Byron T. Ahn | Syntactic Structure + Prosodic Prominence

The phrasal stress placement operation (aka the Nuclear Stress Rule, NSR) is well understood take as its input the output of syntax. Though many assume this input to be a linearized, one-dimensional string, this assumption does not follow from anything principled, and recent work argues that instead it operates on a multi-dimensional hierarchical output. My work in this domain investigates putative exceptions to the NSR, and ultimately finds that none of them are exceptions, but instead provide insight into more articulated syntactic structure.

As for focus stress placement, a robust generalization (assumed by many scholars, under different names) is that prosodic focus marking in languages like English must be contained within the domain of semantic focus alternatives. (e.g., Focus accents must be contained within semantically focused words.) Ahn and Sailor 2018 surveys some contexts where the domain of semantic focus maps onto phonological content that cannot support prosodic focus marking, finding that this sort of configuration leads to (apparent) semantics-phonology mismatches.

Ahn, Jeong & Sailor in press further explores a particular phenomenon in this domain, where focus accents arise on stressless word-final syllables as in “mayBÉ”, where the focus pitch accent falls on the (unstressed) /bi/ syllable.

A pitch track showing the focus accent falling on an unstressed syllable

some work in this project

Ahn, Byron, Sunwoo Jeong & Craig Sailor. In Press. Systematic ‘stray’ focus stress in English? ApparentLY! In WCCFL 39 Proceedings, Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
abstract Paper Bib

In certain responsive contexts, English allows normally prosodically‑weak syllables to exceptionally bear focus marking: “apparentLÝ,” “mayBÉ,” “looks LÍKE,” etc. This is striking for at least two reasons: (i) English prosody is otherwise robust in requiring focus accents to arise on the head of a prosodic category (and not on a weak position, as here), and (ii) the focus accent here arises on an expression that is not even part of the semantically‑focused domain—that is, this phenomenon involves a semantics‑prosody misalignment. As this “stray” focal stress (SFS) phenomenon has received almost no attention in the literature, we begin by describing its distributional, phonological, and semantic properties. We then propose an analysis whereby SFS arises as a side effect of a syntactic derivation in which the domain of F‑marking happens not to map to any segmentally‑overt material at PF. As a result of this, the focus prosody must look for a host elsewhere, only finding an optimal host on PF material corresponding to a position outside the F‑marked domain. In the SFS data we analyze in this paper, the null F‑marked element sits in the low left periphery and contributes meaning relating to the speaker’s beliefs, encoding their degree of certainty about the assertion. However, our analysis also predicts that SFS should arise in various other configurations where null operators are under semantic focus. By characterizing these general conditions for SFS, we hope to provide a blueprint for the identification and analysis of other such semantics‑prosody misalignments.
@incollection{Ahn-Jeong-Sailor-WCCFL39, author = {Ahn, Byron and Jeong, Sunwoo and Sailor, Craig}, booktitle = {{WCCFL} 39 Proceedings}, publisher = {Cascadilla Proceedings Project}, title = {Systematic ‘stray’ focus stress in {E}nglish? Apparent{LY}!}, year = {In Press} }
Ahn, Byron, Sunwoo Jeong & Craig Sailor. 2021, March. Emphatic weak certainty in English: focus at the syntax-semantics/-phonology interfaces. Talk presented at Princeton Symposium on Syntactic Theory 2021. Princeton University.
abstract Handout Bib
In the vast majority of cases across English, syllables marked with focus prosody must be the most prominent syllable within the semantic focus domain (Jackendoff 1972, inter alia). This essentially precludes lexically unstressed syllables from bearing prosodic focus. Despite this, particular linguistic contexts regularly allow lexically unstressed syllables to bear prosodic focus:

   [A and B wait impatiently for their train, which is very late]
   A: It looks like we’ll be late to the party.
   B1: Yeah, appàrentLÝ.
   B2: Yeah, pròbabLÝ.
   B3: Yeah, màyBÉ.
   B4: Yeah, lòoks LÍKE.
   B5: Yeah, còuld BÉ.
   B6: Yeah, sèems SÓ.
   B7: # Yeah, dèfiniteLÝ.

