10.15160/1826-803X/625
Questo articolo contiene la prima proposta di Nespor e Vogel riguardo alla fonologia prosodica della frase, una delle prime proposte teoriche sull'interfaccia tra sintassi e fonologia. I costituenti cui viene dato particolare rilievo sono il sintagma fonologico e il sintagma intonativo, ambedue motivati in base a fenomeni della fonologia frasale dell'italiano: il raddoppiamento sintattico, la ritrazione d'accento e la gorgia toscana. Questi fenomeni sono usati per definire il dominio dei costituenti prosodici. Vengono inoltre proposte delle regole per definire le prominenze relative al loro interno. Le proposte elaborate in questo articolo sono poi state in riprese nel principale lavoro delle autrici: il libro Prosodic Phonology del 1986, che verrà a breve ripubblicato.
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Marina Nespor, Irene Vogel
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Marina Nespor, Irene Vogel
2007
10.15160/1826-803X/625
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<i>Prosodic Domains of External Sandhi Rules</i>
https://annali.unife.it/lettere/article/download/625/550
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere
Vol. 1 (2007) 14/53

                                        MARINA NESPOR AND IRENE VOGEL


                            Foreword to Prosodic Domains and External Sandhi Rules


         The present paper was first published 25 years ago, having appeared in 1982 in The
Structure of Phonological Representations, edited by H. van der Hulst and N. Smith, now out of
print.

         Why do we consider it worthwhile to republish it? Because, as we all know, articles in
books are not read as much as articles in journals, and we think that this paper contains some
ideas (later expanded in Nespor – Vogel [1986], to be republished in 2007) that still inspire
work that is being carried out today.
          One area in which work has continued regards the Phonological Phrase. In particular,
much work has followed from claims about the structure of this domain and relative prominence
within it, as well as the relation between this domain and the distinction between right and left
branching languages. With the exception of one Chinese dialect in which, apparently our
generalization does not hold (Selkirk – Shen [1990]), no counterexamples have been proposed
in any of the languages examined in the framework of Prosodic Phonology (various papers by
Hayes, Itô and Mester, Truckenbrodt, Inkelas, Zec, Booij, Peperkamp, Frota, Vigario, Odden,
Kabak, among many others, as well as our own work).
          The different phonology reflecting word order in syntax has thus been proposed to be of
crucial importance for the acquisition of word order in infancy. If in fact word order could be
acquired through prosody, its acquisition may happen before infants have segmented the speech
stream and discovered the meaning of words. This would account for the fact that when, at
around 20 months of age, children start combining two words, they do not make mistakes in
their relative order (Brown [1973]; Bloom [1970]; Meisel [1992]; Clahsen – Eisenbeiss [1993];
Pinker [1994]), and even before then, they appear to use knowledge about word order in
comprehension (Hirsh-Pasek – Golinkoff [1996]).
          For example, in Nespor – Guasti – Christophe (1996) it is proposed that word order
could be acquired on the basis of the location of prominence within Phonological phrases. In
Christophe – Nespor – Guasti – van Ooyen (2003), it is shown that 6-12 weeks old infants
discriminate Turkish (head final) from French (head initial) solely on the basis of prosody.
Hofmann – Höhle –Weissenborn (2003) show that 14-month-old infants, prefer head final to
head initial structures, reflecting their first productions. Bion – Höhle – Schmitz (submitted)
propose that 14-month-old infants discriminate verb-noun from noun-verb sequences on the
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                     M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 15/53

basis of both prosody and morphological markers.
          Another area that has continued to receive a great deal of attention is the nature of the
Intonational Phrase. Much attention has been devoted to the nature of the relationship between
syntax/semantics and prosodic structure (cf. among others Ladd [1986; 1996]; Steedman [1991];
Croft [1995]). While the Intonational Phrase was originally proposed in the present work as a
domain for the application of phonological rules, it subsequently became identified as the
domain over which intonation contours are spread (e.g. Nespor – Vogel [1986]). It is
particularly with regard to the intonation contours that the interest in this domain expanded.


                                                                   Marina Nespor and Irene Vogel
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                    M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 16/53

References


Bloom, L. (1970) Language development: Form and function in emerging grammars.
Cambridge. MIT Press.


Brown, R. (1973) A first language. Cambridge. Harvard University Press.


Christophe, A., Nespor, M., Dupoux, E., Guasti, M.-T., Ooyen, B. v. (2003) Reflexions on
prosodic bootstrapping: its role for lexical and syntactic acquisition. In Developmental Science.
6/2. 213-22.


Croft, W. (1995) Intonation units and grammatical structure. In Linguistics. 33. 839-82.


Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, R.M. (1996) The origins of grammar: evidence from early language
comprehension. Cambridge Mass. MIT Press.


Hofmann, M., Höhle, B., Weissenborn, J. (2003) The prosody-syntax interface in the acquisition
of word order in German. Ms.


Hoffmann Bion, R., Höhle, B., Schmitz, M. (2007) The role of prosody on the perception of
word order differences by 14-month-old German infants. To appear in Proceedings of the 16th
International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Saarbrücken.


Hulst, H. v.d., Smith, N. (eds.) The Structure of Phonological Representations. Dordrecht. Foris.


Jackendoff, R., Pinker, S. (2005a) The faculty of language: What’s special about it? In
Cognition. 95. 201-36.


Jackendoff, R., Pinker, S. (2005b) The nature of the language faculty and its implications for the
evolution of language (reply to Fitch, Hauser, and Chomsky). In Cognition. 97. 211-25.


Ladd, R. (1986) Intonational phrasing: the case for recursive prosodic structure. In Phonology
Yearbook. 3. 311-40.
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                    M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 17/53

Ladd, R. (1996) Intonational Phonology. Cambridge. University Press.


Meisel, J.M. (ed.) (1992) The Acquisition of Verb Placement. Functional Categories and V2
Phenomena in Language Acquisition. Dordrecht. Kluwer Academic Press.


Nespor, M., Guasti, M.T., Christophe, A. (1996) Selecting word order: the Rhythmic Activation
Principle. In Kleinhenz, U. (ed.), Interfaces in Phonology. Berlin. Akademie Verlag. 1-26.


Nespor, M., Vogel, I. (1986) Prosodic Phonology. Dordrecht. Foris. (To be reprinted in 2007
Berlin. De Gruyter).


Pinker, S. (1994) The Language Instinct. London. Penguin Books.


Selkirk, E.O. (1984) Phonology and Syntax: the Relation between Sound and Structure.
Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press.


Selkirk, E., Shen, T. (1990) Prosodic domains in Shanghai Chinese. In Inkelas, S., Zec, D. (eds.)
The Phonology-syntax Connection. Chicago, London. University of Chicago Press.


