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/

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
2. SYNTAX-PHONOLOGY MAPPING: MANY MOVING PARTS SYNTAX PHONOLOGY 2
3. SYNTAX-PHONOLOGY MAPPING: MANY MOVING PARTS SYNTAX PHONOLOGY ? 2
4. SYNTAX-PHONOLOGY MAPPING: MANY MOVING PARTS SYNTAX PHONOLOGY ? 2 ?
5. SYNTAX-PHONOLOGY MAPPING: MANY MOVING PARTS SYNTAX PHONOLOGY ? 2 ? ?
6. IRISH SYNTAX PHONOLOGY 3
7. IRISH SYNTAX PHONOLOGY ? 3
8. IRISH SYNTAX PHONOLOGY ? 3 McCloskey 1996, 2011
9. IRISH SYNTAX PHONOLOGY ? 3 McCloskey 1996, 2011 Ito & Mester 2007 et seq., Elfner 2012, 2015
10. IRISH SYNTAX PHONOLOGY 4 McCloskey 1996, 2011 Ito & Mester 2007 et seq., Elfner 2012, 2015
11. IRISH SYNTAX PHONOLOGY ? 4 McCloskey 1996, 2011 Ito & Mester 2007 et seq., Elfner 2012, 2015
12. IRISH SYNTAX PHONOLOGY ? 4 McCloskey 1996, 2011 Ito & Mester 2007 et seq., Elfner 2012, 2015 MATCH Selkirk 2011
13. 5 MATCH Selkirk 2011
14. 5 MATCH Selkirk 2011 We could define tonal placement in the spellout rules of syntactic structures.
15. PHONOLOGICAL CONSTITUENCY TESTS? 6
16. PHONOLOGICAL CONSTITUENCY TESTS? 6 Syntactic constituency tests do not depend on phonology.
17. PHONOLOGICAL CONSTITUENCY TESTS? 6 Syntactic constituency tests do not depend on phonology. Phonological constituency tests should not depend on syntax.
18. PHONOLOGICAL CONSTITUENCY TESTS? 7
19. PHONOLOGICAL CONSTITUENCY TESTS? 7
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)
21. PHONOLOGICAL CONSTITUENCY TESTS? 9
22. PHONOLOGICAL CONSTITUENCY TESTS? 9 What might we do going forward? More attention to phonetic data Preservation and distribution of recordings
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
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)
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?
27. 12 Individual differences in cognitive “style”, skills; task effects, frequency effects, dialect, …
28. EVERYTHING MATTERS 13
29. WHAT CONDITIONS INDIVIDUAL VARIATION? 14
30. WHAT CONDITIONS INDIVIDUAL VARIATION? 15
31. 16 What has appeared variable is sometimes later found to be a regular consequence of a previously unrecognized factor.
32. POTENTIALLY UNRECOGNIZED FACTORS 17
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
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
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