Note that in all cases, the most prominent syllable could also be one where stress falls on a lexical stress (apPÁrently, PRÓbably, MÁYbe, LÓOKS like, CÓULD be, SÉEMS so), however, the cases where the stress is on the final syllable convey a particular meaning. Moreover, the availability of this pattern is constrained by syntactic and semantico-pragmatic factors. Across utterances where this focus phenomenon is acceptable, the following properties are shared:
- There is clausal ellipsis of a proposition, p;
- The speaker agrees with the interlocutor(s) that they cannot fully commit to adding p to the Common Ground (cf. B7).
This talk explores how to derive these facts, on the basis of:
- A clearer distinction made between syntactic, semantic, and prosodic notions of “Focus”;
- A silent morpheme under semantic focus;
- A process by which certain focus-marked silent morphemes can be realized as a prosodic enclitic.
This is part of a larger project that considers where focus pheonemona result in “surprising” prosodic patterns, typologically.
@unpublished{Ahn-Jeong-Sailor-PSST21, author = {Ahn, Byron and Jeong, Sunwoo and Sailor, Craig}, howpublished = {Talk presented at Princeton Symposium on Syntactic Theory 2021. Princeton University}, title = {Emphatic weak certainty in {E}nglish: focus at the syntax-semantics/-phonology interfaces}, year = {2021} }
Ahn, Byron & Craig Sailor. 2019, April. The Role of Syntax in Semantics-Prosody Misalignments. Talk presented at PSST 2019. Princeton University.
abstract Handout Bib

Prosodic marking of focus (p-Focus) and focus semantics (s-Focus) are known to be deeply related. In a stress-based language like English, the general maxim is understood to be that p-Focus must manifest within the domain of semantic focus (e.g., Halliday 1967, Rooth 1992, Selkirk 1995, Truckenbrodt 1995, Krifka 2004, Büring 2016). It is for this reason that “dogs CHASED cats”, with p-Focus on “chased”, cannot have an interpretation where alternatives to “dogs” are considered (i.e., with s-Focus on “dogs”). In this way, the location of p-Focus and s-Focus “align”. This sort of alignment data has been used to argue for the syntactic representation of focus (e.g., Jackendoff 1972, Selkirk 1984).

This talk explores a set of counterexamples to this maxim: cases of semantics-prosody focus misalignments, where p-Focus manifests outside the domain of s-Focus. An English example of this is “BOY can she sing beautifully”, where the s-Focus concerns degree of beauty but p-Focus is on “boy”. Misalignment cases like this can be found regularly and across languages.

We argue that these misalignments furnish a new argument in favor of syntactic representation of focus, and an architecture where semantics and phonology do not interface directly with one another. Misalignments can arise because phonology generates p-Focus, semantics generates s-Focus, and they do so independently of one another on the basis of syntactic Focus marking. In making this argument, we will see data from a range of languages, argue that there cannot be a single operation/constraint that determines the placement of p-Focus, and demonstrate that syntactic factors must be considered for p-Focus placement.
@unpublished{Ahn-Sailor-PSST19, author = {Ahn, Byron and Sailor, Craig}, howpublished = {Talk presented at PSST 2019. Princeton University}, title = {The Role of Syntax in Semantics-Prosody Misalignments}, year = {2019} }
Ahn, Byron & Craig Sailor. 2019, January. The landscape of semantics-prosody mismatches. Talk presented at the 2019 annual meeting of the LSA. New York, NY.
abstract Handout Bib

In languages where focus marking is implemented prosodically, there are at least two types of constraints. First, focus alignment constraints influence where prosodic focus marking is realized, in relation to the domain of semantic focus (cf. Question-Answer Congruence). Second, there are minimal size constraints, which require prosodic structure of a certain size to support focus marking (cf. English syllables).

This naturally leads to a theory-driven question: What happens when a semantically focused element (driving alignment) is not prosodically sufficient to support focus marking (blocking optimal alignment)? This question is especially relevant, given the standard assumption that semantic content (which can be put under semantic focus) need not map onto an element that can support prosodic focus. (For example, when the semanticallly focused element is a silent operator or silent functional head.)

