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

5.3.2 The choice of mechanisms
The Agree/Case approach in this chapter develops the following view:
– The repairs reflect a single mechanism. They are uniform and restricted.
– The mechanism is the addition of Agree/Case-licensing to a structure.
– The repair is minimal, just enough to add Agree/Case-licensing.
171
The mechanism underlying the repairs is not selection. Selection does mediate
argument coding alternations that superficially resemble the dative-accusative alternations
of the French, as in Kate presented Mary (with) a gift -- Kate presented
(*with) a gift (cf. Burston 1983: 267f.). However, the selectional interaction of arguments
seems limited to co-(internal-)arguments (cf. Marantz 2006, Collins
2002), and perhaps cannot see feature values like 1 st /2 nd person (Adger 2008).
These restrictions derive the impossibility of the finiteness of T or the phi-features
of the external argument influencing whether think or reflect selects about-PP or
on-PPs. Like the PCC, PCC repairs span long distances, including raising structures
in Basque and Finnish discussed below, and depend on phi-features. 125
That leaves transformational mechanisms, which relate one syntactic structure
to another. They fall into two types: global (reference-set, transderivational)
and nonglobal (local). Both have been suggested for the PCC repair in the literature.
Global mechanisms allow a structure or derivation refer to another, letting
one structure truly be a repair when another is unavailable. Nonglobal mechanisms
do not allow such reference, so that an apparent repair is really a structure
licensed by certain conditions that bar another, not by the latter's unavailability.
Kayne (1975: 174-6) observes the global character of the French PCC repair,
which appears to suspend cliticization "in certain cases where its application
would lead to unacceptable clitic combinations". However, he qualifies the observation
by adducing the clitic problems that it does not repair. Couquaux (1975)
proposes the nonglobal mechanism in (262) that transforms a dative to a locative
argument in the presence of a local 1 st /2 nd /reflexive clitic, in the Revised Extended
Standard Theory. Postal (1990) develops Couquaux's proposal as the demotion of
grammatical function 3 (dative) to 5 (locative) under certain conditions in the Arc
Pair Grammar framework of Relational Grammar.
(262) Règle de Réanalyse: [+dat] Pron. → [-dat] / [V 1/2/SEclitic V] … __
Where ±dative differentiates dative and locative complements, and … is
structure subject conditions on transformations.
125 The PCC also applies to arguments of distinct predicates in Romance clitic climbing, both of
the limited French type in causatives (section 4.5) and the more general Spanish type (García
2001; cf. Rivas 1977, Contreras 1979, Luján 1980, Bok Bennema 1981), and analogues in
Basque (Etxepare 2003, Rezac 2008c) and Czech (Rezac 2005, Dotlačil 2004: 80f.). PCC in the
Spanish constructions and potential PCC repairs in them remain to be properly explored.