This study provides a systematic phonetic analysis of the basic entities of Kabardian prosodic units above the word and investigates the predictability of prosodic units from grammatical and discourse factors. This dissertation is the first extensive description of Kabardian prosody and grammar based on natural data.

This study proposes that Kabardian prosodic units of various sizes are hierarchically arranged with the syllable being the smallest constituent followed in order of increasing size by the prosodic word, the intonation unit and the prosodic sentence. The salient morphosyntactic correlate of the two largest units is the distinction between finite and non-finite verbs.

The best predictor of acoustic markers of prosodic boundaries proved to be the tripartite distinction between finite verbs, non-finite verbs, and all other morphological words. Argument structure (i.e. S and P) does not adequately predict prosodic unit boundaries. Morphology, which serves primarily to subdivide the POS category of non-verb words ('Others'), is not a good predictor of the measured phonetic properties. The Syntax parameter, which primarily replaced non-verbs and prosodic words with phrases and lexical words, failed to distinguish between phrase boundaries and phrase internal word boundaries.