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

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2.4 The limits of a modular signature
From this survey emerges a strong modular architecture in which syntax and
morphology each have their distinctive informational and computational properties,
and morphology is invisible to syntax and interpretation. By the clustering of
these properties in the modular signatures (41), linguistic phenomena are individuated
as morphological or syntactic. The counterpart of the morphological signature
of this chapter is the syntactic one of those that follow, the more striking
because it characterizes phenomena superficially similar to the ones seen here.
The strength of the conclusions reached in this chapter must be tempered in two
ways: the phenomena left aside and the nature of the evidence. DP-internal concord
illustrates the first caveat. It has not been investigated here, and so might be a
domain where morphology transmits phi-features a 'moderate' distance (cf. the
remarks on adjacency in Wechsler and Zlatić 2000: 819). The French gens 'people'
illustrates a possible state of affairs (Grevisse and Goosse 2008: §490). It is masculine,
including for adjectival concord, pleins in (80)a, save for preceding determiners
and modifiers if adjacent: vieilles and bonnes in (80)a, toutes and petites in
(80)b, bonnes in (80)c but not in (80)d where et 'and' intervenes. This would then
be transmission of phi-features sensitive to linearity and adjacency, and thus in the
morphology, yet iterative or unbounded. However, beyond a few set collocations,
speakers either treat gens as masculine or lack judgments. This phenomenon therefore
looks like the prescriptive 'viruses' of Sobin (1997), Lasnik and Sobin (2000),
or like idiomatic exceptions that do not refer to phi-features at all.
(80) a. de vieilles bonnes gens pleins de saveur antique et frustré
old.PLF good.PLF people full.PLM of taste antique and frustrated
b. toutes les petites gens
all.PLF the.PL little.PLF people
c. Quelles honnêtes et bonnes gens!
What.PL[F] honest.PL and good.PLF people
d. Quels bons et honnêtes gens!
What.PL[M] good.PLM and honest.PL people
(Grevisse and Goosse 2008: §490; [] agreement purely orthographic)
quently displace. However, it would seem that at the Vedic stage where Sanskrit was a first language,
the analytic perfect is too rare conclude anything; after the grammarian Panini's time
when the foregoing dissociated analytic perfects occur, Sanskrit was only a second language; and
Panini describes the analytic perfect as a morphological alternative to the synthetic with its parts
inseparable (Staal 1967: 30; for Panini's Sanskrit, Cardona 1999: 2.1.4.8). (Kiparsky also discusses
a couple of roots that allow the analytic perfect because the synthetic one has an irregular
meaning, like veda 'knows < has seen'; but these are treated by Whitney (op.cit.) under (iii) as
roots that need a diacritic specifying the availability of the analytic perfect, also needed for (ii)
because roots with the same shape may behave differently.)