Phonological Theories Session 5

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Phonological TheoriesSession 5
Version SS 2006

• Prosodic Description in Linear and Non-linear
  Generative Phonology

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Prosodic description in linear and
non-linear phonology

• The Terms linear and non-linear were used for
  the segmental level of sound-structure
  description.
• The non-linear is is expressed in the different
  levels of the tree- structures while the linear
  segment string has no relation to any other level
  and each sound is an unstructured collection of
  features.
• Considering prosodic structuring to be a) the
  grouping of sound units into larger units (this
  can seen from the opposite side, i.e.
  separating groups of units from one another
  and be termed demarcation),b) the weighting of
  the units within the groups (stress or
  accent)c) the allocation of a communicative
  function to the larger units by means of
  melodic modulation (intonation) we can compare
  the SPE approach to prosody with later (AM)
  approaches.

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Prosodic Categories in SPE

• The only phonologically treated prosodic
  category was stress(in a general sense of
  abstract weighting).
• However it was dependent for the specification
  of degree of stress on the morpho-syntactic
  demarcation structure of the sentence.
• - lexical formatives and grammatical morphemes
  (including articles, prepositions, which are
  considered to be clitics) are separated by a
  boundary
• - together, these form word units (problem
  pronouns!)
• - word units are bounded by (also elements of
  compounds)
• All boundaries correspond to nodes on the
  syntactic tree, which are also represented in the
  bracketed representation .

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Structural basis of stress allocation

• Ich arbeite in der Eisenbahndirektion.

((Ich) ((arbeit(e)) (in(der(((Eisen)(bahn))(d
irektion))))))
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Practice in stress allocation

• Draw the NP-trees, derive the bracketing and
  determine the stresspattern of the following
  words (phrases)

Wettervorhersage
Landesuniversitätsgesetz
Donaudampfschifffahrtskapitän
Mädchen?handelsschule und ?Mädchenhandelsschule
?baseball bat Kensington ?High Street
Tottenham Court ?Road
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Problems with cyclical stress allocation

• This is the cat that killed the rat that stole
  the cheese. (SPE p. 372)

The prosodic phrasing for the sentence is
2 1 ? 2 1 ? 2
1 (This is the cat) (that killed the rat) (that
stole the cheese).
The stress allocation for the sentence derived
from the linear syntactic structure might be
2 ? 3 2 ? 4 3
1(This is)NP(the cat that killedNP(the rat
that stole NP(the cheese)NP)NP)NP
Creating rules for inserting prosodic phrase
boundaries into the linear syntactic string cant
work because the prosodic structure (although not
unconnected to syntactic constituents) cannot be
derived from the syntactic structure.
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The Strict Layer Hypothesis

• The sort of recursive hierarchy that is seen in
  syntactic structures like This is the cat
  that killed the rat that stole the cheese. are
  ruled out in prosody.

A hierarchical structure has been postulated in
post-linear phonologyin which one or more lower
order units are exhaustively contained within the
bounds of the next higher unit and are
co-extensive with them
A second aspect of the prosodic structure is
its relative indepen-dence of syntactic
structure. This is not the same as saying that
there is no link between them. The claim is that
syntactic information can only be accessed
indirectly and it is mediated by the phonological
constituent structure.
Any violations of the SLH and of the claim of
morpho-syntactic independence can be shown to
result from phonological adjustments made in the
lexicon.
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The SLH layers

• An utterance (U) can contain several intonation
  phrases (IPs), which can contain several
  phonological phrases (?s), which can contain
  several phonological words (?)

( ) U ( )( ) IP ( )( )( )( )(
) ? ( )( )( )( )( )( )( )( )( ) ?
Violation of SLH would be if .. a ? was not
dominated by a ? or was dominated by 2
?sViolation types can be classified as a)
non-exhaustivity, b) improperbracketing and c)
recursivity.
a) ( )3 b) ( )3 c) ( )2 (
)( )2 ( )1 ( x )( )1 ( )( x
y )( )1 ( )(x )1
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Some practice (or problems?)

• How are the following utterance divided into
  prosodic units (U, IP, ?, ?, F, ?) according to
  the SLH?

- When my ?grandmother was ?younger, she was
?quite a ?daredevil.
-- ?All over the ?world, people are ?asking the
reason ?why.
- Es hat ?selten einen ?Menschen gegeben, der
?niemals unter seinem ge?wissen gelitten hat.
- ?Kaum hat sie die Tür ?zugemacht, ?stürmte es
?heftiger, als sie es ?jemals er?lebt hatte.