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

6 Phi in syntax and phi interpretation
6.1 Phi-alphabets
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Chapter 5 concludes on the possible motivations of Agree/Case and of person
hierarchy interactions in the requirements of the external systems that interface
with syntax. Such inquiry is at the heart of the Minimalist Program. Under the
Strong Minimalist Thesis, syntax is an optimal solution to the legibility requirements
of PF and LF, to Full Interpretation. The sources of the properties manipulated
by syntax and the reasons for their arrangements are to be sought there, under
the guidelines in (30).
(356) a. Full Interpretation: Objects submitted by syntax to external systems
must be fully legible to them, both features and their arrangements.
b. Interpretability Condition: Lexical items have no features other than
those interpreted at the interfaces, properties of sound and meaning.
c. Inclusiveness Condition: Syntax does not introduce new features, such
as indices or deletion marks.
(see section 5.4)
Research motivated by the guidelines tends towards the existence of a departure
from the Interpretability Condition: purely syntactic features that are not legible
to the interfacing systems of realization, PF, or interpretation, LF. Among
them are the phi- and Case-features of the Agree/Case system, and the descendants
of the Extended Projection Principle that drive some A-movement. At the
input to PF and LF, such features are illegible, uninterpretable. They must be deleted
within syntax through the mechanisms of syntactic dependency formation.
The ultimate motivation of uninterpretable features has been sought in syntaxexternal
factors. Legibility alone may permit single-word expressions like Hervor!
Beware! to converge, or expressions with arguments in their thematic positions
like Quest of Hervor: The sword Tyrfing. Illegible features may be necessary to
permit the construction of richer objects, moving arguments from thematic to scopal
positions (Chomsky 2000a: 120f., 2008: 140f., 148). They may be a byproduct
of acquisition through canonical templates integrated as requirements of
lexical items (Bever 2009). They may reflect the acquisition of PF patterns that
have no synchronic motivation but are the diachronic residue of earlier interpretable
properties and configurations (discussed in this chapter). Nevertheless, the Interpretability
Condition continues to invite search for the source of all the properties
of lexical items in the legibility requirements of the interfacing systems of PF
and LF, phi and Case among them.
Phi-features are an ideal tool for this inquiry, because they appear to be an alphabet
shared across various linguistic modules. They have been seen in morphology
in chapter 2, and in syntax in chapters 3-5. An example from syntax is the