UC Santa Cruz

In a range of languages, the mapping from syntactic to prosodic structure produces "mismatches", where a prosodic constituent has no matching syntactic constituent. This is puzzling, since prosodic structures are clearly based on syntax, and the two are often isomorphic. Here, I examine the predictions of three theories of the syntax-phonology interface using Optimality Theory: Align/Wrap Theory, Match Theory, and a c-command based theory I call Command Theory. Command Theory is shown to be well suited to deal with the phrasing of ditransitive constructions. The types of matches and mismatches predicted by these theories are examined through the lens of formal OT, with careful attention to candidate generation and constraint definitions. This is accomplished using the JavaScript application SPOT (Bellik, Bellik, & Kalivoda 2016). Data is drawn from Bantu, Germanic, Romance, Japanese, and other languages and language families.