The Phonology/Syntax Interface

Abstract

Abstract This chapter explores the phonology/syntax interface to reveal how phonological matters are critical to understanding aspects of syntactic behaviour in bilinguals. The chapter presents two case studies. The first looks at the role of prosody in sentence processing in hearing and hard-of-hearing populations by focussing on aspects of relative clause attachment preferences and sentential reanalysis. The second looks at the acquisition of L2 WH-questions in learners of Japanese within the framework of Contiguity Theory. The chapter argues that L2 learners construct grammars which are governed by universal properties such as phonological contiguity even though this is not part of the L1 grammar of WH-movement. The resulting grammars are hierarchical and recursive. The chapter demonstrates that the learners acquire the abstract phonology of the L2, though not nativelike phonetic implementation.