In this talk, we argue that this sort of context leads to (surface-level) mismatches of focus between semantics and prosody, one which is rooted in the syntactic marking of focus. We explore some examples of these sorts of mismatch phenomena from a range of languages, as well some of the mechanisms used to resolve this tension (leading to the attested mismatch).
@unpublished{Ahn-Sailor-LSA19-focus, author = {Ahn, Byron and Sailor, Craig}, howpublished = {Talk presented at the 2019 annual meeting of the LSA. New York, NY}, title = {The landscape of semantics-prosody mismatches}, year = {2019} }
Ahn, Byron & Craig Sailor. 2018, September. Principled mismatches in the mapping from semantics to prosody. Talk presented at 2018 Annual Meeting of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain. Sheffield, UK.
abstract Handout Bib

In languages where focus marking is implemented prosodically, there are at least two types of constraints. First, focus alignment constraints influence where prosodic focus marking is realized, in relation to the domain of semantic focus (cf. Question-Answer Congruence). Second, there are minimal size constraints, which require prosodic structure of a certain size to support focus marking (cf. English syllables).

This naturally leads to a theory-driven question: What happens when a semantically focused element (driving alignment) is not prosodically sufficient to support focus marking (blocking optimal alignment)? This question is especially relevant, given the standard assumption that semantic content (which can be put under semantic focus) need not map onto an element that can support prosodic focus. (For example, when the semanticallly focused element is a silent operator or silent functional head.)

In this talk, we argue that this sort of context leads to (surface-level) mismatches of focus between semantics and prosody, one which is rooted in the syntactic marking of focus. We explore some examples of these sorts of mismatch phenomena from a range of languages, as well some of the mechanisms used to resolve this tension (leading to the attested mismatch).
@unpublished{Ahn-Sailor-LAGB18-focus, author = {Ahn, Byron and Sailor, Craig}, howpublished = {Talk presented at 2018 Annual Meeting of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain. Sheffield, UK}, title = {Principled mismatches in the mapping from semantics to prosody}, year = {2018} }
Ahn, Byron. 2016. The Role of Syntax in the Nuclear Stress Rule. In Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2016, 203–206. International Speech Communication Association.
abstract Paper Bib

How directly the operation of phrasal stress placement refers to syntax is theory-dependent: directly in some (e.g., Truckenbrodt 1995, Kahnemuyipour 2009), indirectly in others (e.g., Chomsky & Halle 1968, Halle & Vergnaud 1987). Adequately evaluating this issue requires knowing both the relevant syntactic structure(s) as well as how syntax interacts with phonology - neither is trivial. This paper argues that syntax transparently feeds prosody at regular sub-intervals of structure building (e.g., Uriagereka 1999, Chomsky 2001), and the phrasal stress placement operation refers directly to syntactic hierarchy, without exception. As such, wherever the NSR’s predictions are "incorrect", the syntactic representation must be amended (e.g., Steedman 2000, Wagner 2005). The major contribution of this work is not in its speciﬁc findings, but rather in its demonstration of a methodology by which phrasal stress data are used to understand syntax and not vice versa.
@incollection{Ahn-SP8phrasalstress, author = {Ahn, Byron}, booktitle = {Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2016}, pages = {203--206}, publisher = {International Speech Communication Association}, title = {The Role of Syntax in the {N}uclear {S}tress {R}ule}, year = {2016} }
Ahn, Byron. 2015. There’s Nothing Exceptional about the Phrasal Stress Rule. lingBuzz/002458.
abstract Paper Bib

Since the beginning of generative work on phrasal stress, it has been convincingly argued that syntax generates structure, and the phrasal-stress assignment operation takes syntactic output as its input. In addition, it has long been assumed that there are exceptions to the phrasal-stress assignment operation, caused by certain lexical or interpretive properties. This paper demonstrates that having such exceptions to the rule is not only undesirable on purely theoretical grounds, but is also unsuccessful on empirical grounds.

