Prosody undisputedly affects the choice of syntactic constructions and the order of constituents within a sentence. However, for German, neither theories of grammar nor models of language production consider prosodic influences on sentence structure. This project aims at clarifying which prosodic factors (on the levels of the intonation phrase, phonological phrase, word/foot) lead to which syntactic consequences, and how strong the prosodic effects are compared to other relevant factors. Given the significant role of prosody in poetic language, the project is expected to also further our understanding of the aesthetics of language.

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