Agreement Systems (Linguistik Aktuell Linguistics Today, Volume 92)

Agreement Systems

Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today (LA) provides a platform for original monograph studies into synchronic and diachronic linguistics. Studies in LA confront empirical and theoretical problems as these are currently discussed in syntax, semantics, morphology, phonology, and systematic pragmatics with the aim to establish robust empirical generalizations within a universalistic perspective.

Series Editors Werner Abraham

Elly van Gelderen

University of Vienna

Arizona State University

Advisory Editorial Board Cedric Boeckx

Ian Roberts

Harvard University

Cambridge University

Guglielmo Cinque

Ken Safir

University of Venice

Rutgers University, New Brunswick NJ

Günther Grewendorf

Lisa deMena Travis

J.W. Goethe-University, Frankfurt

McGill University

Liliane Haegeman

Sten Vikner

University of Lille, France

University of Aarhus

Hubert Haider

C. Jan-Wouter Zwart

University of Salzburg

University of Groningen

Christer Platzack University of Lund

Volume 92 Agreement Systems Edited by Cedric Boeckx

Agreement Systems Edited by

Cedric Boeckx Harvard University

John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam
/
Philadelphia

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TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Agreement Systems / edited by Cedric Boeckx. p. cm. (Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, issn 0166–0829 ; v. 92) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. 1. Grammar, Comparative and general--Agreement. 2. Grammar, Comparative and general--Case. 3. Grammar, Comparative and general-Syntax. I. Boeckx, Cedric. II. Series: Linguistik aktuell Bd. 92. P299.A35A36 2006 415--dc22 isbn 90 272 3356 X (Hb; alk. paper)

2006040574

© 2006 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa

Table of contents

Acknowledgements

vii

List of contributors

ix

introduction Cedric Boeckx

1

chapter  Are we in Agreement? Gabriela Alboiu

13

chapter  From hierarchies to features: Person splits and direct-inverse alternations Artemis Alexiadou and Elena Anagnostopoulou

41

chapter  Finiteness and the relation between Agreement and Nominative Case Gülşat Aygen

63

chapter  Case and Agreement with Genitive of Quantification in Russian Željko Bošković

99

chapter  How sentences grow in the mind: Agreement and selection in an efficient minimalist syntax John Frampton and Sam Gutmann

121

chapter  Agreement configurations: In defense of “Spec head” Hilda Koopman

159

chapter  Agree in syntax, agreement in signs Halldór Ármann Sigurðsson

201

vi

Table of Contents

chapter  Standard Arabic subject-verb agreement asymmetry revisited in an Agree-based minimalist syntax Usama Soltan

239

chapter  Complete and Partial Infl Juan Uriagereka

267

chapter  Case-Agreement Mismatches Ellen Woolford

299

chapter  Local agreement Jan-Wouter Zwart

317

Author index

341

Subject index

345

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank editors Werner Abraham and Elly van Gelderen for their interest in this project, sound advice, and never-failing encouragement. Thanks also to Kees Vaes for expertly coordinating all the steps in the publication process, and to all the contributors of this volume, especially Halldór Ármann Sigurðsson (the first to join), for their willingness to embark on this project, and their patience during the publication process. Finally, I am most indebted to my wife Youngmi for her support, enthusiasm, and desire to see this project come to fruition. Cedric Boeckx Cambride, Mass. May 2006

Contributors

Cedric Boeckx (ed.) Harvard University, Cambridge, USA [email protected]

Sam Gutmann Northeastern University, Boston, USA [email protected]

Gabriela Alboiu York University, Toronto, Canada [email protected]

Hilda Koopman UCLA, Los Angeles, USA [email protected]

Artemis Alexiadou University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany [email protected]

Halldór Ármann Sigurðsson University of Lund, Lund, Sweden [email protected]

Elena Anagnostopoulou University of Crete, Rethymno, Greece [email protected]

Usama Soltan University of Maryland, College Park, USA [email protected]

Gülşat Aygen Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, USA [email protected]

Juan Uriagereka University of Maryland, College Park, USA [email protected]

Željko Bošković University of Connecticut, Storrs, USA [email protected]

Ellen Woolford University of Massachusett, Amherst, USA [email protected]

John Frampton Northeastern University, Boston, USA [email protected]

C. Jan-Wouter Zwart Groningen University, Groningen, The Netherlands [email protected]

Introduction Cedric Boeckx Harvard University

Although the agreement relation between a Noun Phrase (typically, the ‘subject’) and a Verb was already captured in Chomsky’s 1957 Syntactic Structures (see Transformation 15 on p. 112), it was not until the Principles-and-Parameters era that a generative theory of agreement took shape. Until then there was no formally coherent notion of Inflection; hence there couldn’t have been any formally coherent notion of that part of the inflectional paradigm of a language we call agreement. Our modern understanding of Inflection can be traced back to Pollock’s 1989 seminal formulation of the Split-Infl hypothesis. By dissociating the Tense component and the Agreement component of IP, and treating each as a distinct projection (TP and AGRP), Pollock made it possible to begin asking questions such as: – – – – –

What is the nature of Agreement such that it can be expressed as a functional projection like AGRP? Which element(s) does AGRP relate to? What is the position of AGRP relative to other functional projections? Is AGRP unique, or should we distinguish between several AGRPs? Should AGRP be further decomposed into smaller units such as PersonP, NumberP, GenderP, etc.?

All these questions are still with us today. After more than 10 years of intensive research, linguists are still debating whether AGRP is a legitimate functional projection (see Chomsky’s 1995 famous rejection of AGRP), whether a single AGR projection may host more than one agreeing element (witness the contrast between those who assume distinct AGRPs for Indirect Object [AGRioP] and Direct Object [AGRdoP] and those who assume a generic AGR“All”P hosting both objects), whether the position of AGRsubjectP is universally above TP, or whether AGRobjectP is above or below the highest VP shell, and so on. To address such questions, it is useful to examine two of the most central arguments pertaining to the nature of agreement that were formulated at the end of the Government-Binding era. Chomsky (1991:146) notes that although Pollock originally split up Infl into Tense and AGR with TP dominating AGRP, one may have expected AGRP to dominate TP

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to capture subject-verb agreement in finite clauses, the logic here being that if T is [+finite], then AGR is available for subject-verb agreement. The only way to express this dependency of AGR on T[finite] in a framework that assumes that syntactic structures are built bottom up and in a cyclic fashion is to have AGR project once T has projected. Chomsky furthermore observes, following Belletti 1990, that in languages where T and AGR are distinct morphemes, agreement is expressed further away from the stem than tense is, as in the following French example: (1) tu parle-ra-s you talk-Future-2sg By the logic of Baker’s 1985 Mirror Principle (a generalization that expresses that the order of morphemes mirrors the order of functional projection), (1) should correspond to the structure in (2). (2) [AGRP [TP [VP V] T] AGR] However, as Chomsky (1991:147) notes, Pollock’s treatment of the well-known verbpositioning contrast between French and English (3)-(4), as well as his (=Chomsky’s) own treatment in 1991, demand that TP dominate AGRP. (3) a. b. (4) a. b.

J’embrasse souvent Marie *Je souvent embrasse Marie *I kiss often Mary I often kiss Mary

Chomsky’s solution to this paradoxical situation was to assume the existence of two AGR projections, one dominating TP (and responsible for subject-verb agreement) and the other dominated by TP. Chomsky suggested that the lower AGR be the locus of object agreement. From this point on, the higher instance of AGRP came to known as AGRsP and the lower instance of AGRP as AGRoP. The structure in (5) became the basic clause structure for many researchers. (5) [AGRsP AGRs [TP T [AGRoP AGRo [VP V]]]] Chomsky noted that the identification of the lower AGRP as AGRoP fitted nicely with Kayne’s 1989 study of agreement between (displaced) objects and active past participles in French, illustrated in (6). (6) Quelle fille Jean a(-t-il) vu-e which girl Jean has-he seen-AGR.fem ‘Which girl did Jean see’ Sentences like (6) clearly show the existence of an agreement relation established lower than the position of the finite auxiliary and distinct from subject-verb agreement, precisely what the structure in (5) leads us to expect. Chomsky furthermore suggested that structural case is correlated with agreement

Introduction

(see already Chomsky 1981:52), and reflects a structural relation between the relevant NP and the appropriate AGR element. Accordingly, AGRsP became associated with nominative case assignment, and AGRoP with accusative case assignment. Here the phenomenon of Object Shift in Scandinavian languages provided yet another rather strong piece of evidence for the structure in (5). As originally discussed in Holmberg 1986, objects in Icelandic may shift (move outside the VP, whose edge can be identified with negation), but only if they are Case-marked NPs, not PPs. (7) Nemandinn las bókinna ekki Student.the read book.the ‘The student didn’t read the book’ (8) * Jón taladhi [ vidh Maríu] ekki Jon spoke with Maria not ‘John didn’t speak with Maria’ This shifting process was plausibly reinterpreted as movement driven by structuralcase reasons, and AGRoP appeared to provide just the position needed to host such shifted objects. The investigation of past participle agreement in French and Object Shift in Scandinavian languages revealed another property of agreement that became central: the need for a Spec-Head relation to establish the relevant agreement relation. This point is best illustrated by means of French data about past participle agreement like (9). (9) a.

Jean a vu-*e la fille Jean has seen-AGR.fem the girl ‘Jean saw the girl’ b. Jean l’a vu-e Jean her-has seen-AGR.fem ‘Jean saw her’ c. Quelle fille Jean a(-t-il) vu-e which girl Jean has-he seen-AGR.fem ‘Which girl did Jean see’ d. Cette fille a été vu-e this girl has been seen-AGR.fem ‘This girl was seen’

As can be seen in the examples above, past participle agreement is only possible with displaced objects (cliticized, wh-moved, and passivized in the examples at hand). Quite naturally, Kayne 1989 took agreement in this case, and, by hypothesis, in all cases, to require raising to some specifier position – the spec-head relation. This line of thought has been very productive (see Chung 1998, Koopman 1992, 1995, 2001, and Sportiche 1998, to cite but a few examples that make abundant use of Spec-Head agreement relations), and was at the core of the early minimalist conception of Case/agreement (Chomsky 1993).

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Elements that didn’t raise in overt syntax but had to enter into agreement/case relations to satisfy independent principles of grammar were assumed to raise to SpecAGRPs in covert syntax. Not only did the Spec-Head agreement appear to be empirically adequate, it was also conceptually very attractive. Let me illustrate this by focusing on structural case (the elaboration of a comprehensive theory of agreement came later onto the syntactic scene, but the point is identical, since case and agreement are meant to pattern alike.) For most of the GB era, nominative Case was assigned under m-command by IP (10). Accusative Case, by contrast, was assigned under c-command by V (11). (10)

InflP Infl’

NPi Infl

VP … ti …

[IP Johni [ I0 [VP ti kick the ball]]] (11)

VP | V’ V NP [IP Johni [ I0 [VP ti [V’ kick [NP the ball]]]]]

In addition, two ‘exceptional’ Case-assignment configurations were be assumed, one for accusative (in the well-known ECM construction) (12), and one for nominative (in the so-called existential construction) (13). (12)

VP | V’ V

InflP Infl’

NPi Infl

VP … ti …

[IP John [ I0 [VP [V’ believe [IP [NP the ball]i [I’ to [VP ti be blue]]]]]]]]

Introduction

(13)

InflP Infl’

Therei Infl

VP | V’ V

NPi

[IP there [I’ is [VP a man in the room]]] With the advent of the Spec-AGRhead hypothesis, a greater symmetry between nominative Case and accusative Case could be achieved: both cases were assigned in the so-called Spec-Head relation with an AGR projection: (14) a.

AGRsP

b. AGRs’

NPi

AGRoP NPi

AGRs

TP

AGRo’ AGRo

… ti …

VP … ti …

At the same time Lasnik and Saito 1991 were reviving some of Postal’s 1974 arguments in favor of object raising into the matrix clause in ECM constructions, allowing this instance of accusative Case assignment to be subsumed under (5b), as shown in (6). (15)

AGRoP NPi

AGRo’ AGRo

VP V

TP … ti …

Even the instance of nominative Case checking in existential constructions was integrated into the Spec-Head configuration by assuming that movement of the NP was covert.

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However, recently, several arguments have been presented in favor of another agreement/Case configuration which Chomsky 2000 dubbed Agreement at a distance, or Agree for short. The evidence for Agree came from existential constructions and instances of longdistance agreement in Icelandic with nominative objects, illustrated in (16) and (17) respectively. (16) There *seems/seem to be two men in the boat (17) Mér *virdhist/virdhast their vera skemmtilegir Me.Dat seem.3sg/3pl they.Nom be interesting ‘It seems to me that they are interesting’ In both cases there is compelling evidence that the agreeing NP hasn’t raised to the locus of agreement at any point in the derivation, making it difficult for a Spec-head analysis to be entertained. For instance, the case-marked NP in (16) doesn’t behave as a raised NP for purposes of binding and scope: it can’t take scope over or bind an element which it would c-command had it moved (albeit covertly), as illustrated in (18)-(19). (18) a. a man seems to be outside (seem >> a man; a man >> seem) b. there seems to be a man outside (seem >> a man; *a man >> seems) (19) a. a mani seems to himselfi to be doing something wrong b. * there seems to himselfi to be a mani doing something wrong Based on such facts, Chomsky proposed a simplification of feature checking (including Case/agreement) by eliminating actual (covert) displacement (originally used in the context of (16)-(17); see Chomsky 1986, and Boeckx 2000) in favor of a checking procedure taking place at a distance. Under Agree, a functional head, called Probe, checks its uninterpretable feature against a matching element, called Goal, located inside the Probe’s complement (domain), as schematized in (20). (20)

TP

vP T’

T0

v’ vP

v0

… NP … [Nominative]

VP

… NP … [Accusative]

Chomsky hypothesizes that all instances of Case/agreement-checking fall under Agree, and any instance of categorical displacement is said to be an instance of EPPsatisfaction. EPP-satisfaction is taken to be a process distinct from Case/agreement

Introduction

checking. Not only does Chomsky’s claim force us to re-examine all the evidence adduced in support of the Spec-Head agreement hypothesis, it also begs the question of the relation between case/agreement and EPP-checking. While it is likely that not all instances of raising to an A-specifier (such as SpecAGRsP) are driven by agreement, as evidenced by the existence of, e.g., Quirky subjects in languages like Icelandic (21) (i.e., non-nominative NPs that behave like subjects but do not trigger subject-verb agreement), it is also clear that, as Chomsky (2004:114) notes, “(…) raising of α (…) is always restricted to some category of constituents (…), hence some feature of α (or complex of features).” (21) Stelpunum var hjálpađ The girls.Dat.pl.fem was.3sg helped.sg ‘The girls were helped’ What the range of possible features identifying elements satisfying the EPP is still remains an open question. Likewise, it remains unclear whether such features should be regarded as uninterpretable, or unvalued, two mention two notions that have played a role in the recent literature on agreement (and case) (see Pesetsky and Torrego 2004 for valuable discussion.) Another technical aspect of the minimalist program worth pointing out in the context of agreement is the extensive use of multiple specifiers within a single projection. As far as agreement is concerned, several researchers (Anagnostopoulou 2003, Boeckx 2003, Boeckx and Niinuma 2004, Bejar and Rezac 2003, Jeong 2005, Bobaljik and Branigan 2006) have hypothesized that allowing multiple elements to entertain some relation with a single AGR projection may allow us to capture “interference effects” such as the so-called. me-lui or Case-Person Constraint (Kayne 1975, Perlmutter 1971, Bonet 1994). The original formulation of the PCC is given in (22). (22) Person-Case Constraint (PCC): Original Formulation (Bonet 1994) If Dative agreement/clitic, then Accusative agreement/clitic = 3rd person Examples from Basque (agreement) in (23) and from French (clitic cluster) in (24) are typical PCC effects. (23) a.

Azpisapoek etsaiari misilak saldu d-Ø-izki-o-te traitors-erg enemy-dat missiles-abs sell abs3-dat3-erg3 ‘the traitors sold the missiles to the enemy’ b. * Azpisapoek etsaiari ni saldu na-i-o-te traitors-erg enemy-dat me-abs sell abs1-dat3-erg3 ‘the traitors sold me to the enemy’

(24) a.

