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

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(278) DPs have a unique Case feature. Phi-Agree can value Case only if it occurs
for all the phi-features of a DP.
These technical proposals have as consequence that the PCC can be viewed as
a failure of Case licensing. The repairs work by adding a Case licensing capacity.
5.4.2 The interface algorithm ℜ
In syntactic structures that meet Full Interpretation, each DP needs to have its
[Case:] valued and deleted, and thus must be within the reach of the phi-probe of
an Agree/Case locus. The inventory of Agree/Case loci appears to be parametrically
fixed per linguistic system. In English, French, or Icelandic finite clauses,
they are T, transitive v, and full P. Closely similar languages may add for instance
the v of unaccusative psych-verbs in Faroese, of 'fate' unaccusatives in Icelandic,
and so on (e.g. Barnes 1986, Lavine and Freidin 2001, Sigurðsson 2009).
PCC repairs indicate that not all Agree/Case licensing is fixed lexically. Accusative
case surfaces in Finnish unaccusatives just to repair the PCC, likewise for
ergative case and agreement in Basque and Chinook. A new Agree/Case relation
appears when Case-licensing would fail, but in a 'conservative' way that respects
the potential of the repaired structure. This can be understood in terms of the
Agree/Case potential of the pre-repair structure. An unaccusative has the same potential
loci as a transitive, v and T, with their interpretable Case features, for instance
[Case:NOM] on T. However, only one of them is active in an unaccusative,
TNOM or vABS, by having a phi-probe [phi:]. The repair activates the other, vACC or
TERG, through adding a phi-probe. It does so in PCC contexts, where a DP would
otherwise fail to have its uninterpretable [Case:] valued.
This is a global mechanism where a structure is licensed by the failure of another.
A global mechanism specifies a set of structures or derivations, the reference
set, and a metric that selects the winner (Reinhart 2006). For instance, for
Minimize Structure in section 5.3, the reference set is the set of convergent functional
architectures of a lexical item under a given interpretation, and the metric
picks the smallest. The global principles of Chomsky (1995: chapter 4) depend on
the concept of the numeration (279) to define the reference set.
licensing, the same probe values [Case:] both to the dative and to a lower DP. The [Case] of the
probe is interpretable and can be given multiple times (cf. notes 159, 140, 120). Agree with the
dative occurs for [person], with the lower DP for [number], and to both Case is assigned. Cf.
Chomsky (2001: 17f., 2008: 142) for the configuration v[Case:ACC] … participle[Case:] … DP[Case:].
An overt reflex might be multiple Case assignment stacking NOM/ACC on top of DAT, on
which see Yoon (1996) (but cf. Schütze 2001).