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

speaker/addressee because the more specific 1 st person is compatible with only
one of the values assumed by the pronoun. 177
(366) Eachi of usj evaluates herselfi/themselvesi/*ourselvesi/j (in ourj report).
241
Other mismatch that might not need a syntax-interpretation divorce are illustrated
in (368)-(370) Nunberg (2004a) argues that (367) involves the use of a context
of such a granularity that among the properties of the speaker is being the
condemned prisoner but not being John Doe, rather than the use of 1 st person to refer
to someone other than the non-speaker. (368) may involve the speaker mentally
putting herself or himself in the addressee's shoes, perhaps in the way proposed
for one by Moltmann (2006), for empathy, deference, or ridicule of selfimportance.
Metonymies like (369) and (370) also keep the 1 st person feature in
interpretation, but transfer it or the predicate in various ways, discussed by
Jackendoff (1992), Nunberg (1995, 2004b), Ward (2004), Kwon and Zribi-Hertz
(2008).
(367) Condemned prisoner: I am traditionally allowed to order whatever I want
for my last meal. (i.e. The condemned prisoner is traditionally…)
(368) Don't wek look nice in ourk new hat! But it's bit too large for youk.
(369) We parked ourselves out back and (we) got a coffee/#stolen.
(370) I'm the ham sandwich and (I'm) rather satisfied/#tasty.
There do exist mismatches where morphology and syntax do show phi-features
that ought not be there in interpretation. Probably most familiar is the use of 2PL
(French) or 3PL (German) for 2SG. However, it only affects the finite verb and
might be set aside as politeness marking or as emergence of the default (Wechsler
2004, Sauerland 2008). Wechsler and Zlatić (1998, 2000, 2003) discuss the more
egregious number and gender mismatches in Table 6.1 that resist such analysis.
They conclude that nouns may come with different phi-sets for different mechanisms.
All may mismatch, as may be illustrated by the noun deća 'children':
– Index phi-set, neuter plural, for subject-predicate and antecedent-pronoun
matching (through phi-matching in Discourse Representation Structures).
– Concord phi-set, feminine singular, for modifier and secondary predicate
matching (through subcategorization in HPSG).
– Semantic phi-set, e.g. masculine plural, that surfaces under redescription,
including by a pronoun (through pragmatics).
Table 6.1: Serbo-Croatian agreement mismatches
177 Also illustrated in (366) is Sauerland's proposal that plural is underspecified, and so may refer
to atoms to avoid the gender presuppositions associated with the more specified singular.