Cover not available
Part of
Morphological Complexity within and across Boundaries: In honour of Aslı Göksel
Edited by Aslı Gürer, Dilek Uygun-Gökmen and Balkız Öztürk
[Studies in Language Companion Series 215] 2020
► pp. 285–312

Morphosyntax-prosody mismatches in Karachay-Balkar

An analysis of narrow focus constructions

| İstanbul Bilgi University
| Marmara University
This study aims to account for prosodic phrasing and morphosyntax-prosody mismatches in Karachay-Balkar narrow focus constructions. Firstly, based on the analyses of the pitch tracks of utterances we demonstrate how narrow focus shapes prosodic structure and yields mismatches with morphosyntactic structure. Then, in line with Truckenbrodt (1995), we suggest that the driving force for the so-called mismatches is the requirement for focus to be the most prominent constituent in its domain. We propose a top-down model according to which the focus aligns with the right edge of the intonational phrase and inserts a phonological phrase boundary to its left. The proposed focus driven prosodic phrasing can also account for prosodic structuring in polar questions with the question suffix.
Keywords: prosody, morphosyntax, Karachay-Balkar, focus, polar questions, question suffix
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Mapping between prosodic structure and syntactic structure
  • 3.Prosody of Karachay-Balkar
    • 3.1Broad focus constructions
    • 3.2Narrow focus constructions
  • 4.Deriving prosodic phrasing in Karachay-Balkar
    • 4.1Prosodic phrasing at sentence level constructions
    • 4.2Prosodic phrasing in narrow focus constructions with the question suffix
      • 4.2.1The distribution of question suffix and focus in polar questions
      • 4.2.2Prosodic phrasing with the question suffix
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 15 July 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.215.11gur
References (25)
References
Boersma, Paul & Weenink, David. 2020. Praat. Doing Phonetics by Computer [Computer program] (Version 6.1.09), retrieved 26 January 2020).Google Scholar
Büring, Daniel. 2009. Towards a typology of focus realization. In Information Structure, Malte Zimmermann & Caroline Féry (eds), 177–205. Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, Noam & Halle, Morris. 1968. The Sound Pattern of English. New York NY: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1970. Deep structure, surface structure and semantic interpretation. In Studies in General and Oriental Linguistics, Roman Jakobson & Shigeo Kawamoto (eds), 62–119. Tokyo: T.E.C. Corporation for Language and Education Research.Google Scholar
Féry, Caroline. 2013. Focus as prosodic alignment. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 31(3): 683–734. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Göksel, A. (2010). Focus in words with truth values. Iberia 2(1): 89–112.Google Scholar
Güneş, Güliz. 2015. Deriving Prosodic Structures. PhD dissertation, University of Groningen.
Gürer, Asli. 2017. Prosody of Karachay-Balkar broad focus sentences. Turkish Studies 12/15: 367-382. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray. 1972. Semantic Interpretation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kabak, Barış & Vogel, Irene. 2001. The phonological word and stress assignment in Turkish. Phonology 18: 315–360. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kamali, Beste. 2011. Topics at the PF Interface of Turkish. PhD dissertation, Harvard University.
Kan, Seda 2009. Prosodic Domains and the Syntax-prosody Mapping in Turkish. MA thesis, Boğaziçi University.
McCarthy, John J. & Prince, Alan. 1993. Generalized alignment. In Yearbook of Morphology 12, Geert Booij & Jaap van Marle (eds), 79–153. Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
Nespor, Marina & Vogel, Irene. 1986. Prosodic Phonology. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Özçelik, Öner & Nagai, Miho. 2011. Multiple subject positions: A case of perfect match between syntax and prosody. In Proceedings of the 28th West Coast Conference for Formal Linguistics (WCCFL 28), Mary Byram Washburn, Katherine McKinney-Bock, Erika Varis, Ann Sawyer & Barbara Tomaszewicz (eds), 303–312. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Rooth, Mats. 1992. A theory of focus interpretation. Natural Language Semantics 1: 75–116. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Seegmiller, Steve. 1996. Karachay [Languages of the World/Materials 109]. Munich: Lincom.Google Scholar
Selkirk, Elisabeth. 1984. Phonology and Syntax. The Relation between Sound and Structure. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
. 1986. On derived domains in sentence phonology. Phonology Yearbook 3: 371–405. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1995a. The prosodic structure of function words. In Papers in Optimality Theory [University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers 18], Jill N. Beckman, Laura Walsh Dickey & Suzanne Urbanczyk (eds), 439–469. Amherst MA: GLSA.Google Scholar
. 1995b. Sentence prosody: intonation, stress and phrasing. In The Handbook of Phonological Theory, John Goldsmith (ed.), 550–569. London: Blackwell.Google Scholar
. 2009. On clause and intonational phrase in Japanese: The syntactic grounding of prosodic constituent structure. Gengo Kenkyu 136: 35–74.Google Scholar
. 2011. The syntax-phonology interface. In The Handbook of Phonological Theory, 2nd edn, John A. Goldsmith, Jason Riggle & Alan C.L. Yu (eds), 435–484. Malden MA: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Truckenbrodt, Hubert. 1995. Phonological Phrases: Their Relation to Syntax, Focus, and Prominence. PhD dissertation, MIT.
. 1999. On the relation between syntactic phrases and phonological phrases. Linguistic Inquiry 30(2): 219–255. DOI logoGoogle Scholar