A Unification-Based Approach to Prosodic Analysis

Classical SPE phonology makes a rigid distinction between rules and representations, which are organized in an ordered series of input-output mappings. Contra SPE, the technique of Prosodic Analysis, practised by J.R. Firth and members of the London School, attempts to subsume the e ect of rules within a theory of representations, organized in a modular fashion as an unordered set of constraints or `prosodies'. Functional Uni cation Grammar, developed by Martin Kay (1979), is a declarative, computationally tractable grammar formalism, which deliberately blurs the distinction between rules and representations: the same data-structure is used for both. In Uni cation Grammar a `rule' is construed as a partially speci ed representation, a representation is just a fully speci ed rule. I argue that UG is thus an appropriate framework in which to explain and formalize the fundamental principles of Prosodic Analysis. As illustration, I reconstruct W.S. Allen's (1957) treatment of aspiration in H ar . aut within this framework. Finally, I argue that the suitability of Uni cation Grammar to Prosodic Analysis is no accident, and trace a continuous line of development from Firth to Kay via the mediation of M.A.K. Halliday's work in Scale and Category and Systemic Grammar.