When Prosody Follows Syntax: Verbal Stems in Czech
Marketa Zikova
January 2016

The paper examines syntactic and prosodic constituency within a verbal stem in Czech. Working in the frameworks of Nanosyntax and Strict CV, I argue that syntax to prosody mapping is direct to the extent that prosodic domains correspond to particular syntactic constituents. On the basis of two vocalic alternations, namely vowel zero alternations in verbal prefixes and roots and alternations in vowel length in roots and theme suffixes, I show that the perfective verbal stem represented by a linear string prefix root theme is parsed into three prosodic constituents, [prefix root], [root theme] and [prefix root theme]. These prosodic domains correspond to three syntactic constituents: VP and a lower and higher projection of the theme suffix respectively. The crucial point of the syntactic analysis is that the prefix undergoes phrasal movement: it is generated next to the root in VP and when the theme is added, it moves to its specifier. In the [prefix root] constituent, the vocalization pattern of the prefix is established. The constituents comprising theme suffixes are prosodic domains in which a general rule (called the infinitival template) operates; this rule in effect lengthens underlying long vowels in monosyllabic infinitives.