The prosody of ‘dislocation’ in selected Bantu languages

Previous work on the prosodic phrasing of left and right dislocations in Bantu languages has shown that one finds two basic patterns: an asymmetric phrasing pattern where only right dislocations are phrased separately from what precedes, and a symmetric pattern, where both left and right dislocations phrase separately from their surroundings. This paper identifies a third pattern, where right dislocations phrase separately, while some left dislocations do and some do not. The analysis of these phrasing patterns is developed in the OT version of the Edge-based framework, and, specifically, it is argued that prosodic phrases align with syntactic phase edges. Right dislocations phrase separately because they are external to a syntactic phase. Left dislocations phrase separately when they are clause-external: that is, external to a non-selected CP. CP-internal left dislocations phrase with the CP which contains them.