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

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bizu 2002). In Albondiga (66)b, the impoverishment of the phi-features of the ergative
agreement simply turns the exponent 2pE sue to 3sE ∅, so that ga1pA-itxpAu[+ERG]-sue2pE-spA
becomes ga-itx-u-∅-s. In (66)d shown in (68)c on the other
hand, the ergative phi-features are totally erased so that not even 3sE is present.
This affects the choice of the auxiliary root, which is now the [-ERG] root of unaccusatives,
with its distinctive allomorphy for absolutive phi-features. The phenomenon
is superficially similar to syntactic detransitivization used in Basque for
anticausatives, mediopassives, and reflexives, so that (68)c ikusi sara can mean
'You see yourselves' (Hualde and Ortiz de Urbina 2003: 4.7, 4.9.1.3). However, no
ergative argument is possible then. When ikusi sara is created by opaque agreement
in (68)c, the ergative argument guk remains, and remains ergative. Syntax
and interpretation do not see the agreement impoverishment at all.
These observations also testify to the local character of opaque agreement, the
same as for opaque cliticization. Only phi-features in the agreement complex are
visible, not phi-features at a distance. There seems to be no analogue of opaque
agreement that would reach out to affect the phi-features of remote independent
pronouns like guk in (68), with or without those of agreement affixes. It would appear
as the deletion or transfer of phi-features, like Basque (68) or Chukchi (67),
or the opaque cliticization in (55), as arbitrary as they are – but affecting the phifeatures
of pronouns separated by as large phrase-structure distances as agreement
regularly spans. The absence of such phenomena bespeaks a significant limit on
morphology, (69).
(69) Morphological mechanisms are restricted to "small" domains: adjacent
elements, nonadjacent ones in the extended word, etc.
(69) characterizes many theories of morphology, which restrict morphological
mechanisms to small domains explicitly (Carstairs-McCarthy 1992: 3.3.1,
Ackema and Neeleman 2003, Embick and Marantz 2008), or through the nature of
the information which they manipulate (Embick and Noyer 2001). Other theories
give realizational morphology the power to span phrase-structurally unbounded
domains, some explicitly for agreement and case (Marantz 2000, Bobaljik 2008).
Opaque agreement and cliticization must not be within their scope to derive (69). 22
The generalizations accounted for by (69) are one of the core issues to be addressed
if opaque agreement and cliticization belong to syntax rather than morphology.
In order to model them, syntax must be capable of selecting or moving
subsets of phi-features: 3 rd person but not 1 st /2 nd person, 3 rd person plural but not
22 Strict adjacency does not seem to be the right condition on morphological phi-feature manipulations
or even allomorph selection; see Carstairs-McCarthy (1992: 3.1.3), Bonet (1991: 90, 114
note 15, 173 note 29), Noyer (1992: 87), Stump (1998: 34), Ackema and Neeleman (2003), Bobaljik
(2000: notes 17, 44). The iteration of local processes in morphology does not seem to
break out of this small domain condition in general, Noyer (2001: 796), although perhaps such
iteration is available, Harris and Halle (2005). If failure to iterate is derivable from the way the
syntactic tree is spelled out, cf. Bobaljik (2000), it might permit exceptions.