Recursivity in prosodic phonology

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Frank Kügler
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages ; Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics
• Term: from 2016 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 313566120

The project aims at contributing to two major debates in prosodic phonology. The first issue centres on the debate on how recursivity is modelled in prosodic phonology. Competing approaches where recursivity is either prohibited (e.g. Align-based theory) or inherently built-in (Match theory) will be evaluated. A comparative prosodic analysis of new data from typologically different languages like German and the Kwa-languages Akan, Nawuri, Gua, and Tafi will provide evidence for recursivity in prosodic structure. Prosodic phrases and their boundaries are expressed by means of laryngeal and supra-laryngeal cues. The project focusses, on the one hand, on pitch register effects of phrasing, and on the other hand, on regressive vowel harmony across word boundaries (henceforth RVH) which was analysed in Akan to indicate a maximal phonological phrase. The second issue of this project pursues research on the laryngeal expression of prosodic phrase boundaries analysing the interaction of tone and sentence-level intonation. The project will thus contribute to the debate of how to model intonation, either in terms of autosegmental tones and interpolation or in terms of separate levels that are superimposed. As a challenge for prosodic theory, this research also aims at contributing new data in terms of (semi-) spontaneous task-oriented speech for the analysis of prosodic phrasing. Comparing carefully elicited speech with an analysis of multi-layer annotated spontaneous corpus data will add to a comprehensive theoretical analysis of prosodic phrasing at the syntax-phonology interface.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Ghana
• Cooperation Partner: Dr. Reginald Duha