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

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interface repair strategies that respond to the failure of the computational system
to meet Full Interpretation. At PF, globality in morphology has mostly turned on
the unclear existence of blocking principles beyond the realization of terminal
nodes (Embick and Marantz 2008). Persuasive evidence has been amassed for
global mechanisms at LF (Fox 2000, Reinhart 2006, Katzir 2008). Fox points out
that they respect a strong version of modularity, operating only over the convergent
structures sent them by syntax, and accessing only the logical aspects of
meaning (Fox 1995: notes 9, 10, 64, 2000: 70-74, 130-133, Fox and Hackl 2006).
It may be that there is a generalization of ℜ that encompasses them: a mechanism
to enrich an interface representation in order to meet interface requirements, at the
same or at other interfaces. The numeration of syntax is enriched with uninterpretable
features if it fails at PF/LF. The syntactic input to LF might be enriched
with symbols to allow nonlocal variable binding if needed by the systems of inference,
satisfying this requirement directly, or permitting further computation to do
so. The viability of unification turns on common properties in global mechanisms
across the core systems of syntax, PF, and LF modules, and on potential global
phenomena beyond them in the 'systems of use' (q.v. Jacobson 1997).
It would be helpful to have on these issues a perspective from other cognitive
domains where modularity has been investigated. It may be that the organization
of other 'mental organs' bears little resemblance to the faculty of language (Chomsky
1980). However, many of the themes raised here reappear elsewhere, as in
Pylyshyn's (1999) review of low-level vision (cf. section 1.2). Among them are its
nearly complete encapsulation from an agent's knowledge and goals, and within it,
the partial encapsulation of distinct vision-for-perception and vision-for-action
components, which may nevertheless share some primitives and computations.
Pylyshyn also reports a narrow channel of communication between vision and the
general cognitive systems by attention modulation, recalling intringuingly the interface
algorithms of Reinhart (2006), Fox (2000), and ℜ.