On the prosody and syntax of DPs : Evidence from Italian noun adjective sequences

The opposition between N- and NP-raising is central to the debate about therepresentation of DPs, yet it often eludes syntactic testing. The two hypotheses are however distinguished by the prosodic phrasing they predict. This paper presents the results of an experiment designed to test the prosodic phrasing of Italian N-A and A-N sequences as signaled by the lengthening effects induced by prosodic boundaries. We show that A and N share the same phonological phrase and that under all models of syntax prosody mapping the attested phrasing requires N-raising. Finally, we propose an analysis reconciling N-raising with Cinque’s recent evidence for DP-internal phrasal movement