7KHVRXQGSDWWHUQVRIV\QWD[ UHYLHZ Nicole Dehé
Language, Volume 88, Number 1, March 2012, pp. 197-199 (Article)
Published by Linguistic Society of America DOI: 10.1353/lan.2012.0001
For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/lan/summary/v088/88.1.dehe.html
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The sound patterns of syntax. Ed. by NOMI ERTESCHIK-SHIR and LISA ROCHMAN. (Oxford studies in theoretical linguistics.) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Pp. xi, 385. ISBN 9780199556878. $49.95. Reviewed by NICOLE DEHÉ, University of Konstanz
This collection of papers is based on a workshop organized by the volume editors and inspired by their own work on ‘phonological effects on word order’ (1), which led them to the conclusion that prosodic properties, along with aspects of information structure, may determine word order in certain languages. This finding raises ‘serious architectural questions’ (1), including the question of whether and how information structure (IS), which potentially affects both syntax and phonology, fits into the architecture of the grammar. That this topic is of high interest in current linguistic theory is also reflected in the growing number of workshops and special journal issues dealing with the syntax/prosody/information structure interface. Including a short introduction by the editors, the book contains sixteen contributions, covering a wide range of languages, phenomena, and research topics. While the table of contents simply lists the individual chapters but suggests no particular organization, the introduction (Ch. 1) reveals that the fifteen original contributions are organized as follows. Chs. 2–9 ‘deal with word-order phenomena’ (2): they are ‘Adjunction and 3D phrase structure’ by TOR A. ÅFARLI; ‘The phonology of adverb placement, object shift, and V2: The case of Danish “MON” ’ by NOMI ERTESCHIK-SHIR; ‘Is free postverbal order in Hungarian a syntactic or a PF phenomenon?’ by KATALIN É. KISS; ‘Why float? Floating quantifiers and focus marking’ by LISA ROCHMAN; ‘Prosodic prominence: A syntactic matter?’ by JOÃO COSTA; ‘On the mechanics of Spell-Out’ by STEVEN FRANKS; ‘Semantic and discourse interpretation of the Japanese left periphery’ by MAMORU SAITO; and ‘Rhythmic patterns cue word order’ by MOHINISH SHUKLA and MARINA NESPOR. Chs. 10–15 ‘deal with various prosodic issues’ (2): ‘Object clauses, movement, and phrasal stress’ by HUBERT TRUCKENBRODT and ISABELLE DARCY; ‘Optimality theory and the theory of phonological phrasing: The Chimwiini evidence’ by CHARLES W. KISSEBERTH; ‘Functional complementarity is only skin-deep: Evidence from Egyptian Arabic for the autonomy of syntax and phonology in the expression of focus’ by SAM HELLMUTH; ‘Syntax, information structure, embedded prosodic phrasing, and the relational scaling of pitch accents’ by CAROLINE FÉRY; ‘Deconstructing the nuclear stress algorithm: Evidence from second language speech’ by EMILY NAVA and MARIA LUISA ZUBIZARRETA; and ‘Focus as a grammatical notion: A case study in autism’ by KRISZTA SZENDRŐI. Ch. 16, ‘Intermodular argumentation: Morpheme-specific phonologies are out of business in a phase-based architecture’ by TOBIAS SCHEER, provides ‘evidence from word stress for an intermodular grammar’ (2). The introduction touches on two previous approaches to the syntax-phonology interface (1–2), which represent two extreme views: Bobaljik’s (2002) copy theory of movement, a solely syntactic account, and Erteschik-Shir’s (2005a,b) radically phonological approach to word order. Both views are represented by contributions to the volume. In the remainder of the introduction, the editors confine themselves to paragraph-long summaries of the content of each paper. There is no state-of-the art introduction to the topic(s) of the volume or a general overview of the major theoretical insights. The book is heterogeneous in many respects. Most papers offer new insights into familiar empirical phenomena and research topics. These topics include the construction of phonological phrases (e.g. the chapter by Kisseberth on phrasing in Chimwiini, 217–46), approaches to scrambling in different languages, such as Japanese A- and A′-scrambling (cf. the paper by Saito, 140–73), Hungarian postverbal constituent order (cf. the paper by É. Kiss, 53–71), and aspects of nuclear stress (Naval and Zubizarreta’s contribution (291–316) offering second language (L2) evidence). Szendrői’s chapter (317–32) is innovative in that it uses an autistic person in its experimental setting, which is designed to address the question of whether focus is a linguistic (language-specific, grammatical) concept or an extralinguistic communicative tool. The idea is that to an autistic person, the ‘theory of mind’, which is ‘necessary to interpret, explain, and to some extent foresee complex human behaviour’ (332f.), is not available. If the identification and mark-
