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

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None of these points is insuperable. However, the impression is that the relationships
between the substructures introduced in the repair and their correspondents
outside the repair do not have the profile expected of Agree/Move.
Silverstein (1986: 178f.) introduces a distinction among case and agreement relations
that relates to this conclusion. Some depend on the properties of an argument
and its relationship to the clause; these fit Agree/Move. Others, person hierarchy
interactions such as the PCC, depend on another argument as well, and they correspond
to the profile of Agree/Move only rarely.
In other frameworks, Agree/Move dependencies obtain through potent devices
that also subsume such relationships as those between actives and passives
or finite and nonfinite complements. This power underlies Couquaux's (262), and
the Relational Grammar analyses of PCC repairs (Harris 1981 for Georgian, Postal
1990 for French). Within Principles-and-Parameters approaches, the Agree/Move
mechanism is limited by principles like cyclicity and locality, and in the framework
of Chomsky (1995 et seq.), it is the sole nonglobal mechanism relating objects
in syntax. The lexicon and selection mediate other significant relationships
between independently base-generated syntactic structures, but PCC repair is not
for them.
5.3.3 Global mechanisms
Global mechanisms let the licensing of a structure or derivation refer to another
one in a certain relationship to it. They fit the impression that the PCC repairs are
'marked' structure licensed as last resort when the PCC bars more 'unmarked' ones.
PCC repairs need a certain limited, minimal enrichment of a structure for a certain
kind of grammaticality failure. The insights and disadvantages of two global proposals
in the literature suggest the lines along which to proceed.
Bonet (1994) proposes the seminal global approach to PCC repairs in Optimality
Theory (cf. Grimshaw 2001). Optimality Theory is a framework of global
comparison of all possible structures for their satisfication of ranked and violable
constraints. Some penalize unfaithfulness to a given input structure, others universal
markedness. The winner is the structure that best satisfies the ranked constraints.
Violation of a higher-ranked constraint cannot be compensated for by the
satisfaction of lower-ranked ones. For French, two markedness constraints might
interact: *STRONG requires unfocussed pronoun datives to be clitic, and the
higher-ranked *PCC bans PCC configurations. If a structure does not violate
*PCC, *STRONG rules out nonclitic pronouns. However, structures with 1 st /2 nd
person accusatives and unfocussed pronoun datives cannot satisfy both constraints.
All such structures that satisfy the higher-ranked *PCC violate
*STRONG, and so *STRONG does not matter for picking the winner among them.
Such a global approach captures the dependence of PCC repairs on the PCC,
as well as their greater markedness than the structures they fix. However, Optimality
Theory makes repair universal, and that seems wrong for syntax. For any given
input to the evaluation mechanism, there is always a grammatical output, because