Phi-features and the Modular Architecture of - UMR 7023 - CNRS

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The syntactic character of the information accessed by the PCC and its repair
bears emphasis. A dative clitic does not wear on its sleeve whether it corresponds
to an indirect object or causee, yet this information is crucial for the repair. Nor is
there a simple superficial reflex of applicativity that could be referred to. Some
applicative datives are barred as à-phrases, and more as à + focussed strong pronouns,
yet this is by no means always so when they are barred from the repair. The
y-repair does not use à-phrases at all and shows the same restrictions. In contrast,
the opaque cliticizations of chapter 2 are superficially similar to the y-repair, but
affect all datives indiscriminately, as befits morphology. 83
4.6 Irreparable problems
4.6.1 Introduction
One last element of the PCC repair remains to be established: its specificity to
the PCC. The PCC blocks 1/2/SE.ACC + DAT clitics, and the repair licenses an
otherwise unavailable unfocussed strong pronoun dative. In so doing, the repair
may be responding to the PCC itself, or simply to the unavailability of a clitic only
incidentally due to the PCC. It is essential to decide between the two possibilities.
If the repair is licensed by the unavailability of a clitic, it fits very general
'blocking' or 'competition' approaches where a given structure becomes available
whenever a more optimal one is blocked. A good analogy is Williams' (1997: 579)
view of the English comparative alternation. More + adjective is available only if
adjective + -er is not. The constraints that block the latter are heterogeneous: adjective
length (quicker, *rapider), morphology (*participle + -er: *doner,
*spenter), and phonotactics or lexical arbitrariness where the morphophonological
properties of -er seem relevant (fatter, *gladder, *apter). It seems that more + adjective
refers directly to the unavailability of adjective + -er, rather than restate
these constraints. Bonet (1994), Grimshaw (2001), and Cardinaletti and Starke
(1999) have proposed that clitics ordinarily pre-empt strong(er) pronouns, but the
latter emerge when clitics are unavailable. In the logic of these approaches, the
strong pronoun of the PCC repair does not make reference to the PCC, but simply
to the unavailability of a clitic for any reason (see further section 5.3).
83 The inspiration of the present analysis by that of Couquaux (1975) has been stated, but it is
likewise indebted to that of Postal (1990), which ends up being different. Instead of there being
arguments that must be realized in the applicative (GR3) rather than prepositional construction
(GR5) and this constraining PCC repair, Postal proposes that there are applicative (GR3) dative
like possessors that cannot lower (demote) to the prepositional construction (GR5), and this encompasses
both the PCC repair and focussed pronouns both of which need the latter. The empirical
divergences come down to different status attributed to minor and/or variable patterns: possessor
and benefactive à-phrases, inclusion of reflexives (but see Postal 1989: 50), the PCC
repair in connaître-class causatives (out for his consultant), the y-repair in double-dative causatives
(section 4.7), and the complex domain of the causatives of raising verbs (note 108).