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

frire 'fry' (e.g. 1PL *frions vs. rire 'laugh', 1PL rions), past for English forgo
(*forwent, *forgoed), past participle for stride (*stridden, *strided), contracted
form for am not (*amn't -- isn't, aren't), and subject-verb inversion in French for
-je 'I' with most verbs (dois-tu/je 'must-you/I' but bois-tu/*je 'drink-you/*I'). These
gaps may be wholly arbitrary synchronically, but syntactico-semantically arbitrary
are also gaps motivated in other systems like the prosodic constraint in (43).
Arbitrary gaps often occur where closely related systems have opaque cliticization
and agreement. In (66)a, the 2PL.ERG→1PL.ABS combinations deletes the
object's phi-features in Bermeo Basque. The 1PL.ERG→2PL.ABS combination
incurs a gap. Speakers resort to a paraphrase, like Bakosu guretsako lekorik ela?
"Do you have room for us?" for *Erungosu gu? "Can you take us along?" (Egaña
1984: 14). Lekeitio Basque lacks the agreement combination
1PL.ERG→2PL.DAT, and speakers can only use nonagreeing allative and other
postpositions to paraphrase the sense of the agreeing dative, much as in (43)
(Fernández 2001: 156). Wiltschko (2008: 309) compares the arbitrary agreement
combinations where Chukchi uses the spurious antipassive (67) to Halkomelem
gaps for (subject→object) 3→2 but not 3→1, and to Thompson River Salish gaps
for 1PL→3 and 2SG→1PL but not elsewhere. There is one caveat. Opaque cliticization
and agreement refer to phi-features rather than their exponents; it is less
clear that arbitrary gaps ever do so. However, there is evidence for it analogous to
that mentioned for opaque agreement, including generalizations over phi-feature
classes like interactions between 2 nd person and 1PL in Basque.
The causes of these gaps are sometimes understood and reinforce the impression
of syntactico-semantic arbitrariness. Among them are uncertainty in morpheme
order or allomorph choice, anti-repetition constraints on morphological or
phonological features, morphological garden paths, acquisition failures due to
conflicting generalizations, and perhaps limits on feature complexity in morphemes:
see Noyer (1992: 164-6), Heath (1991, 1998), Neeleman and van der
Koot (2005), Albright (2006), Arregi and Nevins (2008), Rivero (2008), Wiltschko
(2008), and Baerman, Corbett and Brown (2010).
The gaps of interest here belong to the morphology or its use by the parserproducer.
From this follow their properties. One is their definability within phrasestructurally
'small' domain, to which morphology but not syntax is restricted by
(69) (cf. Wiltschko op.cit.). Another, central to modularity, is their syntacticosemantic
inertness, brought out by Trommer (2002) and Embick and Marantz
(2008). An expression that exists only in the context of a gap is its repair, whether
licensed by the gap itself (Andrews 1990, Poser 1992, Williams 1997), or by a restatement
of the conditions that define the gap. The modular architecture of the
Y/T model claims that gaps defined at PF cannot have syntactico-semantic repairs.
This is so. The missing past participle of English stride renders unavailable the
perfect (70)a, but does not license otherwise unavailable syntactic structures (70)b
or interpretations (70)c. The perfect of stride is ineffable.
(70) a. *He has strid-?.
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