"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.

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?'.

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 volume is a collection of advanced laboratory phonology research papers concerned with the interaction between the physical and the mental aspects of speech and language. The traditional linguistic theoretic distinction between phonetics and phonology is put to the test here in a series of articles that deal with some of the fundamental issues in the field, from first and second language acquisition to segmental and supra-segmental phenomena in a range of different languages. Unique features of this volume are the development of innovative experimental methodologies, advanced techniques of data analysis, latest-generation equipment for the observation of speech, and their combined critical application to the study of the phonetics-phonology interface. The volume is therefore not only of great interest but of outstanding value and importance to anyone who wishes to be completely apprised of the latest advances in this crucial area of phonological research.

Following up on the Guide to Morphosyntax-Phonology Interface Theories (2011), written from a theory-neutral point of view, this book lays out the author’s approach to the representational side of the interface. The book is thus about how information is transmitted to phonology when an object is inserted into phonological representations (as opposed to the derivational means, i.e. phase theory today). The idea of Direct Interface is that diacritics such as hash-marks in SPE or prosodic constituency since the early 80s, which mediate between morpho-syntax and phonology, are illegal in a modular environment where computational systems can only process domain-specific vocabulary. Direct Interface instead holds that only truly phonological vocabulary can carry morpho-syntactic information. It is shown that of all representational objects only syllabic space qualifies. Couched in CVCV (or strict CV), i.e. Government Phonology, this insight is then applied in detailed case studies of Belarusian, Corsican, Greek and the exhaustive lexical inventory of sonorant-obstruent-initial words in 13 Slavic languages,. In this sense, the book is the 2nd volume of A Lateral Theory of Phonology (2004).

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)?

This book explores theoretical issues of the syntax-phonology interface within the Minimalist Program of linguistic theory and proposes an entirely new approach to prosodic categories. Conceptual as well as empirical questions are addressed, concerning how syntactic objects are mapped to the sensorimotor system through the processes of externalization. Elaborating on recent progress in the theories of labelling and workspace-based syntactic derivation, this book further develops a null theory of the prosodic domains, and recasts these as the domains of interpretation that are reducible to more fundamental concepts of linguistic theory. Phonological phrases are characterized by Minimal Search, a third factor principle of efficient computation. Intonational phrases are taken to be reflexes of the termination of syntactic derivation, which is formulated in terms of the workspace to which MERGE applies. This book explores the new implications this theory has for the general architecture of grammar as well as for linguistic interfaces. It provides a comprehensive review of the development of theories of the syntax-phonology interface from over the past three decades. The book is well-suited for general linguistic readers as well as phonologists, syntacticians, and any linguist interested in interface research.

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.