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ing of focus involve a deductive process (as would follow from the extralinguistic approach), the autistic person will experience problems with the experimental task. That this is not the case is considered suggestive of an approach to focus as a language-specific rule, a grammatical concept rather than a merely communicative tool. While one participant is not enough to draw strong conclusions, particularly since autism is a heterogeneous syndrome (331), the study makes an innovative contribution to the growing number of studies that explore new psycholinguistic methods in theoretical linguistics. Throughout the volume, methodologies also vary, ranging from purely theoretical discussions (e.g. the chapters by Åfarli, Franks, Saito, and Scheer) to solid empirical research and carefully designed and conducted experiments. Examples of empirical/experimental research include the chapter by Szendrői discussed above, as well as, for example, the chapters by Truckenbrodt and Darcy (174–88) and by Hellmuth (247–70). Truckenbrodt and Darcy use a carefully controlled perception and production (reading) study to address the question of whether syntactically extraposed object clauses have the same effect on the stress pattern in the matrix clause as DP-object arguments, namely exemption of the verb from being stressed. They find that this is not the case, but they are careful to generalize their results to stress reconstruction of extraposition in general. Based on evidence from other sources, they speculate about a more complex relation between syntactic structure and prosodic reflexes such as stress. Hellmuth’s paper uses new evidence from syntactic and prosodic strategies found in a corpus of semi-spontaneous Egyptian Arabic speech data to argue against the functional complementarity between syntax and phonology in the encoding of IS categories and in favor of a component-internal approach to IS-marking strategies. In her corpus, she finds overlap of syntactic and prosodic strategies in the expression of focus (against the complementarity hypothesis) but no such overlap in the expression of thetics (in line with the complementarity hypothesis). Like the methodologies, the conclusions about the architecture of the syntax-phonology interface are varied. While some chapters advocate a radical phonological approach to word-order phenomena (e.g. contributions by É. Kiss and by Erteschik-Shir), other authors maintain a phonologyfree syntax, for example, Costa in his contribution (93–109). Costa challenges the idea of prosodically motivated movement in the syntactic component (Zubizarreta 1998) and argues in favor of a model in which the syntactic component generates multiple outputs. Postsyntactic filters operate on these outputs to select the felicitous candidate. Specifically, the output of the syntactic component is sent to PF, where phonological rules such as stress assignment apply; the interface with discourse then selects the candidate that has stress in the intended position. If none is available, last-resort options such as stress shift apply. Costa’s architecture of the grammar follows models where the IS component communicates with prosodic and semantic components. Saito’s contribution (140–73) is a radically syntactic approach located at the syntax-meaning interface rather than the syntax-phonology interface. As for the place of IS within the architecture of the grammar, Hellmuth argues against a separate IS module and in favor of IS expressions as the result of the interaction of the other components of the grammar. Some chapters, especially contributions supporting the phonological approach to word order, would in my view have benefited from more (and more conclusive) phonological/prosodic evidence or references to prosodic literature in the field. For example, É. Kiss (53–71) offers a new account of postverbal free word order in Hungarian. Her main insight is that certain data, which have previously been considered a syntactic phenomenon, cannot be accounted for in the syntactic component of the grammar, and that scrambling ‘must be a PF operation’ (71). However, there is no direct evidence for free word order as a PF phenomenon other than the conclusion that syntax cannot account for it. This is reminiscent of what Burton-Roberts and Poole (2006:563) refer to as phonology as a ‘wastepaper basket for syntax’. Moreover, certain key assumptions of É. Kiss’s analysis would have been stronger if supported by prosodic evidence or by references to prosodic research in Hungarian. She assumes, for instance, that a postverbal NP and its PP complement (e.g. the meeting with his old girlfriend) form separate phonological phrases (68, 69) even if not particularly complex. She further assumes that an ‘infinitive phrase … does not represent a separate intonation phrase [but] is integrated into the matrix intonation phrase’ (70). And finally, the analysis relies on nonrecursivity of prosodic structure, a principle that is not uncontroversial and has been argued to be untenable in much recent work, including work in this volume (Kisseberth).
