Interrogative prosodic structure

Abstract

Abstract This chapter examines the internal prosodic structure of wh- expressions and the prosodic integration of interrogative items in Ikpana wh- questions. Insight into the prosody of Ikpana interrogatives is achieved through an examination of hiatus resolution in wh- questions. Owing to its lack of codas and abundance of vowel prefixes and vowel-initial lexical expressions, vowel hiatus is a widespread phenomenon in Ikpana. The chapter focuses on the description and quantitative analysis of vowel hiatus and its repair strategies at word boundaries, wielding these as indicators of prosodic structure and prosodic integration. The chapter demonstrates that vowel hiatus is handled differently at different syntactic boundaries and that vowel reduction is significantly more likely to occur within prosodic phrases than across prosodic phrase boundaries. This leads naturally to a number of generalizations regarding the prosodic structure and integration of Ikpana interrogative expressions in a variety of wh- constructions.