Jean le lui presentera Jean it him will-present ‘Jean will introduce it to him’

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b. * Jean me lui presentera Jean me him will-present ’Jean will introduce me to him’ At the same time, if morphology is taken to reflect syntactic structure, as the mirror principle mentioned above has it, languages like Basque, which displays ergative, absolutive, and dative agreement relations, demand that each agreement morpheme be associated with a distinct AGR-head, as several authors have argued (see, e.g., Lasnik 2003). It may be useful to note at this point that the range of variation in the morphological expression of agreement is quite extensive: apart from well-known cases of suffixation and prefixation, one also finds cases of fusion, circumfixation, infixation, portmanteau morphemes, fission, etc. Interestingly, Cinque (1999: 127) notes on the basis of an extensive survey of the world’s languages that [by the logic of the mirror principle], “the order [of functional heads] appears crosslinguistically invariant. The limited cases of apparent variation all seem to involve agreement and negation.” But such cases are not limited at all. Concluding her survey of over 500 genetically unrelated languages, Julien (2000: 359) observes that “there is one inflectional category which does not so easily fit into the … rigid framework that syntactic analyses [assuming a rigid mirror principle] provide. This category is agreement.” Likewise, several hypotheses were formulated in the GB era that tied (morphological) richness of agreement to phenomena such as pro-drop (see Rizzi 1982, Jaeggli and Safir 1989) or polysynthesis (Jelinek 1984, Baker 1996). But to this day no satisfactory characterization of “rich agreement” has been formulated, despite repeated attempts. And yet few would deny that agreement is deeply implicated in these phenomena. Another area that merits attention is the extent to which AGRP should be split in smaller projection reflection Person, Number, and Gender agreement, respectively. One of the phenomena discussed in this context is the nature of nominative NPs in Icelandic. Whereas the language does not impose any φ-feature restriction on nominative subjects, it prohibits non-3rd person nominative objects, as shown in the contrast in (25)-(26). (25) Vidh kusum hana We.Nom elected.1pl her.Acc ‘We elected her’ (26) * Henni leiddumst vidh Her.Dat bored.1pl us.Nom ‘She was bored with us’ cf. Henni leiddust their Her.Dat bored.3pl they.Nom ‘She was bored with them’

Introduction

Sigurðsson 1996 and Taraldsen 1995 took the contrast to indicate that agreement with nominative objects in Icelandic was restricted to 3rd person, which, following Benvéniste’s well-known suggestion, they took to mean absence of Person. Hence agreement is restricted to Number (effectively excluding non-3rd person nominative objects, as in (26)). This led them to claim that AGRoP licensing nominative objects is a NumberP, whereas nominative subjects can relate to a PersonP. Similarly, the fact that past participle agreement is often restricted to Number and Gender (no Person) suggests that finer-grained distinctions are needed in the characterization of AGRP. These are some of the burning issues that arise in the context of agreement. Needless to say, this survey is by no means exhaustive. For instance, I haven’t touched on the relation between agreement and clitics, the interpretability of agreement markers on verbs (which relates to Chomsky’s 1995 claim that AGR projections don’t exist since agreement relations are never interpreted semantically), the strength of the correlation between agreement and case, the establishment of agreement relation with coordinated structures (cf. there was a man and a woman here/*a man and a woman was here), the general weakening/impoverishment of agreement with post-verbal subjects, the phenomenon of anti-agreement in the context of wh-extraction, the nature of wh-agreement (agreement triggered by moving wh-phrases), the general lack of agreement relations with covertly moved NPs (such as covertly raised quantifiers), differences between agreement and concord, agreement within NPs, adjectival agreement, and so on. But I hope that the reader of this overview got a sense of the importance of agreement phenomena in theoretical debates, and the need for cross-linguistic, comparative investigations to address questions in the realm of agreement systems. The papers contained in this volume address the issues mentioned above, focusing specifically on the formalization of the mechanisms of agreement and on the relationship between case and agreement. All the papers propose solutions by seriously examining crosslinguistic data. Indeed, one of the strengths of the present volume seems to me to be that sheer range of data discussed from the usual Germanic and Romance languages to Lummi, Greek, Hindi, Turkish and other Turkic languages (Tuvan, Kazakh, Khakas, Altay, Turkmen), Japanese, Tsez, Masaai, Russian, Arabic, Basque, Warlpiri, Kaltakungu, and Bantu. In the remainder of this introduction I want to provide brief summaries of each contribution. Gabriela Alboiu discusses the relationship between structural Case valuation and phi-completeness (i.e. agreement) by focusing on Nominative Case in Romanian. She argues that phi-specifications on T (i.e. agreement) are neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for Case checking. She then goes on to offer a formalization of case assignment in terms of phases. Artemis Alexiadou and Elena Anagnostopoulou examine ergative splits conditioned by person. They compare this type of splits to hierarchical effects in direct-in-

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verse alternations. On the basis of two case studies (Lummi instantiating an ergative split person language and Passamaquoddy an inverse language) they offer an account that makes no use of hierarchies as a primitive. One consequence of their analysis is that Case checking in split and inverse systems is guided by the presence/absence of specific phi-features. This in turn provides evidence for a close connection between Case and phi-features. Gülşat Aygen proposes that agreement is a Mood feature at C(omplementizer) and that it licenses Nominative subjects only in the presence of Epistemic Modality on the I(nflection) head. The crucial empirical evidence comes from a comparative study of lesser-studied Turkic languages. Željko Bošković examines the structure and case/agreement properties of Russian numeral NPs, focusing on the phenomenon of genitive of quantification (GQ). To account for the difference between inherent and structural case in the context of GQ, Boskovic appeals to theta-theory and economy. John Frampton and Sam Gutmann pursues a crash-proof model of minimalist syntax, in which the core of syntax is agreement. The bulk of their paper is devoted to detailing a theory of the mechanisms of agreement, including feature sharing and the distinction between phi- and delta-agreement, and explaining how the theory operates, both in “ordinary” cases and in challenging examples involving expletives and Icelandic quirky case. Hilda Koopman argues on the basis of agreement patterns within Maasai DPs that agreement within DPs should be handled in the same way as agreement within clauses. Specifically, she claims that the traditional Spec head hypothesis (agreement under Merge) yields an optimally elegant and simple analysis for the observed agreement patterns within the Maasai DP, with no need to assume a different mechanism for “concord”. She then goes on to evaluate some of the empirical evidence based on long distance agreement that seems to support the long-distance operation of Agree, and proposes alternative analyses for them. Halldór Ármann Sigurðsson explores the idea that abstract Agree is a precondition on Merge and an integrated part of it. That is, an element F merges with the structure X only if the relation of Agree holds between the two (the Agree Condition on Merge). Sigurdsson motivates his proposal on the basis of various agreement phenomena in Icelandic. His proposal leads to the idea that PF is a multilayered and a highly complex system, producing strings that can be radically different from underlying syntactic structures. Usama Soltan revisits a classic agreement phenomenon in Arabic syntax (pre/ post-verbal subject agreement asymmetries) from a minimalist perspective, showing how a rather unexpected asymmetry follows naturally from the conditions imposed on syntactic representations at the interface, thereby lending support to the strong minimalist thesis that views language as an optimal solution to legibility conditions. Juan Uriagereka argues for extending the conditions of Null Case assignment beyond control structures. He presents an intriguing degree of variation with regard to

Introduction

successive-cyclic A-movement, which is affected by the generalization of null Case to various inflectional contexts. The paper also discusses freezing conditions relating to null Case valuation, showing how cyclicity may affect freezing, and how sometimes freezing effects can be bypassed. Ellen Woolford concentrates on the typological claim that only instances of one of the two logically possible types of Case-agreement mismatches actually exist: ergative Case systems with nominative-accusative agreement, and goes on to address the question of why the opposite mismatch does not occur. Jan-Wouter Zwart explores the possibility that agreement, in particular subjectverb agreement, is always a relation between phrases, never a relation between a head and a phrase. More specifically, Zwart attempts to restrict the possibility of restricting the agreement relation to pairs of sisters.

References Anagnostopoulou, E. 2003. The Syntax of Ditransitives. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Baker, M. 1985. The mirror principle and morphosyntactic explanation. Linguistic Inquiry 16: 373-416. Baker, M. 1996. The Polysynthesis Parameter. Oxford: OUP. Bejar, S. and M. Rezac. 2003. Person licensing and the derivation of PCC effects. In Proceedings of LSRL 32. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Belletti, A. 1990. Generalized Verb Movement. Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier. Bobaljik, J. D. and P. Branigan. 2006. Eccentric agreement. In Ergativity, D. Mussam, A. Johns and J. Ndayirag (ed.)., 47-77. Dodrecht: Kluwer. Boeckx, C. 2000. Quirky agreement. Studia Linguistica 53: 451-480. Boeckx, C. 2003. Symmetries and asymmetries in multiple feature checking. In Multiple Whfronting, C. Boeckx and K.K. Grohmann (eds), 17-26. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Boeckx, C. and F. Niinuma. 2004. Conditions on agreement in Japanese. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 22: 453-480. Bonet, E. 1994. The Person-Case constraint: A morphological account. In MITWPL 22: 33-52. Cambridge MA: MITWPL. Chomsky, N. 1957. Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton. Chomsky, N. 1981. Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris. Chomsky, N. 1986. Knowledge of Language. New York NY: Praeger. Chomsky, N 1991. Some notes on economy of derivation and representation. In Principles and Parameters in Comparative Grammar, R. Freidin (ed.), 417-454. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 1993. A minimalist program for linguistic theory. In The View from Building 20, K. Hale and S. J. Keyser (eds), 1-52. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 1995. Categories and transformations. In The Minimalist Program, N. Chomsky, 219-394. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 2000. Minimalist inquiries: The framework. In Step by Step, R. Martin, D. Michaels and J. Uriagereka (eds), 89-155. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 2004. Beyond explanatory adequacy. In Structures and beyond. A. Belletti (ed.),

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104-131. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chung, S. 1998. The Design of Agreement. Chicago IL: Chicago University Press. Cinque, G. 1999. Adverbs and Functional Heads: A cross-linguistic perspective. Oxford: OUP. Holmberg, A. 1986. Word Order and Syntactic Features in Scandinavian Languages. PhD dissertation, University of Stokholm. Jaeggli, O. and K. Safir (eds). 1989. The Null Subject Parameter. Dordrecht: Foris. Jelinek, E. 1984. Empty categories, case, and configurationality. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 2: 39-76. Jeong, Y. 2005. Asymmetries in multiple case checking. Proceedings of WCCFL 23. Somerville MA: Cascadilla. Julien, M. 2000. Syntactic heads and word formation: A study of verbal inflection. PhD dissertation, University of Tromsoe. [Published 2002 as Syntactic Heads and Word Formation. Oxford: OUP.] Kayne, R. 1975. French Syntax. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Kayne, R. 1989. Facets of Romance past participle agreement. In Dialect Variation and the Theory of Grammar, P. Benincà (ed.), 85-103. Dordrecht: Foris. Koopman, H. 1992. On the absence of case chains in Bambara. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 10: 555-594. Koopman, H. 1995. The spec-head relation. Ms., UCLA. Koopman, H. 2001. DP-structure in Masaai. Ms., UCLA. Lasnik, H. 2003. Minimalist Investigations in Linguistic Theory. London: Routledge. Lasnik, H. and M. Saito. 1991. On the subject of infinitives. Papers from the 27th regional meeting of CLS, 324-43. Chicago IL: CLS. Perlmutter, D. 1971. Deep and Surface Constraints in Syntax. New York NY: Winston, Rinehalt, and Holt. Pesetsky, D. and E. Torrego. 2004. The syntax of valuation and the interpretability of features. Ms., MIT and University of Massachusetts, Boston. Pollock, J.-Y. 1989. Verb movement, universal grammar, and the structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry 20: 365-425. Postal, Paul M. 1974. On Raising. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Rizzi, L. 1982. Issues in Italian Syntax. Dordrecht: Foris. Sigurðsson, H.Á. 1996. Icelandic finite verb agreement. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 57: 1-46. Sportiche, D. 1990. Movement, agreement, and case. Ms., UCLA. [Published in Sportiche, D. 1998. Atoms and Particles of Phrase Structure. London: Routledge.] Taraldsen, K. T. 1995. On agreement and nominative objects in Icelandic. In Studies in Comparative Germanic Syntax, H. Haider, S. Olsen, and S. Vikner (eds), 307-327. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

chapter 

Are we in Agreement?* Gabriela Alboiu York University

This chapter argues for an analysis of Case checking as a property of phasal domains rather than of agreement. It shows that, cross-linguistically: (i) availability of Nominative subjects with phi-deficient T probes, (ii) failure of phi-complete T probes to check Case on their DP goals in the absence of temporal deixis, and (iii) recurrent phi-feature valuation by a single DP up to the first phase, all receive a straightforward explanation under an approach where the crucial ingredient in Case valuation is a C-saturated T domain, rather than a phi-probe. Furthermore, by focusing on Romanian, it provides evidence against multiple Case checking and discusses the relationship between (un)availability of lexical subjects and featural properties of T in obligatory control and raising constructions.

Introduction This chapter discusses the relationship between structural Case valuation and phicompleteness (i.e., agreement) with a focus on Nominative Case. Starting with Chomsky (1981) and work by George and Kornfilt (1981), much of generative grammar has assumed Nominative Case to be incumbent on agreement properties within the functional domain, typically understood as phi-feature type properties, regardless of whether these phi-properties were taken to project independently as AGR phrases or to be couched parasitically on T, as suggested by minimalist proposals. Most recently, Chomsky (2000, 2001a,b) assumes Nominative Case to be valued by an Agree operation with a phi-complete T probe, where, following insights in Pesetsky and Torrego (2001), phi-complete T is strictly correlated to a phi-complete C. Crucially, the presence of ‘agreement’, formalizable as an uninterpretable set of phi-features (uphi) on T (and possibly C), is taken to be a necessary ingredient in Nominative Case-licensing mechanisms. I suggest that generative grammar has placed too heavy a burden on agreement and argue that phi-specifications on T (i.e., agreement) are neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for Case checking. Instead, I propose an account of Case valuation based on phasal domains, which I show is better able to capture various cross-linguistic idiosyncrasies, including the following facts: (i) availability of Nominative subjects

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in the presence of phi-deficient T probes, (ii) failure of phi-complete T probes to value Case on their DP goals in the absence of temporal deixis, and (iii) recurrent phi-feature valuation by a single DP up to the first phase. The chapter is organized as follows. Section 1 introduces the reader to a broader picture of Nominative Case instantiation that goes beyond English and puts forth a unifying proposal. Section 2 focuses on featural properties of T and their role in Case assignment. A detailed discussion of each type of T follows in subsequent subsections. Section 3 discusses obligatory control phenomena in Romanian, for which only a Case checking account with matrix probes can capture the data despite the obligatory presence of an agreeing embedded T, thus further supporting an approach where Case features are independent of agreement. In Section 4, I argue against multiple Case valuation and provide further evidence that phi-probes are insufficient to license Case. Section 5 is a conclusion.

1.

Instances of Nominative Case beyond English

While, it seems clear that for English overt Nominative subjects are intrinsically linked to a phi-complete T, thereby warranting Chomsky’s claims, in certain Romance languages Nominative Case can also be valued by phi-deficient T probes, as shown by the availability of lexical subjects (in bold) in (1a) from Spanish and (1b) from Romanian infinitive constructions.1 (1) a.

Lo supimos [CP después de llegar él]. we found out [CP after arrive.INF he.NOM] ‘We found out after he had arrived.’ (adapted from Ledgeway 1998: 5) vreau să cumpăr un tort. b. [CP Înainte de a pleca ea], [CP before of INF leave she.NOM], want.1SG SBJ buy.1sg a cake. ‘Before she leaves, I want to buy a cake.’

The above phenomenon has received recent attention in Ledgeway (1998) who discusses various types of infinitives available to Romance languages. However, it is also attested outside of Romance, for example in West Flemish (see Haegeman 1985), which suggests a noteworthy robustness. Note that these constructions are to be kept distinct from inflected infinitives discussed by Raposo (1987) for European Portuguese (henceforth, EP), as no agreement morphology is present on the infinitive. While the facts in (1) suggest Case valuation to be independent of phi-features, the availability of Nominative subjects with inflected infinitives, see (2) from Raposo, also divorces Nominative valuation from finiteness.

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(2) Será difícil [ eles aprovarem a proposta]. ‘It will be difficult they to-approve-Agr the proposal.’

(Raposo 1987: 86)

On the other hand, caution is needed as even if these data show Case checking not to be incumbent on agreement or finiteness, they cannot be taken as an argument per se against phi-probes valuing Case. So, were we to ignore the unwelcome theoretical implications faced by a system in which Case valuation were inconsistently available due to agreement, finiteness and possibly something else, we could, in principle, still entertain the idea that phi-complete probes can check and value Case. Fortunately, this account is refuted by the discussion below. Under minimalism, inactive XPs do not enter further checking relationships. For DPs this translates into the impossibility of entering A-chains if already Case-marked. Specifically, once Case has been valued on a DP, the DP should become inactive and remain immovable (Chomsky 2001a,b). The familiar restrictions from English subject raising constructions in (3) support this claim: (3) a. Agreementi seems [ ti to be a popular topic these days]. b. It seems [that agreement is a popular topic these days]. c. * Agreementi seems [that ti is a popular topic these days]. Subject DP raising is only permitted provided the DP is not Case-marked in the embedded clause; specifically, in (3a) but not in (3b) and (3c). Raposo (1987) provides similar evidence by showing that Nominative subjects cannot raise outside of inflected infinitives in EP, which further supports the view that DPs are ‘de-activated’ once their Case is valued. Now, if phi-probes could indeed value Case, DP raising for Nominative Case valuation from within a phi-complete TP would not to be expected. Nonetheless, there are languages that permit A-type agreement and raising of DP subjects from within phi-complete TPs. Subject raising constructions in Albanian, Greek, Persian and Romanian, among others, involve subjunctive complements in which the T probe is phicomplete. Consider (4) from Romanian, where both matrix and embedded T agree in person and number with the raised DP. (4) Maxi pare [să fie ti de încredere]. Maxi seem.3SG [SBJ be.3SG ti of trust] ‘Max seems to be trustworthy.’ Had the DP ‘Max’ valued Case within the subjunctive clause in (4), any subsequent relationship with matrix T, as well as further raising should have been prohibited, contrary to fact. These preliminary examples support an approach which divorces phi-probes from Case. A closer look at languages that cut their pie in a more refined way than English with respect to properties of T and licensing of Nominative Case suggests that the sine qua non condition for Nominative Case valuation is the C-T (phase-level) relationship

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rather than a phi-complete T. Following, Chomsky (2001b), Stowell 1982, and others, I take T to be ‘tensed’ only if saturated by C, which is equivalent to saying that Nominative Case is available strictly in the presence of a tensed T.2 This proposal has the benefit of providing a consistent account for Nominative Case valuation cross-linguistically, as well as shifting the burden from agreement to tense.3 In terms of implementation, I assume tensed T is formalizable as an interpretable deictic Tense feature (iT) on T with the potential of valuing Case. Paramount to our account is that iT will only be a property of T in the presence of CP. Following proposals in Haeberli (1999), Pesetsky and Torrego (2001, 2004), and Svenonius (2001), I take Case itself to be construed as an uninterpretable Tense feature (uT) on D. The challenge then is twofold. On the one hand, we need to demonstrate that it is iT and not agreement that is responsible for Nominative Case checking; on the other hand, we need to show that the iT specification on T is incumbent on the presence of the C domain. The next section addresses the various types of T (in terms of iT availability and phi-features) and their relationship with lexical subjects. Occurrence of the C head is also investigated. Much of the discussion focuses on Romanian which provides empirical evidence for all manners of T.

