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

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variation may be modelled through variation in grammaticalized presuppositional
features, causal functional architecture, and so on.
If the motivation of phi-driven movement is interpretive, syntax might ultimately
be dispensed of all reference to phi-features and move arguments around
freely, as is also true for focus, wh, and so on. If syntax does not establish the interpretively
needed configuration, interpretation simply fails. 1 st person ends up
higher than 3 rd person on the only successful interpretation, and that is the configuration
seen by obviation, cross-clausal agreement, spell-out. We may call this
idea LF Filtering. An LF requirement filters syntactic structures so as to leave
only those that satisfy it. Syntax never has to see the features involved, including
the phi-features of PH-interactions.
Exactly the same logic can be applied to model PH-interactions on the PF
side, PF Filtering, as in Albizu's (1997a) Generalized Person Case Constraint
(99). It is a morphological condition that requires syntax to furnish PF with structures
where more 'referential' person features, 1 st /2 nd person, c-command less referential
ones, 3 rd person. If syntax does not do so, morphology cannot realize it.
The net result is the same as in LF-filtering. Syntactic computation may operate
blind to phi-features. If it fails to meet (99), it does not produce a legitimate LF-PF
pairing. PF/LF-filtering lets syntax operate blind to phi-features, yet it gives them
syntactic consequences, by filtering the output of syntax according to syntaxexternal
constraints on phi-features.
(99) Generalized Person Case Constraint: A Person-morphosyntactic feature
P1 must be less referential than, or as equally referential as, a Personmorphosyntactic
feature P2 that c-commands it at MC [the Morphological
Component in Distributed Morphology].
(Albizu 1997a)
LF and PF filtering likely both exist in their own right, banning syntactically
legitimate structures by giving them no interpretation or realization, as in the case
of the morpho(phono)logical gaps discussed in chapter 2. This does not mean that
PF/LF-filtering have the scope to capture PH-interactions. Various aspects of the
syntactic movements described above refer to phi-features in a way that may be irreducible
to independent aspects of PF or LF, such as feature-relativized locality.
There also appear to be mismatches between the phi-features of arguments seen by
syntax, including by PH-interactions, and those seen by PF and LF, discussed in
chapter 6; the notion of grammaticalized presuppositionality is among them.
Finally, uncertainly but intringuingly, there may be a difference in the mechanical
profiles of PH-interactions and PF-filtering (perhaps extensible to LFfiltering).
Secure instances of PF-filtering arise from the arbitrary properties of the
spell-out items or rules of a language: the absence of the past participle of stride in
English, of 2PLEA→1PLO phi-features in Bermeo Basque agreement morphology
(chapter 2). Such gaps could yield an Ojibwa-type system accidentally. There is
some PF-detectable property that differentiates direct structures from inverse ones,
for instance whether the highest argument is [+control]. This property governs the