The prosodic word

AbstractAs in much current literature, prosodic structure is here taken to be recursive. The discussion of the prosodic hierarchy in Swedish must neessarily begin with the prosodic word which is an important point of alignment of morphological and prosodic structure. In this chapter the centrals generalizations of the minimal prosodic word are laid out, i.e. domain of syllabification, domain on culminativity (1 stress), and a few other properties relating to segment sequencing and rhythm. These properties can be used to diagnose the boundaries of the minimal prosodic word. Interestingly, the minimal prosodic word is also the domain within which a suffix can assign a lexical tone to a stressed syllable. This fact turns out to be a major key to understanding the regular inhibition of accent 2 under certain conditions. The chapter also describes the maximal prosodic word when it is distinct from the minimal prosodic word, and how word accent is culminative in that domain. The chapter also briefly touches on the formation of prosodic word domains in syntax.