The prosodic syntax of German - language production and grammar

韵律无疑影响着句法结构的选择和句子中成分的顺序。然而，对于德语来说，无论是语法理论还是语言生成模型都没有系统地考虑韵律对句子结构的影响。目前尚不清楚是哪些韵律因素影响了德语的句子结构，以及它们对自发言语中的语法编码的影响有多大。这个项目的目的是澄清哪些韵律要求在语言产生的哪个阶段有句法后果。我们将使用语言产生实验和自发语音的语料库来系统地研究可能影响句法结构的韵律现象，这些现象超越了词的界限。所研究的现象涵盖了韵律层次的基本部分（语调短语、语音短语、词/脚）。对于每一个层次，我们研究了它们对a)句法结构选择和b)成分排序的影响。具体来说，我们检验了以下假设：韵律的措辞和句法结构的选择在表达信息时，说话者会自发地考虑韵律的格式是否良好。句法结构的选择及其在句子中的位置符合有利的韵律短语。韵律平衡和单词顺序说话者喜欢的结构可以被分成大小相等的韵律成分（韵律平衡）。这种偏好特别影响灵活的线性成分的排序。节奏和句法说话者使用句法选择来优化由强弱音节交替产生的语言节奏。基于实验和语料库数据，我们评估了语言生成和语法模型。具体来说，我们回顾了语法编码的哪些阶段受到哪些韵律条件的影响，以及与其他相关因素相比，韵律效应有多强。最后，我们讨论了a)数据在多大程度上可以用与语法-语音界面相关的语法约束来解释，以及b)这些约束在语言产生中的作用。

Prosody indisputedly affects the choice of syntactic constructions and the order of constituents within a sentence. However, for German, neither theories of grammar nor models of language production systematically incorporate prosodic influences on sentence structure. It is largely unclear which prosodic factors affect sentence construction in German, and how strong their influence is on grammatical encoding in spontaneous speech.The aim of this project is to clarify which prosodic requirements have syntactic consequences at what stage of language production. We will use language production experiments and corpora of spontaneous speech to systematically study prosodic phenomena which may condition syntactic structure, operating beyond word boundaries. The phenomena under study cover essential parts of the prosodic hierarchy (intonation phrase, phonological phrase, word/foot). For each of these levels, we study their effect on a) the choice of syntactic construction, and b) on constituent ordering.Specifically, we test the following hypotheses:i. Prosodic phrasing and choice of syntactic constructionWhen formulating a message, speakers spontaneously consider prosodic well-formedness. The choice of syntactic construction and its position in the sentence comply with a favorable prosodic phrasing.ii. Prosodic balance and word sequenceSpeakers favor constructions that can be phrased into equal-sized prosodic constituents (prosodic balance). This preference specifically affects the ordering of flexibly linearizable constituents.iii. Rhythm and syntaxSpeakers use syntactic options to optimize the linguistic rhythm that arises from the alternation of strong and weak syllables.Based on the experimental and corpus data, we evaluate models of language production and grammar. Specifically, we review which stages of grammatical encoding are affected by which prosodic conditions and how strong the prosodic effects are in comparison to other relevant factors. Finally, we discuss a) to what extent the data can be explained in terms of grammatical constraints pertaining to the syntax-phonology interface and b) which role these constraint have in language production.