2.1. Rigid ι-mapping approaches

It is an accepted view in the syntax-prosody literature that prosodic constituents are organised into hierarchical units that, on the one hand, systematically reflect syntactic structure and, on the other, are subject to phonological requirements/constraints that are independent from syntax (Selkirk Reference Selkirk1978, Reference Selkirk1986; Nespor et al. Reference Nespor, Vogel, van der Hulst and Smith1982; Nespor and Vogel Reference Nespor and Vogel1986, among others). Depending on the language, two or three levels of prosodic constituency above the level of a prosodic word are recognised. The smaller one(s) are typically labelled Minor or Major Phrases, or, if there is a single one, Phonological or Prosodic Phrase (φ). The larger ones are Intonational Phrases (ι); additionally, the level of Utterance Phrase (υ) may be recognised (see Shattuck-Hufnagel and Turk (Reference Shattuck-Hufnagel and Turk1996) and Selkirk (Reference Selkirk2011) for an overview). Phonological Phrases are taken to correspond to smaller XPs (Truckenbrodt Reference Truckenbrodt1999; Selkirk Reference Selkirk2011), or, alternatively, to spell-out domains (Dobashi Reference Dobashi2003; Ishihara Reference Ishihara2003; Kratzer and Selkirk Reference Kratzer and Selkirk2007). There is more variability with respect to the mapping between Intonational Phrases and syntactic constituents: while there is a common understanding that Intonational Phrases correspond to ‘clauses’, different implementations are available, with syntactic, semantic and/or information-structural factors considered primary.

In the earliest syntax–prosody literature, ι was taken to correspond to the syntactic node S, the highest one in the syntactic clause. To account for the prosodic properties of different types of embedded clauses, S was specified as not dominated by a node other than S (Downing Reference Downing1970; Emonds Reference Emonds1970; Bing Reference Bing1979; Nespor and Vogel Reference Nespor and Vogel1986). According to a less syntax-centred view, ι was a semantic/information-structural unit larger than a prosodic word and variable in its extent, not necessarily isomorphic to any syntactic constituent. Accordingly, a single clause could contain one or more ιs (Selkirk Reference Selkirk1984). Later, ι was proposed to correspond to the Comma Phrase in syntax, roughly equivalent to a speech act (Selkirk Reference Selkirk2005, based on Potts Reference Potts2005), or more directly to a speech act itself, without addressing its syntactic implementation (Truckenbrodt Reference Truckenbrodt2015). In more recent and more syntax-centred work, ι has often been taken as corresponding to CP (Truckenbrodt Reference Truckenbrodt2005, Reference Truckenbrodt2007; Cheng and Kula Reference Cheng and Kula2006; Pak Reference Pak2008; Henderson Reference Henderson2012), or, less commonly, TP (Zerbian Reference Zerbian2006, Reference Zerbian2007, based on Northern Sotho, where matrix clauses are analysed as CP-less). In another attempt to account for the prosodic properties of both matrix and embedded clauses, it was suggested that ι corresponds to the complement of C $^0$ in embedded clauses and the complement of Force $^0$ (‘illocutionary clause’; Rizzi Reference Rizzi1997) in matrix clauses (Selkirk Reference Selkirk2009, Reference Selkirk2011). This means that in complex clauses, ι was established as recursive. In a similar vein, it has been argued that ι corresponds to syntactic phases (CP and vP), with the caveat that only non-complement embedded CPs form phases (e.g. non-restrictive relative clauses; Cheng and Downing Reference Cheng and Downing2007, Reference Cheng and Downing2009).

In addition to the difficulty in establishing the syntactic counterpart of ι, some phonological factors, known as eurhythmic constraints, have been recognised as affecting ι-formation (see Elfner Reference Elfner2018 for an overview). The most obvious is phonological weight: heavy syntactic constituents can form higher-level prosodic constituents even if they are not clausal (e.g. Gussenhoven Reference Gussenhoven2004). Among others, ι-formation can also result from the application of the constraint StrongStart, according to which the leftmost prosodic constituent cannot be lower in the prosodic hierarchy than the following one (Selkirk Reference Selkirk2011; Elfner Reference Elfner2011, Reference Elfner2012; Bennett et al. Reference Bennett, Elfner and McCloskey2016).