2. Featural properties of T The prerequisite for demonstrating that T specified for iT can value abstract Case regardless of phi-features, warrants a discussion of all the potential T types emerging from the combination of these two parameters. Specifically, (i) a temporally deictic and phi-complete T, specified as [iT, uphi]; (ii) a temporally deictic but phi-deficient (or φ-incomplete) T, specified as [iT] but no phi-probe; (iii) a phi-complete but anaphoric (i.e., ‘untensed’) T, specified solely as a phi-probe, [uphi]; and (iv) anaphoric T without any phi-features.4 5

2.1 T : [iT, uphi] I will set aside any detailed discussion of type (i) T. The reason for this is simple: given that both agreement and tense are available to T, these situations will not shed any light on which of the two features is responsible for Case-checking and valuation, or whether it is the combination of them both.

2.2 T : [iT] but no [uphi] As the examples in (1) show, in some languages Nominative subjects are available with uninflected infinitives. These clauses are temporally deictic, in that they allow for a distinct temporal specification from that of the matrix clause. Given their adjunct CP status, this is expected. T is saturated by C, so it bears an iT feature. Such infinitives

Chapter 1. Are we in Agreement?

share the important property of requiring an obligatory preposition, typically taken to be responsible for the presence of Nominative subjects. One approach is to assume that the presence of the preposition, suggested to be external to the CP, ‘activates’ Case-assigning properties of the Inflectional domain, properties intrinsically related to agreement (see, for example, discussion in Cowper 2002, Haegeman 1985, Ledgeway 1998, Motapanyane 1995, and Raposo 1989). But if agreement were at stake, why is there no overt manifestation of phi-feature valuation on the embedded T? This is a puzzle given that agreement morphology is typically available to these languages, while some also license inflected infinitives (e.g. EP).6 On the other hand, were we to assume that phi-features are absent in this type of T, as suggested above, no agreement morphology would be expected. I suggest that uphi is present on T only when agreement morphology is available to the respective paradigm. In the absence of overt agreement morphology, I take T to lack uphi features (see also Landau 2004). Note, however, that in the absence of phi-features, the only property of T capable of valuing Nominative would have to be iT. In their discussion of English gerunds and for-to infinitives, Pesetsky and Torrego (2001, 2004) suggest that the preposition in C is an overt manifestation of T to C movement, required to satisfy the T-related properties of C. Extending their analysis to the infinitives in (1), we can take the preposition to be the spell-out of T to C movement. Intuitively, its presence is an indication of iT on T, which I take to be responsible for Nominative licensing. Technically speaking, Nominative emerges whenever the uT feature on the DP subject is checked and valued against iT in T.

2.3 T: [uphi] but no [iT] I take this type of T to be present in all clauses unsaturated by a CP level but which show agreement morphology on T. Potential candidates are inflected infinitives and TP (but not CP!) subjunctives. It turns out that inflected infinitives in EP are not of this type. These infinitives may function as subject sentences and adjunct clauses (see Raposo 1987) both of which require CP status, thus guaranteeing iT on T. While Ledgeway (1998) considers them to be [-T], Raposo (1987) argues that they contain a tense operator. In addition, Landau (2004), also argues for their [+T] status based on the fact that complements to factive, declarative and epistemic predicates must all be tensed (whether T bears dependent or independent tense is irrelevant for Nominative Case valuation). Consequently, the featural specification of T in inflected infinitives in EP includes both iT and uphi, so lexical Nominative subjects are expected to be licensed and, in addition, expected to be barred from further entering A-chain type dependencies. This is in accord with the empirical facts, as noted in Section 1. Another well-documented instance of inflected infinitives is available in Hungarian (see Jakab 2003, Landau 2004, Tóth 2000). According to Jakab (2003) inflected

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infinitives in Hungarian have to be untensed, see (5), her (20): (5) * Tegnap Jánosnak nem volt szabad holnap elmen-ni-e. yesterday John-DAT not was allowed tomorrow VM-go-INF-3SG ‘Yesterday, John was not allowed to go away tomorrow.’ (5) shows that tense mismatch is disallowed between matrix and embedded T, which suggests infinitive T lacks an iT feature. Jakab (2003) argues contra Landau (2004) that these infinitival complements lack not only C but also T and that the obligatory control phenomena prevalent in inflected infinitives is the result of raising the unique DP argument from the reduced complement clause into the matrix clause. 7 Let us next focus on TP subjunctive clauses. It is currently well-known that languages such as Albanian, Persian, Greek, Bulgarian and Romanian, among others, take subjunctive (rather than infinitive) complements in both raising and control constructions.8 The question is whether these subjunctive clauses have CP or TP status. Most of the authors in footnote 8 distinguish between ‘two types’ of subjunctives, roughly revolving around tense and control properties. While subjunctive complements do not manifest independent tense on a par with indicative clauses, their tense properties may or may not be anaphoric depending on the matrix verb selecting them (see Dobrovie-Sorin 1994 and Farkas 1992, for Romanian; Krapova 2001, for Bulgarian; Landau 2004, for Balkan languages more generally). Specifically, complements to obligatory control (henceforth OC) predicates (i.e., ‘exhaustive control’ in the sense of Landau 1999, 2003, ‘semantic control’ in the sense of Wurmbrand 1998), such as aspectual, implicative, and some modal matrix verbs, are untensed (i.e., bear anaphoric tense). This is illustrated in (6) below, with Romanian data, where (6a) involves an OC implicative and (6b) involves an OC aspectual predicate. In both instances, subjunctive T is anaphorically related to matrix T as indicated by the absence of distinct temporal deixis. Am reuşit să plec (*mîine).9 AUX.1SG managed SBJ leave.1SG tomorrow ‘I managed to leave (*tomorrow).’ b. Încep să citesc / *fi citit. begin.1SG SBJ read.1SG / PAST read ‘I’m beginning to (*have) read.’

(6) a.

On the other hand, complements to desideratives and other non-obligatory control predicates, which may optionally (and, in some languages, partially) take an identical embedded argument, allow for a distinct tense from that of the matrix clause, albeit dependent on matrix clause T given the irrealis status of subjunctives in general. (7) illustrates both these phenomena. 10 (7) a.

Am vrut să plece Mihai (mîine). AUX.1SG wanted SBJ leave.3SG Mihai.NOM (tomorrow) ‘I wanted for Mihai to leave (tomorrow).’

Chapter 1. Are we in Agreement?

b. Am vrut să plec (mîine). AUX.1SG wanted SBJ leave.1SG (tomorrow) ‘I wanted to leave (tomorrow).’ In our system, this amounts to saying that T in OC subjunctives is not specfied for iT, whereas T in non-OC subjunctives is. Contra Landau (1999, 2004) who assumes a unitary CP account, but following Alboiu (2004), I suggest that the presence versus absence of iT specification on subjunctive T is strictly dependent on the presence versus absence of the CP domain. Specifically, while non-OC subjunctives have CP status, OC subjunctives are non-phasal TPs. Consequently, they fall under the type of T being investigated in this section.11 The next subsection provides further evidence that, in Romanian, subjunctives to OC predicates (as defined above) have non-phasal status on a par with raising complements.

2.3.1 Further evidence for the non-phasal status of certain Romanian subjunctives Let us first note that in addition to the synthetic marking of person and number on the verb stem, as in Romance more generally, Romanian subjunctives also require the obligatory presence of a subjunctive particle să preceding the verb (i.e., the subjunctive is also analytically marked as in other Balkan languages). The subjunctive particle să has generally been argued to be a mood/finite marker within T by a number of authors (e.g. Alboiu 2002, Cornilescu 1997, Isac 2002, Motapanyane 1995, Pîrvulescu 2001, Rivero 1994, Terzi 1992), though Dobrovie-Sorin (1994, 2001) suggests să is ambiguous between a C and a T element. Given the availability of a distinct subjunctive complementizer in the language, specifically ca, an unambiguous C element which surfaces to the left of să, I take să to be a genuine T element. As discussed in Alboiu and Motapanyane (2000), the subjunctive complementizer ca is obligatory with topicalised material, as in (8a), optional with fronted focus, as in (8b), and subject to idiolectal variation when nothing precedes să, as in (8c). (8)

a.

Trebuie [*( ca) Mioarai să ajungă ti repede]. must that.SBJ Mioara SBJ arrive.3SG ti soon.’ ‘Mioara must arrive soon.’ b. Vreau [(ca) AZI să pleci (nu mîine)]. want.1sg that. SBJ today SBJ leave.2SG (not tomorrow) ‘It is today that I want you to leave (, not tomorrow).’ c. Vreau [(? ca) să ningă]. want.1sg that. SBJ SBJ snow.3SG ‘I want it to snow.’

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Given that C is not always lexicalized as ca, the absence of ca cannot be taken as synonymous to the absence of C. The absence of C, on the other hand, will necessarily prevent insertion of the complementizer ca. Returning to OC subjunctives, there are further properties which point towards their non-phasal (i.e., TP) status aside from lack of iT specification, addressed in the previous section. First, subjunctives to OC predicates can never occur with the complementizer, see (9), or with wh-phrases, see (10). 12 (9) a.

Victor va începe [TP (*ca pe Mihai) să-l ajute]. Victor will.3SG begin [TP (that.SBJ PE Mihai) SBJ-3SG.M.ACC help.3sg] ‘Victor will begin to help Mihai.’ ajute (pe Mihai)]. b. Victor va începe [TP să-l Victor will.3SG begin [TP SBJ-3SG.M.ACC help.3sg (PE Mihai)] ‘Victor will begin to help Mihai.’

(10) a.

Mihai va începe [TP (*ce) să cînte]? Mihai will.3SG begin [TP (what) SBJ sing.3sg] ‘What will Mihai start singing?’ b. Ce va începe Mihai [TP să cînte]? what will.3SG begin Mihai [TP SBJ sing.3sg] ‘What will Mihai start singing?’

Importantly, the absence of ca in these contexts mirrors constructions with raising predicates (e.g. pare ‘seem’) also discussed in Grosu and Horvath (1987); see (11). (11) Copiiii par [TP (*ca în ultima vreme) să stea ti mult timp kids-the seem.3PL [TP (that.SBJ in last.the time) SBJ stay.3pl ti much time la calculator]. at computer] Kids seem to be spending too much time in front of the computer (lately).’ Crucially, this is different from what is available to desiderative predicates, which can arguably select a CP given the non-anaphoric tense properties available to these subjunctives (see discussion in the previous section). In (12), the subjunctive complement supports both an overt C and topicalised material, as expected if the iT property of T is incumbent on the C-T relationship. (12) Am vrut [CP (ca la bursă) să fi plecat Mihai]. AUX.1SG wanted [CP (that.SBJ at scholarship) SBJ PAST left Mihai] ‘I wanted for Mihai to have left for the scholarship.’ Second, in the presence of the subjunctive complementizer ca, negative polarity items cannot extract to the main clause sentence-initial contrastive focus position. This behaviour, shown in (13), is unsurprising in the presence if a CP (phasal) boundary.

Chapter 1. Are we in Agreement?

(13) a.

Ion nu voia [CP ca Mihai să invite pe nimeni]. Ion neg wanted [CP that.sbj Mihai SBJ invite.3SG PE noone] ‘Ion didn’t want Mihai to invite anyone.’ [CP ca Mihai să invite ti]. b. * Ion pe nimenii nu voia Ion PE noonei neg wanted [CP that.sbj Mihai SBJ invite.3SG ti] ‘Ion didn’t want Mihai to invite [focus anyone].’

In contrast to (13), negative polarity items can undergo A-bar movement to this focus position in the absence of ca with both OC subjunctives, as in (14a,b), and raising subjunctives, as in (14c), which suggest that these subjunctives have a non-phasal, TP, reduced status. (14) a.

Ion pe nimenii nu reuşea [TP să invite ti]. Ion PE noonei neg managed [TP SBJ invite.3SG ti] ‘Ion didn’t manage to invite [focus anyone].’ b. Pe nimenii n-a încercat Ion [TP să invite ti]. PE noonei neg-AUX.3sg tried Ion [TP SBJ invite.3SG ti] ‘Ion didn’t try to invite [focus anyone].’ c. Pe nimenii nu pare [TP să invite Ion ti]. PE noonei neg seems [TP SBJ invite.3SG Ion ti] ‘Ion doesn’t seem to be inviting [focus anyone].’

Consequently, I conclude that there is sufficient evidence to support the claim that subjunctive complements to obligatory control verbs have TP rather than CP status in Romanian. This correlation strengthens the claim that iT is only available to T if saturated by C. Specifically, that tense domains are phasal properties. The crux of this conclusion is that material from within obligatory control subjunctives remains available to matrix clause Agree operations as it has not yet been sent to the interfaces. In Section 3, this discussion is followed up by an account of Romanian OC as raising, supported by the absence of partial control phenomena in the language, alongside ‘backward control’ effects (in the sense of Polinsky and Potsdam 2002). I show there that under an account which equates Nominative Case valuation with the availability of iT on T, rather than agreement, the raising properties of obligatory control constructions fall out naturally. Prior to this discussion, however, we need to briefly focus our attention on the last type of T, specifically phi-deficient, untensed T.

2.4 T: No [uphi] and no [iT] This is the T of English ECM and subject raising constructions. Martin (1996) has argued that raising in English is dependent on the absence of tensed T, while Rizzi (1982, Pesetsky 1995) and many others have demonstrated that these infinitives are TP rather than CP domains. Insofar as Romanian is concerned, earlier stages of the language had phi-deficient,

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untensed T infinitive complements which were gradually replaced with a subjunctive counterpart. Nonetheless, even in modern Romanian (see also discussion in Motapanyane 1995), some aspectual verbs involved in OC are still currently acceptable with infinitive (15a), as well as subjunctive complements (15b).13 (15) a.

Au început [TP a strănuta copiii de frig], AUX.3PL started [TP INF sneeze children-the.NOM of cold], aşa că am închis geamurile. so that AUX.1PL closed windows-the ‘The children started sneezing because of the cold, so we shut the windows.’ b. Au început [TP să strănute copiii de frig], AUX.3PL started [TP SBJ sneeze.3PL children-the.NOM of cold], aşa că am închis geamurile. so that AUX.1PL closed windows-the ‘The children started sneezing because of the cold, so we shut the windows.’

These data show that a lexical Nominative is legitimate in the embedded clause regardless of whether phi-features are present, as in (15b), or not, as in (15a). Recall, however, that we just argued that aspectuals select TP rather than CP complements and that the tense of their complements is anaphoric, rather than specified for iT. Consequently, we do not expect the embedded T to be capable of checking Case in either (15a) or (15b).14 However, it is paramount to note that the mere presence of a Nominative DP in the embedded clause says nothing with respect to which T probe - embedded or main clause - is responsible for checking and valuing this Case. In keeping with the proposal put forth in this chaper, in the absence of a deictic T probe, the uT (Case) feature on D cannot be checked nor valued. So how does the DP subject get its Nominative specification? The answer is straightforward: the non-phasal status of these complements permits active goals to enter checking relationships with matrix probes as the embedded clause has not undergone Spell Out. Matrix T, being saturated by C and thus temporally deictic has an iT feature which checks and values Nominative Case on the embedded subject. In the process, matrix T will also value its own uphi, which results in agreement with the embedded subject. The backward control flavour of these constructions, as well as properties of shared arguments more generally in Romanian OC, is tackled in the next section.15

3. Obligatory control in Romanian In this section, I provide evidence for an account of obligatory control in Romanian analogous to that of raising predicates. So far, we have seen that in both raising and OC subjunctives, T is specified as uphi but untensed. So, whatever account we adopt

Chapter 1. Are we in Agreement?

for raising should also be relevant for control (and vice versa). And, if this seems an oversimplification, various arguments will strengthen the claim as we proceed. Let us first address the behaviour of the controlled/shared argument in Romanian OC subjunctives. 16 While in languages like English, the shared argument is constrained to a matrix clause position, in Romanian it may surface in a number of legitimate slots, including in the embedded clause, as already shown in (15) and more elaborately, below in (16). However, only one instantiation of the DP subject is permitted (see also Alboiu 2004, in preparation). 17

(16) (Victor) încearcă (Victor) [să cînte (Victor) la (Victor.NOM) try.3SG (Victor.NOM) [SBJ sing.3SG (Victor.NOM) at trombone (Victor.NOM)] trombon (Victor)]. ‘Victor is trying to play the trombone.’ Note also, that despite the fact that the complement clause in Romanian is a subjunctive (with agreement morphology) rather than an infinitive, obligatory control still holds, as shown in (17a), with the silent subject represented in (17b). (17) a.

