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

141
This view of the PCC repair originates with Couquaux (1975), who argues that
the repair turns dative pronouns into locative ones if they need not be applicative.
Locative à-phrases stand in a close relationship to dative à-phrases. Locatives differ
in licensing unfocussed pronouns, and in the absence of the variety of applicative
uses like possessors. On both points they pattern with other full PPs that have
no pro-PP clitics. Locatives may thus be viewed as the full PP elaborations of the
poorer, defective PP structure of datives, in a way specified further below. When
the PCC repair allows a dative unfocussed pronoun to be strong rather than clitic,
it creates something very close or identical to a locative. 100
It is unsurprising that the result of the repair can cliticize in the y-grammar as
the locative clitic y. Y cliticizes unfocussed locative PPs. Its invariant form suggests
that it only cliticizes locative pronouns or adverbs without phi-features, as on
Kayne (2008)'s proposal that y corresponds to there-ofP. Supporting evidence
comes from the capacity of y but not strong pronouns to pick up genderless elements
like the infinitive in (219), and y's resistance to human and 1 st /2 nd person
referents except through the mediation of verbs like penser 'think' (note 57). The
PCC repair creates unfocussed locative PPs. However, the content of the PP is a
pronoun with phi-features, since it comes from a dative, and datives always have
phi-features as both strong and clitic pronoun datives show. Hence the parameter
that allows the y-grammar to cliticize the outcome of the repair as y may be the
capacity of its y to cliticize locatives with phi-full pronouns (Rezac 2010c).
(219) L'infinii? Je me prends à [sourire]j.
Qui songe à luii/*j, en ce temps de mécanisme? (strong)
Qui yi/j songe, en ce temps de mécanisme? (clitic)
The infinitei? I find myself smilingj. Who dreams.of à iti/*j (strong) /
LOCi/j (clitic), in this time of mechanism?
(Zribi-Hertz 2000, ex. 23; % )
The next step is to understand the Cliticization Requirement, its relationship to
the dative-locative difference, and how the repair overcomes it in PCC contexts.
The rest of this section addresses the first point and prepares ground for the second.
To it the next chapter turns, in French and cross-linguistically.
The Cliticization Requirement is modelled by the following assumptions, partly
building on Cardinaletti and Starke (1999) and discussed below:
– French pronouns are: (i) Case-deficient, as all DPs; (ii) Prosodically or Σdeficient,
unlike other DPs and focussed pronouns.
– CPs, full PPs (and focussed DPs) are phases (chapter 5): complete domains
for various systems, including Case and Σ-licensing, (220). Pronouns
Case/Σ-licensed by the CP surface as dative/accusative clitics in the CP.
100 The view of the repair as creating locatives is traditional, Gaatone (1984: 124f.), cf. Grevisse
and Goosse (2008: §662.b.2°-3°, 678.2°), and shared by Blanche-Benveniste (1975: 208).