Despite definitional discrepancies, the notion of ι has proved useful in linguistic theorizing, both with respect to phonological and morphosyntactic processes: it has been argued to be the domain of low-tone insertion in Slave (Na-Dené; Rice Reference Rice1987) and morphological alternations in K'ichee’ (Mayan; Henderson Reference Henderson2012), to name a few. This, in turn, means that a cross-linguistically valid approach to determining ι-size is called for.

2.2. The flexible ι-mapping approach

Hamlaoui and Szendrői (Reference Hamlaoui and Szendrői2015, Reference Hamlaoui and Szendrői2017) propose that accounting for the cross-linguistic variability in mapping of ι onto syntactic constituents is possible if this mapping is not assumed to target a particular syntactic projection. Instead, they argue that ι corresponds to the highest projection that hosts overt verbal material (‘the verb itself, the inflection, an auxiliary, or a question particle’), together with its specifier (HVP). That is, the size of ι is relative and does not rigidly correspond to any syntactic projection (e.g. CP, TP and/or vP), but is determined by the syntactic height of the verb. The proposal is based on the prosodic properties of the Hungarian narrow focus construction, English wh-questions/German V2 clauses, and Bàsàá zero-coded passives. In each of these languages, ι corresponds to the HVP: FocP, CP, and TP, respectively, as schematised in (1), where the ι-edges are represented by curly braces above the syntactic square brackets. There is no restriction on the kind of material that can occupy the specifier of the HVP; for example, it does not have to have a particular information-structural status.

1. (1)

   

These facts are derived with the help of Align constraints, shown in (2).Footnote ² The left and right edges of the HVP are aligned with the left and right edges of ι by Align-R/L(HVP, ι).Footnote ³ Additionally, the edges of the full ‘illocutionary’ clause (the speech act) are mapped onto the edges of the larger ι by Align-R/L(SA, ι).Footnote ⁴ The corresponding prosody–syntax mapping constraints, which ensure mapping of prosodic constituents onto syntactic ones, are low-ranked, and we omit them for the sake of simplicity.

1. (2)

   

To illustrate, let us consider the prosodic properties of narrow-focus constructions in Hungarian, as compared to those of topics. In Hungarian, narrow (identificational, exhaustive) foci appear immediately preverbally. Syntactically, focus-verb adjacency is derived by movement: the narrowly focused constituent moves to Spec,FocP, and the verb raises to Foc $^0$ , as manifested by the fact that detachable preverbs in focus constructions are left behind (Horvath Reference Horvath1986; Bródy Reference Bródy1995; É. Kiss Reference É. Kiss1998). Prosodically, the narrowly focused constituent receives sentential stress, which has been analysed as targeting the leftmost constituent of an ι (Szendrői Reference Szendrői2001, Reference Szendrői2003). This means that, in the presence of a narrowly focused constituent, the ι in Hungarian corresponds to FocP, the projection that also houses the verb, which is in accordance with the flexible ι-mapping hypothesis. This is illustrated in (3):

1. (3)

   

In contrast with foci, the movement of topics to the left-peripheral positions is not accompanied by verb movement, as shown by the lack of preverb detachment. The prediction of the flexible ι-mapping hypothesis, then, is that topics should not be part of the ‘core’ ι. This is borne out by the fact that in utterances with topics but not foci, sentential stress targets the preverb+verb complex (Ladd Reference Ladd1996; László Reference László2001; Szendrői Reference Szendrői2001, Reference Szendrői2003).Footnote ⁵ Accordingly, topics in Hungarian are not part of the ‘core’ ι, as shown in (4).

