NYI lecture: Markus Pöchtrager, Phonology Goes Syntax

TODAY (10 January) ay 5:30 pm Markus Pöchtrager will give an NYI Distinguished Linguist talk with the title “Phonology Goes Syntax”.

Attendance is free but registration is required. You can register here.

Abstract

To what extent do the individual modules of grammar share a similar architecture? In this talk we will ask that question about syntax and phonology.

I’ll focus on the “lower” levels of phonological constituency to show what evidence we find for (recursive) hierarchical structure. Neeleman & van de Koot (2006) point out that any argument in favour of parallels must not only show that phonology *can* be done with hierarchical structures, but why it *must* be. Syntax needs hierarchical structures to express asymmetries, and similar asymmetries in phonology can be found between elements. Asymmetries between the elements I and U seem particularly wide-spread, and we’ll see how a syntax-inspired phonological model can make sense of them in various phenomena across different languages such as Mandarin, Japanese, English, Finnish, Turkish etc.