The Spanish feminine el at the syntax-phonology interface

2012-08-01The main theoretical goal of this dissertation is the investigation of the syntax-phonology interface through probing syntax-sensitive phonological phenomena, exemplified by a comprehensive analysis of the so-called Spanish “feminine el”, a morpho-phonological determiner alternation that is triggered by certain phonological and syntactic contexts. Specific areas of the syntax-phonology interface that I examine are syntactic triggers to prosodic clitic organization and phonetic reflections of those prosodic structures. I argue that the feminine el provides support for the inclusion of the syntactic head-complement relation in the Prosodic Phonology mapping, and produces recursive Prosodic Word (Pwd) cliticization structures. In particular, it accrues evidence for the maximal Pwd domain proposed by Itô and Mester (2006, 2007, 2008, 2010). This dissertation provides new phonetic evidence for distinguishing between maximal and minimal Pwd boundaries in different cliticization structures. ❧ Additional theoretical proposals of the dissertation include a scale of phonological contrast-driven hiatus restrictions, and the development of a morphology-phonology correspondence account of apparent mismatches in gender realization at the morphology-phonology interface, in order to address the specific feminine or masculine morphological interpretation of the Spanish article in question. The proposed scale of hiatus restrictions is a novel application of the Minimum Distance (Flemming 2004) approach to perceptual contrast, utilizing perceptual contrast in segment transitions to produce a relative scale of adjacent VV restrictions. The morphology-phonology correspondence account provided builds on previous work in the morphology-phonology interface (Walker & Feng 2004, Wolf 2008) to evolve the family of IDENTITY constraints governing correspondence between morphological and phonological forms in the input and output. ❧ In examining these areas, this dissertation is the first to provide a full theoretical analysis of the Spanish feminine el phenomenon, accounting for phonological, morphological and syntactic effects. Further case studies in Spanish and Romance dialects also demonstrate the effects of the prosodic cliticization structures, hiatus restrictions, and morpho-phonological correspondence proposed. Among the broad theoretical contributions of this work, this dissertation brings new insight and evidence to the distinctions between different prosodic clitic attachments and the nature of the syntactic information on which they may rely, further developing the relationship between syntax and phonology. It additionally expands the understanding of phonological vowel hiatus by building on perceptual contrast considerations, opening a new perspective on segment sequencing