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

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This application of ℜ has some familiar properties. It is limited to activating a
potential Agree/Case locus. It operates on the numeration or requires countercyclicity,
because Transfer failure at the vP-level strengthens PDAT within the vP.
The phasal consequences of ℜ may be examined here more closely than up to
now. Adding a phi-probe to a potential Agree/Case locus leads to Agree and
Transfer, turning the strengthened PPDAT into a phase. In French this is detectable
not only in the absence of the PCC, but also in the inaccessibility of the DP within
to applicative relationships. This is a property of full PPs that follows if such relationships
hold between a DP and something else in the clause, such as possessorpossessum
binding, for phasehood prevents this. In consequence, the PCC repairs
can never fix applicative arguments by applying to their P head. This restriction
explains why PCC repairs in applicative unaccusatives never strengthen the PP. It
would be easily detectable, for instance in Basque dative-experiencer psychunaccusatives,
whose agreeing PPDAT would become a nonagreeing full PP. Such
a repair is impossible. The phasehood of full PPs explains why (Rezac 2009).
The phasal difference between defective and full PPs may be a sufficient explanation
of their difference in Σ-licensing. French (unfocussed) dative and accusative
pronouns must cliticize to T+V. This is their Σ-deficiency. Full PPs (and focussed
pronouns) meet it in some way. A pronoun within them is realized in its
strong form. There is no consensus on the nature of Σ-deficiency. Cardinaletti and
Starke (1999) view it as the need of a lexical core to have the prosody-related head
Σ in its extended functional projection. A clitic pronoun fails to project Σ and so
must move to a corresponding Σ in the clause. Under this view, PPDAT needs to be
strengthened by the activation or addition of Σ to turn into a full PP. It would fall
within the purview of ℜ if construed as the addition of some probe to inactive Σ in
PPDAT (cf. section 5.9). If there is no Σ in PPDAT, ℜ might be given very limited
means to add the functional head correlated with a probe (section 5.4).
A different view of ℜ-deficiency proves more fruitful here. Matushansky
(2006) proposes that French cliticization is the morphological attachment of a clitic
to T+V from a local specifier reached by the last step of syntactic movement
(section 4.7; cf. Chomsky 1995: 249, Sportiche 1996: 244). This fits in with research
highlighting the prosodic and other morphophonological aspects of cliticization
that have no syntactico-semantic correlates (Zribi-Hertz and Diagne 2002;
section 2.3). The Σ-deficiency of French pronouns is then their need for a host
with certain morphophonological properties. In the clause, this is T (T+Σ/v/V, or
even v, which always raises to T). French unfocussed pronouns first undergo regular
syntactic movement out of the VP. It is only available to them, in the same way
as Object Shift is limited to pronouns in Mainland Scandinavian, unlike in Icelandic.
Cliticization itself is the postsyntactic, morphophonological attachment of
the pronoun to T in the local domain of its final syntactic position.
The P head of full PPs but not PPDATs satisfies this morphophonological Σdeficiency
of pronouns to have a host. The host might thus be whatever has an active
Agree/Case system. Phase theory suggests an interesting way to derive this.
The complement of a phase-head undergoes Transfer and so is an autonomous unit