We’re delighted to share that our book, Syntax-Prosody in Optimality Theory: Theory and Analyses (Bellik, Ito, Kalivoda & Mester, eds.), is now available for purchase either directly from Equinox Press or from other retailers (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Avid Bookshop, etc.)

You can also purchase pdfs of individual chapters from Equinox.

Table of contents:

Introduction

• Chapter 1: Syntax-Prosody in Optimality Theory (SPOT): Jennifer Bellik, Junko Ito, Nick Kalivoda, Armin Mester

Part I: GEN Settings

• Chapter 2. Counting Tree Parses: Edward Shingler, Jennifer Bellik
• Chapter 3. Branching Sensitivity, Prosodic Recursion and Mapping Constraints –Max Tarlov

Part II: Match Theory

• 4. Overtly Headed XPs and ι-initial StrongStart in Irish Syntax-Prosody Mapping: Nick Kalivoda
• 5. Constraining Subcategory-Sensitive MATCH Constraints Nicholas Van Handel, Dan Brodkin, Benjamin Eischens
• 6. Visibility Settings for Match Theory: Nicholas Van Handel

Part III: Align Theory

• 7. Interactions of Matching, Alignment and Binarity in Japanese and Beyond: Nick Kalivoda
• 8. Align-driven Clitic Movement in Chamorro: Richard Bibbs
• 9. Revisiting Tone Sandhi Domains in Xiamen Chinese: MATCH vs ALIGN with Strict Layering: Yaqing Cao, Richard Bibbs, Jennifer Bellik

Part IV: Prosodic Well-Formedness Constraints

• 10. Size Effects in Prosody: Branch-Counting, Leaf-Counting, and Uniformity: Jennifer Bellik
• 11. Stringency Hierarchies in Prosodic Sisterhood: STRONGSTART and EQUALSISTERS: Jennifer Bellik

Tutorial

• 12. How to Use SPOT: A Tutorial: Jennifer Bellik, Nick Kalivoda

The SPOT team is pleased to announce that we are working on a book for the Equinox series Advances in Optimality Theory, with the preliminary title Syntax Prosody in Optimality Theory: Theory and Analyses. The editors are Jennifer Bellik, Junko Ito, Nick Kalivoda, and Armin Mester, and in addition to chapters they write, the book will contain contributions from Richard Bibbs, Max Tarlov, and Nick Van Handel.

Syntax-Prosody in Optimality Theory; Theory and Analyses; Bellik; Ito; Kalivoda; Mester

Abstract:

Optimality Theory has become the dominant approach to studying phonology, including analyses of the mapping from syntactic structure to prosodic structure. However, when both syntactic and prosodic structures are represented as trees, it is difficult, if not impossible, to systematically generate by hand all the possible candidates, i.e., all the possible prosodic parses that must be considered in an OT investigation for any given syntactic input. Consequently, most existing syntax-prosody analyses are in this way incomplete, compromising their very validity. This volume presents a series of studies of the syntax-prosody interface that are complete in this sense, thanks to their use of the SPOT application ( https://spot.sites.ucsc.edu ). This JavaScript application (developed by the editors) automates candidate generation and constraint evaluation, making a rigorous OT analysis of syntax-prosody possible. SPOT allows the user to test the typological predictions of the numerous proposed constraints on prosodic markedness and syntax-prosody mapping, so that researchers can make progress toward determining which formulations of the constraints should actually be part of the universal CON. A theme of the volume is comparing Match Theory (Selkirk 2011) with the older Align Theory of syntax-prosody mapping, with the finding that both are needed, at least in some languages.