Revisiting prosodic reconstruction

In this thesis, I develop a theoretical implementation of prosodic reconstruction and apply it to the empirical domain of German sentences in which part of a focus or contrastive topic is fronted. Prosodic reconstruction refers to the idea that sentences involving syntactic movement show prosodic parallels with corresponding simpler structures without movement. I propose to model this recurrent observation by ordering syntax-prosody mapping before copy deletion. In order to account for the partial fronting data, the idea is extended to the mapping between prosody and information structure. This assumption helps to explain why object-initial sentences containing a broad focus or broad contrastive topic show similar prosodic and interpretative restrictions as sentences with canonical word order. The empirical adequacy of the model is tested against a set of gradient acceptability judgments.

Level thesis:degree_level

thesis.doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher

Universität Potsdam

Year

2017

Author dc:creator

• Wierzba, Marta

Contributors dc:contributor

• Fanselow, Gisbert

• prosody
• syntax
• interface
• focus
• contrastive topic
• Prosodie
• Schnittstelle
• Fokus
• kontrastives Topik

Statement dc:rights

• CC-BY-NC-ND - Namensnennung, nicht kommerziell, keine Bearbeitungen 4.0 International

Repository record source_url

https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/40315

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:kobv.de-opus4-uni-potsdam:40315