(Prosodic-) Structural Constraints on Gapping in Turkish

Abstract

This study investigates string-identical gapping constructions with different prosodic phrasings and reports the results of a perception test that seeks to pinpoint the prosodic constraints on gapping constructions. We suggest that unacceptability judgments for Forward Gapping (FG) and Backward Gapping (BG) cannot be analyzed purely through word-order restrictions. The information structural status of the shared, discourse-given constituent and the prominent contrastive constituents play a crucial role. Phonological phrasing patterns, induced by information structural units, interplay with word order restrictions and save the structures noted as unacceptable in the literature. The findings indicate that prosody does not work on the output of syntax but works in tandem with syntactic mechanism. This study further reveals that FG and BG cannot be variations of the same derivational mechanism and we propose a copy analysis for FG, and Multiple Dominance (MD) analysis for BG.