We provide novel evidence in favor of flexible mapping between an Intonational Phrase (ι) (Nespor & Vogel 1986) and syntactic constituents. In the existing accounts, ι is assumed to map onto a syntactic clause, but a 'clause' in the syntax-prosody literature may be defined as a TP (Zerbian 2006), CP (Truckenbrodt 2005, Henderson 2012), or the complement of Force0 and C0 (Selkirk 2011). Hamlaoui & Szendrői (2015, 2017) propose that ι is flexible and corresponds to the highest projection that hosts verbal material, together with its specifier (HVP, 'highest verbal projection'), and, therefore, provide a unified, syntax-based account of cross-linguistic variation in ι-size. A prediction that it makes is that ι-size is also determined by HVP in a language where the height of the verb depends on utterance type. Iron Ossetic (East Iranian), with several projections available for verb raising, is a uniquely suitable testing ground for this prediction. We adopt the flexible ι-mapping approach and, using experimental prosodic data, show that the HVP indeed determines the size of ι in Iron Ossetic. Specifically, we demonstrate that the prosodic phrasing obtained in clauses that contain narrow foci and negative indefinites directly follows from the flexible ι-mapping hypothesis. We also show how the flexible ι-mapping hypothesis interacts with phonological (i.e., independent from syntax) markedness constrains on prosodic phrasing in wh-questions and neutral SOV clauses.