1. (4)

   

Hamlaoui and Szendrői (Reference Hamlaoui and Szendrői2015: 6) take multiple topics, if present, to be part of the ‘maximal’ ι, not separated from each other by ι-boundaries, because ‘there does not seem to be any evidence for the presence of intonational phrase boundaries between the topics’. As shown in §5.1, this does not hold for Iron Ossetic, where left-peripheral topics form individual ιs.

3.1. Basic clause structure

The neutral word order in Iron Ossetic is SOV, but in actual discourse the word order is largely determined by information structure. Smaller phrases are mostly head-final. Iron Ossetic is morphologically complex, mostly suffixing, with a rich case system, an inventory of aspectual prefixes, and a sophisticated system of pronominal and adverbial second-position clitics (Erschler Reference Erschler2020).

Following Borise and Erschler (Reference Borise and Erschler2021), we take the clausal spine to be left-branching up to the level of TP, as shown in (5). The finite verb is assembled via head movement through a series of functional heads (v $^0$ , Asp $^0$ ) and raised to T $^0$ . Aspectual prefixes are merged in Asp $^0$ ; their linearization on the left is achieved by means of a diacritic [+prefix].Footnote ⁶ The subject is generated in Spec,vP and raised to Spec,TP.

1. (5)

   

With respect to head directionality, we take the VP to be head-final, because the neutral constituent order is OV (Erschler Reference Erschler2020: 669). The evidence for the head-finality of vP is supplied by the behaviour of complex verbs. Complex verbs are combinations of a nominal part and a light verb that bears tense and agreement markers (e.g. ba-fɐʃtiat kod-ta ‘pfv-delay do-pst.3sg’), as exemplified in (16) and (17) below. The order of elements in such verbs is rigidly nominal part–light verb (Erschler Reference Erschler2020: 656–657). The literature on complex verbs in a number of languages, including Persian and Hindi-Urdu, agrees that the light verb must include v $^0$ or even be the spell-out of it (e.g. Butt and Ramchand Reference Butt and Ramchand2005; Folli et al. Reference Folli, Harley and Karimi2005). The order nominal part–light verb can be derived only if vP is head-final.

We know of no direct evidence that would bear on head directionality in AspP and TP. Iron Ossetic lacks auxiliaries or any other items that can be identified as the spell-out of T $^0$ . On the other hand, the CP is head-initial, because a complementiser, if present, always precedes the verb (Erschler Reference Erschler2020: 679–682). Therefore, at some point there must be a switch from the head-finality of lower projections to the head-initiality of higher ones. Given the typologically robust Final-over-Final Condition (FOFC), which prohibits head-final phrases from immediately dominating head-initial ones within the same extended projection (Sheehan et al. Reference Sheehan, Biberauer, Roberts and Holmberg2017: 1), we assume that this switch occurs only once. For the sake of consistency, we assume that all phrases in the inflectional domain (such as AspP and TP) are head-final, and that the phrases in the discourse domain (i.e. NegP and above) are head-initial. Nothing in our analysis hinges on where exactly in the inflectional domain the switch in head directionality occurs.

3.2. Discourse projections

Ossetic has a well-articulated left periphery, which houses several types of constituents, including topics, narrow foci, wh-phrases, and negative indefinites (Erschler Reference Erschler2012, Reference Erschler2020). The latter three constituent types share the following property: descriptively, each of them must appear in the immediately preverbal position (in the absence of another element with the same requirement). Details of the distribution and co-occurrence requirements of the left-peripheral constituents are provided below.

Negative indefinites in Iron Ossetic must appear immediately preverbally, as shown in (6a)–(6b); if there are several, all surface as a cluster, left-adjacent to the verb, as in (6c). No material can intervene between the negative indefinites and the verb, or between adjacent negative indefinites, as in (6d): abon ‘today’ cannot be inserted in any of the positions where it appears in angled brackets. The exponent of sentential negation is in complementary distribution with negative indefinites in negative sentences: that is, in the presence of a negative indefinite, no exponent of negation is used, but in the absence of a negative indefinite, the exponent of negation is obligatory.

