Different Phrasal Prominence Realizations in Vo and Ov Languages

How do infants start learning the syntax of the language they are exposed to? In this paper, we examine a plausible mechanism for the acquisition of the relative order of heads and complements We hypothesize that a version of the iambic-trochaic law determines the physical realization of main prominence within phonological phrases that contain more than one word: if it is realized mainly through pitch and intensity, it is in a phonological phrase that is stress-initial and has a complement-head structure, otherwise it is in a phonological phrase that is stress-final and has a head-complement structure. We show this to be the case both interlinguistically ( French and Turkish), and intralinguistically (German, where both orders of head and complement are found). Our finding allows us to consider a psychologically plausible mechanism for the acquisition of the relative order of heads and complements, one of the basic parameters of syntax