Victor încearcă (* Mihai) să cînte (*Mihai). Victor try.3SG (* Mihai) SBJ sing.3SG (* Mihai) ‘Victor is trying (*Mihai) to sing.’ b. Victori încearcă proi /PROi să cînte. Victori try.3SG proi /PROi SBJ sing.3SG ‘Victor is trying to sing.’

Given the availability of agreement morphology present on the subjunctive, the null subject in Romanian obligatory control structures in (17b) has often been claimed to be an instantiation of ‘pro’ (e.g., Dobrovie-Sorin 1994, Farkas 1988, Motapanyane 1995), but given the semantics of control, some authors maintain it as ‘PRO’ (e.g. Kempchinski 1986, Terzi 1992, Landau 2004). As in Alboiu (2004, in preparation), I adopt here an approach which views thetaroles as features that can be valued via Agree on a par with any other unvalued feature and propose a raising account of control, with neither PRO nor pro. As noted earlier, I take the absence of independent semantic tense in control subjunctives to be synonymous with the failure to value Case on the embedded subject D. Consequently, despite the fact that the embedded DP subject values uphi on embedded T, it remains accessible to matrix clause Agree operations as it has not checked its own Case feature (i.e., uT) in the subjunctive clause.

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3.1 Why ‘raising’ is the best solution In this section, I first show how none of the recent minimalist analyses can do justice to the Romanian OC data and subsequently refine a Hornstein-type account to capture the facts. There are two major directions pursued with respect to obligatory control in recent studies: a reductionist and a non-reductionist approach. Approaches eliminating PRO differ primarily as to whether they assume or do not assume movement, which is usually linked to whether theta roles are construed as features or not. Perhaps the least controversial reductionist minimalist approach is that put forth by Wurmbrand (1998), who essentially argues that obligatory control presupposes a monoclausal construction, with no PRO. Her analysis is reminiscent of various restructuring analyses that go back to Rizzi (1982) and Haegeman and van Riemsdijk (1986). In a nutshell, the matrix verb selects a VP complement as in (18). (18)

John tried [VP to read the new Chomsky].

Wurmbrand’s analysis is easily dismissed for Romanian as (16) shows evidence for structure beyond VP (i.e., phi-complete T, embedded subject DP, etc.). 18 Furthermore, clitic climbing - a crucial argument for restructuring - while present in certain contexts in Romanian, see (19a), is ruled out in obligatory control contexts, see (19b). Given that clitics target the T domain in Romance (since Kayne 1991), the subjunctive in (19b) must project at least to a TP. (19) a.

Li-a putut [VP (* îli) vedea] ? CL.3SG.M.ACCi-AUX.3SG could.PART [VP (* CL.3SG.M.ACCi) see] ‘Could s/he see him ?’ încercat [să-li vadă ]. b. Nu (*li)-a not (*CL.3SG.M.ACCi)-AUX.3SG tried [SBJ-CL.3SG.M.ACCi see] ‘S/he didn’t try to see him.’

The most influential syntactic movement analyses of obligatory control belong to Manzini and Roussou (2000) and Hornstein (1999, 2001), so I will briefly focus on those. Both of these analyses view theta roles as features which have to be checked (i.e., valued) and crucially, both enable a DP to be associated with more than one theta-role.19 Manzini and Roussou propose that theta roles are aspectual features which merge in the verbal domain and which associate with a DP. In their system, DPs can only merge in their Case position and, consequently, can only occur in the inflectional domain. From there a DP will attract as many theta-roles as are in its domain, essentially, all of the theta-roles up to the next DP. Obligatory control is devoid of any PRO, being simply viewed as attraction of two theta-roles instead of one. This is schematically illustrated in (20).

Chapter 1. Are we in Agreement?

(20) a. [TP John T [vP tried [TP to [vP read]]]] b. [ JohnD [ θ1tried [θ2 read ]]] A Manzini and Roussou approach has actually been proposed for Romanian by Dobrovie-Sorin (2001). Essentially, it would work as in (21):

(21) a.

Victor încearcă să cînte la trombon. Victor try.3SG SBJ sing.3SG at trombone ‘Victor is trying to play the trombone.’ b. [ VictorD [ θ1tried [θ2 the trombone play θ3]]]

Leaving aside theory-internal problems with the Manzini and Roussou approach, such as for example, the fact that it is stipulative to assume the DP would be interested in attracting more than one theta-feature to begin with, there are also empirical problems which are more difficult to ignore. Basically, this analysis only works if the unique DP argument appears in the main clause preverbal position but becomes problematic once we consider data where the shared argument is not pronounced in the matrix clause domain but lower, as for instance in (22). (22) a.

proi încearcă să cînte Victori la trombon. proi try.3SG SBJ sing.3SG Victori at trombone ‘Victor is trying to play the trombone.’ b. [ proD [ θ1tried VictorD [θ2 the trombone play θ3]]]

Crucially, (22) is a Condition C violation. If anything, assuming the null subject is indeed available in the Numeration, we expect it to be incapable of bearing the same index with the subjunctive DP subject, contrary to fact. One possibility is to hypothesize that Romanian is insensitive to Condition C effects. However, example (23) shows that Condition C effects are, nonetheless, operative in this language, which amounts to disqualifying the Manzini and Roussou approach as a correct analysis for Romanian. (23) proi/*j ştie că pleacă Mihaij mîine. proi/*j know.3SG that.IND leave.3SG Mihaij tomorrow ‘Hei/*j knows that Mihaij will be leaving tomorrow.’ Hornstein’s approach is more conservative in that it assumes DPs to be merged in theta-domains rather than in the inflectional domain. Nonetheless, it is novel in that is allows for DP-movement into theta-positions on a par with movement into Case positions. In his system, theta-roles are features that check either by initial or by second Merge (i.e., via DP-insertion from the Numeration or via DP-movement from within the syntactic tree, respectively). In this approach PRO is simply a lower unpronounced

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copy of a moved DP, as in (24), where the pronounced copy is in bold. (24) [TP John T [vP John tried [TP to [vP John v [VP read the new Chomsky]]]]] The major proponent of the non-reductionist approach to control in minimalism is Landau. I next discuss Landau and comment on Hornstein last, given that I ultimately adopt a revised version of Hornstein as the optimal solution for Romanian. Landau (1999, 2003) argues that PRO is cross-linguistically present in obligatory control structures and that equating control with raising is a major mistake. His insights rely heavily on an earlier analysis proposed by Borer (1989) which he adapts to minimalism. Essentially, obligatory control is seen as an instantiation of the operation Agree holding between a matrix probe and an embedded anaphoric element. This anaphoric element is sensitive to the specific type of control at stake in the derivation. If involved in ‘exhaustive control’ (OC in this chapter), the anaphoric element is PRO; if involved in ‘partial control’ (here, non-OC), the anaphoric element is Agr of the embbeded clause. The split between exhaustive versus partial control depends on whether the selecting matrix predicate obligatorily requires an identical embedded argument, see data in (25), or does so optionally, as in (26b), or even partially, as in (26c). (25) Exhaustive Control (EC) a. Tomi tried [PROi to understand calculus] b. * Tomi tried [for Mary to understand calculus] c. * Tomi tried [PROi+ to meet at 9] (26) Partial Control (PC) a. Gandalfi wanted [PROi to succeed] b. Gandalfi wanted [for Frodo to succeed] c. Gandalfi wanted [PROi+ to meet late at night] / [PROi+ to leave together]. Crucially, for Landau (1999, 2003), PRO is present throughout, being ‘active’ for Agree due to its anaphoric nature and ‘inactive’ for movement given that it is Case-marked with null Case. However, by definition, PRO is in complementary distribution with overt DPs, clearly not the case for Romanian OC structures as shown in (16).20 Consequently, a PRO analyis cannot do justice to the data, so it seems stipulative to adopt it. Note that Landau’s main argument against a raising analysis for obligatory control in English comes from the availability of partial control with certain matrix verbs in this language, as seen in (26c). This is a viable argument that cannot be ignored. However, it is an argument that does not apply to Romanian, which lacks the partial control effects seen with English desideratives. Consider (27). (27) a. * Eu vreau [să plec împreună]. I want.1SG [SBJ leave.1SG together]

Chapter 1. Are we in Agreement?

b. Eu vreau [să plecăm împreună]. I want.1SG [SBJ leave.1PL together] ‘I want to leave together.’ (27a) shows that a syntactically singular subject cannot license a semantically plural predicate (i.e., a collective predicate) as in the case of English. The subject has to be plural, as in (27b), in which case we are dealing with exhaustive control again and not partial control. In effect then, there is nothing to prevent a raising analysis for Romanian obligatory control structures. 21 As for a Hornstein-type analysis it would work as in (28), where the subject DP first merges in the Spec,vP of the embedded clause and subsequently moves to its second Merge position in Spec,vP of matrix clause, thus satisfying the external thematic roles of both predicates (i.e., θve and θvm, respectively). (28) [TP is trying [vP Victor θvm [TP SBJ play [vP Victor θve [VP the trombone]]]]] The problem with (28) is that it only partially accounts for (16), repeated as (29) with the copies relevant for the theta-chain in bold: (29) (Victor) încearcă (Victor) să cînte (Victor) la trombon (Victor). Victor try.3SG Victor SBJ sing.3SG Victor at trombone Victor ‘Victor is trying to play the trombone.’ Recall that in Romanian, subjects do not dislocate to Spec,TP for Case valuation15. Crucially, in (29), ‘Victor’ in italics is not involved in movement of the English EPPtype when matrix initial but is interpreted as a topic (Alboiu, in preparation). If anything, then, the Hornstein account predicts pronunciation of the postverbal copy for VSO language like Romanian, which we see not to be supported by the empirical facts. Consequently, while I take an approach which views theta-roles as features in need of valuation to be not only correct but the best solution for Romanian, dislocation cannot be a prerequisite – contra Hornstein.22 In Alboiu (2004, in preparation) I argue that whether theta-feature and/or Case valuation is further accompanied by movement of the embedded DP subject to the matrix clause depends on the presence or absence of relevant semantico-pragmatic triggers for displacement (e.g., focus, de-rhematization, etc.). Given that our focus here is the relationship, or lack thereof, between Case valuation and agreement, I take the significance of each copy instantiation in Romanian OC to be beyond the scope of our discussion and I refer the interested reader to the aforementioned work. Let us next briefly consider desideratives which seem to provide some interesting evidence in support a raising analysis of control. Consider first (30). [CP ca mîine să cînte Mihaij la trombon]. (30) proi/*j vrea pro want.3SG [CP that tomorrow SBJ sing.3SG Mihai at trombone] ‘S/he wants Mihai to play the trombone tomorrow.’

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In the presence of a CP phasal complement, the null subject (i.e., a referential pro) of the matrix clause cannot be coreferential with the embedded subject as this would result in a Condition C violation. As expected, (30) can only be interpreted with disjoint DPs. However, in the absence of clear indication for the phasal domain (i.e., in the absence of the subjunctive complementizer ca), as in (31), the matrix subject may be interpreted coreferentially with the embedded subject. [să cînte Mihaij la trombon]. (31) proi / * proj vrea proi / * proj want.3SG [SBJ sing.3SG Mihaij at trombone] (i) ‘S/he wants Mihai to play the trombone.’ OR (ii) ‘Mihai wants to play the trombone.’ Reading (i) is, in effect, a sub-type of (30); namely, the phasal CP domain is present but C is null given that nothing has been topicalised. As a result, proi and Mihaij are Case-marked by distinct T probes, matrix and embedded, respectively. Reading (ii) is more interesting, as something akin to (30) can no longer be assumed. The reason is straightforward: a proj in the matrix clause would trigger a Condition C violation. The only possibility we are left with is to assume control-as-raising on a par with genuine OC constructions.23 To conclude this discussion, I assume that obligatory control in Romanian is an instance of ‘raising’, loosely defined as an instance of a matrix probe valuing the Case features of an active embedded DP. We expect that whether dislocation ensues or not in such cases would depend on the status of A-chains in the respective language. Given that in Romanian, A-chain formation is not incumbent on movement, dislocation is not a prerequisite, as shown.

3.2 When is control raising? If we are on the right track in assuming that embedded DP subjects are available to matrix clause probes whenever they are initially merged in unsaturated T domains, the issue of whether a language permits control-as-raising or not resides solely with the status of the embedded clause. If the embedded clause is a non-phasal TP, as in Romanian OC and standard raising constructions, Greek complements to aspectual and classical raising verbs (Alexiadou & Anagnastopoulou 2002) and Hungarian inflected infinitives involved in control (Jakab 2003), then the uT (i.e., Case) feature on the highest embedded D will be checked by matrix T. However, prior to this checking operation, the respective nominal remains active and capable of satisfying the uD theta-feature on matrix clause v, should there be one. There happens to be one with aspectual and implicative verbs, but none with classical raising predicates. Note, however that control-as-raising is not synonymous to an agreeing T. Polinsky and Potsdam (2002) propose a raising-type analysis for OC constructions in various languages that lack any agreement morphology on the embedded T but instantiate backward control, such as Japanese or Malagasy. The reverse side of the coin is also

Chapter 1. Are we in Agreement?

available. For example, Persian, a pro-drop SOV language, in which complements to control verbs are subjunctives with a phi-complete T, is difficult to capture under a raising-type analysis. First of all, despite the relative mobility of the subject DP, backward control is ruled out in Persian, as shown in (32). (32) (Ali) say kar-d (Ali) [CP (ke) (*Ali) be-r-e]. (Ali) try did.3sg (Ali) [CP (that) (*Ali) SBJ-go-3sg] ‘Ali tried to leave.’ In addition, the complementizer ke is optionally available to OC constructions, which suggests a robust CP domain. Consequently, we can assume that the subjunctive complement to OC verbs constitues a phasal domain (contra Ghomeshi 2001 who argues for a restructuring analysis, but in accord with Darzi 2004). This is similar to English, with the exception that T is specified as uphi in the Persian embedded subjunctive but as phi-deficient in the English infinitive. Nonetheless, I take it that in both cases, the presence of C licenses an iT feature on embedded T, which guarantees Case-marking of the embedded DP subject in its own phasal domain, thus preventing it from entering subsequent Agree operations with any matrix probes. However, as we know for English and is observable in (32) for Persian, the embedded subject is never overt and is intrinsically anaphoric, so it has to be PRO. Note that a Case-marked PRO has ceased to be a contradiction since Chomsky and Lasnik (1993); moreover, I take Landau’s point (2004) who argues against the concept of ‘null Case’ and suggests that PRO checks its Case feature and has it valued as any DP would in that domain - except that it will never be phonetically spelled out due to its anaphoric status. Unsurprisingly, its antecedent will be the one with the privilege of phonetic features. As indicated by the brackets around the subject DP in (32), for Persian, the antecedent need not be pronounced, which is expected given the pro-drop status of this language. This is different from English, of course, in which the antecedent has to be pronounced. To sum up, in languages like English and Persian, OC is best kept distinct from raising due to the CP status of the complements.

4. Against multiple Case valuation Aside from construing Case as a tense feature, rather than a phi-feature, the proposal set forth in this chapter relies on Chomsky’s crucial assumption that Case-checking inactivates a DP from further entertaining A-chain type dependencies. But suppose that these assumptions were wrong. A number of authors have in fact argued for the availability of multiple Case checking and against the uniqueness of Case (e.g. Bejar and Massam 1999, Ura 2000, among others). If multiple Case checking turned out to be available, we might have to reconsider some of our claims. In addition, there is a weaker version of this approach which also needs to be dismissed. Specifically, Carstens (2003) has recently argued that Case-checked DPs remain active until the

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phase is shipped off to the interface levels. Consequently, while I have shown that in the absence of a C-T relationship at the complement level, the embedded subject DP is accessible to matrix probes, separate evidence against multiple Case-checking and/or Case-checking in the embedded domain is needed to strengthen the claim that Case is not a property of agreement. In the absence of such evidence, it is possible in principle to assume that the embedded phi-complete but untensed T does in fact check Case, but that the DP remains active until Spell Out. The following subsections provide a discussion focusing on Romanian that dismisses these concerns as unfounded.

4.1 The absence of blocking effects with Datives Let us assume for the sake of argument, that the phi-complete but untensed T in the subjunctive clauses in (33) is sufficient for Case valuation. The DP Max, raised from the embedded clause, would then check Nominative Case against both the embedded and the matrix clause Ts. (33) a.

