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

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on it, but there is no dependence on the person of the other argument (Dixon 1994:
87). The case-marking of EA and O depends only on its own 'local' features, not
'globally' on (agreement with) those of another argument, as it does in PHinteractions.
(86) a. I was flunked by Prof. Summers.
b. Mary Summers was flunked by me.
(Delancey 1981: 638)
PH interactions have sometimes been modelled entirely in the morphology, for
instance Noyer (1992) for a variety of languages, Anderson (1992) and by Halle
and Marantz (1993) for Potawatomi related to Ojibwa, and Marantz (2000) for
Georgian in a program of a postsyntactic approach to case and agreement relations
generally. The prediction of morphological approaches is that syntax and interpretation
should be blind to them. An argument such as the Ojibwa 1 st person EA
should behave the same in syntax and interpretation regardless of whether it wins
over a 3rd person O, or loses to a 2 nd person O. PH-interactions should be as syntactically
invisible as the forms of the plural in ox-en, sheep, cow-s. This is incorrect,
as will be seen in one way for Ojibwa and Mapudungun in sections 3.2 and
3.3, and in a different way for Arizona Tewa in section 3.4. Thus some PH
interactions, and thus their person agreement and its uninterpretable person phifeatures,
are to be placed in the syntax, answering one of the central questions of
chapter 1. The concluding section 3.5 returns to the contrast between them and the
morphological 'opaque' agreement of chapter 2.
3.2 PH-interactions in Ojibwa and Mapudungun
The seminal arguments for the syntactic character of PH-interaction are due to
Rhodes (1994), for Ojibwa. This section reviews it and adds Arnold's (1997) evidence
from Mapudungun. The next section develops the consequences.
In the Algonquian language Ojibwa, the morphological reflex of PHinteraction
is control of the agreement prefix. It falls to the highest DP on the hierarchy
2 (g-) > 1 (n-) > 3 (w- in 3→3 transitives, ∅ in intransitives). The PH interaction
thus partitions the set of EA→O combinations into direct contexts, where
the EA controls the prefix (2EA→1O, 2/1EA→3O), and inverse contexts, where the
O does (1EA→2O, 3EA→1/2O). This prefix oscillation between EA and O is illustrated
in Table 3.2, in the column headed Independent Order.
Table 3.2: Ojibwa conjugation (Rhodes 1994: 432-3, [] are underlying forms)
Meaning Independent Order Conjunct Order
I go home n[i]-giiwe
1 go.home
giiwe- yaanh
go.home 1SG.SU
you go home g[i]-giiwe giiwe- yan