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

165
you.ABS visit-ing liking R.3sAi.3sDj R.2pAk.3sDj
I like visiting you.
(Basque, Etxepare 2003: 167f.)
When we look beyond agreeing pronouns, the generalization (259) emerges:
(259) In a PCC context, clitics are not licensed, but strong(er) pronouns are not
licensed only if they could otherwise control overt person agreement.
(NB: 'overt' refers to paradigms, including ∅ exponents)
This is at the edge of current understanding, but the Agree/Case approach
suggests a promising line of exploration. Accusatives in Romance, Germanic, and
Slavic do not overtly agree with the clause. To a first approximation, their susceptibility
to the PCC covaries with their richness as pronouns. French [+person] accusative
clitics do not survive in a PCC context, and this tends to be true of Romance
clitics generally. For Germanic weak pronouns and Slavic second position
clitics, which are richer and more independent, the PCC becomes more variable
(Anagnostopoulou 2003, 2008, Rezac 2010c). The strong accusative pronouns of
these languages are not susceptible to the PCC, in direct contrast to the agreeing
strong pronouns of Basque and Icelandic. The way to integrate such pronouns
into the Agree/Case approach is to suppose them to have their own Agree/Case
system, at least for their [+person], while remaining visible to clausal accusative
assignment. However, richness of content only renders a pronoun immune to the
PCC in a context without overt agreement. In Icelandic or Finnish, strong pronouns
escape the PCC as nonagreeing accusatives, but not as nominatives in finite
clauses when overt agreement could occur if there were no PCC, (253), whether it
occurs or not. Likewise for Basque absolutives.
In the Agree/Case system of Chomsky (2000a, 2001), Agree/Case relations
occur through Agree by a phi-probe with a Case-less goal. Let us suppose that the
systematic nonrealization of finite verb agreement with accusatives in a language
like Icelandic indicates that the phi-probe of vACC need not be valued for person
from the goal, for instance because it is not differentiated into individual phifeatures.
It may then Agree with a goal whose person feature is licensed by the
goal's own Agree/Case system. It still assigns accusative Case, but does not receive
a (person) value. By contrast, the phi-probe of TNOM must Agree with a goal
from which it can be valued, without Case. In this manner, the needs of the probe
sort out whether a sufficiently rich pronoun needs to value the probe for
[+person], and therefore, whether it can license its own [+person] or not. 120
120 These difficult issues deserve a great deal more. Other solutions exist that presently seem
more mechanical (Rezac 2007: Appendix). I add some remarks towards eventual further exploration.
In the role of overt agreement in the PCC, the present proposal accords with the conclusions
drawn from the observation that absolutives in nonfinite nonagreeing clauses escape the PCC
(Perlmutter 1971: 93 for Warlpiri, Bonet 1991: 190f. for Georgian, Laka 1993a: 27 for Basque).
This assumes that the PCC should occur in nonfinite clauses, which is unclear (Rezac 2009,