When prosody follows syntax: verbal stems in Czech

When prosody follows syntax: verbal stems in Czech

Blog Article

This paper examines syntactic and prosodic constituency within a verbal stem in Czech.Working in the frameworks of Nanosyntax and Strict CV, I argue that bempresas.com syntax-to-prosody mapping is direct to the extent that prosodic domains correspond to particular syntactic constituents.On the basis of two vocalic alternations, namely vowel-zero alternations in verbal prefixes and roots and alternations in vowel length in roots and theme suffixes, I show that the perfective verbal stem represented by a linear string prefix-root-theme is parsed into three prosodic constituents, [prefix-root], [root-theme] and [prefix-root-theme].These prosodic domains correspond to three syntactic constituents: VP and a lower and higher projection of the theme suffix respectively.The crucial point of the syntactic analysis is that the prefix undergoes phrasal movement: it is generated next to the root in VP and when the theme is added, it moves to its specifier.

In the [prefix-root] constituent, the vocalization pattern of the prefix is established.The constituents comprising theme suffixes are prosodic domains in which a general ivoryjinelle.com rule (called the infinitival template) operates; this rule in effect lengthens underlying long vowels in monosyllabic infinitives.