Given the empirical landscape of possible prosodic parses, this paper examines the computations required to formalize the mapping from syntactic structure to prosodic structure. In particular, we use logical tree transductions to define the prosodic mapping of ditransitive verb phrases in SVO languages, building off of the typology described in Kalivoda (2018). Explicit formalization of syntax-prosody mapping revealed a number of unanswered questions relating to the fine details of theoretical assumptions behind prosodic mapping.

This paper investigates bounds on the generative capacity of prosodic processes, by focusing on the complexity of recursive prosody in coordination contexts in English (Wagner, 2010). Although all phonological processes and most prosodic processes are computationally regular string languages, we show that recursive prosody is not. The output string language is instead parallel multiple context-free (Seki et al., 1991). We evaluate the complexity of the pattern over strings, and then move on to a characterization over trees that requires the expressivity of multi bottom-up tree transducers. In doing so, we provide a foundation for future mathematically grounded investigations of the syntax-prosody interface.

Stabler’s (2013) top-down parser for Minimalist grammars has been used to account for off-line processing preferences across a variety of seemingly unrelated phenomena cross-linguistically, via complexity metrics measuring “memory burden”. This paper extends the empirical coverage of the model by looking at the processing asymmetries of Italian relative clauses, as I discuss the relevance of these constructions in evaluating plausible structure-driven models of processing difficulty.