1. (6)

   

In a similar fashion, a wh-phrase in a wh-question must surface immediately preverbally. If there are several wh-phrases, they form a unit that is left-adjacent to the verb, as in (7a). No material can separate the wh-phrases from each other or from the verb, as shown in (7b) and (7c).

1. (7)

   

Finally, narrowly focused constituents also appear immediately preverbally. This applies to constituents modified by ‘only’, as in (8), or, in responses to wh-questions, the constituent corresponding to the wh-phrase in the preceding wh-question, as in (9).Footnote ⁷

1. (8)

   

1. (9)

   

If elements that require immediately preverbal placement co-occur, their order is strictly focus ¿ wh-phrase(s) ¿ negative indefinite(s). Topicalised constituents precede the resulting preverbal complex; non-topical material may also follow the verb. This is illustrated for wh-phrase(s) ¿ negative indefinite(s) in (10), focus ¿ negative indefinite(s) in (11), and focus ¿ wh-phrase(s) in (12).Footnote ⁸

1. (10)

   

1. (11)

   

1. (12)

   

To account for the order of the preverbal elements and their properties, we propose that the clausal architecture switches from head-final to head-initial in the discourse projections above the TP, as shown in (13). Here, foci, wh-phrases, and negative indefinites are housed in a sequence of dedicated discourse projections. For NegP in Digor Ossetic, this was proposed in Erschler and Volk (Reference Erschler and Volk2011: 149).

1. (13)

   

If these projections are merged, we propose that the verb raises to the head of the lowest discourse projection with a filled specifier; cf. a somewhat similar treatment of Turkish by Akan and Hartmann (Reference Akan and Hartmann2019). In accordance with the Bare Phrase Structure approach (Chomsky Reference Chomsky1994, Reference Chomsky1995), we assume that discourse projections that house no overt material are not projected. Examples with syntactic bracketing are provided in (14).

1. (14)

   

That the verb indeed undergoes movement to a discourse projection in these contexts is supported by the positioning of the constituents that the verb raises past; for example, subjects and temporal (i.e. TP-level) adverbs:

1. (15)

   

We assume that NegP and WP have identical structures, with a single head and the possibility for multiple specifiers, if multiple wh-phrases or negative indefinites are present. This assumption is based on the fact that neg-phrases and wh-phrases are subject to identical ordering restrictions: no superiority constraints are attested, but animate arguments must precede inanimate ones:

1. (16)

   

1. (17)

   

Furthermore, it has been shown that the exponent of sentential negation nɐ is a phrase rather than a head (Erschler and Volk Reference Erschler and Volk2011). The complementary distribution of the negative marker with negative indefinites, as illustrated in (6), is accounted for if we assume that sentential negation is spelled out in Spec,NegP as a last resort when the specifiers of NegP would otherwise remain empty. If, under the alternative assumption, negative indefinites occupied the specifiers of separate (iterated) negative projections, the complementary distribution between negative indefinites and sentential negation would be much harder to explain. Based on this and the overall parallelism between the distribution and behaviour of negative indefinites and wh-phrases, we conclude that multiple wh-phrases are also merged in multiple specifiers of a single functional head. The fact that no material can intervene between multiple wh-phrases or multiple negative indefinites follows from the multiple specifier analysis.

