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

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b. She vacc+showed (*the students) [seven to be a prime].
c. She vacc+showed (*the students) [there to be a prime in the set].
d. *She vacc+showed the students [for seven to be a prime].
(see further (274), (350))
(300) a. The riveri ti vunerg+thundered/cascaded [its way down the ravine].
b. *The riveri vunacc+fell/flowed ti [its way down the ravine].
(see further (349))
The empirical domain central to the parametrization of dependent Case is exceptions
to Burzio's Generalization and its ergative mirror. In accusative languages
there are unaccusatives whose sole DP is accusative: adversity impersonals
in Russian, no/to passives in Ukrainian (Lavine and Freidin 2001), fate unaccusatives
in Icelandic (Sigurðsson 1992: 6.2.4, 2009, forthc, Maling and Sprouse 1995:
174, Schäfer 2007), psych-verbs in Faroese (Barnes 1986, minimal contrast with
Icelandic). In ergative languages there are unaccusatives with an ergative, such as
Basque raising-to-ergative irudi 'seem' in (290), and the lexical exceptions iraun
'last', iraki 'boil' (Oyharçabal 1992, 1999, Artiagoitia 2001ab; cf. Baker 1996: 211-
218). It might be possible to lexically specify such Agree/Case loci as active, e.g.
the v of unaccusative psych-verbs in Faroese or the T lexicalized by the raising
irudi 'seem' in Basque. More natural under a dependent Case approach is a silent
Case competitor to discharge the obligatory Case, such as Laka's (1993b, 2000) silent
theme in ergative-subject unergatives (cf. Bittner and Hale's 1996 incorporated
D in antipassives). Evidence for a Case competitor in Slavic accusative unaccusatives
is discussed by Szucsich (2007) and Lavine and Franks (2008). For
Basque ergative unaccusatives, this explanation mirrors diachrony: raising-toergative
irudi come from 'have appearance', ergative-subject irakin 'boil' and iraun
'last' are fossils of causatives. On these proposals, dependent Case is not itself parametrized.
Its availability follows from the existence or non-existence of silent
arguments that do or do not absorb obligatory Case. 143
5.6 Unaccusative repairs: Transitivization
5.6.1 Introduction
We are now in a position to apply ℜ to the repairs of the PCC in unaccusatives
in Table 5.2. The parallel emergence in the repairs of the two dependent Cases,
ergative and accusative, is strong support for their unification as dependent Case,
and for approaches that assign it to the DP left after the obligatory relation.
143 The dependent Case approach is sometimes held to be predicated on the absence of raising to
ergative/accusative, as in Marantz's (2000) original proposal, but that only demands a silent
competitor. More complex, in any approach, is cross-clausal agreement with a goal agreeing and
Case-licensed in another clause, (290)c (cf. section 3.2). One possibility is that a CP transparent
to external Agree gets the Case that goes with that Agree, obligatory or dependent, perhaps as a
condition on its transparency in the first place, counting as the Case competitor.