Abstract

Definite noun phrases in Yucatec Maya are accompanied by a series of enclitics that delimit topic phrases and encode particular spatial relations (with respect to the deictic center). These elements have intringuing positional properties: they frequently appear outside the domain of the licensing head.

This talk discusses evidence from field experiments and shows that the Yucatec Mayan enclitics are aligned with the right edge of higher-order prosodic domains, i.e., intonational phrases.

This phenomenon is surprising if we take into account that segmental morphology is local, while tonal morphology is not necessarily so. The evidence presented in this talk indicates that these enclitics are associated with a tonal event (a high tonal target) that is aligned with particular properties of the prosodic domain.