Finally, evidence for the verb raising to the head of the lowest discourse projection with a filled specifier comes from word order: no adverbs can intervene between a constituent in the specifier of the lowest discourse projection and the verb, as was shown in (6d), (7c), (8b), (8c), (9b) and (9c). If the verb had stayed in the TP after the merger of the discourse projections, we would expect TP-level adverbials to intervene between the verb and the constituents in the discourse projections. This does not take place.Footnote ⁹

3.3. Prosody: traditional descriptions

Traditional literature on Iron Ossetic describes the prominent role of prosodic phrasing in the language, closely connected with word stress and the way stress is rendered intonationally. In a lexical word, stress targets the first or second syllable, which together comprise the ‘stress window’. The exact location of stress depends on vowel quality (Bagaev Reference Bagaev1965; Isaev Reference Isaev1959; Dzakhova Reference Dzakhova2010). Iron Ossetic has ‘strong’ (S) and ‘weak’ (W) vowels: /a, e, i, o, u/ and /ɐ, ə/, respectively. Stress targets the initial syllable if the first vowel is strong (ŚS: rálizən ‘to run away’, χábar ‘news’; ŚW: ráʒmɐ ‘forward’, sólpə ‘ladle’), and the second syllable if the first vowel is weak (WẂ: kɐʃtr ‘young’, ʃɐnkk ‘lamb’; WŚ: bɐláʃ ‘tree’, χɐdón ‘shirt’).Footnote ¹⁰ Personal names, regardless of vowel quality, are stressed on the second syllable.

In connected speech, stress is described as assigned within a larger prosodic constituent: a so-called ‘prosodic group’, as opposed to a prosodic word. Within a prosodic group, only the stress on the leftmost word is intonationally expressed; other words are described as ‘stressless’ (Abaev Reference Abaev1924, Reference Abaev1939; Bagaev Reference Bagaev1965; Isaev Reference Isaev1959; Testen Reference Testen1997). The nature and intonational expression of what is described as stress in a prosodic group have not been discussed in the grammars, but the important insight that comes from the traditional literature is that the distribution of stresses allows for identifying prosodic groups.

Prosodic grouping and the corresponding assignment of the intonational expression of stress applies to a number of contexts, which may be divided into ‘nominal’ and ‘verbal’ ones. The nominal contexts include combinations of nouns and their modifiers, and nouns and postpositions (DPs and PPs). The verbal contexts include combinations of sentential negation/negative indefinites, wh-phrases or narrowly focused immediately preverbal constituents and verbs, as well as combinations of more than one of the above and verbs (Abaev Reference Abaev1939). The verbal contexts may include second-position clitics and certain particles, which surface between the preverbal constituent and the verb and are also included in the prosodic group. Any other material is described as placed outside the prosodic group.

3.4. Stress and φ-formation

As an OT analysis of stress placement in Iron Ossetic, we adopt the proposal put forward in Borise and Erschler (Reference Borise and Erschler2022), according to which a prosodic word in Iron Ossetic contains a binary iambic foot, under a moraic (as opposed to syllabic) analysis: each foot corresponds to two morae. This is enforced by Ft-Form=I and Ft-Bin constraints (Prince Reference Prince1980; René Reference René1989; Prince and Smolensky Reference Prince and Smolensky1993). Feet are left-aligned in a prosodic word. This is derived via Align-Ft-L and Parse-syll (Hayes Reference Hayes1980; Halle and Vergnaud Reference Halle and Vergnaud1987; McCarthy and Prince Reference McCarthy and Prince1993; Prince and Smolensky Reference Prince and Smolensky1993). The constraints are defined in (18), and the tableaux deriving word stress placement in the four stress-window types are provided in (19)–(22). We adopt the following constraint ranking: Align-Ft-L $\gg$ Ft-Bin $\gg$ Parse-syll; the ranking of Ft-Form=I with respect to the other constraints is undetermined. Justification for the ranking is provided in the context of individual tableaux. Note that syllables with strong vowels are taken to be heavy/bimoraic (S), and syllables with weak vowels are taken to be light/monomoraic (W).

1. (18)

   

In ŚS stress windows, the candidates with both strong vowels parsed into a foot, (19b) and (19c), fatally violate Ft-Bin, because the feet in them contain four morae. Candidate (19d), with the initial vowel unfooted, fatally violates Align-Ft-L. The winning candidate, (19a), violates the lower-ranked Parse-syll only. In terms of constraint ranking, (19b) would win over (19a).

