Phonological phrasing in Germanic: the judgement of history, confirmed through experiment

Abstract

There are contrary views on how phonological phrasing in Germanic is determined: either by surface syntax or by rhythmic principles (forming trochaic ⁄ dactylic or iambic ⁄ anapaestic groupings) or alternately by both depending on speech style (spontaneous ⁄ planned, casual ⁄ careful). It is shown in this paper that a host of historical developments in Germanic -having to do with cliticisation and the creation of new inflectional affixes from clitics, and with attendant changes of the forms involved -point to a default phonological phrasing of grammatical ⁄ function words which associates them leftwards regardless of morphosyntactic constituency and which does not respect morphological word integrity either. Thus, encliticisation predominates almost exclusively, and productive inflectional affixes innovated via cliticisation are all suffixes. Experimental evidence from contemporary Germanic (in this case Dutch) confirms that phonological words are crucial units in speech planning, with such units equally formed as trochees irrespective of the phrasal syntax of grammatical and lexical words. CONTRARY VIEWS ON HOW PHONOLOGICAL PHRASING IS DETERMINED Constructions and their parts: morphosyntax in relation to semanticsIf you want to think and express a thought, you will be guided not only by the laws and vagaries of thinking, but also by the lexicon and grammar of your language. Although our concern subsequently will chiefly be with the latter, it is an interesting question how a thought as such takes shape in real time in the mind of the thinker, especially if it is a complex thought -say, the thought (often thought and expressed, among many others, by Alexander Pope 1 ) that the sound must seem an echo to the sense. It is probably not unreasonable to assume that the parts which come first in the real-time construction of this thought, especially if embedded in a general train of thought about the relationship between form and meaning, are the concepts of sound and of sense and the concept of an asymmetric correspondence relation between them -for which the English lexicon provides the noun-or-verb words sound, sense and echo, respectively. The concepts of seeming (as opposed to being) and of deontic necessity, expressible in English through a verb seem and a modal auxiliary must, would seem secondary, in the sense of not normally being the primary topics when such a thought is being thought and expressed -unless they have gained importance and planning priority as a focus of contrast. The temporal embedding of the thought (something of a timeless directive) and the contextual embedding of its parts (sound and sense as contextually given) are an everpresent mould for thinking -at least when the thinking is being done by speakers of English. 1In his Essay on Criticism (1711) -which is in fact a poem. Its metre is supposed to be the iambic pentameter; but arguably a trochaic reading of this line, and many others, is preferable -as per (4b) below.

Symmetry or asymmetry: Evidence for underspecification in the mental lexicon

“…We assume that it is not 'languages' which change, but rather grammars and grammatical systems in the minds of speakers and listeners undergo change(Lahiri & Plank 2010).Brought to you by | New York University Authenticated Download Date | 4/23/17 2:55 AM…”

Harmonization and disharmonization of affix ordering and basic word order

“…Lahiri & Plank (2010) have also proposed that in Germanic, where function words consistently precede lexical words, a preference for encliticization can be observed. No generalization on the typology of historical morphological developments can neglect the prosodic factor.…”

Clitics: Separating syntax and prosody

“…In fact, the assumption that repositioning can be stated in purely prosodic terms is necessarily based on the further assumption, which can be shown to be incorrect for at least some languages (Lahiri & Plank 2010), that there is a very close, almost one-to-one, correspondence between syntactic and prosodic categories. For example, it is never the case that a clitic is 'moved' or repositioned to directly following the first syllable or mora of a clause, regardless of whether the end of that syllable or mora coincides with a syntactic word or morpheme boundary and regardless of the syntactic class of word involved; this would be predicted under a purely prosodic or 'prosodic inversion' account of clitic positioning.…”