On Clause and Intonational Phrase in Japanese: The Syntactic Grounding of Prosodic Constituent Structure

Abstract

This paper reviews evidence from recent research on Japanese sentence prosody, in particular Kawahara and Shinya (2008) on coordinated clauses and Kubo (1989) et seq, Deguchi and Kitagawa (2002) et seq, Ishihara (2002) et seq and Hirotani (2003) et seq on matrix and embedded wh-questions, which suggests that syntactic clauses correspond to a domain for certain of the phonological and phonetic phenomena that define the intonational patterns of Japanese sentences. The finding that there is a clause-grounded intonational phrase domain of phonological representation in Japanese is predicted by a universal theory of the prosodic hierarchy as grounded in a universal theory of the syntax-phonology interface (Selkirk 2005). This paper lays out a new universal Match theory of the syntax-prosodic constituency interface, according to which designated syntactic constituent types are called on to match up with corresponding prosodic constituent types. Match theory may be construed as a component of the theory of Spell-Out in minimalist phase theory (Chomsky 2001). The data also shows that recursive intonational phrase structure is produced when the universal Match Clause constraint is satisfied on nested clausal domains. This is expected if indeed the availability of recursive prosodic structure derives from the organization of syntactic structure, through the agency of constraints on the syntax-phonology interface. This theory that prosodic constituent structure above the foot is syntactically grounded thus meshes well with the Itô and Mester (2007) claim that the prosodic hierarchy repertoire is universal and highly restricted and that recursivity in prosodic structure is systematic.