Syllabification and the Spell-Out of Phases in Ojibwa Words

This paper provides evidence that word-internal syntax can play a crucial role in the determination of phonological well-formedness. It looks at contexts where V-initial (ie., onsetless) syllables are tolerated in Ojibwa & argues that they invariably coincide with the left edges of lexical categories. A well-motivated analysis of Ojibwa words postulates that verbs & nouns, which obviously contain the categories vP & nP, respectively, may also contain a member of the adjective/adverb category aP. Crucially, these combinations (ie., [aP-vP], [aP-nP]) constitute single prosodic words. V-initial syllables are tolerated word-initially or at the beginning of a lexical category. These domains correspond to phases in the sense of Chomsky (1999), Marvin (2003) & others. The paper proposes that, at the PF interface, the Spell-Out of elements within a phase must satisfy phonological well-formedness conditions, which do not apply across phase boundaries. Onsetless syllables emerge from the phase-by-phase Spell-Out of morphological elements. The paper also argues that cliticization (at least in Ojibwa) is a PF phenomenon & may affect phase structure. References. Adapted from the source document