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

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The obligatory character of [cliticization] can therefore be loosened … in certain cases
where its application would lead to unacceptable clitic combinations.
(Kayne 1975: 174)
Kayne [1975:] 172-6 takes a position which has never been given an intelligible
interpretation internal to any precise theoretical framework. That is that Clitic-Placement
is optional in some contexts and obligatory in others. Kayne's idea is that somehow Clitic-
Placement would not apply when it would yield a banned clitic sequence[.]
(Postal 1981: 308 note 25)
However, the subtle constraints on the repair belie this initial appearance, as
was underlined by the same investigations that observe it, especially Kayne (1975:
2.17, 4.3, 4.6, 2000: chapter 9) and Blanche-Benveniste (1975). Blanche-
Benveniste perspicuously describes the problematique thus. Clitic clusters are subject
to different constraints, some interpretive, some realizational, and (to add to
her words) some syntactic. One of them, the PCC, comes with its own repair. The
others result in sentences that are 'unspeakable', yet often not 'unthinkable'
(Blanche-Benveniste 1975: 44f.). If there is a global mechanism responding to the
unavailability of clitics by the PCC repair, its domain must be chiselled out of the
mass of syntactic and extrasyntactic impossibilities of cliticization into a natural
and sharply bounded class. Chapter 5 develops such a mechanism. The present
chapter lays the groundwork in establishing the scope and limits of the Person
Case Constraint and its repairs in French.
The interest of these phenomena is raised by their cross-linguistic replication.
Bonet (1991) establishes analogues of the French PCC and its repair for a wide variety
of languages, and proposes the universal character of the PCC. Chapter 5.2
reviews the evidence and the theory of the PCC adopted here, the Agree/Case approach
in (121). It proposes that the PCC arises in French when a dative intervenes
in the syntactic dependency Agree between the Agree/Case-locus v and its
[+person] goal, depriving the latter of Case licensing by accusative Case.
(121) Person Case Constraint (Agree/Case approach): A goal G cannot Agree
for [+person] φ-features if X intervenes between it and its Agree/Case locus,
where X is of a type to intervene in the Agree/Case system, to which
belong applicative datives but not full PPs. If G has no other means of licensing
its [+person], it fails the Case Filter.
(122) v > DAT > GACC [+person] > is c-command
*Agree/Case
This formulation represents one view of the PCC. Here, it serves as the background
through which the facts of French may be profitably approached.
Along with the PCC often go dedicated repairs, as in French and the other
languages in Table 4.1. Chapter 5 is dedicated to them. They are remarkable as