Jennifer Fitzpatrick-Cole and Aditi Lahiri, University of Konstanz
The papers notes that certain word orders which might seem to be ambiguous between a complex predicate readings and some other syntactic construction are disambiguated by the phonology. So in Bengali, the verb sequence mere p^haela `beat throw' can be interpreted as either a beating followed by throwing or as a complex predicate, where `throw' does not contribute its meaning as a main verb. Instead the sequence means `beat to death'. The non-complex predicate case is assigned two phonological phrases, one for `beat' and one for `throw'. On the other hand, in the complex predicate case, both the verbs are part of the same phonological phrase. A detailed analysis of the interaction of this phenomena with segmental assimilation, focus, reduplication, and clitics is provided.