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

movement through probes for individual person features and/or feature-relativized
locality (Béjar and Rezac 2009). By contrast, the EA-O phi-interactions of opaque
agreement need to refer to wholly arbitrary lists of EA-O combinations seen in
chapter 2 for Basque and Chukchi, or equivalently, to arbitrary hierarchies, carving
out no natural classes.
It may be, as chapter 2 suggests, that only morphology has the tools to state
such arbitrariness. A hint in this direction is the syntactic inertness of arbitrary hierarchies
where the 1/2 > 3 hierarchy is syntactically active. In Plains Cree,
closely related to Ojibwa, the control of suffix agreement falls to EA or O according
to the hierarchy in (113)a, and Ojibwa has its own version of it. Yet Rhodes'
inquiry finds syntactic consequences in Ojibwa only to the 1/2 > 3 subset of the 2
> 1 > 3 hierarchy governing control of the agreement prefix. If syntax in generally
does not track arbitrary hierarchies or EA-O combinations like (112) or the lists in
chapter 2, it is an important finding about the limits of syntactic devices or the articulation
of phi-features they see (cf. section 2.2 on opaque cliticization, 4.6 on
the 'weak' PCC). 50
(113) a. Plains Cree suffix agreement hierarchy: 1PL > 1PL inclusive / 2PL > 3
animate > 1SG/2SG > 3 inanimate.
b. Kiowa hierarchy agreement: non-SG indirect / extended object (IO) >
2SG dative / 1SG EA > non-SG EA > 1SG/3SG IO > 2SG/3SG EA
(Zuñiga 2002: 90-2, 211f.)
50 Even so, the status of many hierarchies would remain unclear, for instance the rather natural
classes defined by the interaction of person and number in Dummi (Trommer 2006).
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