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

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some structure always wins the competition. If *STRONG were too highly ranked
for strong pronouns to avoid *PCC, the winner would be another, otherwise unavailable
structure, say one with a for-PP for the dative. This does not fit the uniform
and restricted profile of PCC repairs. More clearly, it does not fit syntax,
where PCC repairs are a conspicuous minority in a world of hard, irreparable constraints
(section 1.4). This is the ineffability problem of Optimality Theory. By its
design, some 'repair' should always emerges into grammaticality when a constraint
is rules out a structure. Solutions exist, but the prevalence of irreparability suggests
that syntax is not a system of violable constraints.
Within the Minimalist Program of Chomsky (1995 et seq.), restricted global
mechanisms have been proposed within an overall nonglobal system for the few
apparent repairs of syntax, those where a structure or derivation is licensed as lastresort
(e.g. Chomsky 1995: 227f., 346-8). Within this framework, Cardinaletti and
Starke (1999) propose to account for clitic-strong alternations by a version of the
principle of Minimize Structure (Bošković forthc). It is resumed in (266).
(266) Minimize Structure: For syntactic structures α, β projected from a given
lexical category, where α contains β, β base-generated in preference to α
if β converges with respect to a particular interpretation. 127
(cf. Cardinaletti and Starke 1999: section 8)
Under the hypothesis that strong, weak, and clitic pronouns stand in a subset relationships,
as in (267), Minimize Structure forces the choice of a clitic over a
strong pronoun, save in a syntactic or interpretive context where a clitic cannot
survive. For instance, adjectival modification, or the introduction of new discourse
entities, are taken to require the CP in (267)a. Only a strong pronoun has one, so
Minimize Structure allows it, although it is more complex than a clitic.
(267) a. strong pronoun = [CP C weak pronoun]
b. weak pronoun = [ΣP Σ clitic]
c. clitic pronoun = [IP I LP] (L = lexical category)
Minimize Structure expresses a 'blocking' intuition that has a long history in the
study of clitic-strong alternations. Some blocking proposals operate over syntactically
unrelated structures and freely draw on different modules, to encompass
went:**goed, quicker:*more quick, Katei saw herselfi:*Katei saw heri, yesterday:#the
day before today (cf. Di Sciullo and Williams 1986, Williams 1997,
2007, critiqued in Embick and Marantz 2008, Poser 1992: 123-5, Legate 1999,
Langendoen 2002: 631). Others are far more constrained. Andrews' (1990) Morphological
Blocking Principle is a particularly pertinent antecedent of Minimize
127 Minimize Structure derives from Minimize α and assumptions about the lexicon and basegeneration.
In derivational terms, syntax base-generates for each lexical category in the syntactic
lexicon its full extended projection, e.g. the CP of the verb, and to it Erase-α applies up to crash
with respect to a given interpretation (prior to chain-formation, or at chain-feet).