ABSTRACT
The world’s languages all employ pitch, duration, and some kind of rhythm in their individual prosodic systems. These tonal and temporal characteristics not only give shape to utterance contours, and perform discourse related functions, they also interact with grammar in ways that may have interesting consequences for both processing by adult speakers and learning by children. The specific kinds of interrelations between prosodic features on the one hand and aspects of lexical and grammatical structure on the other vary a good deal across languages, however.