Max pare [TP să fie de încredere]. Max seem.3SG [TP SBJ be.3SG of trust] ‘Max seems trustworthy.’ b. Max va încerca [TP să termine lucrarea mîine]. Max will.3SG try [TP SBJ finish.3SG paper-the tomorrow] ‘Max will try finishing the paper tomorrow.’

In order to rule out multiple Case checking of the DP Max in (31), we need independent evidence that Case valuation does, in fact, render the goal inactive. I take the blocking effect of Dative DPs to provide such evidence. Consider first (34) from Romanian, where the control predicate takes a Dative argument: (34) a.

Mama a promis copiilor mother-the AUX.3SG promised children-the.DAT [TP să vină acasă repede]. [TP SBJ come.3SG home quickly] ‘Mother promised the children [to come home fast].’

Sentences of the type in (34) have always been problematic given that copiilor ‘to the children’ does not control as this violates all sorts of locality requirements (Rosenbaum 1967, Hornstein 1999, Culicover & Jackendoff 2001, and so on). However, once we assume that Case-marked goals are inactive, the account is straightfoward. Specifically, matrix v needs to discharge/value its external theta-role but given that copiilor is inherently Case-marked Dative, hence inactive, its goal can only be the embedded DP mama ‘mother’. Consequently, we need to assume that the subject DP is active in a way that the Dative argument is not. What makes a DP a legitimate goal for A-chain dependencies then has to be its unchecked Case.24

Chapter 1. Are we in Agreement?

A similar argument can be made by looking at standard raising verbs with Dative experiencers in Romanian. In (35), for example, we notice that Case-marked experiencers do not block raising regardless of phi-type properties of the embedded complement.25 (35) a.

Culorile astea îi par mamei [TP a fi foarte Colour.3PL.F-the these CL.DAT seem.3PL mother.DAT [TP INF be very potrivite]. suitable.3PL.F] ‘These colours seem to mother [to be quite suitable].’

b. Culorile astea îi par mamei [TP să fie foarte Colour.3PL.F-the these CL.DAT seem.3PL mother.DAT [TP SBJ be.3 very potrivite]. suitable.3PL.F] ‘These colours seem to mother [to be quite suitable].’ If multiple Case checking were possible, we would lack an explanation as to why the Dative experiencer cannot itself satisfy the phi-features of matrix T.

4.2 Emphatics and Case-checking While the discussion above argues against the availability of multiple Case checking for inactive goals, it has nothing to say with respect to whether the embedded subject is perhaps Case-marked by the subjunctive T but still active up to the first phasal level. Technically speaking, if it were to remain active up to the first phase, it should become unavailable once the matrix vP is spelled out. Specifically, the Case-marked but still active embedded DP would be capable of acting as a goal for theta-role valuation of matrix v but would subsequently become inactive once matrix vP were sent to the interface levels. So, phi-features in matrix T would never find the embedded subject and never establish an Agree operation with it, even under Carstens’s (2003) approach. The simple fact that the embedded subject enters an Agree operation with matrix T refutes the possibility of it having been Case-marked by the embedded T probe. However, for the sake of the argument, let us also look at empirical evidence. The discussion focuses on Romanian emphatics exemplified in (36): (36) a.

Mihai însuşi a făcut [vP tsu acest desen]. Mihai.NOM himself AUX.3SG done [vP tsu this drawing] ‘Mihai himself made this drawing.’ b. Mihai a făcut [vP *(el) însuşi acest desen]. Mihai.NOM AUX.3SG done [vP he.NOM himself this drawing] ‘Mihai made this drawing himself.’

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We can see that subject emphatics cannot be stranded but need to either dislocate with the subject, as in (36a), or if they remain in-situ, as in (36b), they need to rely on a pronominal subject copy for a host. Given that T only probes once, the pronominal copy in (36b) cannot be argued to value Nominative Case independently of (or in addition to) the subject DP Mihai. Consequently, I suggest that the pronominal host for the insitu emphatic is simply a spelled out lower copy of the subject. Consider next the behaviour of subject emphatics in embedded OC subjunctives. The data in (37) show the emphatic either together with the DP subject Victor (37a) or, together with a pronominal copy of the DP subject (37b). tsu pizza]. Victor însuşi încearcă [TP să facă Victor.nom himself try.3sg [TP SBJ make.3sg tsu pizza] ‘Victor himself is trying to make pizza.’ b. Victori încearcă [TP să facă eli însuşii pizza]. Victor.nomi try.3sg [TP SBJ make.3sg he.nomi himselfi pizza] ‘Victor is trying to make pizza himself.’

(37) a.

It is not unreasonable to assume that in (37b) there is a single valuation of Nominative Case, specifically by matrix T, which creates an A-chain with a lower emphatic copy instantiated at PF, on a par with what we argued for (36b). However, this need not be so a priori and pending further evidence, the claim that we are dealing with Nominative valued twice cannot be immediately ruled out. Fortunately, a look at emphatics more generally seems to provide clear evidence that T cannot value Nominative Case in OC contexts. Compare (38a) with (38b): (38) a.

Mihaii regretă [CP că eli nu poate veni Mihai.NOMi regret.3SG [CP that.IND he.NOMi neg can come.3SG (eli însuşii) ]. (he.NOMi himselfi)] ‘Mihai regrets that he himself can’t come.’ b. Victori încearcă [TP să facă (*eli) pizza (eli Victor.NOMi try.3SG [TP SBJ make.3SG (* he.NOMi) pizza (he.NOMi însuşii ) ]. himselfi)] ‘Victor is trying to make pizza himself.’

In non-obligatory control contexts, as in (38a) for example, where the complement to the factive main clause verb has CP status, a syntactically independent (though in this case semantically equivalent) subject DP is licensed in addition to the emphatic copy, should there be one. This contrasts with the situation in OC subjunctives, as illustrated by (38b). The difference lies in the fact that in (38a) but not (38b), the embedded T can value Nominative Case. This is a welcome empirical result as it supports the theoretical claims in this paper.

Chapter 1. Are we in Agreement?

Table 1. Clause status with feature checking relevant for Case valuation (i) [CP C T DP ....] → embedded subject is inactive for raising ⎛ iT ⎞ ⎛ uT: NOM⎞ e.g., canonical indicatives; EP inflected ⎜ ⎟⎜ ⎟ infinitives; CP subjunctives in Romance, ⎝uφ ⎠ ⎝ iφ ⎠ Balkan languages; control subjunctives in Persian (ii) [CP C T DP ....] → embedded subject is inactive for raising ⎛ iT⎞ ⎛ uT: NOM⎞ e.g., uninflected infinitives in some ⎜ ⎟⎜ ⎟ iφ Romance, West Flemish; control in ⎝ ⎠⎝ ⎠ English (iii) [TP

(iv) [TP

T

DP

....] → embedded subject is active for raising e.g., TP subjunctives in Balkan languages, both standard raising and obligatory control; inflected infinitives in Hungarian

DP

....] → embedded subject is active for raising e.g., subject raising and ECM in English; standard raising and OC from Romanian infinitives; uninflected backward control languages

⎛ ⎞ ⎛ uT ⎞ ⎜ ⎟⎜ ⎟ ⎝ uφ⎠ ⎝ iφ ⎠

T

⎛ uT ⎞ ⎜ ⎟ ⎝ iφ ⎠

5. Conclusions In this chapter, I have argued for an analysis of Case valuation as a property of phasal domains, rather than of phi-probes. Nominative Case checking was shown to be reliant on a tensed T, obtainable exclusively when T is saturated by C. The discussion concentrated mainly on Romanian, which allows for all potential feature combinations in T, but a variety of other well-known constructions were also investigated. Much of the analysis focused on phi-complete anaphoric T contexts which have typically been assumed to check Nominative given the availability of lexical subjects in this domain and/or overt agreement morphology on the T-related heads. However, our conclusions systematically pointed to the absence of Nominative Case checking in the absence of a CP phasal domain, regardless of phitype specifications in T. Crucially, the fact that D values phi-features for a certain probe is not synonymous to Case checking, so a D will remain active as long (and only as long) as it maintains an unchecked uT feature and in this interval it will be capable of acting as a goal to as many probes as can legitimately entertain an Agree operation with it. Valuation of uninterpretable features on multiple probes will result in multiple agreement chains and/ or multiple theta-roles but whether this is accompanied by dislocation or not seems to

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be an independent property. Equally important is the fact that such an approach to Case valuation provides significant insights into the relationship between standard raising and obligatory control and why some languages seem to treat them alike while others seem more adamant about keeping them distinct. Having negotiated our way to the conclusion that agreeing Ts (i.e., phi-complete probes) are incapable of valuing Case in the absence of C, in Table 1, I summarize the relevant featural properties of T in conjunction with Case-checking, and consequently raising availability, and exemplify with the various cross-linguistic constructions discussed in this chapter. In conclusion, I would like to hope that we are in agreement, despite the fact that Case-checking properties seem not to be.

Notes * Many thanks to Alexandra Cornilescu, Elizabeth Cowper, Daniela Isac, Arsalan Kahnemuyipour, Idan Landau, Diane Massam, Virginia Motapanyane-Hill, David Pesetsky and Daniel Seely for comments and discussion, as well as to audiences at the North American Syntax Conference in Montreal, the 2003 Annual Linguistics Conference at the University of Bucharest, and the Lisbon Workshop on Agreement, where some of this work was previously presented. Part of this work was supported by SSHRC Fellowship # 756-2002-0126. All errors are mine. 1. I use the following abbreviations in the example sentences: SE: impersonal clitic, AUX: auxiliary, SBJ: subjunctive, INF: infinitive, IND: indicative, NEG: negative, PART: participle, CL: pronominal clitic, SG: singular, PL: plural, NOM: Nominative case, ACC: Accusative case, DAT: Dative case, M: masculine, F: feminine. ‘PE’ is a preposition associated with Romanian direct objects that have an ‹e› type denotation (see Cornilescu 2000b). In addition, uF is used to represent uninterpretable/unvalued formal features and iF stands for interpretable/valued formal features. 2. Semantically, a ‘tensed’ T is non-anaphoric, though it may be dependent, if irrealis, as in inflected infinitives in European Portuguese, CP infinitives in English and CP subjunctives where these are available. In a nutshell, ‘tensed’ T can be both realis and irrealis (dependent) tense, while ‘untensed’ T is always anaphoric. Syntactically, ‘tensed’ T is always selected by C, while ‘untensed’ T is never selected by C. Refinements to follow in subsequent sections. 3. This seems a desirable move on theoretical grounds. If Case is the reflex of syntactic licensing for a DP, specifically a validation mechanism acquired by virtue of establishing a syntactic relationship in the derivation, then it should correlate with features outside of the DP per se. T itself has no interpretable phi-features and any agreement morphology is acquired by virtue of connecting with a DP. Surely, it cannot be these unvalued phi-features on T that are responsible for licensing the DP in the derivation as this has a very circular flavour to it. 4. Note that it is beyond the scope of our discussion to investigate the tense properties of anaphoric T. Specifically, whether this T type implements its anaphoric status as a uT feature subsequently checked from within the matrix clause domain. What is crucial for us is the absence of iT and thus, as I argue, of Case.

Chapter 1. Are we in Agreement? 5. This division is somewhat reminiscent of the +/- T and +/- AGR specifications on INFL which date back to Pollock (1989) and have been used to distinguish between classes of infinitives in Haegeman (1985) and Ledgeway (1998). 6. Under this proposal, it also is not clear what the relationship between the presence of the preposition and phi-feature specification in T would be. Ledgeway’s suggestion that this relationship is possible due to the null-subject flavour of these languages is not sustainable, as West Flemish is not, technically speaking, a pro-drop language (Haegeman p.c.). 7. This approach is reminiscent of control-as-raising approaches argued for in Hornstein (1999, 2001) and subsequently in Alboiu (2004), Alexiadou and Anagnastopoulou (2002), Barrie and Pittman (2004), Boeckx and Hornstein (2003), among others. I will return to this issue shortly. 8. Important references include, among others, Alexiadou and Anagnastopoulou (2002), Roussou (2001), Kapetangianni and Seely (2003) and Varlokosta (1994) for Greek, Krapova (2001) for Bulgarian and Greek, Ghomeshi (2001) for Persian, Terzi (1992) for Greek and Albanian, and, for Romanian, Alboiu (2004), Dobrovie-Sorin (1994, 2001), Farkas (1988), Grosu and Horvath (1987), Motapanyane (1995) and Pîrvulescu (2001). 9. Note that Romanian is a subject pro-drop language. 10. I will refrain from using Landau’s ‘partial’ control denomination for these predicates given that in some languages, such as for example, Romanian, partial control effects are excluded (see Alboiu 2004) and this paper, Section .. 11. The fact that CP subjunctives license Nominative subjects (see 7) is expected given that T is specified as both iT and uphi. In the account proposed here, iT on T checks the uT feature on the subject DP and values it as Nominative. However, proponents of the Case-as-agreement approach could also argue their case, as mentioned in section ., so it is irrelevant to focus on this type of subjunctive. 12. Dobrovie-Sorin (2001) also shows ca to be absent with obligatory control verbs. However, the author assumes să is ambiguous between C and T, so these complements would still presumably count as phasal in her account. 13. Unsurprisingly, the same holds of raising predicates. For most speakers, the version with infinitive complements has a slightly more archaic flavour in both cases. 14. Again, under the classical account that Case is assigned/valued via agreement, T in (15b) would be capable of assigning Nominative, whereas T in (15a) would not. So, the agreement account is even more at a loss than the account proposed here, which is at least capable of capturing the parallel behaviour of the two types of embedded T. 15. At this point, it is necessary to mention that all current studies on Romanian (see Alboiu 2002, Cornilescu 2000a, Dobrovie-Sorin 1987, 1994, Hill 2002) have argued that the language is VSO in the sense that the lexical verb undergoes obligatory displacement into the T domain, while Case is valued in-situ (i.e., via Agree without dislocation to Spec, TP for EPP). 16. I only discuss subject control here. Object control is irrelevant to our analysis as the matrix verb selects a non-anaphoric CP subjunctive, rather than an untensed TP as shown for subject control. This is shown in (ia) where, furthermore, we can also notice the availability of Nominative Case (bolded pronoun), as expected in view of the phasal status of these subjunctives. Given the pro-drop nature of Romanian, (ib) is equally unsurprising.

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(i) a.

b.

rugat pe Ioni Li-am CL.SG.M.ACCi-AUX.SG asked PE Ioni cîinele]. eli 3SG.M.NOMi dog-the] ‘I asked John to walk the dog tomorrow.’ rugat pe Ioni Li-am CL.SG.M.ACCi-AUX.SG asked PE Ioni ‘I asked John to walk the dog.’

[CP ca mîine să plimbe [CP that.SBJ tomorrow SBJ walk.3SG

[CP să plimbe proi cîinele]. [CP SBJ walk.3SG proi dog-the]

17. Note that the unorthodox positions occupied by the shared DP in (16) are A-related positions given the fact that bare quantifiers (in bold) can also occupy the same syntactic slots, as shown in (i). (i) Încearcă (cineva) [să cînte (cineva) la trombon (cineva)]. try.3SG (someone.NOM) [SBJ sing.3SG (someone.NOM) at trombone (someone.NOM)] ‘Someone is trying to play the trombone.’ 18. Significantly, implicatives, for which a restructuring analysis is more difficult to maintain on conceptual grounds, also allow for backward control, as shown in (i). (i) (Mihai) A reuşit (Mihai) [să rezolve (Mihai) toate exerciţiile]? (Mihai) AUX.3SG managed (Mihai) [SBJ solve.3SG (Mihai) all exercises-the]? ‘Did Mihai manage to solve all the exercises?’ While Wurmbrand (1998) argues that verbs like ‘try’ and ‘want’ are modals and, as such, restructuring/raising predicates, this claim is not sustainable for implicatives. 19. This is a legitimate move given that in minimalism D-structure and S-structure are no longer construed as separate levels of representation. 20. Note that Landau (2004) continues to assume that lexical Nominative subjects are ruled out in OC (his ‘exhaustive control’) subjunctives in the Balkan languages. At least for Romanian, this is incorrect, as shown. 21. The Romanian equivalent for Gandalfi wanted [PROi+ to meet late at night] would require the use of impersonal SE. Consequently, this example (or any other example with SE) would be irrelevant given that in Romanian, on a par with Italian, this morpheme is unspecified for number and can be interpreted as both singular and plural. In other words, under the plural interpretation, we would have no indication whether we are dealing with partial control or with a SE bound by a plural pro. Given (27a), we can only assume the latter and conclude that partial control is excluded in Romanian. Recall that subjunctive complements to desideratives are distinct tense domains and, consequently expected to license pro. 22. Interestingly, neither is dislocation a prerequisite in standard raising constructions in this language, which is expected under a unitary raising account of both OC and classical raising predicates: (i) (Mihai) pare [să fie (Mihai) băiat deştept (Mihai)] (Mihai) seem.3SG [SBJ be.3SG (Mihai) boy smart (Mihai)] ‘Mihai seems to be a smart guy.’ 23. While complements to desiderative verbs have been shown to constitute distinct tense domains, which we have taken to be directly correlated to their CP status, if we are to maintain a uniform raising account of control whenever desideratives are involved in OC, we would expect an untensed T in the subjunctive complement given the obligatory TP status of raising complements. Interestingly, this is borne out, as illustrated by the data in (i) for which only the (a)

Chapter 1. Are we in Agreement?

reading is available. a vrut [să vină Victor mîine]. (i) Ieri yesterday AUX.3SG wanted [SBJ come.3SG Victor tomorrow] (a) ‘Yesterday s/he wanted Victor to come tomorrow.’ (b) ‘not Yesterday Victor wanted to come tomorrow.’ 24. Note that Dative DPs do not passivize in Romanian. 25. Not all languages behave in this manner. Cuervo (2003) shows that Dative experiencers block raising in Spanish and argues for a raising-as-control analysis for these constructions. Incidentally, the complement clauses in these cases are taken to be CPs rather than TPs.

