The Prosody of Paths

This talk leverages phonotactic restrictions to reveal a prosodic reflex to A’-movement in Mandar (Austronesian, Central Indonesia): overruling phonological constraints on balance and rhythm, the paths from wh-phrases to their traces must be parsed into tight prosodic domains. I argue that this restriction must underlie a network of patterns historically situated in the syntax- and more specifically, the prohibition on crossing paths of A’-extraction (Pesetsky 1982).