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The Syntax–Prosody Interface
A cartographic perspective with evidence from Italian
This book presents an experimental and theoretical investigation of the interplay between information structure, word order alternations, and prosody in Italian. Left/right dislocations, focus fronting, and other reordering phenomena are analyzed, taking into account their morphosyntactic and prosodic properties. It is argued that a restricted set of discourse-related properties are inserted in the numeration as formal features. These discourse-related features drive the syntactic derivation and the formation of the prosodic representation in compliance with the T-model of grammar. Based on the cartographic approach, this study proposes a model of the syntax–prosody interface in which the phonological computation of prosody is fed by syntactically encoded properties of information structure. However, this computation is also governed by structural requirements intrinsic to the phonological domain, and thus, a bijective relation between information structure and prosodic representation is not guaranteed. The monograph will be of interest to any linguist concerned with syntax, information structure, and prosody.
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 204] 2013. ix, 213 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 26 July 2013
Published online on 26 July 2013
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments | pp. ix–9
- Introduction | pp. 1–4
- 1. The cartographic approach and the left periphery of the clause in Italian | pp. 5–26
- 2. The right periphery of the clause | pp. 27–51
- 3. Crosslinguistic variation: Uniqueness versus multiplicity of focus | pp. 53–74
- 4. Focus on subjects in preverbal position | pp. 75–90
- 5. Focus on Topics: The strange case of Contrastively Focused Left Dislocated Topics | pp. 91–109
- 6. From syntax to prosody | pp. 111–191
- Index | pp. 209–213
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