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

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they lead to ineffability. Various interpretive requirements also may be invisible to
syntax, such as Condition B (section 4.6). These must all be excluded from "effects
on output". Modularity suggests that ℜ should only refer to the interfaces of
syntax with the external systems, not to the internal or external requirements of the
latter. ℜ only sees whether the output of syntax meets the input requirements of
the external systems, whether it is legible to them: Full Interpretation. A minimal
requirement for Full Interpretation is the absence of illegible features, like unvalued
[Case:]. Problems that occur when PF attempts to realize the output, and LF
attempts to interpret it, or other cognitive systems attempt to use the result, are invisible.
However, Full Interpretation need not reduce to the absence of interpretable
features. Other legibility requirements have been proposed and may cover
(279)-(281) (see section 5.9): thematic interpretability (Chomsky 1995: 347, cf.
2000a: 111f.); linear order (Chomsky 1995: 221); the need to receive both QR and
non-QR structures if the two are not logically equivalent (Reinhart 2006: 1.3, 2.7).
Taken together, these restrictions make of ℜ an interface algorithm outside
syntax and lead to the formulation in (38), repeated below:
(38) ℜ: An uninterpretable feature may enter the numeration only if needed
for Full Interpretation of the syntactic structure built from it.
ℜ takes the numeration and the structure built from it as input to PF and LF,
and adds a feature to the former if need for Full Intepretation of the latter. The
syntactic computation and the external systems are impenetrable to ℜ. All the information
and effects of ℜ are localized in the interfaces of syntax with the lexicon,
LF, PF. The appearance of globality or look-ahead of the PCC repairs or successive-cyclic
wh-movement is deceptive. Syntax itself is not global. This
construal of ℜ as an interface algorithm fits Reinhart's (2006) view of global
mechanisms as last-resort repairs to meet interface requirements (section 5.9).
So far undiscussed is the proposal that ℜ affects the numeration, as in (280),
rather than edge of the syntactic structure built from it, (281) and (282). Both
might be accommodated by the modularity of syntax, for the computation from
the numeration is not affected in either case. Empirically, the two options have
different effects, but only under certain assumptions. The addition of a feature to
the numeration may lead to the construction of a radically different structure than
would be possible otherwise, despite the two having the same interpretable content.
In PCC repairs, it will be manifest in the creation of a new Agree/Case domain
out of a part of the numeration, containing a part of its content that would
otherwise block an Agree/Case relationship for the rest. This may occur in the interior
of the structure built up from the numeration, not only at it edge. Thus ℜ
opens up a new derivational path for the numeration. We will see that ℜ could be
made to operate in the manner of (281)/(282) at the edge of already built-up structures,
at the cost of a certain counter-cyclicity, perhaps allowing elimination of its
reference to the numeration. If ℜ does operate on the numeration, cyclicity is