Abstract

In the past three decades or so, a growing body of researches on syntax–phonology interface have been conducted from various theoretical perspectives. The term “syntax–phonology interface” has included a wider range of linguistic study, particularly since the advent of the so-called minimalist program (Chomsky 1995, et seq.), which seeks to minimize the theoretical devices in the “narrow syntax” component and attribute to the interfaces what was once taken to be the properties of narrow syntax. Thus the following are often taken to be subsumed under the study of syntax–phonology interface: linearization, ellipsis, “movement” operations such as Heavy NP Shift, head movement and clitic placement, morphological phenomena in general, and phrasal phonology. ¹ This chapter, however, is concerned with the syntax–phonology interface in a narrower, or more or less traditional, sense: the prosodic domains that are sensitive to syntax.