References Alboiu, G. 2002. The Features of Movement in Romanian. Bucharest: University of Bucharest Press. Alboiu, G. 2004. Shared arguments in control. Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics 22: 53-74. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Alboiu, G. In preparation. Moving forward with Romanian backward control and raising. In Expanding vistas in the analysis of Control and Raising, S. Dubinsky and W. Davies (eds.). Springer. Alboiu, G and V. Motapanyane. 2000. The generative approach to Romanian grammar: An overview. In Comparative Studies in Romanian Syntax, V. Motapanyane (ed.), 1-48. New York NY: Elsevier. Alexiadou, A. and E. Anagnostopoulou. 2002. Raising without infinitives and the role of agreement. In Dimensions of Movement, A. Alexiadou, E. Anagnostopoulou, S. Barbiers and H.M. Gärtner (eds.), 17-30. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Barrie, M. and C. Pittman. 2004. Partial control and the movement towards movement. Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics 22: 75-92. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Bejar, S. and D. Massam. 1999. Multiple case checking. Syntax 2:2: 65-79. Boeckx, C. and N. Hornstein. 2003. Reply to ‘Control is not movement’. Linguistics Inquiry 34: 269-280. Borer, H. 1989. Anaphoric AGR. In The Null Subject Parameter, O. Jaeggli and K. J. Safir (eds.), 69-109. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Carstens, V. 2003. Rethinking complementizer agreement: Agree with a case-checked goal. Linguistic Inquiry 34: 393-413. Chomsky, N. 1981. Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris. Chomsky, N. 2000. Minimalist inquiries: The framework. In Step by Step: Essays on minimalist syntax in honor of Howard Lasnik, R. Martin, D. Michaels and J. Uriagereka (eds.), 89-147. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 2001a. Derivation by phase. In Ken Hale: A life in language, M. Kenstowicz (ed.), 1- 52. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 2001b. Beyond explanatory adequacy. MIT Occasional Papers in Linguistics 20. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT. Chomsky, N. and H. Lasnik. 1993. The theory of principles and parameters. In The Minimalist Program, N. Chomsky, 13-128, Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.

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Cornilescu, A. 1997. Some notes on the syntax of the subject. Revue roumaine de linguistique XLII: 101-147. Cornilescu, A. 2000a. The double subject construction in Romanian. In Comparative Studies in Romanian Syntax, V. Motapanyane (ed.), 83-135. New York NY : Elsevier. Cornilescu, A. 2000b. Notes on the interpretation of the prepositional accusative in Romanian. Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics II(1): 91-107. Bucharest : University of Bucharest Press. Cowper, E. 2002. Finiteness. Ms., University of Toronto. Cuervo, C. M. 2003. A control-versus-raising theory of dative experiencers. In Romance Linguistics: Theory and acquisition, A. T. Pérez-Leroux and Y. Roberge (eds.), 111-131. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Culicover, P. and R. Jackendoff. 2001. Control is not movement. Linguistic Inquiry 32: 493-512. Darzi, A. 2004. Persian subject control. Paper presented at Syntax Project Group, University of Toronto. Dobrovie-Sorin, C. 1987. Syntaxe du roumain. PhD dissertation, Université de Paris 7. Dobrovie-Sorin, C. 1994. The Syntax of Romanian. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Dobrovie-Sorin, C. 2001. Head-to-head merge in Balkan subjunctives and locality. In Comparative Syntax of Balkan Languages, M. L. Rivero and A. Ralli (eds.), 44-74. Oxford: OUP. Farkas, D. 1988. On obligatory control. Linguistics and Philosophy 11: 27-58. Farkas, D. 1992. On the semantics of subjunctive complements. In Papers from the 20th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, P. Hirschbuhler (ed.), 69-105. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. George, N. and J. Kornfilt. 1981. Finiteness and boundedness in Turkish. In Binding and Filtering, F. Henry (ed), 105-127. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Ghomeshi, J. 2001. Control and thematic agreement. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 46: 9-40. Grosu, A. and J. Horvath. 1987. On non-finiteness in extraction constructions. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 5: 181-196. Haeberli, E. 1999. Features, Categories and the Syntax of A-Positions: Synchronic and Diachronic Variation in the Germanic Languages. PhD dissertation, University of Geneva. Haegeman, L. 1985. INFL, COMP and nominative case assignment in Flemish infinitivals. In Features and Projections, P. Muysken and H. van Riemsdijk (eds.), 123-137. Dordrecht: Foris. Haegeman, L. and H. van Riemsdijk. 1986. Verb projection raising, Scope, and the typology of rules affecting verbs. Linguistic Inquiry 17: 417-466. Hill , V. 2002. Adhering focus. Linguistic Inquiry 33: 164-172. Hornstein, N. 1999. Movement and control. Linguistic Inquiry 30: 69-96. Hornstein, N. 2001. Move! A minimalist theory of construal. Oxford: Blackwell. Isac, D. 2002. The force of negative mood. Paper presented at the LSA Annual Meeting in San Francisco. Jakab, E. 2003. Restructuring in relation to tense and agreement: Hungarian infinitives. Paper presented at the Approaching Asymmetry at the Interfaces Conference, UQAM, Montreal. Kapetangianni, K. and D. Seely. 2003. Greek ‘na’ clauses: A case study in minimalist methodology. Ms., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Kayne, R. S. 1991. Romance clitics, verb movement and PRO. Linguistic Inquiry 22: 647-686. Kempchinsky, P. M. 1986. Romance Subjunctive Clauses and Logical Form. PhD dissertation, UCLA. Krapova, Y. 2001. Subjunctives in Bulgarian and modern Greek. In Comparative Syntax of Bal-

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kan Languages, M. L. Rivero and A. Ralli (eds.), 105-127. Oxford: OUP. Landau, I. 1999. Elements of Control. PhD dissertation, MIT. Landau, I. 2003. Movement out of control. Linguistic Inquiry 34: 471-499. Landau, I. 2004. The scale of finiteness and the calculus of control. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 22: 811-877. Ledgeway, A. 1998. Variation in the Romance infinitive: The case of the southern Calabrian inflected infinitive. Transactions of the Philological Society 96: 1-61. Manzini, R. and A. Roussou. 2000. A minimalist theory of A-movement and control. Lingua 110: 409-447. Martin, R. 1996. A minimalist theory of PRO and control. PhD dissertation. University of Connecticut. Motapanyane, V. 1995. Theoretical Implications of Complementation in Romanian, Padova: Unipress. Pesetsky, D. 1995. Zero Syntax. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Pesetsky, D. and E. Torrego. 2001. T-to-C movement: Causes and consequences. In Ken Hale : A life in language, M. Kenstowicz (ed.), 355-426. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Pesetsky, D. and E. Torrego. 2004. Tense, case, and the nature of syntactic categories. In The Syntax of Time, J. Gueron and J. Lacarme (eds.), 495-539. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Pîrvulescu, M. 2001. Le concept de paradigme et la morphologie verbale. PhD dissertation, University of Toronto. Polinsky, M. and E. Potsdam, E. 2002. Backward control. Linguistic Inquiry 33: 245-283. Pollock, J.-Y. 1989. Verb movement, UG and the structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry 20: 365-424. Raposo, E. 1987. Case theory and Infl-to-Comp: The inflected infinitive in European Portuguese. Linguistic Inquiry 18: 85-109. Raposo, E. 1989. Prepositional infinitival constructions in European Portuguese. In The Null Subject Parameter, O. Jaeggli and K. J. Safir (eds.), 277-305. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Rivero, M. L. 1994. The structure of the clause and V-movement in the languages of the Balkans. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 12: 63-120. Rizzi, L. 1982. Issues in Italian Syntax. Dordrecht: Foris. Rosenbaum, P. 1967. The Grammar of English Predicate Complement Constructions. Cambridge MA:The MIT Press. Roussou, A. 2001. Control and raising in and out of subjunctive complements. In Comparative Syntax of Balkan Languages, M. L. Rivero and Angela Ralli (eds.), 74-105. Oxford: OUP. Svenonius, P. 2001. Case and Event Structure. in Syntax of Prediation, N. Zhang 1-21, ZASPIL. Stowell, T. 1982. The tense of infinitives. Linguistic Inquiry 13: 561-570. Terzi, A. 1992. PRO in Finite Clauses. A study of the inflectional heads of the Balkan languages. PhD Dissertation, CUNY. Tóth, I. 2000. Inflected Infinitives in Hungarian. PhD dissertation, Tilburg University. Ura, H. 2000. Checking Theory and Grammatical Functions in Universal Grammar. Oxford: OUP. Varlokosta, S. 1994. Issues on Modern Greek Sentential Complementation. PhD dissertation, University of Maryland. Wurmbrand, S. 1998. Infinitives. PhD dissertation, MIT [published in 2001 by Mouton].

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chapter 

From hierarchies to features Person splits and direct-inverse alternations* Artemis Alexiadou and Elena Anagnostopoulou University of Stuttgart + University of Crete

In the recent literature there is growing interest in the morpho-syntactic encoding of hierarchical effects. The paper investigates one domain where such effects are attested: ergative splits conditioned by person. This type of splits is then compared to hierarchical effects in direct-inverse alternations. On the basis of two case studies (Lummi instantiating an ergative split person language and Passamaquoddy an inverse language) we offer an account that makes no use of hierarchies as a primitive. We propose that the two language types differ as far as the location of person features is concerned. In inverse systems person features are located exclusively in T, while in ergative systems, they are located in T and a particular type of v.1 A consequence of our analysis is that Case checking in split and inverse systems is guided by the presence/absence of specific phi-features. This in turn provides evidence for a close connection between Case and φ-features, reminiscent of Chomsky’s (2000, 2001) Agree.

1.

Person splits, hierarchies and markedness

Many ergative languages employ nominative-accusative and absolutive-ergative markings depending on a) person distinctions (person splits), b) tense/aspect/mood of the clause or c) the main/subordinate clause distinction (Dixon 1994). In this paper we concentrate on person splits. In languages with person splits, sentences with 1st and 2nd person arguments have a different syntax than sentences with 3rd person arguments. 1st and 2nd person pronouns exhibit a nominative-accusative pattern, i.e. transitive subjects and intransitive arguments bear nominative case/ agreement marking while transitive objects bear accusative marking. The nominative-accusative pattern is illustrated in (1) and (2) with examples from Dyirbal (from Dixon 1994: 10, 14) and Lummi (Coast Salish,

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from Jelinek 1993: 19, 24, 25), respectively: nana-na buran nyurra you-all.NOM we all.ACC “you all saw us” b. nyurra banaga-nyu you-all.NOM return-NONFUT “you all returned”

(1) a.

Dyirbal see-NONFUT

(2) a.

NOM ACC Lummi

t’әm’-t-oŋәs=sәn hit-TR-1/2 ACC=1.S.NOM “I hit you” b. čey=lә’= sәn work=PAST=1.S.NOM “I worked”

3rd person arguments (pronouns, NPs) exhibit an absolutive-ergative pattern, i.e. transitive subjects bear ergative while transitive objects and intransitive arguments bear absolutive: (3) a.

yabu ŋuma-ŋgu buta-n mother.ABS father.ERG see-NONFUT “The father saw the mother” b. yabu banaga-nyu mother.ABS return.NONFUT “The mother returned”

(4) a.

t’әm’-t-s=lә=Ø hit-TRANS-3.ERG=PAST=3.ABS “He hit him” b. t’ilәm’=Ø sing=3.ABS “He sang”

Splits of the type illustrated in (1)-(4) have been described in the typological literature as phenomena of case markedness on the core referents of the NPs in the A (subject of transitive verb) and O (object of transitive verb) grammatical functions. Nominative is taken to be the unmarked case of the nominative-accusative system and absolutive the unmarked case of the ergative-absolutive system. Being unmarked, nominative and absolutive surface on the single argument of intransitives, and they are often null or associated with less morphology than accusative and ergative. In languages with person splits 1st and 2nd person pronouns surface with unmarked nominative and 3rd person arguments with marked ergative when they occur in the A function. 1st and 2nd person pronouns surface with marked accusative and 3rd person arguments with unmarked absolutive when they occur in the O function. This sensitivity of case-distribution (marked

Chapter 2. From hierarchies to features

vs. unmarked) to the grammatical function (A vs. O) of particular argument types (1st, 2nd vs. 3rd) has been explained in terms of the nominal hierarchy in (5) (Silverstein 1976) in combination with the view that marked case is associated with marked grammatical function (see e.g. Silverstein 1976; Kuno 1976; Dixon 1994: 85). (5) 1st person 2nd person 3rd person pro- Proper pronouns pronouns nouns, demon- Names stratives

Common Nouns Human Animate Inanimate

It is proposed that the elements in the left-hand side of (5) are more likely to appear in the A function as they are prototypical agents, i.e. “natural instigators of actions”. The ones on the right-hand side of (5) are more likely to appear in the O function as they prototypical patients, i.e. “natural” undergoers. 1st and 2nd (local) person arguments display an accusative pattern and 3rd person (non-local) arguments an ergative pattern because unmarked cases (nominative for A and absolutive for O) appear on prototypical agents/ patients (local subjects, non-local objects), while marked cases (ergative for A and accusative for O) appear on non-prototypical agents/ patients (non-local subjects, local objects). This account is summarized in table 1 (from Aissen 1999: 675): Table 1. Person Splits in Ergative Languages Unmarked

Marked

Local Persons

Subject

Object

3rd Person

Object

Subject

Case

Nominative/ Absolutive

Accusative / Ergative

Building on Silverstein (1976), a number of researchers (DeLancey 1981, Legendre & al. 1993, Aissen 1999) have argued that person splits should be analysed in terms of the requirement, expressed in (6), for harmonic alignment of prominence scales, as in (7), which are considered to be part of the universal grammar. (6) Universal person scales, role scales, relational scales must be brought into alignment (7) Person Scale a. Local person ˜ Pronoun 3rd ˜ Proper noun 3rd ˜ Human 3rd ˜ Animate 3rd ˜ Inanimate 3rd Role Scale b. Agent ˜ Patient Relational Scale c. Subject ˜ Non-subject (Aissen 1999: 679)

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Harmonic alignment associates the high-ranking elements as well as the low-ranking elements on the three scales. According to (6), the maximally unmarked clause is one in which the agent subject is a local (1st, 2nd person) argument and the patient object is a non-local (3rd person) argument. The maximally marked clause is one in which the agent subject is a non-local (3rd person) argument while the patient object is a local (1st, 2nd person) argument. Person splits have been linked to a number of other phenomena that can be understood in terms of (morphological and syntactic) markedness reflecting alignment of scales of the type illustrated in (7). The alternation between the direct and inverse voice instantiates one such phenomenon. Consider Passamaquoddy, a language showing the direct/ inverse alternation (Bruening 2001). In Passamaquoddy, transitive verbs are formed with finals that reflect the animacy of the object. There are TA (Transitive Animate) verbs that take animate objects, and TI (Transitive Inanimate) verbs that take inanimate objects. All animate nouns qualify as either proximate or obviative, depending on several (discourse and grammatical) factors. TA verbs have a prefix that always marks the proximate argument (italicized in (8)). A plural suffix (italicized in (8)) also marks this argument. The other argument is marked by a suffix in final position (underlined in (8)). If the subject is the proximate argument, the verb is direct (marked by a), as in (8a). If the object is the proximate argument, the verb is inverse (marked by ku), as in (8b). First and second persons are always proximate with respect to third persons: (8) a.

k-ciksotuw-a-nnu-k 2-listen to TA-DIR-1P-3P “we (Incl) listen to them” b. k-ciksota-ku-nnu-k 2-listen to TA-INV-1P-3P “they listen to us (Incl)”

Direct

Inverse

Accounts that treat the alternation in (8) in terms of syntactic markedness crucially assume that the direct is the unmarked and the inverse the marked member of the direct/inverse opposition. In (8a) the unmarked direct is chosen because the subject is local and the object non-local, a configuration reflecting harmonic alignment of the person and the relational scales in (7). Choice of the marked inverse in (8b) signals the maximally marked configuration with a non-local 3rd person subject and a local 2nd person object. Markedness relations have also been argued to derive the active/passive voice opposition in another set of languages. As will be discussed in section 4, Lummi has no (unmarked) transitive sentence corresponding to a string like (9a) where a non-local agent acts upon a local patient. Only the (marked) passive is possible in such cases, as

Chapter 2. From hierarchies to features

in (9b): (9) a. * b. xči-t-ŋ=sәn

ERG ACC NOM

“He knows me” “I am known (by someone)”

A final phenomenon that has been treated along similar lines is illustrated in (10): (10) a.