1. (19)

   

Similarly, in ŚW stress windows, Ft-Bin is fatally violated by (20b) and (20c), which have trimoraic feet. (20d), with the initial vowel unfooted, fatally violates Align-Ft-L. The winning candidate, (20a), again violates Parse-syll only. Like (19), (20) illustrates the Ft-Bin $\gg$ Parse-syll ranking: under the opposite ranking, (20b) would win over (20a).

1. (20)

   

In WẂ stress windows, Ft-Bin is responsible for excluding candidate (21b), in which the foot contains only one mora, and Align-Ft-L excludes (21d), where the foot is not left-aligned in the prosodic word. Candidate (21c), which is not iambic, fatally violates Ft-Form=I.

1. (21)

   

Finally, in WŚ stress windows, (22d) fatally violates Align-Ft-L, (22b) incurs a fatal violation of Parse-syll, and (22c) of Ft-Form=I. The winner, (22a), violates Ft-Bin but still fares better than its competitors. WŚ stress windows show that Align-Ft-L is ranked above Ft-Bin. If the opposite were the case, (22d) would be the winner instead of (22a).

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Borise and Erschler (Reference Borise and Erschler2022) also show, based on a production study, that DPs of all sizes in broad-focus declaratives in Iron Ossetic consistently map onto prosodic constituents, φs, as illustrated in (23). This is ensured by Align-L/R(DP/PP, φ) and Align-L/R(φ, DP/PP) constraints, listed in (24). The signature property of a φ is a single pitch accent, anchored to the stressed syllable in the leftmost prosodic word. This is ensured by Align-L(Hd-PrWd, φ) (based on Prince and Smolensky Reference Prince and Smolensky1993), provided in (25). Therefore, the distribution of pitch accents allows for tracking the size of φs; these results provide an instrumental validation to the existing descriptions of Iron Ossetic.

1. (23)

   

1. (24)

   

1. (25)

   

4.1. Predictions and aims

The syntactic facts in §3.1 and §3.2 show that if the discourse projections are merged, the verb in Iron Ossetic may be found at different heights in the clause. The prediction of the flexible ι-mapping hypothesis, then, is that the size of ι will vary, depending on verb height. Based on the traditional descriptions of Iron Ossetic prosody, this is indeed the case, with the expression of ‘stress’ marking the left edges of ‘prosodic groups’, in the contexts that we identify as containing the discourse projections. This has not previously been verified instrumentally, which means that the current study was also largely exploratory.

Therefore, the aims of the study were the following: to (a) verify instrumentally the traditional accounts of the formation of ‘verbal’ prosodic groups (i.e. those including verbs and negative indefinites, wh-phrases or narrowly focused constituents), (b) recast them in terms of Autosegmental-Metrical Theory, (c) provide an Optimality Theory account of the syntax–prosody interaction, and (d) test the predictions of the flexible ι-mapping hypothesis.

4.3. Theoretical framework and scope of the results

For the purposes of the prosodic analysis, we adopt Autosegmental-Metrical (AM) theory (Liberman Reference Liberman1975; Bruce Reference Bruce1977; Pierrehumbert Reference Pierrehumbert1980). According to the AM theory, the tonal contour consists of a sequence of pitch targets aligned with specific hosts in the prosodic structure, and transitions between them (interpolation). The values of pitch targets are high (H) or low (L), and there are several types of pitch targets: pitch accents, which align with metrically strong syllables (e.g. H*, L*), and boundary tones, which align with edges of prosodic domains (e.g. %H, L%). Complex pitch targets consist of two tones. In a complex pitch accent, the main pitch target, aligned with the stressed syllable, is asterisked, with a leading or trailing tone preceding or following it (e.g. L+H*, L*+H) (for later refinements and critiques of tonal alignment within complex accents, see e.g. Grice Reference Grice1995; Arvaniti et al. Reference Arvaniti, Ladd and Mennen2000; Atterer and Ladd Reference Atterer and Ladd2004; Dilley et al. Reference Dilley, Ladd and Schepman2005; Barnes et al. Reference Barnes, Veilleux, Brugos and Shattuck-Hufnagel2012). Smaller prosodic units, such as prosodic words, are grouped into larger prosodic units, such as Prosodic Phrases and Intonational Phrases. Pitch accents are assigned within smaller prosodic units, while all types of prosodic units can carry initial and/or final boundary tones.

