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Commentary on Elfner's Strong Start and phonological phrasing in Irish

krisyu
July 29, 2016

Commentary on Elfner's Strong Start and phonological phrasing in Irish

Commentary on Emily Elfner's talk at Workshop “The Effects of Constituency on Sentence Phonology”, 07/29/16 - 07/31/16, UMass Amherst. See https://gsellblog.wordpress.com/program/

krisyu

July 29, 2016
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  1. COMMENTARY ON ELFNER’S STRONG START
    AND PHONOLOGICAL PHRASING IN IRISH
    KRISTINE YU, UMASS AMHERST
    JULY 29, 2016
    Workshop: the effects of constituency on sentence phonology

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  2. SYNTAX-PHONOLOGY MAPPING: MANY MOVING PARTS
    SYNTAX
    PHONOLOGY
    2

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  3. SYNTAX-PHONOLOGY MAPPING: MANY MOVING PARTS
    SYNTAX
    PHONOLOGY
    ?
    2

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  4. SYNTAX-PHONOLOGY MAPPING: MANY MOVING PARTS
    SYNTAX
    PHONOLOGY
    ?
    2
    ?

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  5. SYNTAX-PHONOLOGY MAPPING: MANY MOVING PARTS
    SYNTAX
    PHONOLOGY
    ?
    2
    ?
    ?

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  6. IRISH
    SYNTAX
    PHONOLOGY
    3

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  7. IRISH
    SYNTAX
    PHONOLOGY
    ?
    3

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  8. IRISH
    SYNTAX
    PHONOLOGY
    ?
    3
    McCloskey 1996, 2011

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  9. IRISH
    SYNTAX
    PHONOLOGY
    ?
    3
    McCloskey 1996, 2011
    Ito & Mester 2007 et seq., Elfner 2012, 2015

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  10. IRISH
    SYNTAX
    PHONOLOGY
    4
    McCloskey 1996, 2011
    Ito & Mester 2007 et seq., Elfner 2012, 2015

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  11. IRISH
    SYNTAX
    PHONOLOGY
    ?
    4
    McCloskey 1996, 2011
    Ito & Mester 2007 et seq., Elfner 2012, 2015

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  12. IRISH
    SYNTAX
    PHONOLOGY
    ?
    4
    McCloskey 1996, 2011
    Ito & Mester 2007 et seq., Elfner 2012, 2015
    MATCH
    Selkirk 2011

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  13. 5
    MATCH
    Selkirk 2011

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  14. 5
    MATCH
    Selkirk 2011
    We could define tonal placement in the
    spellout rules of syntactic structures.

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  15. PHONOLOGICAL CONSTITUENCY TESTS? 6

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  16. PHONOLOGICAL CONSTITUENCY TESTS? 6
    Syntactic constituency tests do not
    depend on phonology.

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  17. PHONOLOGICAL CONSTITUENCY TESTS? 6
    Syntactic constituency tests do not
    depend on phonology.
    Phonological constituency tests
    should not depend on syntax.

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  18. PHONOLOGICAL CONSTITUENCY TESTS? 7

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  19. PHONOLOGICAL CONSTITUENCY TESTS? 7

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  20. PHONOLOGICAL CONSTITUENCY TESTS?
    ▸ Distribution of tonal events
    ▸ Lengthening, strengthening
    ▸ Domain-sensitive segmental, tonal processes
    ▸ “Global” pitch range changes
    ▸ Sensitivity to speech rate
    ▸ “Missing” tonal events underlyingly present? Phonetic realization?
    Allophonic realization?
    8
    Other evidence besides tonal events!
    (Bennett 2015)

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  21. PHONOLOGICAL CONSTITUENCY TESTS? 9

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  22. PHONOLOGICAL CONSTITUENCY TESTS? 9
    What might we do going forward?
    More attention to phonetic data
    Preservation and distribution of
    recordings

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  23. While not all recordings provide equally clear F0 contours, it is
    assumed that the patterns discussed in this paper are in some
    sense the ``default'' pattern…there are many possible
    explanations for deviations from what is proposed to be the
    dominant pattern including, among other things, inter- and intra-
    speaker variation in phrasing patterns and disfluencies or
    unnaturalness due to laboratory context in which the recordings
    were produced.
    Elfner (2013, p. 1172-3)
    10
    ABSTRACTING AWAY FROM VARIABILITY AS A FIRST STEP

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  24. While not all recordings provide equally clear F0 contours, it is
    assumed that the patterns discussed in this paper are in some
    sense the ``default'' pattern…there are many possible
    explanations for deviations from what is proposed to be the
    dominant pattern including, among other things, inter- and intra-
    speaker variation in phrasing patterns and disfluencies or
    unnaturalness due to laboratory context in which the recordings
    were produced.
    Elfner (2013, p. 1172-3)
    10
    ABSTRACTING AWAY FROM VARIABILITY AS A FIRST STEP
    CARVING NATURE AT ITS JOINTS
    (Plato 360 B.C.E., Phaedrus 265E)

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  25. It happens that none of the papers contained in this issue suggest
    the existence of constituents of prosodic structure that fail to
    correspond to appropriate constituents of syntactic structure…
    further variation in the syntactic and phonological properties of
    the sentences investigated in these languages, or the conditions
    under which they are produced, [c]ould show the effects of
    prosodic markedness constraints or other factors which do lead
    to non-isomorphisms…
    Selkirk and Lee (2015, p. 5-6)
    11
    WHERE ARE THE SYNTAX-PROSODY MISMATCHES?

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  26. 12

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  27. 12
    Individual differences in cognitive “style”, skills; task
    effects, frequency effects, dialect, …

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  28. EVERYTHING MATTERS 13

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  29. WHAT CONDITIONS INDIVIDUAL VARIATION? 14

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  30. WHAT CONDITIONS INDIVIDUAL VARIATION? 15

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  31. 16
    What has appeared
    variable is sometimes
    later found to be a
    regular consequence
    of a previously
    unrecognized factor.

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  32. POTENTIALLY UNRECOGNIZED FACTORS 17

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  33. POTENTIALLY UNRECOGNIZED FACTORS
    ▸ Variability in prosodic structures is a consequence of variability in
    syntactic structures (Steedman 2000, Wagner 2005, Hirsch and
    Wagner 2015, Ahn 2015)
    ▸ Extraposition of object? [[VS]O]
    ▸ Different choices for spellout units (also, therefore no mismatch)?
    17

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  34. POTENTIALLY UNRECOGNIZED FACTORS
    ▸ Variability in prosodic structures is a consequence of variability in
    syntactic structures (Steedman 2000, Wagner 2005, Hirsch and
    Wagner 2015, Ahn 2015)
    ▸ Extraposition of object? [[VS]O]
    ▸ Different choices for spellout units (also, therefore no mismatch)?
    ▸ Variability in prosodic structures is a consequence of variability in
    speaker’s imposed discourse contexts under “all-new” conditions
    (check for order effects?)
    17

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  35. POTENTIALLY UNRECOGNIZED FACTORS
    ▸ Variability in prosodic structures is a consequence of variability in
    syntactic structures (Steedman 2000, Wagner 2005, Hirsch and
    Wagner 2015, Ahn 2015)
    ▸ Extraposition of object? [[VS]O]
    ▸ Different choices for spellout units (also, therefore no mismatch)?
    ▸ Variability in prosodic structures is a consequence of variability in
    speaker’s imposed discourse contexts under “all-new” conditions
    (check for order effects?)
    ▸ Relation between tonal events and boundaries and prominence
    17

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