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Erteschik-Shir argues in her contribution (33–52) that V2 and the surface behavior of MON, a Danish illocutionary particle, are best explained along the lines of syntactic invisibility and linearization as a purely phonological process. Despite Danish being a V2 language, MON occurs sentence-initially without subclause word order. Erteschik-Shir’s argumentation is based in part on the syntactic and prosodic behavior of parentheticals such as English I think. One important claim is the ungrammaticality of sentences such as *Peter smokes, I think, cigars (ex. 30d), that is, the position of I think between a matrix verb and its complement. These examples, however, occur frequently in natural spoken language. (1) So the thing really is to identify I think the areas of interest for you …
(ICE-GB: s1a-066 #45)
(2) And we’re going to see I think the introduction after just twelve minutes of Alan MacCarthy into the side (ICE-GB: s2a-003 #88)
Erteschik-Shir also assumes that parentheticals ‘form independent phonological phrases’ (43). While this is true in many cases, in spoken language short parentheticals such as I think are frequently prosodically integrated rather than independent (Dehé 2009 and references given there), and prosodic characteristics serve pragmatic functions. The prosodic analysis of the positioning of internal MON is another case in point. The ungrammaticality of *MON hvem kommer (ex. 41) is explained along the lines of the prosodic weakness of the WH-pronoun hvem, which prevents it from acting as a host for MON. At the same time, Mon han ryger cigarer (ex. 45b) is grammatical. Why the prosodic weakness of a WH-pronoun but not that of a personal pronoun prevents it from acting as a host for MON remains unclear. Furthermore, if MON can act as a host for han (as assumed for 45b), why can it not act as a host for hvem? In short, while these papers argue for a phonological account of certain word-order effects, making implications for the architecture of the grammar, the prosodic evidence is inconclusive, thus in my view weakening the general theoretical point. Unfortunately, the volume also contains editorial flaws, which are unexpected, especially in a series such as ‘Oxford studies in theoretical linguistics’. Some weaknesses affect the readability of individual papers and hamper the argumentation. The sentence pairs in exx. 28 and 29 (42), for instance, aim at showing that the omission of specific syntactic material leads to ungrammaticality in one syntactic environment (ex. 28) but not in another (ex. 29). Example 28a is identical to 28b, however, except that 28b is starred while 28a is not, and 29a is completely identical to 29b. In the discussion of ex. 44b (47), an object pronoun is referred to as a subject pronoun. The reference to ex. 53b (50) should be to 54b. Overall, as promised by the cover text, ‘[i]n this book leading scholars address the issues surrounding the syntax-phonology interface’. The issues addressed are not exhaustive, but they are manifold, and like in so many volumes based on workshops, the chapters vary in quality and originality.
REFERENCES
BOBALJIK, JONATHAN D. 2002. A-chains at the PF interface: Copies and ‘covert’ movement. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 20.197–267. BURTON-ROBERTS, NOEL, and GEOFFREY POOLE. 2006. Syntax vs. phonology: A representational approach to stylistic fronting and verb-second in Icelandic. Lingua 116.562–600. DEHÉ, NICOLE. 2009. Clausal parentheticals, intonational phrasing, and prosodic theory. Journal of Linguistics 45.569–615. ERTESCHIK-SHIR, NOMI. 2005a. The sound patterns of syntax: The case of object shift. Theoretical Linguistics 31.47–94. ERTESCHIK-SHIR, NOMI. 2005b. What is syntax? Theoretical Linguistics 31.263–74. ZUBIZARRETA, MARIA L. 1998. Prosody, focus, and word order. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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