The Principle of Phonology-Free Syntax: four apparent counterexamples in French

Abstract

The Principle of Phonology-Free Syntax (PPFS) is a proposed universal principle of grammar that prohibits reference to phonological information in syntactic rules or constraints. Although many linguists have noted phenomena that appear to them to be in conflict with it, the appearances are misleading in all cases we have examined. This paper scrutinizes four instructive cases in French that appear to falsify the PPFS. Section  deals with the alleged relevance of syllable count to the description of attributive adjective placement ; section  addresses the validity of a rule mentioning consonantality in stating the agreement rule for adverbial tout ; section  turns to the issue of preposition choice (e.g. en vs. au) with geographical proper names ; and section  takes a look at a purported case of phonological reference in stating the rule for ellipsis of a clitic pronoun and an auxiliary in a coordinate structure. In each case we bring independent evidence to bear on the problem in order to show that the analyses employing phonology-sensitive syntactic statements are in error and the prediction of the PPFS is confirmed.

A stress-based approach to the syntax of Hungarian focus

“…I argue that in Hungarian the principle has direct consequences for the syntax of the language in the form of triggering phrasal movement. 2 This flies in the face of the well-known claim that phonology cannot influence syntax (Zwicky 1969;Zwicky and Pullum 1986;Vogel and Kenesei 1990;Miller et al 1997). In this paper, I will question this claim as far as a subset of phonological rules are concerned: the prosodic rules that apply at the clause-level (see Inkelas and Zec 1995 for essentially the same claim).…”

La position de l'adjectif épithète en français : le poids des mots

“…Comme le montrent Miller et al (1997), une telle règle, qui serait contraire à l'indépendance de la syntaxe par rapport à la phonologie, ne tient pas en français : de nombreux adjectifs polysyllabiques sont antéposables (agréable, nombre u x, etc.). Une version plus élaborée de la contrainte met en jeu la longueur respective du nom et de l'adjectif : les adjectifs monosyllabiques devraient précéder les noms polysyllabiques, et les adjectifs polysyllabiques suivre les noms monosyllabiques.…”

Per què Y? Sobre la centralitat de la sintaxi a l’arquitectura de la gramàtica

“…I believe that this indicates that the classical "syntactocentric" model is essentially correct and syntax is "phonology-free" (cf. Miller, Pullum & Zwicky (1997)). Syntax creates structure that is then interpreted by the interfaces:…”