Unbounded recursion in two dimensions, where syntax and prosody meet

Edward P. Stabler, Kristine M. Yu

Abstract: Both syntax and prosody seem to require struc- tures with unbounded branching, something that is not immediately provided by multiple context free grammars or other equivalently ex- pressive formalisms. That extension is easy, and does not disrupt an appealing model of prosody/syntax interaction. Rather than com- puting prosodic and syntactic structures inde- pendently and then selecting optimally cor- responding pairs, prosodic structures can be computed directly from the syntax, eliminat- ing alignment issues and the need for bracket- insertion or other ad hoc devices. To illustrate, a simple model of prosodically-defined Irish pronoun displacement is briefly compared to previous proposals.