Prosodic Structure Above the Word

Since in various studies the term “prosody” has been used in a variety of ways, we will begin by clarifying our use of it in this contribution. We include under “prosodic phenomena” any phonological rules or processes that are not purely local, in that they cannot be described solely in terms of their phonotactic environments. Instead, additional information is required as to what larger units, or “prosodie domains”, they belong to. In other words, while certain phonological phenomena can be described with rules that modify particular segments in particular segmental contexts, these segmental contexts are not enough to determine whether or not a rule applies. Following recent proposals [e.g. Liberman and Prince, 1977; Selkirk, 1978 b, 1980], we take the prosodie domains to include rhyme, syllable, foot, phonological word, phonological phrase, intonational phrase, and utterance. To take a simple illustration, consider a rule in Dutch that inserts a schwa between a liquid and a following consonant1.