Tongan nominal structure and the syntax-phonology interface
Like most Austronesian languages, Tongan is rather rigidly head-initial. In the nominal domain, two obvious counterexamples exist: the demonstrative enclitic, and the so-called definitive accent. I show that both derive from head-initial structures via phrasal movement, and the case of the definitive accent requires neither morpheme-indexed constraints, nor lexemes marked in the lexicon with morphophonological properties such as enclitic/suffix (as opposed to proclitic/prefix). Additionally, I show that PF representations of spelled-out material is mutable (pace e.g. Piggott and Newell 2006’s Phase Integrity/PF, Samuels 2009’s Phonological Derivation by Phase). Further joint work with Laura McPherson explores how to formalize this using OT Faithfulness constraints and a Multiple Spell Out architecture.
some work in this project
Ahn, Byron. 2012. Tongan Relative Clauses at the Syntax-Prosody Interface. In Proceedings of the 18th Annual Conference of the Austronesian Formal Linguistics Association,
Though Tongan, a Polynesian language, is almost entirely head-initial, there are some exceptions to this: Demonstratives and the so-called Definitive Accent (Churchward 1953). Relative clauses in Tongan are also post-nominal and can be variably ordered with respect to the Definitive Accent, but not Demonstratives. To derive these facts, I argue for a promotion analysis of relative clauses (Schachter 1973, Vergnaud 1974, Kayne 1994) and invoke three independently motivated movements, for each of which I bring crosslinguistic support. Each of these movements directly feeds the prosodic component – even when the movement that distinguishes these structures is string-vacuous. I employ only three Optimality Theory style constraints (Prince and Smolensky 1993) to derive this, supporting a strong syntax-prosody connection.
@inproceedings{Ahn-AFLA18,author={Ahn, Byron},booktitle={Proceedings of the 18th Annual Conference of the {A}ustronesian {F}ormal {L}inguistics {A}ssociation},title={Tongan Relative Clauses at the Syntax-Prosody Interface},year={2012}}