Steedman, M. (1991) Structure and intonation. In Language. 67. 260-96.


Truckenbrodt, H. (1999) On the Relation between Syntactic Phrases and Phonological Phrases.
In Linguistic Inquiry. 30. 219-55.


Vogel, I. (to appear) Universals of Prosodic Constituents. In Scalise, S., Bisetto, A. (eds.) With
more than chance frequency. Forty years of Universals of Language. Amsterdam. Springer.
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                                   M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 18/53

                                     Prosodic Domains of External Sandhi Rules*


        1. Introduction

        The organization of the phonological component of a generative grammar has changed
considerably since the proposal made in The Sound Pattern of English (SPE) (Chomsky – Halle
[1968]). According to SPE, phonological rules apply to the linear surface structure of a sentence,
that is, to the output of the syntactic rules. The phonological and syntactic components of the
grammar were thus seen as independent from each other; the phonological rules were blind to
syntactic structure. At most, phonological rules could make reference to boundaries in their input
strings (cf. Selkirk [1972]; [1974]).
        Napoli and Nespor (1979)1 have shown, however, on the basis of an external sandhi rule in
Italian, raddoppiamento sintattico (RS), that there is a much closer relationship between syntax and
phonology. Specifically, the facts of RS cannot be accounted for merely in terms of boundaries, but
rather seem to reflect syntactic information to a larger extent. That is, phonological rules must be
able to distinguish between right and left branches in a syntactic tree. Similarly, Clements (1978)
has argued that tone sandhi rules in Ewe cannot be handled by making reference only to boundaries
between terminal elements, but rather depend crucially on such notions as left branch, right branch
and nonpreterminal node. In these works, while the relation between the syntax and the phonology
is viewed in a new light, the traditional view of the hierarchical organization of syntax as opposed
to the non-hierarchical representation of the phonology is maintained.
        The theory put forth by Liberman (1975) and Liberman and Prince (1977) introduced another
significant modification in the organization of phonology. According to their metrical theory,
certain (prosodic) aspects of phonology, such as English word and phrase stress, «are not to be
referred primarily to the properties of individual segments (or syllables), but rather reflect a
hierarchical rhythmic structuring that organizes the syllables, words, and syntactic phrases of a
sentence» (ibid. 249). This hierarchical structure consists of binary branching trees, and it is to the
constituents of such trees that relative prominence is assigned by projection rules. Linguistic rhythm
is then seen «in terms of the alignment of linguistic material with a “metrical grid”» (ibid.).
Vergnaud and Halle (1978) extend Liberman and Prince’s proposal, which was based exclusively
on English, to an analysis of the stress systems of several languages.

*
  We would like to thank Jan Edelman, Yukj Kuroda, Anneke Neijt, Donna Jo Napoli, Mauro Scorretti and Milos
Stejskal far their helpful suggestions and criticisms. We would also like to thank all of the people who helped us with
their intuitions about their native language and in particular Bernard Bichakjian, Emanuela Cresti, Enzo Lo Cascio,
Anita de Meijer Concas, Massimo Moneglia and Yuri Okabe. Finally, we are grateful to the many speakers of Italian
who spent a lot of time talking into a tape recorder.
1
  NAPOLI – N ESPOR (1979) was originally written and circulated as a manuscript in 1976.
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                       M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 19/53

        They claim that the languages of the world may differ in choosing between the two types of
directional trees and the two labelling conventions made available by universal grammar, though
they explicitly state that each level of metrical structure consists of uniformly right or left branching
trees. What this amounts to is that there are two independent parameters in the stress component,
one that establishes the geometry of the tree (right or left branching) and one that establishes the
relative prominence of the nodes, that is, their labelling. In a discussion of this proposal, Wheeler
(1981) points out that such a system predicts the existence of stress patterns that do not exist in
natural languages. To restrict the proposal so that it will not systematically produce patterns that do
not exist, Wheeler provides a constraint called the Branching and Prominence Constraint that
establishes a correlation between the geometry of the trees and the labelling of their nodes.
According to this constraint, right branching trees are labelled w s (weak / strong) and left
branching trees s w, independently of whether or not their nodes branch.
        While the proposals of Liberman and Prince and of Vergnaud and Halle differ from previous
ones in that they introduce a hierarchical structure in the phonology, the relationship between the
branching structure of the phonology above the word level and that of the syntax is not clear.
Selkirk (1978; 1980a), on the other hand, in addition to accepting the proposal that not only
syntactic, but also phonological representations are hierarchical in nature, actually formulates
explicit rules for building the phonological categories above the word level. She demonstrates,
further more, that certain phonological rules make crucial use of these categories. Thus, while some
phonological rules may make reference to labelled bracketings, others make reference to a distinct
prosodic structure which includes the following categories: syllable, foot, prosodic word,
phonological phrase and utterance. Selkirk points out that, while prosodic and syntactic constituents
are not isomorphic, a mapping between the syntactic and prosodic structures can and must be
defined, since the prosodic structure reflects syntactic structure in certain ways. The fact that the
hierarchical prosodic structure makes use of syntactic information but is not necessarily isomorphic
to syntactic structure, is not surprising in that it parallels the situation below the word level, where
the phonological and morphosyntactic structures do not necessarily coincide. The mapping
conventions Selkirk provides, however, are based solely on English. In this paper, we will
investigate further the relation between syntax and prosodic phonology by examining a number of
phonological phenomena in Italian and other languages. We propose a series of mapping
conventions for Italian which we will then argue are sufficiently general to be able to account for
any X-bar type language once the values of certain syntactic parameters have been assigned. Thus
we find an illustration of the interpretive role of the phonological component in the sense that the
phonology makes use of certain syntactic parameters. That is, at least some aspects of the prosodic
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                       M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 20/53

structures found in the languages of the world can be seen as dependent variables, whose value is
automatically assigned once the values of certain independent variables (parameters) of the syntax
are known.

         2. Prosodic structure of Italian

         In this section, we will present our analysis of the prosodic structure of Italian based on two
suprasegmental phenomena, raddoppiamento sintattico (RS) and intonation contours, and show how
this structure allows us to account for additional prosodic phenomena of the language, specifically
stress retraction (SR) and the Gorgia Toscana (GT). Since we are particularly interested in the
relationship between phonology and syntax, we will limit ourselves to the discussion of prosodic
units larger than the word, and thus to those rules that apply above the word level, external sandhi
rules, even though we recognize that there is also hierarchical prosodic structure below the word
level.

