First published in 1988. This study examines a number of issues arising in multitiered nonlinear phonology in the light of the Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP), which prohibits adjacent identical elements at the melodic level, and aims to provide another kind of evidence for segment-internal tier articulation. This title will be of particular interest to students of linguistics.

First published in 1988. This study examines a number of issues arising in multitiered nonlinear phonology in the light of the Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP), which prohibits adjacent identical elements at the melodic level, and aims to provide another kind of evidence for segment-internal tier articulation. This title will be of particular interest to students of linguistics.

Optimality Theory has become the dominant approach to studying phonology, including analyses of the mapping from syntactic structure to prosodic structure. However, when syntactic and prosodic structures are represented as trees, it is difficult, if not impossible, to systematically generate by hand all the possible prosodic parses that must be considered in an Optimality Theory investigation for any given syntactic input. Consequently, most existing syntax-prosody analyses are in this way incomplete, compromising their validity. This volume presents a series of complete analyses of the syntax-prosody interface, thanks to their use of the Syntax-Prosody in Optimality Theory (SPOT) application. This JavaScript application, developed by the editors of this volume, automates candidate generation and constraint evaluation, making a rigorous Optimality Theory analysis of syntax-prosody possible. SPOT allows the user to test the typological predictions of the numerous proposed constraints on prosodic markedness and syntax-prosody mapping, so that researchers can make progress toward determining which formulations of the constraints should actually be part of the universal constraint set. A theme of the volume is comparing Selkirk’s Match Theory with the older Align Theory of syntax-prosody mapping, finding that both are needed, at least in some languages.

This volume brings together new work on prosody and prosodic interfaces from international experts in the field. The book is divided into three parts that explore topics in word prosody and phrase prosody, lexical tone and intonation, and the syntax-prosody interface. While many recent studies have focused on prosody and related questions, a significant number of languages, dialects, and varieties remain largely undocumented or understudied in this respect. The chapters in this volume help to fill this empirical gap, with investigations into languages such as Choguita Raramuri (Mexico), Poko (Papua New Guinea), Rere (Sudan), and Uspanteko (Guatemala), alongside more widely studied languages such as Japanese and Serbian. The authors also address a range of important questions pertaining to, for example, the interactions between lexical and postlexical tones and the relationship between prosodic and syntactic structure. The volume as a whole sheds light on how prosody is structured in language and how it functions in human communication.