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

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PCC are tied up with this issue: the immunity of nonagreeing strong(er) pronouns
but not agreeing ones or of clitics, and the role that the dative plays.
I will proceed by adopting Anagnostopoulou's proposal in (241) that the dative
blocks Agree between an Agree/Case locus and a [+person] DP, and this prevents
[+person] from being Case-licensed as it needs to be. It proves a fruitful prism
through which to view the PCC repairs. However, the chief part of the analysis of
the repairs that follows does not repose on it, but would do with any Full Interpretation
problem in PCC contexts that can be eliminated by the addition of an
Agree/Case system. Section 5.9 returns to the relationship of [+person] and Case
licensing, and to how the present theory of repairs might integrate alternative construals
of the PCC problem. The next section introduces the repairs.
5.3 The repairs of the Person Case Constraint
5.3.1 The character of the repairs
Among the languages subject to the PCC, some but not others have repairs
dedicated to it, which may differ for transitives and intransitives. They are summarized
in Table 5.1. Section 5.1 has highlighted their defining property as syntactic
repairs of the PCC. In French, an indirect object dative must cliticize if pronominal,
in Western Basque it must agree, in Chinook and Basque unaccusatives have
no ergatives: all save in the PCC context. The repairs emerge in PCC contexts
only, in their form, syntax, and meaning. Wholly distinct is paraphrase, which is
available independently of a partially synonymous expression. I will skip dinner is
a good paraphrase of I will forgo dinner. Speakers that lack the past tense of forgo
resort to some such paraphrase as I skipped dinner for *I forwent dinner, but the
availability paraphrase is not dependent on the gap.
Let us turn first to the repair in unaccusatives, for in them the role of the
Agree/Case system comes out most clearly (section 5.6). They follow a simple
generalization. To repair the PCC in unaccusatives, the Agree/Case relation that is
otherwise found in only transitives is recruited, the accusative or ergative. The
PCC in Basque unaccusatives is repeated in (261). It bans 1 st /2 nd absolutives in the
context of an applicative but not prepositional dative. Some varieties respond by
changing the absolutive to the ergative, (261)c.
(261) a. Miren-ij hurbiltzen / gustatzen zai-zkii-oj / *di-oj-tei
Miren-D coming / liken R.3pAi.3sDj / R.3sDj.3pEi
b. Miren-ij (nii) hurbiltzen / ?*gustatzen ni-atzai-oj
Miren-D I.ABS approaching / liking R.1sAi.3sDj
c. Miren-ij (niki) *hurbiltzen / √gustatzen di-oj-ti
Miren-D I.ERG approaching / liking R.3sDj.1sEi
(Basque, section 5.5)