Anti-contiguity: A Theory of Wh- Prosody
Jason Kandybowicz
Abstract
This book develops a theory of wh- prosody according to which wh- expressions must avoid forming prosodic constituents with overt complementizers at the level of Intonational Phrase. The theory is inspired by Richards’s (2010, 2016) Contiguity Theory and is based empirically on asymmetries in the distribution of wh- items in five West African languages: Krachi (Kwa: Ghana), Bono (Kwa: Ghana), Wasa (Kwa: Ghana), Asante Twi (Kwa: Ghana), and Nupe (Benue-Congo: Nigeria). The observations and analyses stem from original fieldwork on all five languages and represent some of the first prosodic descr ... More
This book develops a theory of wh- prosody according to which wh- expressions must avoid forming prosodic constituents with overt complementizers at the level of Intonational Phrase. The theory is inspired by Richards’s (2010, 2016) Contiguity Theory and is based empirically on asymmetries in the distribution of wh- items in five West African languages: Krachi (Kwa: Ghana), Bono (Kwa: Ghana), Wasa (Kwa: Ghana), Asante Twi (Kwa: Ghana), and Nupe (Benue-Congo: Nigeria). The observations and analyses stem from original fieldwork on all five languages and represent some of the first prosodic descriptions of the languages. The theory is shown to successfully derive a number of famous and less well-known asymmetries in wh- in-situ distribution in a variety of languages unrelated to those the theory was originally designed to analyze. Against the backdrop of data from eighteen languages, the theory is parameterized to account for wh- item distribution across typologically diverse languages.
Keywords:
wh- prosody,
syntax-phonology interface,
contiguity theory,
anti-contiguity,
wh- in-situ,
Krachi,
Bono,
Wasa,
Asante Twi,
Nupe
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2020 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780197509739 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2020 |
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780197509739.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Jason Kandybowicz, author
Associate Professor of Linguistics, The Graduate Center, City University of New York
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