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

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theless participate in the Agree/Case system for the [+person] feature, while their
other phi-features are hidden by their dative PPDAT shell. Elements of this view
have a long history and good support, particularly developed in the works of
Burston (1983) on the [+person] of datives, Taraldsen (1995: 310f.) on dative case
as the source of the tension between datives' [+person] intervention and their failure
to value other agreement, Laenzlinger (1993: 256f.) on feature-relativized
minimality as the mechanism of [+person] intervention. 123 There is lacking a good
understanding of the mechanism by which PDAT hides phi-features save [+person],
whether it licenses them, and how to parametrize this opacity of PPDAT crosslinguistically
(see for instance Anagnostopoulou 2003, Rezac 2008a). 124
5.2.5 Overview
The elements of the Agree/Case approach to the PCC have different strength.
Robust are the role of Agree/Case domains and the intervention of DPs/PPDATs in
[+person] agreement and licensing. They bring together many aspects of the phenomenon:
the set of [+person] elements subject to the PCC, the set of elements
that interact in it, the role of c-command and of movement. Less clear is the PCC
problem itself: the failure to Case-licensing of [+person] DPs, some other
[+person] licensing failure, or something else entirely such as a conflict in the phivalues
obtained by Agree with multiple arguments. The unclear aspects of the
123 Among the evidence for the [+person] of applicative arguments (dative or not) is:
(i) Morpheme overtness, ordering, and coocurrence restrictions (Anagnostopoulou 2003: 270-2,
Bobaljik and Wurmbrand 2002, Rezac 2008abc; section 4.2).
(ii) The syntax of clitic doubling: in Spanish all datives pattern with 1 st /2 nd person accusatives in
doubling without specificity restrictions (Ormazabal and Romero 2010).
(iii) Interpretation: the possession restriction, We sent them/?the conference our abstracts (Adger
and Harbour 2007: 4.2, 4.3.1), the absence of inanimate applicatives in Mohawk (Baker 1996:
238 note 2); the subtler facts of French (section 4.2) that suggest [+person] is not related to
animacy but rather Burston's (1983) Individuation or Boeckx's (2000: 3.4.3-5) Point-of-View.
(iv) Subject-object person-hierarchy interactions, where an applicative dative behaves like 3 rd
person proximate and not obviative direct object (Rosen 1990: 2.3; see section 3.4).
124 A straightforward alternative is that datives block all higher phi-Agree, not only [+person],
and there is an extra number probe below them, say on the applicative head Appl, whose valuation
percolates up to T, perhaps by T-(v-)Appl Agree; see section 5.6.3 languages with such a
probe, and cf. Sigurðsson (2006), Sigurðdson and Holmberg (2008) for Icelandic. Various works
are close to the [+person] intervention view sketched here, with differences on how to achieve
selective visibility of the dative to phi-Agree, the mechanics of intervention, or the problem to
which Agree with the dative gives rise for the other [+person] argument: Adger and Harbour
(2007); Ormazabal and Romero (1998, 2002); Den Dikken (2004); Richards (2004: 4.3.2.1);
Nevins (2007); Boeckx (2000), Schütze (2003), Sigurðsson and Holmberg (2008). Recent work
extends the set of interveners beyond datives to possessors and ergatives in ways compatible
with the Agree/Case approach, Rezac (2008a: 119), Baker (2008: 92), Shklovsky (2009), Artiagoitia
(2009), Karimi (2010), and to other contexts, Richards (2005).