Rutooro is a Bantu language of Uganda that lacks lexical tone. Instead, prominence in Rutooro is marked with a High tone (H) on the penultimate syllable of the phonological phrase (φ-phrase). Like many languages in the family, syntactic XPs reliably correspond to φ-phrases; however, we find a previously unattested pattern in the prosody of Rutooro adnominal phrases. Head nouns are marked H when they combine with strong determiners and full relative clauses (RCs). In contrast, nouns do not bear an H tone when they combine with weak determiners, adjectives, and reduced RCs. We propose that the distribution of H tones serves as a diagnostic for whether an adnominal is generated in a DP-internal or external position. Reduced object RCs with overt subjects are a special case: the relativized head bears an unexpected H tone, while the subject is all-Low despite the fact that it is a self-contained XP. Also in the realm of reduced RCs, when a relativized head is separated from the RC by an additional modifier, e.g. an adjective, that modifier is realized as all-Low even though it is phrasal. We hypothesize that the attested, nonisomorphic phrasing arose to prevent i) ambiguity and ii) prosodic indeterminacy—when prosodic structure could be the output of more than one syntactic configuration—and was subsequently grammaticalized.

中文翻译：

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Rutooro 中的依恋高度和韵律短语

Rutooro 是乌干达的一种班图语，缺乏词汇音调。相反，在 Rutooro 中的突出显示在语音短语（φ-短语）的倒数第二个音节上用高音 (H) 标记。与家族中的许多语言一样，句法 XP 可靠地对应于 φ 短语；然而，我们在 Rutooro 名词短语的韵律中发现了一个以前未经证实的模式。当中心名词与强限定词和完整关系从句 (RCs) 结合时，它们被标记为 H。相比之下，名词在与弱限定词、形容词和减少的 RC 组合时不带有 H 声调。我们建议，H 音调的分布可作为对在 DP 内部位置还是外部位置生成 adnominal 的诊断。具有明显主题的简化对象 RC 是一个特例：相对化的头部带有意外的 H 音调，尽管该主题是一个独立的 XP，但它却是全低。同样在简化的 RC 领域中，当相对化的中心词与 RC 被附加修饰符（例如形容词）分开时，即使该修饰符是短语，它也被实现为全低。我们假设，经过证明的非同构短语的出现是为了防止 i) 歧义和 ii) 韵律不确定性——当韵律结构可能是多个句法配置的输出时——并随后被语法化。