe, a Benue-Congo language of Nigeria. Repetition raises a tension of the descriptive-explanatory variety. In order to achieve both measures of adequacy, movement theory must be supplemented with an account of the conditions that drive and constrain multiple pronunciation. This book catalogs these conditions, bringing to light a number of undocumented aspects of Nupe grammar.

This thesis deals with what happens (or does not happen) at the interface of syntax and phonology. As this is a rather broad concept to tackle in a single thesis, the focus is on what is known in the literature as the Principle of Phonology-Free Syntax (PPFS). The main research questions of this thesis are 1) What does the interface of phonology and syntax look like? That is, should phonology be allowed to refer directly to syntax, or should an intermediate level of representation be assumed?; 2) Does phonological influence on syntax exist, and if so, to what extent does this happen?; and 3) What is the result of the outcome of questions 1 and 2 in terms of the position of phonology in grammar? The thesis is divided into three parts that each attempt to answer one of these questions. The answers to the research questions have significant consequences for how phonology is represented in the various models of Language. As such, this thesis is a contribution to the discussion about the deceptively simple question 'What is phonology?'.

The theoretical domain of investigation of this volume is the nature of the syntax-phonology interface. The empirical domain of investigation is cliticization in South Slavic. The central theoretical questions are how syntax and phonology interact and whether PF can affect word order.

This book proposes a new spell-out-based approach coached within the framework of Chomsky (2000, 2001). It defines a new spell-out mechanism that can handle existing cross-linguistic variations in what is spelled-out (and defined as a p-phrase) within a more integrated approach. Based on this spell-out-based approach, a new constraint-based system is developed translating (many of) the ways syntactic structures can be defined (mapped) onto phonological form into new OT constraints. The main assumption in this book is that phase heads belong to their spell-out domains (contra Chomsky, 2001 and subsequent work) and can regulate the spell-out process by deciding both the kind of spell-out applying and the timing of spell-out relevant. Moreover, this book introduces two new assumptions. The first assumption is that some kinds of phase heads can, in the case PIC2 is in effect, result in hindering, rather than initiating, spell-out on a previous phase, and the second is that some forms of XP movement are not motivated by an EPP feature of a strong phase head mainly v* but they are rather motivated by a last resort strategy to accomplish a spell-out instruction of this strong phase head.

This book reviews the history of the interface between morpho-syntax and phonology roughly since World War II. Structuralist and generative interface thinking is presented chronologically, but also theory by theory from the point of view of a historically interested observer who however in the last third of the book distills lessons in order to assess present-day interface theories, and to establish a catalogue of properties that a correct interface theory should or must not have. The book also introduces modularity, the rationalist theory of the (human) cognitive system that underlies the generative approach to language, from a Cognitive Science perspective. Modularity is used as a referee for interface theories in the book. Finally, the book locates the interface debate in the landscape of current minimalist syntax and phase theory and fosters intermodular argumentation: how can we use properties of morpho-syntactic theory in order to argue for or against competing theories of phonology (and vice-versa)?

In this book leading scholars address the issues surrounding the syntax-phonology interface. These principally concern whether the phonological component can influence syntax and if so how far and in what ways: such questions are a prominent component of current work on the biolinguistics of speech production and reception. The problematic relationship between syntax and phonology has long piqued the interest of syntacticians and phonologists: the connections between sound and structure have played a key role in generative grammar from its inception, initially relating to focus and the prosodic marking of constituent structure and more recently to word-order constraints. This book advances this work in a series of critical and interlinked presentations of the latest thinking and research. In doing so it draws on data from a wide range of languages, evidence from disordered language, and related work in language acquisition.