         2.1. The phonological phrase: raddoppiamento sintattico


         We will begin by considering what is probably the best known external sandhi rule of Italian:
raddoppiamento sintattico, the rule which accounts for the lengthening of the initial consonant of
word2 in a sequence wordl word2, under certain phonological and syntactic conditions (e.g. parla
[b]ene  parla[b:]ene, ‘he spoke well’). While RS is found in all varieties of Central and Southern
Italian, the environments for its application vary from region to region. We will restrict our
attention here to the Tuscan variety of Italian as spoken in Florence. The phonological conditions
for RS in this type of Italian are that wordl must end in a stressed vowel and word2 must begin with
a consonant, optionally followed by a liquid or glide, and by a vowel (cf. Vogel [1978]).
         While it is clear that RS does not apply between just any two words, predicting exactly where
it can occur is a problem which has puzzled scholars of Italian linguistics for years (cf. Camilli
[1941]; Fiorelli [1958]; Pratelli [1971], among others). The problem is, in fact, quite complicated
since it is not sufficient to know which two words are involved, but it is necessary to know what
relationship exists between them. For example, RS occurs between the words perché ‘why’ and
Carlo in sentence (1a) but not in (1 db).

         (1)        a.        Perché [k:] arlo non è ancora arrivato?
                              ‘Why has Carlo not arrived yet?’
                    b.        Che c’è un perché [k]arlo lo sa.
                              ‘That there is a reason is known to Carlo.’
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                                      M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 21/53



        As we mentioned above, Napoli and Nespor (1979) have, in fact, shown that without
reference to syntax, specifically constituent structure, it is not possible to specify the environments
for RS. For example, in a sentence such as

        (2)         Devi comprare delle mappe di città vecchie.
                    a.        ‘You must buy some old maps of cities.’
                    b.        ‘You must buy some maps of old cities.’

which can have two meanings corresponding to two different syntactic structures, RS can occur to
lengthen the initial consonant of vecchie only in the second meaning, that is, only when vecchie is a
complement of città; it cannot occur when vecchie is a complement of mappe. While Napoli and
Nespor’s analysis defines those contexts in which RS is allowed, it is incapable of expressing
precisely where RS actually occurs. In addition to the syntactic structure, it seemed that the length
of the constituents involved, might somehow influence the occurrence of RS, although there was
then2 no part of the grammar that could distinguish between constituents of different lengths. The
most recent developments in phonological theory mentioned above, however, suggest that these
differences might not be merely a question of length but rather of how constituents of different
lengths are organized into prosodic structures.
        Data we have gathered on RS3 have led us to establish the first prosodic category above the
word level, the phonological phrase (ø). That is, ø delimits the domain for the obligatory application
of RS; outside of ø RS is prohibited. While ø’s do not necessarily correspond to syntactic
constituents, syntactic information is needed for their construction. In (3) the rules are given for
mapping syntactic structure onto the prosodic constituent ø.

        (3)         a. ø construction.
                    Join into a ø any lexical head (X) with all items on its non recursive side4 within the
                    maximal projection and with any other non lexical items on the same side (e.g.
                    prepositions, complementizers, conjunctions, copulas...).
                    b. ø constituency.
                    ø branches in the same direction as the syntactic trees.



2
  See footnote 1.
3
  The data consist of tape recordings and oscilloscopic measurements of sentences containing contexts for SR spoken by
six speakers of standard Italian in Rome, six in Palermo, and five in Florence. The data were gathered as part of a larger
project supported in part by the Faculty of Letters of the University of Amsterdam.
4
  By non-recursive side, we mean the side opposite the recursive side.
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                         M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 22/53

          Since Italian is right branching, ø’s are also right branching. Furthermore, assuming
Wheeler’s proposal that the direction of branching determines the labels of the nodes, each pair of
sister nodes is labelled w s.
          It should be noted that the only items that are considered lexical heads in ø construction are N,
V and A. Why P does not belong to this group is not entirely clear, since, in some syntactic analyses
P is, in fact, considered a lexical category (cf. van Riemsdijk [1978]). It is worth noting, however,
that in SPE only N, V and A are considered lexical categories for the purpose of stress assignment.
Thus, independently of syntactic reasons for considering P a lexical category, it seems that there are
phonological reasons for distinguishing P from other lexical categories.
          The application of the rule in (3) is illustrated in the examples in (4). It should be noted that
although ø is necessary for the specification of the environments for the application of RS, it is not
sufficient. In addition, the phonological environment mentioned above must be present in order for
RS to apply. Those contexts in which RS actually applies are marked in the examples below by
‘    ‘.

          (4)
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                            M. Nespor - I. Vogel
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        In (4d), we have an example of a Noun Phrase with a prenominal adjective as its complement.
Note, though, that in Italian, the position of complements is usually to the right, i.e. recursive, side
of the head (cf. 3.1. below). This means that for adjectives the right side is the unmarked position.
There are, nevertheless, some cases, as in (4d), in which an adjective can be found to the left, i.e.
non-recursive, side of the head; this is the marked case. When they are in the marked position,
adjectives do not count as heads of syntactic phrases for the construction of ø, but rather are
subsumed under a ø with the following noun. This particular case may, in fact, be part of a more
general principle according to which major categories count as heads for prosody only when they
are in the unmarked position. Independent evidence for this characteristic of syntactic phrases has
been given by Emonds (1980). To explain the possibility of some extraction transformations and the
impossibility of others, Emonds gives the ‘Generalized Left Branch Condition’, according to which
no syntactic phrase C to the left of the lexical head (N, A, V) of a larger phrase is analyzable as C.
He also makes explicit that on the non recursive side should replace to the left.
        The rule given in (3) to construct ø’s, can produce non-branching ø’s. To eliminate such ø’s, a
restructuring rule may apply, which creates a new node ø’ under certain syntactic conditions. These
conditions are given below in (5).

        (5)         Optional ø restructuring.
                    A non branching ø which is the first complement of X on its recursive sides loses its
                    label and is joined to the ø containing x under a new node labelled ø’.

        Note that ø’ is constructed in such a way that it branches only once. It is therefore impossible
to determine its direction of branching. We assume, however, in accordance with Vergnaud and
Halle that trees within a stratum, in this case the phonological phrase, are uniformly branching.
Thus the relative prominence of the terminal nodes of ø’ is w s. Illustrations of restructuring are
given in (6)-(8), where the forms in a are the result of the application of (3) and the forms in b are
the result of the application of (5).
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                    M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 24/53

        (6)




        a.            Le       città        vecchie     sono    belle.
                    ‘Old cities are beautiful’.




        b.          Le       città         vecchie      sono    belle.

        (7)




        a.          Credo            che      mangerà    bene     da     Francesco.
                    ‘I think he’ll eat well at Francesco’s.’




        b.              Credo che            mangerà    bene da          Francesco.
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                                M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 25/53

        (8)




        a.          Non so           se    troverò       Marco.
                    ‘I don’t know if i’ll find Marco.’




          b.        Non         so    se       troverò        Marco.

