ABSTRACT
Phonological rules that apply above the level of the word are constrained by prosodic constituents that form a hierarchical structure. These constituents are not directly mappable onto the morphosyntactic structure. The phonological structure of languages extends beyond the syllable and the foot. There is a hierarchy of phonological constituents, so that lower, and thus typically smaller, constituents are contained within higher, and thus typically larger, ones. This chapter discusses and illustrates the phonological utterance, the intonational phrase, the phonological phrase and the phonological word. The phonological rules that produce the required forms are in fact lexical rules, and the forms they produce are thus available in the lexicon, ready for insertion into syntactic phrases. The assumption that syntax-dependent rules are in fact lexical rules puts such alternations in a comparable position with phrasal allomorphy of the sort that is seen in the English indefinite article, which is before vowels but elsewhere.
