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

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b. Where are the boysi whoi Tom think(s) ti Dick believe(s) ti Harry expect(s)
ti to be late?
(Boston English, Kimball and Aissen 1971: 246)
The issues raised by agreement with the target's nonarguments are brought to
a point by (24), discussed in chapter 2. In Spanish the 3 rd person masculine accusative
clitic is singular lo and plural los, and the 3 rd person dative clitic is singular
le and plural les. However when 3PL.DAT and 3SG.ACC are combined in the
same clitic cluster, the result is not the transparent les lo. Rather, les is replaced by
the default clitic se, and in certain varieties its phi-features surface on the accusative
clitic, so that los appears in place of lo. If this is the right view of things, the
phi-features of the surface form los are uninterpreted, since los remains singular
for all interpretive purposes. Under the further assumption that an argument's interpretable
phi-features are not deleted or contradicted by others, the phi-features
of the dative are simply uninterpretable on the accusative.
(24) El libro, a ellos, ¿quién se los prestó?
the book, to them, who SE 3PL.ACC lent.3SG
The book, who lent it (3SGM.ACC lo) to them (3PL.DAT les).
(Spanish, Bonet 1995: 634)
All these examples belong to the broad domain of phi-agreement (Moravcik
1978, Barlow 1988, Wechsler and Zlatić 2000, Corbett 2003). It is the crosscoding
of an argument's phi-features on another element, (25):
(25) Phi-agreement (general): the structure, form, or position of α that obtains
in virtue of the phi-features of an argument β.
Under (25) fall cross-codings of the same abstract character as subject-verb
agreement, but very different in appearance. In canonical subject-verb agreement,
the phi-features of the subject are cross-coded outside the subject on an agreement
target like T+V, and there they surface through morphology dedicated to expressing
phi-features. In the repair paradigm (1)/(2), the person of the direct object determines
whether the indirect object is a dative clitic or a strong pronoun in a PP
headed by à. The expression of the indirect object thus cross-codes the person of
the direct object. This differs from more canonical agreement because the direct
object's phi-features do not control morphology dedicated to phi-features, but it is
nevertheless agreement of the form, structure and/or position of an element (the
indirect object) with the person of an argument (the direct object). Naturally, the
underlying mechanism might pass through other elements, say a clausal functional
head (probe) that drives cliticization. These must still refer to and thus agree with
the person of the direct object. 4 In phi-agreement then, the phi-features of an argument
are cross-referenced somewhere outside it, where they appear not to be interpreted
or interpretable. They are uninterpretable occurrences of phi-features.
4 The mechanism that does so in chapter 5 will be phi-feature relativized locality.