        Since the phonological phrase (ø/ø’) is the environment for the application of RS (given the
appropriate phonological conditions at the word level and below), when RS occurs between X and a
following non branching complement, this is an indication that restructuring has occurred. Note that
this restructuring ensures that the rightmost word in a phonological phrase is always marked s. If,
on the other hand, RS does not occur in this environment, this is an indication that the non-
branching complement forms a separate ø. Finally, it should be noted that since ø restructuring
makes reference to the non-branching nature of the complement of a given head, and thereby
“implicitly” to its length, this directly reflects the observation that length plays a crucial role in
determining the application of RS as well as other external sandhi rules5.


        2.2. The intonational phrase: intonation contours

        Once phonological phrases have been constructed, we can proceed to construct the
intonational phrase (I), which consists of one or more ø/ø’ and is «the domain over which an
intonational contour is spread» (Selkirk [1978, 26]). It has often been noticed that syllables at the
end of sentences and other types of clauses are lengthened and often followed by a pause (cf.
Cooper [1976], among others), and in this way serve to indicate the end of intonational contours.
Since performance factors such as rate of speech, style and length of the sentence may affect the

5
 P. Verluyten (personal communication) has suggested that length also plays a role in the application of liaison in
French.
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                               M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 26/53

number of intonational contours contained in an utterance, any rule for constructing I must allow
for this variability. This does not mean, however, that the variability is without limits. Rather, there
are certain syntactic factors that play a role in determining the domain of I. Certain syntactic
structures, such as parentheticals and non-restrictive relative clauses, obligatorily form I’s (cf.
Selkirk [1978]). Other syntactic constituents, that is NP and S’, determine the grouping of ø/ø’ into
I’s, though other non syntactic factors may override these original divisions. We propose the
following rules for constructing I:

        (9)         a.        I construction.
                              (i) Any displaced syntactic constituents, parentheticals and non-restrictive
                              relative clauses obligatorily form at least one I.
                              (ii) Starting with the first ø/ø’ of a sentence, join as many ø/ø’ as possible into
                              an I until either a) the end of the maximal projection of an N is reached, or b)
                              another S’ begins. Once such an I is formed, proceed in the same way until
                              the end of the main sentence is reached. Join any remaining ø’s at the end of a
                              sentence into an I.
                    b.        I constituency.
                              I is right branching.

        Since I’s are right branching, the relative prominence of sister nodes is w s. If we assume that
lengthening is typically a feature of strong rather than weak ø’s, this accounts for the general
observation mentioned above that lengthening tends to mark the ends of intonation contours. That
is, in a right branching structure, the strongest element, i.e. the one dominated uniquely by s’s, will
always be the rightmost one. Since final lengthening appears to be independent of the direction of
branching of the syntactic trees, this means that I is right branching not only in Italian but
universally. The construction of I is illustrated below.

        (10)




        Marco ha         venduto la bicicletta al      fratellino di   Marta.
        ‘Marco has sold the bicycle to the little brother of Marta.’
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                       M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 27/53



         (11)




            Pur di non andare col padre di Marco, Marta e Alice salterebbero le vacanze.
            ‘Rather than going with Marco’s father, Marta and Alice would miss their vacation.’

        The I’s thus constructed determine the domains over which an intonation contour is spread.
Since I is a somewhat variable category, the groupings of ø/ø’ into I’s obtained by the rule in (9)
represent only one of the possible divisions. In addition, there are restructuring rules that allow us to
modify the original I’s in case they are particularly long or particularly short (with the exception of
those structures mentioned in (9ai) that obligatorily form I’s).

        (12)        I restructuring.
                    a. Eliminate very short I’s by joining them with adjacent I’s.
                    b. Eliminate very long I’s by breaking them down into shorter I’s.

        We have deliberately left the formulation of the restructuring rules vague since we are not yet
sure of exactly what factors determine restructuring, and since it seems that these factors include
other than strictly linguistic considerations (e.g. physiological limitations, perceptual strategies,
stylistic considerations). This is not to say, however, that restructuring is completely random. We
have observed, for example, that whenever possible, a restructured I ends with the end of an NP
(dominated in this case by other NP’s).
        When I’s are restructured, the previous I structure is eliminated and new I’s are built up
according to the general branching and prominence convention. The number of I’s would be
reduced by (12a) and increased by (12b) in the examples given in (13) and (14), respectively.
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                                     M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 28/53

        (13)




         Marco         crede         che andrò.
        ‘Marco believes that I’ll go.’

        (14)                                          I




          Ha invitato gli amici         più cari del fratello più piccolo            del suo prof       di ginnastica.
          ‘He has invited the dearest friends of the youngest brother of his gym teacher.’

        The three I’s in (13) may be reduced to two I’s by combining the two rightmost I’s, or to one I
that includes the entire sentence. The single I in (14) may be divided either into two I’s such that the
first includes the first three ø’s and the second the remaining four ø’s, or into three I’s, such that the
first includes the first three ø’s, the second the next two ø’s and the third the last two ø’s.
        We have seen above that, apart from constituents that have been moved, the syntactic
categories that are crucial in the construction of I are NP and S’. That is, NP and S’ barriers for I’s6.
Exactly why this should be the case is not clear to us, though it is interesting that precisely these
two nodes are the bounding nodes for subjacency (cf. Rizzi [1980]), and are also barriers for
government (see, among others, Bennis – Groos [1980]). They are thus barriers for syntactic,
phonological and logical form rules.
        Once the I’s are built, we can proceed to construct the utterance (U), the highest prosodic
category which corresponds to the highest category of syntactic structure (cf. Selkirk [1978]).




6
 They are not absolute barriers since, as we have seen, a restructuring of I can, under certain circumstances, take place
with the effect that I can extend over NP and S’ (cf. (13)).
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                                       M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 29/53

        (15)        a. U construction.
                    Join all I’s in a root sentence (most generally the highest category of syntactic
                    structure) into a U.
                    b. U constituency.
                    U is right branching.

        The fact that U is right branching predicts that if, for example, three short I’s such as those in
(13) are restructured, the first and second I’s can be dominated (directly or indirectly) by the same
node labelled I only if the third I is also dominated by the same node. The second and third I’s, on
the other hand, can be joined to form a new I without necessarily including the first I. Either of
these possibilities yields an unmarked pronunciation, that is, one with no particular emphasis. The
structures in (16a) and (16b) are thus possible while the structure in (16c) is not7. The I’s in
parentheses are those node labels eliminated when restructuring occurs.

        (16)
        a.




        b.




7
  If in sentence (13) special emphasis is placed on the word crede, (16c) is the correct structure, as seen by the fact that
this word bears the label s only in (16c). The predictions that prosodic trees make in cases of emphasis are very
interesting but we will not go into them any further in this paper, since they raise a whole series of independent
questions.
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                         M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 30/53

        c.




