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

d. There were shown (*her) to be five and seven among the primes.
The oddity of phi-agreement and Case would vanish if they belonged to PF.
There uninterpretability is a consequence of modular architecture. Marantz (2000)
proposes to eliminate phi-agreement and Case from syntax, and implements them
in a post-syntactic realizational morphology (cf. Bobaljik 2008, Kratzer 2009). To
this move accrues the commitment to enrich realizational morphology with certain
core properties of syntax. Among them are those seen in (28): dependencies across
phrase-structurally unbounded domains, sensitive to c-command among noncontinguous
constituents, and syntax-like locality conditions.
These properties are among the touchstones that place phi-agreement and Case
in syntax, for they characterize also (A-)movement that is sometimes visible to interpretation.
They are not the properties of realizational morphology, as will be
seen in chapter 2 through morphological phi-phenomena like that in (24). The postulation
of a morphology component with the necessary syntax-like character
would lift powerful explanatory constraints. It is to be countenanced only if it has
a powerful explanatory recompense. The correct prediction of syntactic and interpretive
inertness for all phi-agreement and Case might suffice, if they and their
apparently uninterpretable phi-features can thereby be eliminated from syntax, and
the tension they bring to the Minimalist Program resolved. 6
However, an extra-syntactic theory of phi-agreement and Case is belied by
cases where they do have consequences for syntax and interpretation, despite their
uninterpretability. Chapters 3 and 4 develop the argument. It comes from interactions
between two DPs according to each other's person features, first between the
transitive subject and object in Ojibwa, Mapudungun, and Arizona Tewa, then
from the Person Case Constraint of (1)/(2) in French. Such 'person hierarchy' interactions
involve phi-agreement in the sense of (25): the form or position of an
element – agreement prefix, case-marking, clitic/strong form – depends on phifeatures
outside itself and uninterpretable on it. Yet there turn out to be effects on
syntax and interpretation, often in minimal contrast with superficially similar phenomena
in morphology. Thus phi-features are among syntactic primitives and
some of their dependencies are formed there. Chapter 6 examines the potential interpretive
bases of person hierarchy interactions and argues they are as uninterpretable
as the phi-agreement and Case requirements seen above. 7
6 Marantz's (2000) proposal is made principally on grounds other than the interpretive inertness
of phi-agreement and Case, although it follows, and is picked up on by work such as Bobaljik
(2008), Kratzer (2009). These grounds are rather the apparent divorce of A-movement and subject
licensing from phi-agreement and Case (Sigurðsson 1991, 2002, Freidin and Sprouse 1991,
Schütze 1993, 1997, Frampton and Gutmann 1999, Chomsky 2000a, Harley 1995), and the character
of 'dependent' Case that appears not to fit the profile of syntactic dependencies (see section
5.5). Marantz's distinctively nonsyntactic morphology is not to be identified with the possibility
that regular syntactic computation continues after the spell-out to LF, before or after Vocabulary
Insertion (Sauerland and Elbourne 2002; Embick and Noyer 2001, 2007).
7 Recent work already suggests that phi-Agree may matter for the syntactic licensing of sig/setype
anaphora, in contrast to the interpretive licensing needed in (19), (20) (Reuland 2006,
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