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

5 Repairs and uninterpretable features
5.1 Introduction
153
Chapter 4 discussed the Person Case Constraint (PCC) and its repair in French.
The constraint bans [+person] (1 st /2 nd /reflexive) accusatives separated from v by a
dative (applicative or clitic). The repair lets a dative be coded by a full, locativelike
PP autonomous of the clause, instead of a defective dative PP transparent to
the clause. This is impossible otherwise, even to fix problems other than the PCC.
Table 5.1: PCC repairs
Transitive Applicative (IO-O)
Person-Case Constraint
(α* banned iff [+person])
Repair
(bold element changes)
French DATclitic-ACCclitic* ACC*-DATPP/LOCclitic
(? DATSE(INH)-ACCclitic* DATSE(INH)-ACCstrong*)
West. Basque DATagr-ABSagr* ABS-DATPP
Georgian DATagr-ABS/ACCagr* ABS/ACC-DATPP
DATagr-ABS/ACCagr* DATagr-[agr's self].ABS/ACC3SG*
Unaccusative Applicative (IO-S)
Basque (dial.) DATagr-ABSagr* ERGagr*-DATAppl
Chinook ABSagr-ABSagr* ERGagr-ABSagr*
Finnish OBLAppl-NOMagr* OBLAppl-ACC*
Transitive (EA-S)
Arizona Tewa bareagr-bareagr* ERGagr-bareagr*
Yurok NOM-NOM* NOM-ACC*
Legend: S unaccusative subject, EA transitive subject, O direct object, IO applicative object.
Note: Yurok 1/2→2/1 combinations are NOM-NOM; see section 5.9.
The French combination of the PCC and an otherwise unavailable repair belongs
to the remarkable cross-linguistic paradigm in Table 5.1. Across widely different
systems, it is impossible to combine a [+person] S/O with an applicative argument
in the way expected from their behaviour outside this combination, or
from combinations involving of [-person] S/O. In their place appear structures that
do not exist otherwise: in French a locative for a dative, in Western Basque a nonagreeing
dative for an agreeing one, in Basque dialects and in Chinook an ergative
for an absolutive, in Finnish an accusative for a nominative. These 'repairs' of the
PCC are not alternative realizations of the expected syntactic structures, for they