Prosody and Prosodic Interfaces

This volume brings together new work on prosody and prosodic interfaces from international experts in the field, with parts exploring word prosody and phrase prosody, lexical tone and intonation, and the syntax-prosody interface. The empirical data comes from a wide range of languages, including many that are largely undocumented or understudied.

This volume brings together new work on prosody and prosodic interfaces from international experts in the field. The book is divided into three parts that explore topics in word prosody and phrase prosody, lexical tone and intonation, and the syntax-prosody interface. While many recent studies have focused on prosody and related questions, a significant number of languages, dialects, and varieties remain largely undocumented or understudied in this respect. The chapters in this volume help to fill this empirical gap, with investigations into languages such as Choguita Rarámuri (Mexico), Poko (Papua New Guinea), Rere (Sudan), and Uspanteko (Guatemala), alongside more widely studied languages such as Japanese and Serbian. The authors also address a range of important questions pertaining to, for example, the interactions between lexical and postlexical tones and the relationship between prosodic and syntactic structure. The volume as a whole sheds light on how prosody is structured in language and how it functions in human communication.