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.

This article describes a novel approach to the computational modeling of reduplication. Reduplication is a well-studied linguistic phenomenon. However, it is often treated as a stumbling block within finite-state treatments of morphology. Most finite-state implementations of computational morphology cannot adequately capture the productivity of unbounded copying in reduplication, nor can they adequately capture bounded copying. We show that an understudied type of finite-state machines, two-way finite-state transducers (2-way FSTs), captures virtually all reduplicative processes, including total reduplication. 2-way FSTs can model reduplicative typology in a way which is convenient, easy to design and debug in practice, and linguistically-motivated. By virtue of being finite-state, 2-way FSTs are likewise incorporable into existing finite-state systems and programs. A small but representative typology of reduplicative processes is described in this article, alongside their corresponding 2-way FST models.