Phi-features and the Modular Architecture of Language [Paperback]

This monograph investigates the modular architecture of language through the nature of "uninterpretable" phi-features: person, number, gender, and Case. It provides new tools and evidence for the modular architecture of the human language faculty, a foundational topic of linguistic research. At the same time it develops a new theory for one of the core issues posed by the Minimalist Program: the relationship of syntax to its interfaces and the nature of uninterpretable features. The work sets out to establish a new cross-linguistic phenomenon to study the foregoing, person-governed last-resort repairs, which provides new insights into the nature of ergative/accusative Case and of Case licensing itself. This is the first monograph that explicitly addresses the syntactic vs. morphological status of uninterpretable phi-features and their relationship to interface systems in a similar way, drawing on person-based interactions among arguments as key data-base.

This monograph investigates the modular architecture of language through the nature of uninterpretable phi-features: person, number, gender, and Case. It provides new tools and evidence for the modular architecture of the human language faculty.

Acknowledgments.-Conventions and glosses.-Preface.-1 Modularity, phi-features, and repairs.-1.1 Introduction.1.2 Modular architectures.1.3 Phi-features across modules.1.4 Repairs at the interface.-2 Phi-features in realizational morphology.2.1 Modularity, morphology, and phi-features.2.2 Opaque cliticization and agreement.2.3 Gaps and synthetic-analytic alternations.2.4 The limits of a modular signature.-3 Person Hierarchy interactions in syntax.3.1 Person hierarchies and PH-interactions.3.2 PH-interactions in Ojibwa and Mapudungun.3.3 Theories of PH-interactions.3.4 PH-interactions and repairs in Tanoan.3.5 The limits of syntactic PH-interactions.-4 Person Case Constraint repairs in French.4.1 Introduction.4.2 French cll‚