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

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(329) Minu-ni täyty-y ti men-nä kaupunki-in näke-mä-än sinu-t / se
me-GEN must-3SG go-INF city-ALL see-INF-ALL you-ACC / it-NOM
I must go to the city to see you / it.
(Finnish)
(330) resumes the Finnish configurations with nominative objects, the PCC,
and the repair accusative. They parallel Icelandic oblique-subject constructions
and Italian impersonal si with nominative object, save for the existence of transparent
infinitives whose object depends on an external Agree/Case system. Unlike
in Icelandic, the PCC is repaired by an otherwise unavailable accusative (in Italian,
the repair would look like the independent impersonal si with accusative object).
(330) a. [ALL TNOM [tALL v [tALL [V SNOM, [+person]ACC ]]]] (possessive)
b. [proarb TNOM [tpro v [V ONOM, [+person]ACC ]]] (passive)
c. [GEN TNOM [tGEN v [tGEN [V [VINF ONOM, [+person]ACC ]]]]] (necessive)
(TNOM-NOM intervener in bold)
The emergence of the accusative in these constructions follows the same logic
as in transitives, and as the parallel emergence of the ergative in transitives and
PCC repairs. The highest DP in need of Case relates to the nominative locus TNOM.
Usually, it is the highest argument, and it raises to become an agreeing nominative
or stays in-situ without overt agreement. If there is a lower DP, the object of transitives,
the accusative emerges because it is needed to license it. In the configurations
(330), the highest argument is rather an oblique or a defective pro. It only relates
to TNOM for [person]. Across this intervener, TNOM licenses lower non-
[+person] DPs, but not [+person] ones. On them, the accusative appears.
The Finnish accusative fits the profile of last-resort Case provided by ℜ. The
Agree/Case locus v is activated because a Case licensing failure occurs. The derivation
is uniformly that of the dependent accusative seen in (298). The numeration
starts off with only T as an active Agree/Case locus, a Case failure leads to
crashed Transfer at the C/T-phase, and the potential Agree/Case locus v of unaccusatives
and passives is enriched with a phi-probe. ℜ can effectuate no other repairs.
In particular, the interveners in (330) cannot be turned into full PPs invisible
to TNOM, for they would lose their ability to serve as applicative arguments or
proarb; the next section discusses this derivation. 160
160 The Finnish nominative object patterns have close areal analogues in North Russian and
Lithuanian, bringing confirming or converging evidence, including for the low position of the
nonagreeing nominative; see Lavine (2000: chapter 4). Most analyses of Finnish cited in the introduction
to this section share the present basis of nominative assignment to the highest DP,
agreeing if sufficiently high, nonagreeing otherwise (cf. Kiparsky 2001, Maling 1993, Timberlake
1975). Relating the alternation of the nonagreeing nominative and [+person] accusative to
the PCC is based on Rezac (2007), drawing on Icelandic and Italian as well as the ergative and
accusative repairs in Table 5.1. The usual alternative is that the accusative realizes the low, nonagreeing
nominative on [+person] pronouns (sometimes related to hierarchies, Kiparsky 2001:
section 5.3, cf. Maling 1993: 52 note 2). Under Baker's (2008) approach to the PCC (section 5.2),
the matter is empirically moot: the PCC is due to staying low, whether because of an intervener