The fact that U is right branching means that the rightmost I will always be strong. Since length is
one of the features associated with s, the fact that the rightmost I is strong may account for the
generally observed lengthening at the end of an utterance. That is, the domain of lengthening will
be under Is, though exactly which elements are lengthened and to what extent, must be determined
at a lower prosodic level.
        Finally, assuming a model of grammar in which shallow structure, that is surface structures
enriched with elements that are not phonetically realized such as PRO and traces (cf. Chomsky
[1975]; [1980]) is the input to the phonological component, it is reasonable to ask the following two
questions: a) What role, if any, do these elements play in the phonology? b) Assuming that at least
some of these elements do play a role, does their influence extend to the entire phonological
component or is it restricted to a specific part of it? While it is clear that at least some prosodic rules
do not take into consideration the presence of elements without a phonetic form (see, for example,
(18b) below in which the Gorgia Toscana applies across a trace), it might be that other prosodic
rules are sensitive to such elements (see Jaeggli [1980] who argues that traces marked for case,
unlike traces not marked for case, block contraction in English). This is, of course, a very
interesting and important problem, but we will not go into it further in this paper.


        2.3. Further evidence for ø and I

        In this section, we will demonstrate that the prosodic categories established on the basis of RS
and intonational contours allow us to account for additional phonological phenomena of Italian: the
rule of stress retraction in Northern Italian and the Gorgia Toscana in Tuscan Italian.


        2.3.1. Stress retraction (SR)

        SR is a sandhi rule that applies in a sequence of word1 word2, if word ends in a primary
stressed vowel and word2 has primary stress on its first syllable. In such cases, the primary stress is
moved leftward away from the final syllable of wordl to avoid this clash of primary stresses (e. g.
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                           M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 31/53

metà tórta  méta tòrta ‘half cake’).
        Nespor and Vogel (1979) have shown that stress retraction is in a type of geographical
complementary distribution with RS. That is, the former is found in northern varieties of Standard
Italian while the latter is found in central and southern varieties. It follows from this that the
prosodic category ø/ø’, which defines the syntactic environments for RS also allows us to specify
the syntactic environments for stress retraction, despite the difference in the phonological context
for the two rules. That is, SR applies, as does RS, only when the two words in question are in the
same phonological phrase. The sentence below provides examples of the environments for stress
retraction or raddoppiamento sintattico, depending on the variety of Italian in question.

        (17)




        Ventitré medici              del   Perú   sono   stati   dalle   tribú   nordiche.
        ‘Twenty-three doctors of Peru have been to (see) the northern tribes.’

        In this sentence there are three pairs of words in which the phonological context for SR (RS)
is present: ventitré medici, Perú sono, tribú nordiche. In the first case, SR applies obligatorily since
the words in question form a ø. SR also applies in the third case if restructuring has applied to form
ø’ as indicated in the prosodic tree. SR is blocked, however, in the second case since the two words
belong to different ø’s.

        2.3.2. Gorgia Toscana (GT)

        The next sandhi rule we will consider is the Gorgia Toscana. GT is traditionally described as
a phonological phenomenon of Tuscan Italian that results in various degrees of so-called aspiration
of the voiceless stops p, t, k in intervocalic position (cf. Giannelli – Savoia [1979]; Lepschy –
Lepschy [1977]). The most common form of GT changes p, t and k into ɸ, θ and [h], respectively
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                    M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 32/53


(e.g. la porta  la [ɸ]orta ‘the door’, la tavola  la [θ]avola ‘the table’, la casa  la[h]asa ‘the

house’).
        Since the “aspiration” of k is the most widespread form of GT, we have limited our
investigation to this particular phenomenon. On the basis of our recordings of over 900 sentences
read by five speakers of Tuscan Italian from Florence and immediately surrounding areas, we have
found that the domain of application of GT is I. It should be noted, however, that the Gorgia
Toscana, unlike RS and SR, is not exclusively an external sandhi rule, but it applies in I both within
and across words, as long as the proper segmental phonological environment exists. Thus, while in
the cases of RS and SR, word junctures must be taken into account in addition to the prosodic
domain of application, in the case of GT, no further specification is required. The environments for
the Gorgia Toscana are illustrated below in (18a), (18b) and (18c).

        (18)
        a.




         Le case        carine       costano     molto care   in   America.
        ‘Cute houses are very expensive in America.’
        ( – = possible GT; / = prohibited GT)

        b.




        Chi         hai      visto      costì?
         ‘Who did you see there?’
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                        M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 33/53

        c.




             L’ oro      costa caro.
        ‘Gold is expensive.’

        In the sentence in (18a), GT occurs within the word (cf. America), within ø (cf. case, care)
and within ø’ (cf. carine), all of which are also obviously within I. GT is prohibited across I’s (cf.
costano), though in the unlikely case that the speaker utters the sentence so quickly that it is a single
I, restructuring would then call for GT even in costano. In (18b) and (I8c), GT occurs again in ø’.
Furthermore, in (18c), since the two I’s are so short, restructuring is very likely and GT can
therefore also occur in costa.

        3. The universal character of ø

        In section 2.1., rules for constructing ø have been given. It should be noted that, while these
rules make reference to the syntactic notion of lexical head, they do not refer to language particular
syntactic structures of Italian. Instead, they make reference to the notion of recursive versus non
recursive side of a phrase with respect to the head of the phrase. It would be very strange if only
Italian prosodic categories needed to refer to such general notions as recursive and non-recursive
side of a phrase. In this section we will show that these notions, in fact, allow us to determine the
phonological phrase in all X-bar type languages.


        3.1. The recursivity parameters

        In Graffi (1980), the following two parameters of core grammar are given:

        (19)        First Parameter of Core Grammar (ibid. 379). Every language chooses a recursive
                    side (Chomsky [1965]) with respect to the head of syntactic phrase categories.
        (20)        Second Parameter of Core Grammar (ibid. 382). Some languages only exploit the
                    recursive side with respect to the head: the remaining languages also exploit the non
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                                  M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 34/53

                    recursive side8.

