Syntactic structure is defined in its three components. A survey of prosodist's studies on the relationship between prosody and syntax brings out two major trends: those who think that syntactic structure is immaterial for intonation and those who argue for matching rules between syntax and prosody. The recent studies presented here lend weight to a syntactic-based approach to accounting for intonational phrasing and boundary strength. A three-level model consisting of three modules, pragmatic, syntactic and rhythmic, is discussed. The flexibility of the higher units of prosodic structure is explained and predicted. The extent to which syntactic structure can be retrieved from prosodic markers is demonstrated.