Prosodic word deletion in coordinate structures

• Main Authors: Marina Vigário, Sónia Frota
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Open Library of Humanities 2002-12-01
• Series: Journal of Portuguese Linguistics
• Online Access: http://jpl.letras.ulisboa.pt/articles/44

Prosodic word deletion in partially identical coordinate structures (DUI) is a rather general phenomenon across languages. In this paper, new data is presented that contributes to a cross-linguistic understanding of the deletion process. Its phonological nature is supported by an array of prosodic requirements on the deleted unit, its counterpart, the remnant, and the way the coordinate sequence is prosodically phrased, showing that a pure morpho-syntactic analysis of DUI is unattainable. On the other hand, it is also shown that syntax constrains DUI as well. These properties are argued to be general and the cross-linguistic variation found is shown to result from prosodic differences that the languages independently display. It is further argued that DUI is fundamentally different from syntactic ellipsis phenomena. The account proposed places this process at the syntax-phonology interface without any further addition to constrained models of syntax-phonology interaction.