Instead, this paper argues that putative examples of exceptionality are in fact produced by an exceptionless model, extending logic in Wagner 2006 and Ahn 2015. Specifically, the model rethinks the nature of the system that predicts phrasal stress placement. Instead of a linear-based rule with exceptions, evidence is found in favor of an exceptionless and structure-based phrasal stress assignment operation in the vein of Cinque 1993 and subsequent works such as Zubizarreta 1998. The proposed theory allows phrasal-stress assignment to conform to Minimalist assumptions, simplifies the task of language acquisition, and provides theoreticians and the learner with evidence for a more articulated syntax that is transparently interpreted at the interfaces.
@unpublished{Ahn-PhrasalStressSyntax, author = {Ahn, Byron}, howpublished = {{lingBuzz/002458}}, title = {There's Nothing Exceptional about the Phrasal Stress Rule}, year = {2015} }
Ahn, Byron. 2015. Giving Reflexivity a Voice: Twin Reflexives in English. UCLA dissertation.
abstract Thesis Bib

Across languages, there is variability in the surface realization of reflexivity, according to various sets of properties. For example, there are languages (e.g. Greek, Lakhota) that seem to treat some of their reflexive clauses as being in a non-active voice, similar to a passive. There are also languages (e.g. French, Kannada) in which reflexivity is encoded differently depending on whether the antecedent is the subject or not. In this way, English seems to be different: reflexivity is apparently realized in a homogeneous way – filling an argument position with an anaphoric expression like themselves – regardless of clausal voice or grammatical role of the antecedent.

This homogeneity is an illusion. Despite using a single set of anaphoric expressions for reflexivity in various situations, reflexive anaphors in English fall into two classes: those that exhibit exceptional prosodic behaviors, and those that do not.

This exceptionality can be directly observed in two domains: the distribution of "default" phrasal stress, and the distribution of a certain focal accent. From the results of investigations on these issues, I show that the distribution of exceptionally behaving reflexive anaphors is structurally constrained. This implicates that there must a be syntactic account for these prosodic properties.

Assuming that syntactic structure plays a near deterministic role in prosody (an assumption going back to even the earliest generative work on phrasal stress; Chomsky and Halle 1968:25), I argue for a more refined syntactic structure of reflexivity. Briefly, I demonstrate a sub-class of reflexive anaphors in English undergo a syntactic movement (to a reflexive VoiceP). This movement, along with independently motivated mechanisms for placement of phrasal stress and focal accents, derives the heterogeneous prosodic behaviors of reflexives in English. Crucially, this analysis does not require the prosodic component to have any stipulations for specific (classes of) words, in line with a Minimalist approach to the Syntax-Prosody Interface.

This model of reflexivity simultaneously reduces the amount of theoretical machinery necessary to achieve descriptive adequacy, while also enhancing the model’s predictive power. Moreover, this research has broad theoretical implications, beyond just reflexives in English. This theory is able to unify the various morpho-syntactic instantiations of reflexivizing functions – across languages – as being related to the Reflexive VoiceP. It also establishes a core set of properties that define clausal reflexivity, each of which are the result of the formal properties of the reflexive Voice head. Finally, it provides direct support for the hypothesis that syntactic and prosodic structures are maximally isomorphic, with prosodic cues in the signal giving direct evidence for otherwise invisible in syntactic structure.
@phdthesis{Ahn-PhDThesis, author = {Ahn, Byron}, school = {UCLA}, thesis = {https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/002359}, title = {Giving Reflexivity a Voice: Twin Reflexives in {E}nglish}, year = {2015} }
Ahn, Byron & Dominique Sportiche. 2014. Bind Locally Indeed. In Carson T. Schütze & Linnaea Stockall (eds.), Connectedness: Papers by and for Sarah VanWagenen, Vol. 18, 61–69.
abstract Paper Bib

We present new evidence supporting the generalization encoded in rule H, a rule defended in Fox (2000): this rule encodes an economy principle on pronominal binding according to which a closer binder bleeds binding by a more distant one if both would yield the same semantic representa- tion. The evidence we discuss is based on how English reflexive pronouns behave in two different cases: one involving focus and one involving the (non)availability of phrasal stress.
@incollection{Ahn-Sportiche-BindLocally, author = {Ahn, Byron and Sportiche, Dominique}, booktitle = {Connectedness: Papers by and for {S}arah {V}an{W}agenen}, editor = {Sch\"utze, Carson T. and Stockall, Linnaea}, pages = {61--69}, series = {UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics}, title = {Bind Locally Indeed}, volume = {18}, year = {2014} }
Ahn, Byron. 2012, January. The Prosody of Binding: Reflexive Voice and Default Sentential Stress. Talk presented at the 2012 annual meeting of the LSA, Portland, OR.
abstract Handout Bib

