Phonological theory asks how phonological shapes are assigned to linguistic units. In this issue of the Phonology Yearbook we bring together examinations of the role that syntactic structure plays in this assignment. The focus is therefore on phenomena that have been labelled, in one framework or another, as external sandhi (as opposed to internal sandhi), phrase phonology (as opposed to word phonology), or postlexical phonology (as opposed to lexical phonology).

Kimatuumbi, a Bantu language of Tanzania, has a number of phonological rules applying between words which are sensitive to syntactic structure. Kimatuumbi thus presents a test for theories of the interaction between syntactic structure and phonology. I argue that phonological rules in Kimatuumbi make direct reference to labelled surface syntactic bracketing, contrary to the claims of boundary theories such as Chomsky & Halle (1968) and Selkirk (1974), as well as the prosodic theories of Selkirk (1980), Nespor & Vogel (1982) and Hayes (1984).

Syntactic juncture has been a topic of interest in phonological theory in recent years. One major issue addressed in the study of syntactic juncture is how to predict from syntactic structure the domains of phrase-level rules of the phonology, or prosodic structure. Many, including Selkirk (1978, 1984, 1986), Nespor & Vogel (1982) and Hayes (1984), propose that utterances are organised in a prosodic hierarchy, determined by but not isomorphic to syntactic structure. In work by these authors, algorithms for determining the relationship between syntactic structure and prosodic structure have been proposed, leading to a deeper understanding of prosodic phrasing.

In the last two years, two very interesting books about the interaction of phonology and syntax, Selkirk (1984a) and Kaisse (1985), have addressed the problem of characterising fast speech processes and made interesting proposals about the status of fast speech rules (FSRs) and their place in the grammar. Essentially, Kaisse's proposal is that fast speech rules belong to a separate subcomponent of the phonology, which is ordered after the sandhi rules subcomponent: while sandhi rules are sensitive to their syntactic environment, fast speech rules have only phonetic motivation. That is, they operate throughout a string, within as well as across words, independently of its structure (cf. also Rotenberg 1978; Hasegawa 1979).

The ability of a language's syntax to determine the application vs. non-application of postlexical phonological rules has by now been firmly established in a number of languages. Such rules, which apply above the word level, have come especially from the prosodic aspects of phonological structure, e.g. effects of syllabification, stress-accent, duration and tone. Much of the interest in this syntax-phonology interaction has centred around two general questions: (i) which specific properties of the syntax are available to affect the application of phonological rules?; (ii) how should these syntactic properties be incorporated into the phonology?

This collection of thematically related papers in the current issue of the Phonology Yearbook, coming in the wake of recent major works like Selkirk (1984a) and Kaisse (1985), betokens a growing interest in the interfacing problem of syntax and phonology. So far, the most intensively investigated problems such as English contraction and auxiliary reduction fall in the intermediate area of morphosyntax, in the sense that they typically involve the adjunction of clitic-like elements to a neighbouring constituent with certain phonological consequences. The truly phrasal level of postlexical phonology is rather more sparsely populated by well-documented case studies. Chapter 7 of Kaisse (1985) reviews some of the better-known cases, including French liaison, Ewe tone sandhi, Italian raddoppiamento sintattico (initial consonant gemination), and Kimatuumbi vowel shortening (see references cited therein). To this list we may add the highly suggestive case of Chi Mwi:ni vowel shortening (see Kisseberth & Abasheikh 1974; and the insightful reanalysis in Selkirk 1986).

The intonation contour of a Papago sentence is entirely predictable on the basis of its surface syntactic structure. It consists of a sequence of instances of the pattern (L)HL. For example, one Papago sentence may manifest a single (L)HL pattern, as in (I):

while another will show repetitions of the canonical tonal shape, as in (2):

Our task in this paper will be to characterise the distribution of the (L)HL pattern in Papago sentences. Our analysis is that the phonological representation of a sentence of Papago consists of a sequence of one or more tonal phrases, and that (L)HL is the pattern assigned to a tonal phrase. This tonal phrasing - i.e. the beginnings and ends of individual tonal phrases - will be indicated by parentheses in the tonal tier, as in (1) and (2). The association of the (L)HL pattern within each tonal phrase is captured by simple rules of the phonology, to be described in §2. Thus the description of the syntax of Papago intonation contours will centre on the tonal phrasing itself, and on the manner in which it is determined with respect to surface syntactic structure.

