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

192
c. TNOM v S d. T vABS S Unaccusative
(292) Obligatory Case Parameter (descriptive, see (295)): T, v are potential
Agree/Case loci. If there is only Agree/Case relation active, it is
parametrically: v (vABS, ergative system) / T (TNOM, accusative system).
The Obligatory Case Parameter states which potential Agree/Case locus is active
when there is only one DP, in unaccusatives, and it will be later implemented
as a lexical property of T/v. The other Agree/Case relationships, the accusative
and the ergative, must be limited to the remaining argument of transitives. Their
distribution could be stipulated in the lexicon by specifying a phi-probe on the
transitive but not unaccusative v in nominative-accusative systems, and on T selecting
a transitive v in ergative-absolutive ones (Albizu and Fernádez 2006).
However, this does not capture the parallelism between two. Both are relations
that surface only when there remains a DP after the obligatory relation has been
used up. The proposals of Marantz (2000), Bittner and Hale (1996), and Laka
(2000) aim to do that. They group the ergative and accusative as dependent Case,
which becomes automatically available if there remains a DP after the obligatory
Case has been discharged by a distinct DP, its Case-competitor, independently of
any selectional relationships. The pattern of PCC repair in unaccusatives is just
such a last-resort emergence of ergative and accusative when the obligatory relation
fails to license a DP in the PCC. 139
Dependent Case demands an extension of syntax beyond ordinary
Agree/Move dependencies, because it does not have a uniform path-theoretic relationship
to the Case-competitor or the obligatory Case on which it depends. In
(291), the ergative c-commands the absolutive, but the accusative is c-commanded
by the nominative. Only one of them can easily be made to depend on a given
obligatory Agree/Case relationships while obeying the Path Condition (263). The
ergative EA is on the path from the C/T/v system to O and can be made to depend
on a relationship between them (Bobaljik and Branigan 2006). The accusative O is
below the path from C/T/v to EA, so its dependence on their relation would be
countercyclic (Harley 1995: 4.3 note 104). Instead, the theory of dependent Case
proposes that distribution of the ergative and accusative is 'global'. They depend
on the Agree/Case relation of another argument in the same CP, without a fixed
path-theoretic relationship to it. The same conclusion has been drawn about PCC
repairs in section 5.3, and the same mechanism will be useful for them.
139 Other instances of the emergence of dependent Case without selectional relationships will be
seen in section 5.6. See Harley (1995: 4.2) for discussion of the other original justification of dependent
Case: the insensitivity of nominative to structural positions, so that it falls to the highest
Caseless DP in the domain of T while the next lower one gets accusative (cf. Yip, Maling and
Jackendoff 1987, Maling 1993). It loses its force with the replacement of spec -head checking by
Agree. Distinct from dependent Case is default Case, accusative in English, nominative in Icelandic,
absolutive in Basque, assigned at realization in configurations independently licensed for
the Case Filter (Schütze 2001, Quinn 2005; cf. Bittner and Hale's 1996 structural oblique).