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

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There are alternative conceptions of phase-theory or cyclicity, and not all the
elements of the model sketched here play an equal role in this chapter. The numeration
and the evaluation of its convergence upon Agree play a key role. The
Phase Impenetrability Condition does not. Chomsky (2000a) derives its effects in
the phi-Agree/Case/A-movement system from the feature-relativized locality of
the probe-goal search, and empirical grounds for this position seem to me robust
(cf. Rezac 2004a: chapters 2, 3, Bošković 2007: 5.2, Chomsky 2008: 143). 136
5.5 Dependent Case as last-resort
Unaccusatives make a convenient starting point for analysing PCC repairs, because
their Case-based character is transparent. The repairs show up as the transitivization
of the Agree/Case structure of an unaccusative. This section develops
the theory of the difference between the Agree/Case systems of unaccusatives and
transitives, and the next section applies it to the repairs. The theory needs to single
out the extra ergative and accusative Agree/Case relations that transitives have
over unaccusatives and allow its introduction by the repair mechanism ℜ. These
desiderata fit the proposal known as dependent Case in the literature. ℜ makes for
an attractive mechanism of dependent Case not only in PCC repairs, but in general.
ℜ becomes the source of the ergative and accusative as last-resort
Agree/Case relations that emerge when needed, in PCC repairs and plain transitives
alike.
In adding ergative/accusative to unaccusatives, the unaccusative PCC repairs
manipulate structural Case, or more properly, structural Agree/Case relations.
The concept of structural Case reposes first and foremost on the alternation of case
morphology and agreement such as those in Icelandic (285). Some boats alternates
between an agreeing nominative and a nonagreeing accusative accordingly to as it
is embedded under the active or passive of the ECM verb believe. The alternation
occurs over an indefinite phrase-structural distance, and the alternating argument
has no argumental, aspectual, or any other apparent interpretive relationship to the
matrix verb (cf. the (272), (273) above and chapter 1).
(285) a. Hún taldi [hafa verið keypta einhverjir báta].
136 Other work seeks precisely the opposite reduction, of intervention to phasehood, Müller
(2004). Reasons to think that feature-relativized intervention is ineliminable rest in Rizzi's (1990)
separation of locality condition on A- and A'-movement, as in (i). For the phi/Case/A-movement
system, an applicative object is an intervener in (i-a), but A'-extraction does not see it in (i-b).
Abandonment of impenetrability would be required here if phases were downsized, to the XP in
Müller (2004), or to every operation in Epstein and Seely (2002). A failed Transfer must then be
tolerated if some Transfer later converges, which again seems compatible with what follows.
(i) a Hervori was given ti Tyrving.
b Whatj was Hervori given ti tj?