Selkirk (1986) proposes that rules of the phrasal phonology apply to a structure called P-structure that is derived from, but not isomorphic to, syntactic structure. While Selkirk claims that most rules of external sandhi fall into the category of P-structure rules, there are three rules that she suggests may still require direct reference to syntactic structure. These are Mende Consonant Mutation (Conteh et al. 1986), Kimatuumbi Vowel Shortening (Odden this volume), and ‘perhaps even rules like English wanna contraction’ (Selkirk 1986: 374). Selkirk says that these rules ‘appear to be sensitive to a richer array of syntactic conditions than would be expressible via the translation of syntax into P-structure’.

In Italian certain prepositions (Ps) can appear morphologically combined with articles, inflecting for number and gender. We will dub this the inflected form of the P for the moment, without prejudice as to the analysis of this form:

(1) Sta nella terza camera ‘It's in the third bedroom’ is in/the (fern sg) third bedroom

(2) C' è abbastanza carta sulle scrivanie there is enough paper on/the (fern pi) desks ‘There's enough paper on the desks’

(3) Ci va col vicino there goes with'the (masc sg) neighbour ‘He's going there with his neighbour’

(4) L' ho dato ai ragazzi ‘I gave it to the boys’ it I–have given to/the (masc pi) boys

The inflected form of the P has desinences similar to those found on the articles and the demonstrative adjective quel(lo). These forms are given overleaf in Table I (where only one inflected P is shown, but the forms for the other inflected Ps vary for number and gender in the same way).

Spatial location and direction are expressed in French primarily by means of prepositional phrases involving three different prepositions:en, dans and à. Disregarding the usual collection of fixed expressions, lexical idiosyncrasies and subtle pragmatic and stylistic effects, the large generalisation about spatial PPs is that dans and a tend to be used with objects understood referentially, as in (1) and (2) (such ‘determinate’ or ‘particularised’ NPs will typically have a determiner in them), while en is used with non-referential objects, as in (3) (these will typically lack a determiner):

(1) a. dans la prison ‘in(to) the prison’

b. dans une prison ‘in(to) a prison’

(2) a l'ecole ‘in(to) the school’

(3) en prison ‘in(to) prison’

Study of the phonology-syntax interface has typically proceeded by asking the following question: what aspects of syntactic structure are relevant for the application of phonological rules? Several years’ study of the question by a number of persons (e.g. Kaisse 1985; Selkirk 1984) suggests that phonological rules may be sensitive, either directly or indirectly, to the surface-syntactic constituent structure – typically through extension of the notion of government or c-command. Phrasal phonological rules do not appear to be sensitive to differences in grammatical relations (e.g. subject vs. object) unless these are encoded as different surface constituent structures. Nor do phrasal phonological rules (as opposed to lexical rules) appear to be sensitive to different syntactic features such as [±noun] or [±wh].

When a phonological rule applies across words, it is necessary to be able to specify across which types of words it may apply and across which it may not, or in other words, within which domain it applies. That such domains do not necessarily coincide with syntactic constituents has been amply demonstrated in such works as Clements (1978), Napoli & Nespor (1979), Rotenberg (1978), Selkirk (1978, 1984), Nespor & Vogel (1982, 1986) and Kaisse (1985). As has been argued in recent work, what is needed instead is a somewhat more complex theory in which there is a more complex type of interaction between phonological rules and syntactic structures. In the past few years, several such theories have been proposed, in particular, those advanced by Selkirk (1984), Kaisse (1985) and Nespor & Vogel (1986).

Stowell (1979) argues that an intermediate level of structure between foot and word tree is necessary: superfeet or cola. Cola are metrical constituents built on the output of footing. Stowell's argument is based on the accentual systems of Passamaquoddy and Seneca. However, in both cases, the analysis is for one reason or another questionable. First, P. LeSourd (personal communication) has suggested that the Passamaquoddy data are more complex than the sample Stowell presents, which undercuts his account. (Stowell's data are drawn from LeSourd's fieldwork.) Second, the Seneca analysis rests on the assumption that bounded and unbounded feet cannot cooccur in the same language – not a necessary component of metrical theory.