The Prosody-Syntax Interaction

In recent years, much attention has been given to the prosody-syntax interaction by many linguists at home and abroad. This thesis is to make an analysis of the issue of prosody-syntax interaction from two aspects:one is the constraints that syntax exerts on prosody; the other is the constraints that prosody exerts on syntax. First, this thesis presents an analysis of the Italian phonological sandhi rule and the Chinese Tone 3 sandhi rule to illustrate the direct reference hypothesis and indirect reference hypothesis. Then, the constraints that phonology exerts on syntax are examined with reference to the heavy NP shift in English, the norms of the monosyllabic and disyllabic collocations in Chinese, the postverbal PPs in Chinese and the [verb+object+quantifier] structure in Chinese.This thesis consists of four chapters. In the first chapter, attention is paid to the former study on the prosody-syntax interaction by linguists at home and abroad. The second chapter discusses the constraints that syntax exerts on prosody, and through the examination on the Italian phonological sanhdi rule and Tone 3 sandhi in Chinese, the constraints that syntax exerts on prosody can be proved to be indirect. The third chapter discusses the constraints that prosody exerts on syntax by the heavy NP shift in English, the norms of monosyllabic and disyllabic collocations in Chinese, the postverbal PPs and the [verb+object+quantifier] structure in Chinese. The forth chapter makes a conclusion of the discussions in the former chapters and points out the further study on the prosody-syntax interactions.