To the best of our knowledge, no AM analysis of Iron Ossetic has so far been proposed. Borise and Erschler (Reference Borise and Erschler2022) take the first step towards a systematic account by demonstrating that in neutral broad-focus declaratives, each φ in Iron Ossetic carries a complex pitch accent consisting of two tonal targets, L and H. The L portion is invariably associated with the stressed syllable in the leftmost word of a φ (the first or the second syllable, depending on vowel quality, as discussed above), and the H portion is realised on the post-tonic syllable. The exact alignment of the rise from L to H is shown to be determined by the quality of the stressed vowel: ‘strong’ stressed vowels can carry a low or rising tonal contour, while ‘weak’ ones carry a low tone only. Borise and Erschler (Reference Borise and Erschler2022) propose that the tonal alignment is determined by the mora count of the stressed vowel, as introduced in the context of stress assignment above: strong stressed vowels correspond to two morae, and weak ones correspond to one. The two morae of strong stressed vowels can accommodate a low plateau or rise in F0, whereas weak stressed vowels can accommodate only a single low tone. Accordingly, Borise and Erschler (Reference Borise and Erschler2022) label the two rising pitch accents L+H* and L*+H. The intuition behind these labels is that, in L+H*, the starred tone H* is primary, in that it appears on both the stressed and the post-tonic syllable, and in L*+H, L* is primary, because this is the only tone aligned with the stressed syllable. Strong, stressed vowels can carry either accent, but weak vowels can only carry L*+H.

Most pertinently for the current purposes, Borise and Erschler (Reference Borise and Erschler2022) show that in neutral broad-focus contexts, each φ carries a rising pitch accent, with the F0 peak reached on the post-tonic syllable. We find that the same applies to topicalised φs in our data. In contrast, we find that the pitch accents carried by the leftmost φs in the ‘core’ ιs in our data – such as the ιs in the context of narrow foci, wh-phrases, and neg-words – are monotonal H*s aligned with the stressed syllables themselves. Therefore, we tentatively assume that the distinction between the bitonal rising and monotonal high pitch accents might be rooted in information structure: rising pitch accents seem to mark given/familiar/topical material, while monotonal high pitch accents mark new constituents. Put differently, the constituents outside of the core ι carry bitonal rather than monotonal accents. The one exception to this is the wh-word savɐr ‘which’, which often carries a rising rather than high pitch accent, in contrast with other wh-phrases. This, in fact, fits well with the hypothesis that bitonal pitch accents are correlated with givenness, due to the given or D(iscourse)-linked status of ‘which’ (Pesetsky Reference Pesetsky1987, Reference Pesetsky2000). The relevant examples are discussed in §5.2.2 and §5.3.2.

Because it is not the aim of this paper to provide a description of the intonational phonology and the full tonal inventory of Iron Ossetic, we leave other issues pertaining to the pitch accent types for future research. The contrasts between L+H*, L*+H and H* are largely irrelevant for our current purposes and have been introduced to facilitate visual recognition of the pitch accents in the figures. What is important is the presence or absence of an accent on a particular constituent, not the type of accent. Visually, the main difference between L+H* and L*+H is the presence or absence of rise in F0 on the stressed syllable. The difference between L+H* and L*+H, on the one hand, and H* on the other is the location of the F0 peak: it is on the post-tonic syllable in the case of the bitonal accents and on the stressed syllable in the monotonal accent. However, the type of pitch accent and the exact alignment of its subparts are not important for the argument at hand.