The interaction of prosody, syntax and information structure in Bemba (Bantu M42)

Gästföreläsning

Dr Nancy C Kula, University of Essex

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Prosody-syntax interactions have received increasing attention in the literature in recent times with different proposals on their interaction relating to the question of whether a direct relation is involved or an interface mediated by prosodic structure is more appropriate (see Samek-Lodovici 2006, Costa 2003, Scheer 2011, among others). This talk sheds light on this debate by considering sets of data on the prosody-syntax interaction in Bemba involving relative clauses (including noun-adjective phrases) and questions (including focus). On the one hand, the prosodic structure of relative clauses shows that they indicate particular syntactic constituents and on the other hand, question prosody shows consistency effects but there is no prominence associated with the focus, rather pre-focal expansion is seen, suggesting that prosody does not support the presence of a focus phrase.