Recursive phonological phrasing in Basque

Abstract

This paper presents data that force a revised account of the distribution of downstep and pitch reset in Lekeitio Basque. In the light of these data, previous analyses of pitch reset in Lekeitio Basque make wrong predictions. On the one hand, pitch reset is predicted where downstep occurs, and on the other, an ordinary reset is predicted where a large reset occurs. The occurrence of downstep and pitch reset, as well as the amount of pitch reset observed, is best accounted for under the assumption that languages possess a hierarchical prosodic structure that roughly matches the surface syntactic structure of a sentence, including levels of embedding or nesting of syntactic constituents. The analysis proposed in this paper is that pitch reset in Lekeitio Basque applies at the left edge of a non-minimal phonological phrase, i.e. a phonological phrase that dominates at least another phonological phrase.