        That is, every language chooses a side with respect lo the head for its complements
(parameter I) and either the same side or the opposite side for its specifiers (parameter II)9. These
choices establish what is unmarked in a language, though it is nevertheless possible that some
marked orders exist.
        If we now look back at our rule for constructing, we see that it depends crucially on which
value (right or left) has been assigned to the first parameter of core grammar given above. That is,
once the recursive side has been determined, we automatically know that ø will be built on the
opposite side of the head. It should be noted that if the second parameter is fixed in favor of the use
of the non-recursive side as well as the recursive side, there will be many contexts for construction,
whereas if the second parameter is fixed in such a way that only the recursive side is used, the
contexts for construction are limited to marked cases if they exist. The fact that the basic syntactic
structure of a language is taken into account in constructing implies that ø, rather than being an
independent variable of the phonological component, is a dependent variable. This suggests that
there are two distinct types of variables in the phonological component: independent variables such
as those that specify opaque segments in harmony processes, and variables dependent on the syntax
such as those that determine the domain of application of certain rules10. This is, of course, an
empirical question. What we are saying is that there exists a category of external sandhi rules whose
domain of application must be stated in relation to the basic order of the elements in a syntactic
phrase. These rules will operate (a) to the left of the head in languages whose recursive side is to the
right of the head, (b) to the right of the head in languages whose recursive side is to the left of the
head. Furthermore, if there are sandhi rules that apply on the recursive side, this implies that they
must also apply on the non-recursive side, but not vice versa. In such cases, the phonological phrase
on the recursive side will have been created by a language specific rule. In the next section, we will
illustrate the role the phonological phrase, as constructed on the basis of our rules, plays in relation
to sandhi rules in languages other than Italian.

        3.2. The phonological phrase in other languages

        In this section, we will examine sandhi rules in English and French whose domain of
application is the phonological phrase. The first rule we will consider is stress retraction in English

8
  Our translation.
9
   This applies of course, only to X-bar type languages, as opposed to W-star type languages. See Hale (1981) for the
distinction between X’ and W* languages.
10
    Some phonological rules might also need to refer directly to the syntax, such as rules that must specify syntactic
categories, but we will not consider this type of rules in this paper.
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                                     M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 35/53

and the second is liaison in the colloquial style of French. We will also briefly compare Selkirk’s
(1978) proposal to account for English stress retraction and French liaison since it is, in fact, quite
similar to ours. Finally, we will discuss a prediction our ø construction rule makes for Japanese.
        Rule (3) given above for constructing ø yields phonological phrases similar to those yielded
by the rule Selkirk (1978) gives for constructing ø in English. Our rule is to be preferred, however,
since it is more general in that it can ø’s in any X-bar type language and since it provides a
principled way for determining the direction of branching of the prosodic trees in ø.
        As Selkirk points out, is the domain of application of the rhythm rule that retracts stress to
eliminate clashes of primary stresses, as in thirtéen mén  thírteen mén (cf. Liberman – Prince
[1977] for details of this phenomenon)11. In as much as our ø is the same as Selkirk’s, the two
proposals account for the same facts. It seems, however, that an additional category, ø’ is necessary
in English, as in Italian, in order to account for all cases of stress retraction. Consider the following
examples.

        (21)        a. John g1ádly persevéres.
                    b. John pérseveres gládly.
        (22)        a. Given the chance, rabbits quickly reprodùce.
                    b. Given the chance, rabbits réproduce quickly.

        While in (21a) and (22a) the verbs persevere and reproduce have final stress, this is not the
case in (21b) and (22b), where they are directly followed by a word with initial primary stress.
Thus, it is not the case that retraction occurs only to the left of the head of a phrase. Instead, the
domain of application of the rhythm rule in English appears to be identical to the domain of stress
retraction in Italian. That is, a restructuring rule such as the one given above in (5) is also required
to construct ø’ in English.
        Note that, as in Italian, ø’ is constructed only when the complement in question is non
branching. Thus, retraction occurs as we have seen in (21b) and (22b), but not in the sentence in
(23), where the complements are branching.

        (23)        a. John persevéres g1ádly and diligently.
                    b. Given the chance, rabbits reprodúce véry quickly.

        Although Selkirk (1978) does not discuss French in detail, she does mention that the
phonological phrase is also the domain of application of liaison. As we mentioned above, the ø’s

11
  Our use of an acute accent does not say anything about the absolute value of the stress of the syllable bearing it, but
simply that it bears more stress with respect to other syllables in the word.
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                     M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 36/53

constructed in right branching languages are the same in Selkirk’s proposal and the one presented
here. It follows, therefore, that both accounts adequately handle liaison. That is, liaison applies in
colloquial French within a ø, as illustrated in (24), but not across ø’s, as illustrated in (25), where
the relevant consonants are underlined.

        (24)




        a.         Les           enfants   chantent.
                  ‘The children are singing.’




        b.          Cette      famille      a          trois    beaux   enfants.
                    ‘That family has three beautiful children.’




        c.          Les         enfants      sont       alles      a     l’ecole.
                    ‘The children went to school’.

        (25)




        a.          Jean a           des    livres        assez         nouveaux.
                    ‘Jean has some rather new books.’
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                       M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 37/53




        b.          Nos       voisins           avaient              deux    chiens.
                    ‘Our neighbours had two dogs.’




        c.          Nos invités          sont    arrivés         en         retard.
                    ‘Our guests arrived late.’

        It should be noted, however, that liaison differs from the other rules that operate in the domain
of the phonological phrase discussed so far in that it does not apply in the additional ø’
environment. Thus, while liaison occurs in the sentence above in (24), the ø domain, it does not
occur in those in (26), the ø’ domain.

        (26)




        a.          Les maisons         italiennes         coutent          beaucoup.
                    ‘Italian house are very expensive.’




        b.          Les garcons         les      aidait      activement.
                    ‘The boys helped them actively.’
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                           M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 38/53




        c.          Marc             viendrait   aujourd’hui,…
                    ‘Marc would come today,…’

        This does not necessarily mean that ø’ does not exist in French. It might in fact turn out that
there are other sandhi rules that apply within the domain of ø’.
The empirical evidence for the phonological phrase we have given thus far is based on data from
right branching languages. We have shown that in these languages external sandhi rules treat
everything to the left of the head of a phrase plus the head itself as one constituent (ø). The
prediction made by our statement of ø constituency as formulated in (3b) is that in left branching
languages sandhi rules make use of phonological constituents that are the mirror image of ø’s in
right branching languages. We do not, however, have enough empirical evidence about sandhi rules
in left branching languages to make an explicit claim. It is interesting to note, though, that a study
by McCawley (1977) of accent in Japanese, a left branching language, seems to confirm the left
branching nature of phonological phrases in that language. McCawley claims that if a constituent of
more than one word is read «as a single phrase», then it is the accent of the first constituent that
predominates, exactly the opposite of what happens in right branching languages. McCawley points
out further that a rule that would account for this phenomenon in Japanese is the mirror image of
the nuclear stress rule of English (cf. Chomsky – Halle [1968]). Since we have assumed, following
Wheeler (1981), that the prominence relation is s w in left branching trees and w s in right
branching trees, and since the predominant accent of a constituent cannot fall on a w element, the
prosodic category that is the domain of application of the stress rule mentioned by McCawley
should be left branching. What remains to be investigated is if that category is ø as constructed in
(3a), or a category that is the result of a restructuring rule, or still a different category. More data
than those provided by McCawley are, however, needed in order to establish the exact environment
of the rule.

