Prosodic syntax and morphology in Chinese

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In linguistics, it has been commonly assumed that syntax can exert influence on prosody, but the opposite direction, prosody influences syntax, is much less widely recognized. The present manuscript argues for a bidirectional interaction between prosody and Syntax governs prosody and prosody also constrains syntax, based on data from Chinese. For example, a classical problem in Chinese syntax is only one constituent is, in general, allowed after the main verb. However, if the object is a destressed element (a pronoun, for example), two constituents can legitimately occur after the verb. This pattern is explained by proposing a prosodic feature assignment on elementary trees in the Tree Adjoining Grammar notation. The manuscript is the first work that a system of prosodically constrained syntax is proposed in the literature, and it will create a sub-field of linguistics in the study of human languages.