Prosodic Word Recursion in a Polysynthetic Language (Blackfoot; Algonquian)

Abstract

This paper focuses on prosodic adjunction at the Prosodic Word level in a polysynthetic language. I argue that recursion at a depth of more than two levels can only be generated by a theory which requires exact correspondence between certain syntactic phrases and Prosodic Words. Such a theory is similar to Phonological Phrase correspondence in Match Theory, suggesting there is an underlying shared property between correspondence at the Prosodic Word and Phonological Phrase levels. In addition, this theory must include a constraint which prohibits recursive prosodic constituents in order to generate the attested typology of clitics across languages. The empirical focus is the prosodic structure of the verbal complex in Blackfoot (Algonquian; ISO 639-3: bla). Using phonotactic evidence I argue that the vP phase corresponds to a Prosodic Word, and that each prefix to the stem is a Prosodic Word adjunct. I then compare several theories of the syntax-prosody interface, including versions of Alignment Theory, Wrap Theory, and Match Theory. A subset of schematic candidates with one or two prefixes to a stem are used to determine which theories generate the attested typology of clitics as well as a multiply recursive Prosodic Word structure.

Blackfoot Words: a database of Blackfoot lexical forms

“…The pre-assibilants [ˢt] and [ˢtː] only occur after front vowels, but are included here because they are minimally contrastive with [t] and [tː] in the same position (Weber, 2020). The sounds [k] and [ ks ⌢ ] contrast before underlying vowels, including high front vowels and glides (Armoskaite, 2006;Weber, 2020), but neutralize to [ks ⌢ ] before epenthetic [i] (Weber 2020(Weber , 2021(Weber , 2022. Long [kːs] only occurs when a geminate /kː/ assibilates to [kːs] before [i] in derived environments, and is not included in Table 1.…”

“…Blackfoot is a polysynthetic language, which is strongly head-marking (Bliss, 2013;Louie, 2015) with morphologically complex "clausal" words (Weber, 2020(Weber, , 2021(Weber, , 2022. This can be illustrated with the basic morphological template for the verbal complex, in (3) below (Bliss, 2013;Frantz, 2017;Taylor, 1969;Weber, 2020).…”

“…Older reference materials such as Geers (1917), Uhlenbeck (1938), andTaylor (1969) discuss some internal structure, but their analyses do not always align. More recent linguistic research has also discussed the internal structure of stems, but again, the analyses do not always converge (Armoskaite, 2011;Genee et al, 2012;Weber, 2020Weber, , 2022. There are also multiple phonological processes which occur at morpheme boundaries (segment deletion and epenthesis, vowel coalescence, etc.)…”

Metrically conditioned /a/-syncope in Modern Hebrew compounds

“…Research on the Prosodic Hierarchy has compiled evidence that prosodic categories, including the prosodic word, may be recursive (see, for recent work focusing on the prosodic word, Bennett 2018, Ito and Mester 2021, Weber 2022, and references cited therein). 2 Assuming such structures, if syncope targets local weak prosodic constituents, it should be able to target weak syllables of weak minimal prosodic words.…”