        4. I and U in other languages

        4.1. Intonational Phrase

        The rule given in (9ai) for constructing I in Italian is, in fact, quite general in that it makes use
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                     M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 39/53

of such notions as displaced syntactic constituents, parentheticals and non-restrictive relative
clauses. The part in (9aii), however, makes use of the syntactic categories NP and S’ and is thus
formulated in such a way that it is a possible rule only for right branching languages. We have
suggested above that the fact that NP and S’ are relevant for the construction of I might somehow
be related to the fact that they are binding nodes for subjacency and barriers for government. We
could thus hypothesize that our rule would be adequate for constructing I’s in all languages in
which NP and S’ function in this way. We expect, however, that it would not be difficult to modify
the rule to account for other types of languages as well, though in the absence of relevant data, we
will not do so here. In the remainder of this section, we will discuss rules in two right branching
languages, English and Spanish, that operate in the I domain, as constructed by the rule in (9).
        We will first consider the flapping of t and d in American English. It has been noted that
flapping not only occurs within words, but also across word boundaries (see, for example, Kahn
[1976]). It is obvious that flapping does not occur across all words, but rather it appears to be
limited to those within the domain of I. Thus, flapping occurs in the examples in (27), and is
blocked in those in (29); the relevant consonants are underlined.

        (27)




        a.          John             met   Anne.
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                       M. Nespor - I. Vogel
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        b.          John      met       Anne     and Sue.




        c.          John             heard     the   story   about Anne.

        (28)




        a.          The dean          of Admissions at Pratt eats   her lunch   at   MacDonalds.
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                                  M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 41/53




        b.                Pat         eats   with her     fingers.




        c.           Roger,          alias   the rat,   eats    only          cheese.

        While in the examples in (27) flapping is obligatory, since the t’s are necessarily within an I,
the examples in (28) are slightly more complicated. That is, flapping does not occur because the t’s
are at the end rather than within an I. As mentioned above, however, restructuring may take place to
eliminate sequences of particularly short I’s. In (28b), for example, where the first I contains only
one word, the sentence is likely to be pronounced as a single intonational phrase. In this case, in
fact, flapping occurs. In (28a), since the I’s are relatively long, restructuring, and therefore flapping,
are highly unlikely, if possible at all. Finally, in (28e), where “alias the rat”, a parenthetical, is
obligatorily in I, flapping can never occur.
        The second sandhi rule operating within I that we will consider is nasal assimilation in
Spanish. It has frequently been observed that nasals assimilate in point of articulation to the
following consonant across word boundaries as well as within words (cf. Navarro Tomás [1957];
Harris [1968]; Hooper [1976], among others)12. Exactly across which words nasals assimilate,
however, has never been adequately specified. Examination of the following examples shows that
the appropriate domain of nasal assimilation is the intonational phrase constructed exactly as in
Italian.



12
  While there are some minor differences in the assimilation patterns within words and across word boundaries, such as
the behavior of nasal + glide sequences, we are not concerned with them here.
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                  M. Nespor - I. Vogel
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        (29)




        a.            Vive en             u[m] parque.
                     ‘He lives in a park.’




        b.          Juan             es     u[m] bue[m] padre.
                    ‘Juan is a good father.’




        c.          Juan             sabe        que             ha[m]   bailado.
                    ‘Juan know, that they danced.’




        d.           Tengo            pa[m]       bueno.
                    ‘I have some nice bread.’
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                      M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 43/53




        e.          Los         muchachos        canta[m]     bien.
                    ‘The children sing well.’




        f.          Tengo            pa[m]   poco      fresco.
                    ‘I have stale bread.’




        g.          Los muchachos                  canta[m]           poco   seguido.
                    ‘The children don’t sing very often.’

             (30)




        a.          Juan      baila      bien.
                    ‘Juan dances well.’
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                       M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 44/53




        b.          Dicen            que       vienen.
                    ‘They say they will come.’




        c.          El       hermano        de la mujer   de   Juan viaja   muy   seguido con     Maria.
                    ‘The brother of the wife of Juan travels very often with Maria.’




        d.          Maria viene,           según Juan,     mañana.
                    ‘Maria comes, according to Juan, tomorrow.’

        In the sentences in (29), nasal assimilation applies obligatorily, since all the nasal plus
consonant sequences in question are within I. Note, however, that the organization of the relevant
words in phonological phrases does not affect the application of nasal assimilation. That is, in (29)
a, b and c, assimilation occurs within ø, in (29) d and e within ø’ and in (29) f and g across ø’s. In
the sentences in (30), on the other hand, the nasal and the consonant are in different I’s and
assimilation, therefore, does not take place. Sentences (30) a and b, however, are likely to be
restructured to avoid very short I’s within a sentence, and in this case, assimilation takes place.
Such a restructuring is very unlikely in (30c) given the length of the I’s, and it is prohibited in (30d)
where the parenthetical, según Juan, obligatorily forms an I on its own.
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                         M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 45/53

        4.2. Utterance

        We have not yet found any rules in Italian whose domain is U. There are, however, two
phenomena in standard English as spoken in England that occur in U: the linking-r and the related,
intrusive-r.
        While final r’s are usually deleted in the English in question, if the following word begins
with a vowel, the r is retained as a “linking-r”. As the sentences in (31) show, the final r is retained
before any word beginning with a vowel as long as the words are in the same U. That is, the r is
pronounced within ø (31a), across ø’s within I (31b) across I’s (31c) and even at the end of a
parenthetical (31d).

        (31)        a. He has the proper attitude.
                    b. The ruler of that country is a tyrant.
                    c. The driver arrived late today.
                    d. The crime, according to Arthur, is the work of a band of thieves.


        When a word ends with a vowel, specifically [ə], [ɔ] or [a], and the next word begins with a

vowel, an r is introduced, yielding a sequence similar to that produced by the linking-r. The
intrusive r is also found between any two words in the same U, as well as within words, as we see
below.

        (32)        a. The cat has been claw - r - ing at the furniture all afternoon.
                    b. I bet you don’t dare eat a raw - r - aubergine.
                    c. They go to America - r - in the spring of every leap year.
                    d. His far-fetched idea - r - appeals to everyone.
                    e. The great continent, Asia, - r - evokes mysterious images.

        In (32a), the intrusive r is found word internally, in (32b) within a ø, in (32c) across ø’s within
I, in (32d) across I’s and in (32e) at the end of a parenthetical.