Syntactic structure has long been recognized as playing a crucial role in calculating Default Sentential Stress (DSS). Reflexive pronouns introduce an apparent problem: they tend not to bear DSS where other DPs would ("Remy SAW himself"/"Remy saw MARIE"). However, reflexives do not always avoid DSS; manipulating syntactic context, a reflexive can bear DSS (e.g., "Remy saw Marie and HIMSELF"). Based on such data, I argue against a string-positional account of DSS (e.g. SPE’s Nuclear Stress Rule). Moreover, I present evidence for the existence of subject-oriented reflexives in English, and motivate substantial revisions to Binding Theory.
@unpublished{Ahn-lsa2012, author = {Ahn, Byron}, howpublished = {Talk presented at the 2012 annual meeting of the LSA, Portland, OR}, title = {The Prosody of Binding: Reflexive Voice and Default Sentential Stress}, year = {2012} }
Ahn, Byron. 2012. External Argument Focus and the Syntax of Reflexivity. Coyote Papers: Working Papers in Linguistics, Linguistic Theory at the University of Arizona 20.
abstract Paper Bib

A sentence like Johnny burned himself, with the sole focal stress on the reflexive anaphor, can be felicitously interpreted as a response to a subject-question like Who burned Johnny?. This is unexpectedly felicitous, given previous accounts of focus in question-answer pairs. Critically, this phenomenon is limited to a subclass of reflexive anaphors. Though commonly accepted theories of focus and reflexivity would not predict this to be possible, by amending the syntactic representation of reflexivity, this phenomenon and its particular constraints are entirely predictable on the basis of normal rules of syntax-prosody mapping. This analysis gains independent support from the distribution of phrasal stress with regard to reflexive anaphors, as well as from the realization of reflexivity of other languages.
@article{Ahn-WCCFL29, author = {Ahn, Byron}, journal = {Coyote Papers: Working Papers in Linguistics, Linguistic Theory at the University of Arizona}, title = {External Argument Focus and the Syntax of Reflexivity}, volume = {20}, year = {2012} }
Ahn, Byron. 2010. Not Just Emphatic Reflexives Themselves: Their Prosody, Semantics and Syntax. UCLA dissertation.
abstract Thesis Bib

Emphatic Reflexives is the term used to describe the use of reflexive pronouns in an emphatic, adjunct-like way, as in "Sayoko drove to LA herself." Emphatic Reflexives (ERs) have been investigated by many in the course of generative linguistics (Moravcsik 1972, Edmondson and Plank 1978, Browning 1993, Eckardt 2001, Hole 2002, Konig and Gast 2002, Bergeton 2004, Konig and Siemund 2005, and Tavano 2006, to name a few), but past analyses leave some questions inadequately or not at all answered.

I endeavor to explain as many of the phenomena as possible, focusing on three main points. First, there are exactly two readings of ERs, each with its own felicity conditions, syntactic licensing and semantic properties. Second, ERs are indeed instances of reflexive pronouns that are subject to the Binding Conditions; and though some ERs may appear linearly disjoint from their associate DP, they are always (extremely locally) bound. Thirdly, all ERs are obligatorily contrastively focused under both readings, and they exhibit prosodic properties related to this.

In making these arguments, I also find evidence for hypotheses that may have broader impact, such as the fact that the Voice head must be the licenser of volitional agents and that the MAE ToBI model of English intonational structure needs modification.
@mastersthesis{Ahn-MAThesis, author = {Ahn, Byron}, school = {UCLA}, thesis = {Ahn-MA.pdf}, title = {Not Just Emphatic Reflexives Themselves: Their Prosody, Semantics and Syntax}, year = {2010} }