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This article deals with a so-far unnoticed phenomenon in prosodic phonology, which we dub prosodic smothering. Prosodic smothering arises when the prosodic status of a clitic or affix varies with the presence or absence of some outer morpheme. We first illustrate prosodic smothering with novel data from two genetically unrelated languages, Macedonian (Slavic) and Kaqchikel (Mayan). We then provide a unified account of prosodic smothering based on a principled extension of the theory of prosodic subcategorization (e.g., Inkelas 1990 , Peperkamp 1997 , Chung 2003 , Yu 2003 , Paster 2006 , Bye 2007 ). Prosodic subcategorization typically involves requirements placed on items to the left or the right of the selecting morpheme. We show that prosodic smothering naturally emerges in a theory that also allows for subcategorization in the vertical dimension, such that morphemes may select for the prosodic category that immediately dominates them in surface prosodic structure. This extension successfully reduces two apparent cases of nonlocal prosodic conditioning to the effects of strictly local prosodic selection.

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Syntactic movement of phrases, modeled in terms of Internal Merge, has traditionally been distinguished on empirical grounds from syntactic movement of heads, modeled by other means. I demonstrate that, once the class of head movements implicated in word formation is excluded from consideration (assumed to be, for example, post-syntactic, following Harizanov & Gribanova 2019), the residue of head movements, which are purely syntactic in nature, and phrasal movement can receive a unified treatment. Both phrasal and syntactic head movement are implemented here as instances of Internal Merge (following, for example, Fukui & Takano 1998; Toyoshima 2001; Matushansky 2006; Vicente 2007; 2009). This treatment of syntactic head movement renders long-standing stipulations about structure building such as the Chain Uniformity Condition superfluous. It also makes sense of the properties of syntactic head movement, as demonstrated in a case study of participle fronting in Bulgarian, which targets a specifier position, violates the Head Movement Constraint, can cross finite clause boundaries, and can have discourse effects.

and audiences at GLOW 32, UCSC's Prosody Interest Group, Crosslinguistic Investigations in Syntax-Phonology (CrISP), the UCSC Morphology Reading Group and McGill University. We thank two anonymous volume referees for numerous very helpful comments. Section 2 of this paper is based on a paper written by Gribanova that will appear in Journal of Linguistics; she gratefully acknowledges their editors and referees for their insightful comments. For discussion of the data, thanks to Alexander Gribanov, Irina Gribanov and Boris Glants. All errors are the authors' responsibility.