        5. Prosodic Structure and Speech Perception

        In this paper we have shown that the grammar, that is, the theory of competence, must include
a hierarchically organized prosodic component as part of the phonology. We hypothesize now that
the prosodic units justified in the theory of competence are also units of performance, that is, both
production and perception. In the remainder of this paper, we will investigate the implications of
this hypothesis further, limiting ourselves, however, to perception and further, to Italian data.
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                      M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 46/53

Specifically, we will argue that it is the units of the prosodic structure of a sentence that determine
the first level of processing in perception. This means that a listener will not be able to distinguish
between the possible meanings of ambiguous sentences if they have the same prosodic structure,
whether or not their syntactic structure is the same. In order to disambiguate such sentences, the
listener must resort to other types of information such as contextual cues.
        This proposal makes predictions that contrast with those of Lehiste (1973, 112), among
others, according to which sentences that can be disambiguated are ones «for which a difference in
meaning is correlated with a difference in surface [syntactic] constituent structure», and sentences
that cannot be disambiguated are those that «have only one bracketing, although the constituents
may bear different labels». While Lehiste’s study deals with English, we do not think this is what
accounts for the difference between Lehiste’s and our proposals. That is, although the actual
syntactic and prosodic structures may differ from language to language, we assume that a principle
so fundamental as the role of the different components of the grammar in perception cannot be
language specific. The crucial difference lies thus in the fact that Lehiste refers only to syntactic
structure while we claim that it is necessary to refer to the prosodic structure, which, although it is
based on syntactic structure, is not isomorphic to it.
        We will now examine some sentences in Italian which demonstrate that disambiguation in
perception depends on prosodic constituents rather than syntactic ones. The relevant sentences are
those in which the same sequence of words, can be analyzed syntactically in different ways but
which nevertheless yield identical prosodic structure. Consider the sentences in (33) and (34) in
which a difference in meaning is correlated with a difference in syntactic structure.

        (33)        Ha toccato il quadro con la matita.
                    a. ‘He touched the picture with (containing) the pencil.’
                    b. ‘He touched the picture with (using) the pencil.’

        (34)        Ho mangiato i pasticcini con la cioccolata.
                    a. ‘I ate donuts with (containing) chocolate.
                    b. ‘I ate donuts (together) with chocolate.’

        The a interpretations in (33) and (34) correspond to the syntactic structures in which the PP is
a complement of the NP, while the b interpretations correspond to syntactic structures in which the
PP is a complement of the VP. Despite these syntactic differences, the prosodic structures
corresponding to the different interpretations are identical at the ø level. There is, nevertheless, a
difference at the I level. The prosodic structures of the a and b examples are given in (35) and (36)
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                        M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 47/53

respectively.

        (35)




          Ha toccato             il      quadro           con la matita.
          Ho mangiato                i   pasticcini       con la cioccolata.

        (36)




          Ha toccato             il       quadro      con la matita.
          Ho mangiato                i   pasticcini   con la cioccolata.

        It should be noted, furthermore, that the two I’s in (36) may be restructured to form a single I
since they are both quite short (cf. (12a)). If this restructuring occurs, as it typically would in such a
case, the two sentences can no longer be disambiguated since their prosodic structures become
identical, despite their different syntactic structures. If, on the other hand, restructuring does not
take place and the sentences in (36) contain two intonational contours, these sentences can only
have the interpretations given in (33b) and (34b).
        There are other sentences, however, in which different syntactic structures obligatorily give
rise to different prosodic structures and may thus be disambiguated on the basis of phonological
information, as illustrated by the sentences in (37) and their configurations given in (33b) and (34b).

        (37)        La vecchia legge la regola.
                    a. ‘The old law regulates it.’
                    b. ‘The old lady is reading the rule.’
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                         M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 48/53

        (38)
        a.




        b.




        In (38a), there are only 2 ø’s, while in (38b) there are 3. This comes as a result of the different
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                          M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 49/53

functions of the words vecchia and legge in the two sentences. In (38a), legge, the noun ‘law’ is the
head of the phrase and incorporates what is to its left, including, in this case, vecchia, the adjective
‘old’, into a ø. In (38b), on the other hand, the verb legge ‘(she) reads’, as head of the VP, forms a ø
by itself. Vecchia, here the noun ‘old lady’, is the head of the NP and thus forms a ø along with its
preceding determiner.
        Our analysis thus shows that syntactic structure plays a role in the perception of sentences,
however this role is only indirect. According to a theory of perception in which each level of
linguistic representation in the native speaker’s competence corresponds to a level of representation
computed by the processor, there must obviously be a level of processing corresponding to the
syntactic structure. Our proposal does not imply that the syntactic level is no longer relevant, but
rather that the syntactic units do not themselves form the initial units of processing. Instead, the
syntactic units allow us to construct the prosodic units which then serve as the perceptual units at
the initial level of processing. It is for this reason that syntactic distinctions that are not reflected in
the prosodic structure are not perceived at this initial level.

        6. Conclusions

        In this paper, we have provided an analysis of the domains of application of rules of external
sandhi in Italian. These domains cannot be adequately defined in terms of syntactic categories. The
first of these, the phonological phrase, extends over the left side of a phrase and not the right side.
This asymmetry had already been observed by Napoli and Nespor (1979), Rotenberg (1978) and
Clements (1978), who argue that in Italian, French, Hebrew and Ewe certain phonological rules
must make references to either left or right branches of a syntactic tree. The second prosodic
category, the intonational phrase, in addition to not necessarily being isomorphic to any syntactic
category, also exhibits a certain amount of variability based on such non syntactic factors as length
and rate of speech.
        Starting from the observations that syntactic phrases in X-bar type languages are themselves
asymmetric in that one side is recursive and the other is not, we have built prosodic categories on
the basis of two external sandhi rules in Italian. We have shown that these prosodic categories are
the domain of application of other sandhi rules in Italian, French, Spanish, British and American
English.
        The prosodic categories above the word level, as constructed in this paper, have interesting
theoretical consequences in that they can be built only after a syntactic parameter of core grammar
has been determined. Therefore, although prosodic structures differ in left and right branching
languages, this choice is not made in the phonology independently of the syntax.
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                 M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 50/53

        Finally, we have shown, on the basis of Italian data, that prosodic categories are used in
perception at the first level of processing, in that speakers cannot disambiguate sentences with
identical prosodic structures independently of whether their syntactic structures are identical or
different.


Marina Nespor
Università di Ferrara
Dipartimento di Scienze Umane
Via Savonarola, 38
I – 44100 Ferrara
marina.nespor@unife.it


Irene Vogel
University of Delaware
Department of Linguistics & Cognitive Science
46 E. Delaware Ave. R.201
Newark, Delaware 19716
USA
ivogel@udel.edu
Annali Online di Ferrara - Lettere                                                   M. Nespor - I. Vogel
Vol. 1 (2007) 51/53

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