Tha su ton stilune Fut Cl(Gen, 2nd, sg) Cl(Acc, 3rd, sg, masc) send-3pl “They will send him to you” b. * Tha tu se stilune Fut Cl(Gen, 3rd, sg, masc) Cl(Acc, 2nd, sg) send-3pl “They will send you to him”

The phenomenon in (10) is known in the literature as the *me lui/I-II Constraint, or Person-Case Constraint (henceforth the PCC; see Perlmutter 1971, Kayne 1975, Bonet 1991, 1994, Ormazabal & Romero 2001, Haspelmath 2001, Anagnostopoulou 2003, 2005; Bianchi 2003 among others). The PCC restricts combinations of dative and accusative phonologically weak elements (clitics, agreement markers, weak pronouns). One formulation of the PCC is given in (11) ((11) is the, so called, Weak version of the PCC assumed to be the core case of the PCC by Haspelmath 2001, Bianchi 2003 and others; see Bonet 1991 and Anagnostopoulou 2005 for discussion of the two versions of the PCC): (11) In a combination of a weak direct object and an indirect object [clitic, agreement marker or weak pronoun], if there is a third person it has to be the direct object. (Bonet 1991: 182) (11) prevents 1st and 2nd person weak direct objects from co-occurring with 3rd person weak indirect objects, capturing the fact that (10a), with a local indirect object and a non-local direct object, is grammatical, while (10b), with a non-local indirect object and a local direct-object, is ungrammatical. As discussed in Haspelmath (2001), among others, the effects of the PCC in (10), under the formulation in (11),2 can be straightforwardly accommodated in terms of alignment of scales, if goal/ benefactors are taken to outrank patient themes in the Role Scale and indirect objects outrank direct objects in the Relational Scale, as in (12): (12) Person Scale a. Local person ˜ Pronoun 3rd ˜ Proper noun 3rd ˜ Human 3rd ˜ Animate 3rd ˜ Inanimate 3rd Role Scale b. Agent ˜ Goal ˜ Patient Relational Scale c. Subject ˜ Indirect Object ˜ Direct Object

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The requirement for alignment of grammatical function prominence and person/ animacy prominence has as a consequence that the direct object cannot be ranked higher than the indirect object in the person/animacy scale, explaining the ungrammaticality of (10b). At first sight, the above mentioned accounts might seem attractive as they treat a number of different phenomena as reflexes of a single generalization, association of semantic role with person/animacy rank. They raise, however, questions having to do with the status of Silverstein’s nominal hierarchy and the way in which markedness generalizations can be expressed in a formal theory of grammar. More specifically, as pointed out by Jelinek (1993: 18), the most obvious difficulty with Silverstein’s scale is that contrary to the claim that 1st and 2nd person arguments are “more natural” agents than 3rd person arguments, the referents of 3rd person arguments are statistically as likely to be agents as 1st and 2nd person arguments, a fact confirmed by text counts by Wierzbicka (1981). Moreover, much research in the Principles and Parameters framework has shown that hierarchies, such as the theta-hierarchy – even though descriptively useful – are not primitive but can be derived from independently motivated interacting principles. A further set of questions concerns markedness, and in particular the way in which statements about markedness can be encoded in the theory of morpho-syntax. Should the formal theory of Case include statements about case markedness? Is unmarked case a morphological or syntactic notion? In what sense is the passive more marked than the active and the inverse more marked than the direct? Is it correct to unify the different expressions of markedness and to treat case markedness on a par with voice markedness? A final consideration is that it is not at all evident that all the phenomena mentioned above (person splits, direct-inverse, activepassive, the PCC) should be reduced to exactly the same principles. Recent work on the PCC (Ormazabal & Romero 2001; Anagnostopoulou 2003, 2005; Adger and Harbour 2003; Bejar and Rezac 2003, Bianchi 2003) has shown that the constraint can be successfully analyzed in terms of agreement checking procedures. Person/ animacy and case scales turn out to be epiphenomenal the effects of which can be derived from independent components of the grammar. The present paper continues this line of research focusing in particular on person splits. Our goal is to explore the extent to which effects which have been described in terms of hierarchies can be successfully analyzed in terms of familiar agreement and Case checking in a number of well-defined syntactic environments. We argue for an analysis of person splits based on a particular view of ergativity and feature checking. We then compare hierarchical effects in person splits to hierarchical effects in direct-inverse alternations, pointing to the similarities and differences between the two types of phenomena. We conclude that it is incorrect to unify split ergativity, direct-inverse alternations and PCC effects under a single explanation. The three phenomena arise under different syntactic conditions. In the next section we present our core assumptions on ergativity. In section 3 we turn to a detailed study of Lummi. In section 4 we examine inverse systems. In section 5 we offer our general conclusions.

Chapter 2. From hierarchies to features

2. Ergativity: Core assumptions The literature on ergativity contains several attempts to reconcile the well known Case and Agreement patterns of ergative languages with a constrained theory of Universal Grammar. Bobaljik (1993) and Laka (1993) argue that absolutive case is low case, the counterpart of accusative. Ergative is seen as a ‘high’ case, the counterpart of nominative. On this view, the parameter differentiating ergative from accusative languages manifests itself in the intransitive clause and has to do with the case that is active in intransitives: high nominative takes precedence over accusative in accusative languages; low absolutive takes precedence over ergative in ergative languages. On the other hand, many analyses within the Principles and Parameters theory equate absolutive case to the nominative of the nominative-accusative languages (Bok-Bennema 1991; Nash 1995, 1996; Woolford 1997). The ergative case is analyzed as a by-phrase (Hale 1970), a PP or a KP (Bittner 1994), a genitive NP (Bok-Bennema 1991) or an abstract equivalent of the accusative (Murasugi 1992).3 Mahajan (1993), Nash (1996) and Woolford (1997) argue that ergative is not a structural case parallel to nominative, but rather a lexical case parallel to dative. In this paper we will adopt the view that ergative is what Marantz (1991) calls dependent case similar to accusative. Marantz argues that there is an important similarity between ergative and accusative case: both are what he calls “dependent cases”. Dependent case is assigned when a distinct position is (i) not part of a chain having lexical case and (ii) distinct from the chain being assigned dependent case. Marantz proposes that ergative is dependent case assigned “upwards” to the subject, while accusative is dependent case assigned “downwards” to the object. On Marantz’s theory, it is the definition of dependent case that explains the data covered by Burzio’s generalization (accusative case on the object is assigned only when a subject is present) as well as the generalization that ergative case is assigned only when an object is present. This view will be re-stated within the v system. We will place our analysis in a system without agreement projections following Chomsky (1995, 2000, 2001). Following Alexiadou (2001),4 we propose that ergativity/ accusativity is tied to the properties of a semi-functional head v introducing the external argument and checking Case of the internal argument (Kratzer 1994, Chomsky 1995). In the literature, see e.g Collins (1997) and Marantz (1997), it has been argued that there are two main types of v: transitive vs. intransitive. The former combines with the external argument, the latter does not: (13) a. transitive v [+external argument] v-TR b. intransitive v [-external argument] v-INTR Extending this distinction we will assume that there are several types of intransitive (Embick 1998, Alexiadou 2001) and transitive vs available to the computational system (Harley & Noyer 1998, Arad 1999). In the transitive clause of nominative-accusative languages, the object checks Case

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and phi-features against v-TR and the subject checks Case and phi-features against T. Passives and unaccusatives contain a deficient v-INTR which cannot check the Case of the object. As a result, the object enters Agree/Move with T, resulting in Nominative Case and Subject Agreement. Following a recent trend in the literature (see e.g. Bobaljik & Branigan, 2006) we assume that ergativity is not a uniform phenomenon. We propose that certain types of ergative languages include a v that does not enter Agree with the object (cf. Müller 2004). In these languages, the object checks absolutive case under Agree with T (with or without movement). Ergative is a case on the subject assigned by v. We will call this type of v, v-ERG. Thus the “dependent case” generalizations state above can be stated as properties of v-TR and what we called here v-ERG. Specifically, v-ERG checks Case on the subject only when an object is present , while v-TR enters Agree with the object only when a subject is present. The “dependent case” statements are, in turn, reducible to a requirement of T to always enter Agree. In clauses containing a single argument, this must enter Agree with T, yielding Nominative or Absolutive, which, therefore, take precedence over Accusative and Ergative. The treatment of ergative as dependent case is consistent with a view of ergative as structural rather than lexical Case.

3. The syntax of splits: Case distinctions reflect different types of vs On the basis of Lummi, we argue that person splits result from choices of particular Voice heads: (i) ergative vs. accusative v. In particular, Ergative v reflects the lack of person features (3). On the other hand, accusative v reflects the presence of person features (1,2). To begin with, there is clear morphological evidence that ergative arguments are realized in a low position in Lummi (Jelinek 1993: 19-23), supporting the view that ERG is assigned to the subject in its base position, adopted in this paper. Lummi has a second position clitic sequence marking Mood, Tense, Modality and the Nominative Subject. These unstressed clitics follow the first word in the sentence, the predicate. The predicate contains a root, derivational suffixes and internal arguments. These arguments are morphologically internal; they are suffixes preceding the clitic string. The clitics are unstressed while the internal argument suffixes are integrated into the predicate and may receive the sentence stress. In transitive predicates the root is obligatorily followed by transitivizing suffixes which mark the valence of the predicates. Sentences with a local object and a local subject have a nominative-accusative syntax. The accusative suffix ACC is associated with the TR head which immediately precedes ACC. The subject is the rightmost element in the clitic cluster: (14) leŋ-t-óŋәλ =lә’ =sxw see-TR-1.P.ACC =PAST =2.S.NOM “You saw us”

Chapter 2. From hierarchies to features

Following and modifying Murasugi (1992) and Jelinek (1993), we assume that the TR suffix is a realization of v-TR. The structure we assume for (14) is given in (15) (compare to tree (23) in Jelinek 1993: 23): (15)

TP 3 T vP = lә’= sxwi 3 v’ Agenti 3 v-TR RootP leŋj-t-óŋәλk 3 Rootj Patientk

The 1.P.ACC morpheme “óŋәλ” on the predicate cluster in v-TR spells out Agree between v-TR and the object while the 2.S.NOM morpheme sxw on the clitic cluster in T spells out Agree between T and the subject.5 Crucially, ergative morphemes in Lummi occur in the same place as accusative morphemes. As shown in (16), the 3rd person ergative marking s occurs internal to the predicate, right next to the TR head, just like the accusative “óŋәλ” in (14) (Jelinek 1993: 25-26): (16) q’woy-t-s = lә’ die-TR-3ERG = PAST “He killed him”

=Ø = 3ABS

The ergative suffix precedes the tense clitic in (16) while the nominative clitic follows the tense clitic in (14). We propose that the string in (16) has the syntax in (17): (17)

TP 3 T vP = lә’=Øk 3 Agenti v’ 3 v-ERG RootP q’woy j-t-si 3 Rootj Patientk

The ERG morpheme on the predicate cluster in v-ERG spells out Agree between vERG and the subject, while the zero absolutive morpheme on T spells out Agree between T and the object. In Lummi, absolutive arguments are phonologically null. All other arguments are overt. The presence of an ergative agent in spec, vP in (17) does not block Agree between T and the lower absolutive patient, i.e. the agent does not cause what Chomsky (2000; 2001) calls “a defective intervention effect”. This is not surprising, however. As

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stressed by Bobaljik (2004), defective intervention effects are never caused in monoclausal environments. Thus, while in Icelandic biclausal sentences (cf. 18a,b from Schütze 1997 and Holmberg and Hróarsdóttir 2002) the intervening dative blocks Agree between matrix T and the embedded nominative, in monoclausal contexts (cf. 19, taken from Bobaljik 2004) the dative does not block Agree between T and the nominative object: (18) a.

Mér fannst/*fundust henni leiðast þeir Me-DAT seem-3sg/*3pl she-DAT to-be bored they-NOM “I thought she was bored with them” b. Það virðist/ *virðast einhverjum manni [ hestarnir vera there seems-sg/seem-pl some man-DAT the horses-NOM be seinir] slow “It seems to some man that the horses are slow”

(19) a.

Það líkuðu einhverjum þessir sokkar there liked-PL someone-DAT these socks-NOM “Someone liked these socks” b. Um veturinn voru konunginum gefnar ambáttir In the winter were-PL the king-DAT given slaves-NOM “In the winter the king was given (female) slaves”

It is beyond the scope of the present paper to explain the presence vs. absence of the intervention effect in (18) vs. (19). What matters for present purposes is the fact that the nominative object enters Agree with T across an intervening dative experiencer in (19a) and goal in (19b). In a similar manner, the absolutive object enters Agree with T across an intervening ergative agent in (16), (17).6 In (15) and (17) above we have seen the derivations for the patterns that involve 12 person (see ex. (14)) and third-third person (see example (16)) subject-object combinations respectively. In the system we are assuming the difference between (14) and (16) is expressed through the presence of different types of vs: in particular two such vs are taken to present, an accusative v that leads to a pattern where the object bears accusative and the subject nominative, and an ergative v that leads to a pattern in which the object bears absolutive and the subject ergative. Now consider how this system enables us to account for the attested and non-attested patterns in Lummi (20): (20) a. b. c. d.

NOM ACC ERG ABS * ERG ACC NOM ABS

xči-t-oŋәs=sәn ‘I know you’ 1,2 > 1,2 xči-t-s=0 ‘He knows him’ 3 > 3 ‘*He knows me’ *3 > 1,2 xči-t-0=sәn ‘I know him’ 1>3

We have seen that (20a) has the syntax in (15), while (20b) has the syntax of (17). The NOM ACC pattern relies on the presence of v-TR, which yields the syntax that

Chapter 2. From hierarchies to features

appears throughout in nominative-accusative languages. The ERG ABS pattern relies on the presence of v-ERG, which yields the ergative-absolutive clause. The interesting cases to explain are the ungrammatical (20c) and the grammatical (20d) which mix a case from the ergative system with a case from the accusative system. Starting from the well-formed (20d), where NOM co-occurs with ABS, we propose that this is an instance of a multiple Move/ Agree construction (Ura 1996, Richards 1997, Anagnostopoulou 2003), in which both arguments enter Agree with T, checking their features on T. Following Richards (1997) and Anagnostopoulou (2003), we propose that when two arguments enter Move/Agree with a higher head the order of operations must respect the Minimal Link Condition. The higher argument Moves first, followed by Move or just Agree of the lower argument. When the lower argument moves, it tucks in beneath the first one. The derivation proceeds as shown in (21). First the DP1 moves to T because it is closer to it, and sub-sequently the DP2 moves to T. Movement of DP.2 across the trace of DP1 is licit because traces do not count as interveners (Chomsky 1995; 2000; 2001). (21) Base:

TP 3 T vP 3 DP1 v’ 3

v ....... VP 6 DP2

Step I: Movement of High Argument

Step II: Movement of Low Argument

TP TP 3 3 DP1 TP DP1 T’ 3 3 DP2 T’ T vP 3 3 T vP e v’ 3 3 e v’ v ....... VP 3 6 v ....... VP DP2 6 e When the lower argument (DP2) does not move, it enters Agree with T after DP1 has moved to T because Agree across an A-movement trace is possible (see Holmberg

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and Hróarsdóttir 2002 for evidence from Icelandic). We propose that (20d) has either an analysis as in (21) or an analysis where the NOM moves to T and then the ABS enters Agree with T.7 Under either analysis both arguments, subject and object, enter Agree with T. In recent research on the PCC (Anagnostopoulou 1999; 2003, 2005; Bobaljik & Branigan 2006; Bejar and Rezac 2003) it has been argued that two arguments are allowed to check features against a functional head, v-TR or T, provided that certain conditions are met. The core observation is that when two arguments check features against a single functional head either (22) or (23) must hold: (22) Strong Condition on Multiple Feature Checking When two arguments check features against a single functional head, the lower one must be third person (23) Weak Condition on Multiple Feature Checking When two arguments check features against a single functional head, if there is a third person it has to be the lower argument. Conditions (22) and (23) subsume the Strong and the Weak version of the PCC discussed in Bonet (1991; 1994), Bianchi (2003) and Anagnostopoulou (2005) (see section 2 above for an explicit formulation of the Weak Version of the PCC). According to (22), when two arguments enter feature checking against the same head the lower argument is not allowed to be 1st or 2nd person, regardless of the person specification of the higher argument, i.e. whether it is 1st , 2nd , or 3rd. According to (23), what is not allowed is for the lower argument to outrank the higher one in person. 1st and 2nd person low arguments are licit in the presence of 1st and 2nd person high arguments and illicit in the presence of 3rd person high arguments. Which Constraint is active in a particular language, i.e. whether a language has (22) or (23), appears to be a parameter (see Anagnostopoulou 2005, for extensive discussion). In the literature several proposals have been developed to derive Conditions (22) and (23). NOM>ABS sequences like (20d) in Lummi are compatible with both the Strong Condition in (22) and the Weak Condition in (23). The language is such that in NOM>ABS configurations the NOM argument is always 1st or 2nd person and the ABS argument always 3rd. Recall that when both the subject and the object are equally ranked in person, i.e. when they are both 1st and 2nd person, then they check features against distinct heads, T the subject and v-TR the object, bleeding the Multiple Feature Checking Configuration For the purposes of the present discussion we will assume that the Strong Condition (22) holds in Lummi. Following Anagnostopoulou (2003; 2005) we propose that in Multiple Feature Checking configurations the derivation proceeds as detailed above. In such configurations phi-features are not checked as a bundle. The argument that moves first to a functional head F checks person on F and the argument that moves/ agrees second may only check number on F, as depicted in (24) for the Multiple Move construction:

