On Clause and Intonational Phrase in Japanese: Th e Syntactic Grounding of Prosodic Constituent Structure

Th is paper reviews evidence from recent research on Japanese sentence prosody, in particular Kawahara and Shinya (2008) on coordinated clauses and Kubo (1989) et seq, Deguchi and Kitagawa (2002) et seq, Ishihara (2002) et seq and Hirotani (2003) et seq on matrix and embedded wh-questions, which suggests that syntactic clauses correspond to a domain for certain of the phonological and phonetic phenomena that defi ne the intonational patterns of Japanese sentences. Th e fi nding that there is a clause-grounded intonational phrase domain of phonological representation in Japanese is predicted by a universal theory of the prosodic hierarchy as grounded in a universal theory of the syntax-phonology interface (Selkirk 2005). Th is paper lays out a new universal Match theory of the syntax-prosodic constituency interface, according to which designated syntactic constituent types are called on to match up with corresponding prosodic constituent types. Match theory may be construed as a component of the theory of Spell-Out in minimalist phase theory (Chomsky 2001). Th e data also shows that recursive intonational phrase structure is produced when the universal Match Clause constraint is satisfi ed on nested clausal domains. Th is is expected if indeed the availability of recursive prosodic structure derives from the organization of syntactic structure, through the agency of constraints on the syntax-phonology interface. Th is theory that prosodic constituent structure above the foot is syntactically grounded thus meshes well with the Itô and Mester (2007) claim that the prosodic hierarchy repertoire is universal and highly restricted and that recursivity in prosodic structure is systematic.