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

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For an important class of syntactic dependencies, their formation may be attributed
to PF or LF requirements. A wh-word might only be interpretable if it occurs
in both a thematic and a peripheral/scopal position, and wh-movement satisfies
this requirement. This is particularly so for the A'-system, with its
characteristic interpretive consequences (Rizzi 1997, 2006). Movement scopes a
quantifier above a proposition, turns a sentence into a relative clause, creates a
topic-focus articulation. Yet empirically, such dependencies make use of features
that are not interpretable at LF. In (23), each step of wh-movement must take place
to satisfy the interpretive requirements of the wh-word, but they are accompanied
by uninterpretable phi-agreement in English or Passamaquoddy (Bruening 2001),
or syntactic category agreement Chamorro, Welsh, and Breton (Chung 1998: 6.2,
Willis 1998: 3.4, Rezac 2004b).
(354) 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; section 1.3)
It has been proposed that uninterpretable features are simply the optimal device
to build syntactic dependencies like wh-movement. If so, the features are motivated
as a class by the need of PF/LF for there to be syntactic dependencies (cf.
Chomsky 2000a: 120f., 2008: 140f., 148). On standard assumptions, these uninterpretable
features are the lexical properties of items like the interrogative CQ,
and thus a departure from the Interpretability Condition (27)b that lexical items
consists only of PF/LF properties.
If the PF/LF conditions that need syntactic dependencies were construable as
Full Interpretation requirements, they could become the direct source of individual
occurrences of uninterpretable features through ℜ. At each nonfinal step of whmovement
in (23), the wh-word fails to scope over a question. If this is a Full Interpretation
problem for LF, ℜ can insert an uninterpretable feature to drive whmovement
without there being one in the lexicon. This potential is partly exploited
in Chomsky's antecedents (281)-(282) of ℜ, for successive-cyclic and terminal A'movements
(cf. Chomsky 1995: 294, 377, 2000a: 109, 2001: 34). If this were feasible,
it would not be necessary to posit uninterpretable features on lexical items,
contrary to the Interpretability Condition. They could be always viewed as the direct,
dynamic response of syntax to the needs of Full Interpretation. 174
However, structural Agree/Case relationships do not seem to occur to meet
LF needs, as section 5.4 has discussed. They exist without thematic, scopal, binding
correlates, and include DPs without autonomous referential or quantificational
content (cf. (271)). They also do not appear to meet obvious PF needs, unlike for
instance displacements that may be sensitive to PF content (Chomsky 2001; Lasnik
2009; Holmberg 2000, 2005, Jouitteau 2005). Moreover, the uninterpretable
174 The choice of the inserted uninterpretable features is a technical matter: specific features such
as [wh:] on Cinterrogative and [Q:] on a wh-word, or generalized Edge Features (Chomsky 1995:
289ff., 2000a: 109, 128ff., 149 note 91, Rizzi 2006; Chomsky 2001: 6, 34, 2007, 2008: 151).