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

ecause then there is no crossing of agreement dependencies, but bad again in
(83)c because the secondary predicate recreates the crossing. The striking effect
that Napoli observes is that the morphophonological realization of phi-features on
the controller has an effect on the crossing ban. When the distinctively PLF le clitic
of (83)a is in (83)b replaced by the 1PL ci syncretic for gender, and the effect is
reduced to ?, and likewise for other choices of object clitics and subjects syncretic
for gender. Even more remarkably, in (83)d the same amelioration is brought
about by phonological elision of the vowel of the clitic that eliminates the gendermarking
vowel (on the elision, see Russi 2008: 217f.).
(83) a. I ragazzii lej hanno (*tuttii) vistej (√tuttii).
b. I ragazzii cij hanno (?tuttii) vistej (√tuttii).
the boys them(F)/us have.3PL all.PLM seen.PLF all.PLM
c. I ragazzii lej volevano (*tuttii) vedere (*tuttii) nudej.
the boys them(F) wanted.3PL all.PLM see all.PLM nude.PLF
d. I ragazzii *la/?l'j hanno tuttii vistaj.
the boys her have.3PL all.PLM seen.SGF
(Italian, Napoli 1974)
These ameliorations, Napoli reports as grammaticality judgments. Cinque
(1999: 219 note 28, 118) finds Napoli's cases like (83)a 'quite grammatical'. Other
Italian and French speakers find Napoli's pattern, yet not necessarily as a matter of
grammaticality, rather of parsing (for some independent of the overt expression of
agreement). Napoli's effect of elision on long-distance agreement dependencies
would be hard to account for under the hypothesis of phonology-free syntax, the
most robust and explanatory aspect of modularity. But it may be viewed otherwise:
as the summation of both syntactic and morphological well-formedness and
of production-processing. In parsing/production morphophonological difficulties
interact with judgments of syntactic well-formedness, along with other factors like
prescriptive rules (cf. Rezac 2010a for (71)a). These different sources of linguistic
difficulties are only sometimes superficially distinguishable. Garden-paths, for instance,
can sometimes be bypassed by a judgment of grammaticality, as in the
centre-embedding type The horse raced path the barn fell, but sometimes not, as
in the type (*)The daughter of the Pharaoh's son admires himself 'The son of the
daughter of the Pharaoh admires himself' discussed by Fodor and Inoue (1994).
This leads to familiar uncertainty about the source of phenomena like A'-
Superiority (Clifton, Fanselow and Frazier 2006, Sag et al. 2006, cf. Snyder 2000,
Sprouse 2009). Only the analysis remains to judge the coherence and robustness
of the patterns and weigh the caveats.
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