Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Vincent DeCaen <decaen AT chass.utoronto.ca>]

hi folks, is this getting through now? ;-)

I've finished my summer's work on projecting pause and accents from
the syntax. I'm working on a professional masters, and they're letting
me take electives in other departments to keep up my studies. so I
decided to do an outstanding-Revell-problems directed study in the
linguistics dept under Elan Dresher, a phonologist with an interest in
the accents as prosodic representation. (he has a really important
paper on the subject in Language 1994)

re pause. I have confirmed Revell's observations (JSS 1980) and can
now formulate a prosodic projection from the syntax to account for the
distribution of pause. the insight is that there is a prosodic
constituent between the verse and the disjunctive accents (or
phonological phrases): the intonational phrase. it's a fruitful
proposal.

also re pause. I'm developing a new rigorous phonology based on (a)
the actual system (not Qimhi; cf Goerwitz's work) and (b) the new
optimality approach to phonology. on this view---are you ready?-- the
pausal forms are faithful outputs and the contextual forms are
*derived* by refooting. I love turnings things on their heads!

re accents. if you grant the presence of hidden intonational phrases,
and the idea the tempo or grain varies (both motivated)..., then all
you need is a prosodic notion of BALANCE to rule out certain trees.
the idea, again deriving from tempo/grain, is that (1) is bad, (2) is
ok, but (3) is best. the rest is a really simple mapping from syntax
to accents.

        Violates BALANCE                no problem

             Y'                                   Y'
           /   \                                /   \
        Y           Y                       Y           Y
        |         /   \                   /   \         |
(1)     X       X       X       (2)     X       X       X


        binary is better:

            Y
          /   \
(3)     X       X

anyone looking for dissertation topics or term papers? I've got topics
and projects coming out of my ears! ;-)

cheers
V
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Vincent DeCaen, Ph.D.                                
<decaen AT chass.utoronto.ca>
Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto

Hebrew Syntax Encoding Initiative
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca:8080/~decaen/hsei/intro.html
c/o Deparment of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations
4 Bancroft Ave., 2d floor,  University of Toronto,  Toronto ON,  M5S 1A1

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