Title of the article

3.Framework and phonological analysis

The mechanism of constraint interaction, the essential characteristic of OT, is also used in the generative theory of tonal music (Lerdahl and Jackendoff, 1983). In both frameworks, constraint satisfaction determines grammaticality and in both frameworks the constraints are potentially conflicting and soft, which means violable. Violation, however, is only allowed if it leads to satisfaction of a more important, higher ranked constraint. The great similarities between these theoretical frameworks make comparison and interdisciplinary research possible.

For example, restructuring rhythm patterns as a consequence of a higher playing rate is a very common phenomenon in music. In Figure 1 we give an example of re-/misinterpretation of rhythm in accelerated or sloppy playing.

D
otted notes rhythm  triplet rhythm

Figure 1. Rhythmic restructuring in music
In Figure 1, the “dotted notes rhythm” (left of the arrow) is played as a triplet rhythm (right of the arrow). In the dotted notes rhythm the second note has a duration which is three times as long as the third, and in the triplet rhythm the second note is twice as long as the third. In fast playing it is easier to have equal durations between note onsets. Clashes are thus avoided and one tries to distribute the notes, the melodic content, over the measures as evenly as possible, even if this implies a restructuring of the rhythmic pattern. To ensure that the beats do not come too close to each other in fast playing, the distances are enlarged, thus avoiding a staccato-like rhythm. In short, in fast tempos the musical equivalents of the Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP), a prohibition on adjacency of identical elements in language (McCarthy, 1986), become more important.

We claim that - just as in music - the allegro patterns in all the different types of data in Table 1 are caused by clash avoidance. There is a preference for beats that are more evenly distributed over the phrase. The different structures can be described phonologically as a conflict between markedness constraints, such as foot repulsion (*ΣΣ) (Kager, 1994), and output - output correspondence constraints (cf. Burzio, 1998) within the framework of OT. foot repulsion prohibits adjacent feet and consequently prefers a structure in which feet are separated from each other by an unparsed syllable. This constraint is in conflict with parse-, which demands that every syllable is part of a foot. output - output correspondence compares the structure of a phonological word with the structure of its individual parts. For example, in a word such as fototoestel 'photo camera', output - output correspondence demands that the rhythmic structure of its part tóestel 'camera' with a stressed first syllable is reflected in the rhythmic structure of the output. In other words, output - output correspondence prefers fótotòestel, with secondary stress on toe, to fótotoestèl, with secondary stress on stel.

Whereas the normal patterns in andante speech satisfy output - output correspondence, the preference for triplet patterns in fast speech is accounted for by means of dominance of the markedness constraint, foot repulsion, as illustrated in Table 2._⁴⁵
Table 2. Rhythmic restructuring in language

a. ranking in andante speech:

con­strai­n­ts  fototoestel candidates 	output - output correspondence	*ΣΣ	parse-
 (fóto)(tòestel)		*
(fóto)toe(stèl)	*!		*

b. ranking in allegro speech:

con­strai­n­ts  fototoestel candidates 	*ΣΣ	output - output correspondence	parse-
(fóto)(tòestel)	*!
 (fóto)toe(stèl)		*	*

Dutch is described as a trochaic language (Neijt and Zonneveld, 1982). Table 2a shows a preference for an alternating rhythm. The dactyl pattern as preferred in Table 2b, however, is a very common rhythmic pattern of prosodic words in languages such as Estonian and Cayuvava: every strong syllable alternates with two weak syllables (cf. Kager, 1994). We assume that the rhythm grammar, i.e. constraint ranking, of Dutch allegro speech resembles the grammar of these languages. In the next section we will explore whether we can find empirical evidence for our hypothesis.