Chapter 2. From hierarchies to features

(24) Base:

FP 3 F{P,N} XP 3 DP1 X’ 3 X ....... ZP 6 DP2

Step I: Checking of person feature by high argument

(P = person features N = number features)

Step II: Checking of number by low argument

FP FP 3 3 DP1 FP DP1 F’ 3 3 DP2 F’ F{0,N} XP 3 3 F{0,0} XP e X’ 3 3 e X’ X ....... ZP 3 6 X ....... ZP DP2 6 e If the lower argument is of an appropriate type (third person) the derivation converges. If, however, the lower argument is inappropriate (1st, 2nd person) the derivation crashes. On the assumption that 3rd person arguments lack a person feature (they are no person; Benveniste 1966, Postal 1966, Silverstein 1986, Bonet 1991, Johns 1993, Taraldsen 1995, Ritter 1995 and Kayne 2000 among many others), they are the only ones that can match the number feature of F, once person on F has been checked. Before closing the discussion of (20d), there is a final question we need to address. Why is it that 3rd person objects in Lummi must check features against T, i.e. why is it that they are not allowed to check features against v-TR which would lead to a surface ACC form? We propose that presence vs. absence of person features is exactly what differentiates the two types of v of Lummi, v-TR vs. v-ERG. The presence of an ACC Case feature on v matches objects specified as [+person].8 The presence of an ERG Case feature on v matches subjects that lack person. Turning, finally, to the ungrammatical ERG>ACC combinations in (20c), there are at least three ways to account for them. One possibility is to resort to the definition of ERG and ACC as dependent Cases. Assuming, as in section 3, that the “dependent case” statements are reducible to a requirement of T to always enter Agree, ERG>ACC

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combinations are ruled out because there is no argument that can enter Agree with T. Another option is to assume that v-ERG is basically an intransitive v (cf. Jelinek 1993; Alexiadou 2001). (24c) is, on this view, ruled out because an intransitive v introducing the ergative subject cannot check accusative Case on the object. A final possibility is that ERG>ACC combinations are ruled out because they violate the Conditions on Multiple feature checking (22) and (23) discussed above. ERG>ACC combinations would represent instances where a 3rd person subject and a 1st or 2nd person object check features against the same head, an inappropriate configuration, for the reasons outlined above.9 To summarize, thus far we have argued that: (i) The person split in Lummi is linked to choice of two different vs. (ii) The presence vs. absence of person features guides choice of v-TR vs. v-ERG In the next section we turn to inverse systems.

4. Inverse systems We now turn to Passamaquoddy, where, as will be seen in this section, hierarchical effects result from the interaction of the following factors: (i) Person features are hosted on only one head in the clause, namely T. (ii) In the transitive clause, a [+Proximate] feature on T must be checked. (iii) [+Person] arguments are always [+Proximate] and must check their features against T. (iv) 3rd person animate arguments check features against T in order to satisfy the requirement of T in the transitive clause to enter Agree with a [+proximate] NP (see condition (ii) above). Recall from section 2 the main characteristics of Passamaquoddy. In Passamaquoddy, transitive verbs are formed with finals that reflect the animacy of the object. Transitive Animate verbs take animate objects, and Transitive Inanimate verbs take inanimate objects. Animate nouns qualify as either proximate or obviative. Transitive animate verbs have a prefix and a suffix (italicized in (25)) that mark the proximate argument and a suffix in final position (underlined in (25)) for the other argument. If the subject is proximate, the verb is direct, as in (25a). If the object is proximate, the verb is inverse, as in (25b). First and second persons are always proximate with respect to third persons: (25) a. k-ciksotuw-a-nnu-k 2-listen to TA-DIR-1P-3P “we (Incl) listen to them”

Direct

Chapter 2. From hierarchies to features

b. k-ciksota-ku-nnu-k 2-listen to TA-INV-1P-3P “they listen to us (Incl)”

Inverse

Drawing on evidence from binding, Bruening (2001) argues convincingly that inversion is A-movement of the object across the subject to a higher head H, which proceeds via a secondary specifier to v-TR, the head that introduces the subject. As argued extensively in Ura (1996), Richards (1997) and Anagnostopoulou (2003), non-local Amovement always proceeds successive cyclically through the specifier of a higher head introducing the intervener. We will therefore adopt the essentials of Bruening’s analysis and we will assume that the target H of inversion is T. Inverse languages thus have two types of v-Tr (see Ura 1996): (i) (Direct) v-Tr does not license a secondary specifier that can host the object on its way to T; therefore, only the subject is allowed to move to T in the Direct Voice. (ii) (Inverse) v-Tr licenses a secondary specifier through which the object moves to T across the subject. In intransitives, 1st and 2nd person arguments agree on the verb in intransitives as subjects of transitives ((26a), (26b)), but third persons agree on the verb like objects (27): (26) a.

nt-op 1-sit “I sit” b. kt-op “2-sit”

(27) opu-wok sit-3P “they sit”

(cf. n-tokom-a-k) 1-hit-Dir-3P “I hit them”

At first sight, this could be seen as a person split of the type found in Lummi. 1st and 2nd person arguments could be seen as having NOM in (26), while 3rd person arguments could be seen as having ABS in (27). However, a closer look into Passamaquoddy shows that this is not the right way of looking at things. Crucially, 1st and 2nd person subjects and objects in transitives show a different agreement pattern than the one illustrated in (25). As pointed out by Bruening, they behave as if they are competing for the same agreement slot: the slot they would occupy if their co-argument were a third person. The principle that decides the conflict is that the second person prefix always over-rules the first person prefix. Suffixes display the opposite preference: if there is a first person plural it is marked. Otherwise, a second person plural is marked. Which is the subject and which the object is marked by a sign: first person subject, second person object is marked by l; second person subject, first person object is marked by i: (28) a.

k-ciksotuw-i-pon 2-listen to TA-2/1-1P “you(Sg/P) listen to us (Excl)”

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b. k-ciksotu-l-pon 2-listen to TA-1/2-1P “we listen to you (Sg/P)” The fact that 1st and 2nd person subjects and objects both occupy the subject agreement slot in (28) suggests that they both check features against the same head, namely T. In contrast, we have seen that in Lummi 1st and 2nd person arguments check their features against two different heads, T and v-TR. To account for the facts in (25) - (28), Bruening proposes that there is a syntactic uninterpretable feature in Passamaquoddy Proximate [P] which is a feature on NPs. When this feature has a positive specification [+P] it must be checked against T. First and second person pronouns are always [+P], and must check their features against T. Inanimates cannot be [+P]. Animate third person arguments have unvalued [P]. When two animate NPs co-occur in a single clause, one of them is assigned [+P]. If the subject is [+P], it enters Agree with T. If the object is [+P] it has to move to T through a layered specifier to (inverse) v-Tr. The other argument receives an unvalued [P] feature which is checked against v, and is then assigned another feature [Obv] which is spelled out as the obviative suffix in the morphology. Obligatory assignment of a [Proximate] feature to one third person animate DP in a transitive clause lacking another 1st or 2nd person argument can be shown to be linked to a requirement of T in the transitive clause to check a [+P] feature, unlike T in intransitives which may or may not enter Agree with a [Proximate] feature. Recall from (27) that there is never a prefix for third person arguments in intransitives, suggesting that only 1st and 2nd person arguments, which are inherently specified as [+Person], check their features against T in the intransitive clause. 3rd person arguments do not enter Agree with T but with v-INTR. Syntactically they behave as obviative, even though they surface with unmarked (i.e. proximate) case morphology. In contrast, T in transitives must enter Agree. For this reason, when 1st and 2nd person arguments are not present in the clause, a 3rd person animate argument that is considered central is singled out as proximate; all other third persons are obviative. When the proximate argument is the subject, as in (29) below (Bruening 2001: 38), the Direct Voice is employed: (29) Mali ´-kis-ewestuwam-a-l peskuw-ol pomawsuwinuw-ol Mary 3-Perf-talk to-Dir-3 one-Obv person-Obv “Mary (Prox) spoke to one person (Obv)” When the proximate argument is the object, the Inverse Voice is employed. Crucially, it is absolutely impossible for two inanimates to co-occur as subject and object in Passamaquoddy (see Bruening 2001: 127 who shows that there is no such restriction against inanimate arguments in intransitives), a restriction that follows from the requirement that T must enter Agree in transitives. Since inanimate arguments cannot be assigned a [Proximate] feature, the requirement of T to enter Agree is not satisfied, and the derivation crashes.10

Chapter 2. From hierarchies to features

The Proximate feature of Passamaquoddy can be seen as a dependent Case feature, the counterpart of ACC in nominative-accusative languages and ERG in ergativeabsolutive languages, as discussed in the previous section. Just as ACC and ERG, PROX is assigned in opposition to another argument in the clause, and is therefore present only in transitives. Unlike ACC and ERG, though, PROX is not checked against v. Rather, it is checked against T. The above considerations lead to the following distribution of dependent Case features: (30) Ditsribution of Dependent Cases: ACC, ERG, PROX Downwards: ACC. In Intransitives NOM is assigned because Intransitive T needs to enter Agree. NOM is compatible with 1st, 2nd and 3rd person animate and inanimate (i.e. no person). Upwards: ERG. In Intransitives ABS is assigned because Intransitive T needs to enter Agree. ABS is compatible with 1st, 2nd and 3rd person animate and inanimate (i.e. no person). Both directions: PROX. In Intransitives PROX is not assigned because Intransitive T does not need to enter Agree. PROX is compatible with 1st, 2nd and 3rd person animate, therefore two animates cannot co-occur in transitives. The discussion of person splits in Salish has led us to propose that ACC in Lummi matches 1st and 2nd person, supporting the connection between Case and agreement checking suggested in Chomsky (2000, 2001). The same link between Case and phifeatures can be established on the basis of assignment of PROX in Passamaquoddy, if PROX is seen as a Case feature. More specifically, suppose that the syntactic uninterpretable feature Proximate [P] has an interpretable feature as a correlate, namely Person. As will be seen, this quite naturally accounts for the characterization of certain NPs as necessarily proximate and of other NPs as necessarily obviative. A number of researchers have argued on the basis of PCC effects (see sections 2 and 4) that indirect objects behave as if they have a person feature, even when they are 3rd person (see Anagnostopoulou 2003: 270-271 who discusses evidence for this based on the serialization of agreement markers in Georgian). In contrast, accusativenominative/ direct object 3rd person pronouns behave as if they lack person features altogether. Adger and Harbour (2003) propose to express this distinction as follows. They argue that 3rd person indirect objects have a negative person specification (i.e. they are [-person]) while 3rd person direct objects lack a person feature entirely. On this view, there are two ways in which an argument can be 3rd person: either by being [-person] or by lacking a person feature. Indirect objects in PCC environments must have a +/- person value since they encode point of view, affectedness etc. On the other hand, direct objects are undergoers and therefore they do not have to have a participant value (they have one only when they are 1st or 2nd person). Suppose we adopt this view for subjects and objects Passamaquoddy. We can then propose that in this language, the feature PROX is assigned to NPs that are either [+Person] or

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[-Person], but not to NPs that lack a person feature entirely. 1st and 2nd person pronouns are necessarily [+Person]. Inanimate NPs lack [Person] features as they cannot encode point of view, affectedness etc, and can therefore never bear PROX. Animate 3rd person NPs, though, can, in principle, have a specification for person. When they are contextually salient (topic-like) they are assigned the feature [-Person], i.e. they have a feature specification similar to 3rd person indirect objects. When they are not salient they lack a person/ participant feature, being similar to 3rd person accusative/ nominative/ absolutive arguments. When 3rd person animates are assigned the feature [-Person/ Participant] they surface with unmarked proximate morphology, and the prefix on the verb agrees with them. When they lack the participant feature they have marked obviative morphology and are coindexed with the verb’s final suffix. The [-Person] specification is assigned in opposition to another third person which lacks the [Person] feature. In this analysis, the feature specification of NPs in languages with inverse systems is no different than the feature specification of NPs in other languages. What is special about inverse languages is that animate 3rd person NPs must be assigned a feature [Person] in opposition to another 3rd person NP. Obligatory assignment of a [-Person] feature to one third person animate NP in a transitive clause lacking another 1st or 2nd person argument is linked to the requirement of T in the transitive clause to check a Person feature. Another crucial property of languages with inverse systems is that only T hosts person features that can be checked against NPs. That is, a [+/-Person] object cannot check its person feature against v-Tr, and must enter an Agree relation with T. Finally, the fact that 1,2>3 combinations are licit and 3>1,2 combinations are illicit in this language is reduced to the following factor. As has been seen above, arguments inherently specified as [+Person] must always enter Agree with T. In contrast, 3rd person animate arguments are assigned the feature [-Person] only in opposition to another third person argument as a Last-Resort: when there is no other way to satisfy properties of T. Therefore, 1st and 2nd person arguments always move to T preventing 3rd person arguments from doing so.

5. Conclusions In this paper we examined ergative splits conditioned by person, which we compared to hierarchical effects in direct-inverse alternations. On the basis of two case studies (Lummi instantiating an ergative split person language and Passamaquoddy an inverse language) we proposed that the two language types differ as far as the location of person features is concerned. In inverse systems person features are located exclusively in T, while in ergative systems, they are located in T and a particular type of v. Naturally, our treatment of such splits raises a number of questions, e.g. the treatment of tense splits in ergative languages and of animacy splits in languages such as Spanish. We leave these questions for further research.

Chapter 2. From hierarchies to features

Notes * An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 25th GLOW Colloquium in Amsterdam (April 9-11, 2002) and at the McGill Linguistics Colloquium (October 4, 2002). We would like to thank the participants for their comments. 1. Our proposal differs from approaches that link person splits to properties of the T-C system and to the mapping hypothesis (Jelinek 1993 and others). 2. As discussed in Anagnostopoulou (2005), the strong version of the PCC cannot be as easily accommodated in an alignment approach. 3. Müller’s (2004) analysis of ergativity is quite close to Murasugi’s view. In Müller’s system the ergative vs. accusative marking is regulated by an earliness condition on Merge vs. Agree respectively. 4. It should be mentioned here that Alexiadou (2001) pursues an analysis of ergative as a lexical case. 5. We remain neutral as to whether Agree is combined with Move (of a small pro argument, as in Baker 1996) in these examples or not.. As will be seen below (see fn 8), there is evidence that Nominative arguments do move in Lummi. The ERG morpheme, though, in (16)/(17) is a reflex of Agree without Move in our analysis. 6. Bobaljik (2004) proposes that the defective intervention effect constrains Move but not Agree. If he is right, then the null absolutive morpheme spells out Agree without Move in Lummi. For the present paper, it is sufficient to state our generalizations in terms of Agree. 7. The nominative argument must be assumed to move to T, regardless of whether the absolutive argument is taken to Move to T or just to enter Agree with T (see also footnotes 6 and 7 for discussion of the issue of Move and Agree). 8. Person split languages provide evidence that case checking is linked to person checking as claimed on purely theoretical grounds in Chomsky (2000, 2001). 9. Note however that in Halkomelem Salish ERG>ACC is not always ruled out. It is also not ruled out in Dyirbal (language with Case marking not Agreement Marking). The fact that ERG>ACC is possible in Dyirbal is expected in a theory that treats the ungrammaticality of ERG>ACC combinations as a subcase of the PCC constraint, because the PCC restricts combinations of agreement markers and clitics and does not obtain with strong pronouns (see Bonet 1991, 1994 and many others for discussion). In Halkomelem Salish the ERG>ACC constraint could be morphological in nature. As Wiltschko (2003) notes, certain ERG>ACC combinations are possible when a portmanteau morpheme is available for them. As discussed by Anagnostopoulou (2003), Haspelmath (2001), Ormazabal and Romero (2001) and others, the PCC is not a universal, contra Bonet (1994). 10. The asymmetry between transitive and intransitive T in Passamaquoddy (intransitive T does not have to enter Agree, transitive T has to enter Agree) is reminiscent of a Generalization extensively discussed in Alexiadou & Anagnostopoulou (2001), namely The Subject In-situ Generalization (SSG), formulated in (i) (compare (i) to the original formulation of the SSG in Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou 2001: 193): (i)

The vP can contain no more than one argument with structural Case

Just as in the cases falling under SSG one argument in transitive clauses, the subject or the object must vacate the vP, in Passamaquoddy transitive clauses, one argument, the subject or the object must enter Agree with T.

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References Adger, D. and D. Harbour. 2003. The Syntax and Syncretisms of the Person Case Constraint. Ms. Queen Mary, University of London and MIT. (To appear in MIT Working Papers in Linguistics). Alexiadou, A. 2001. Functional Structure in Nominals: Nominalization, and ergativity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Alexiadou, A and E. Anagnostopoulou. 2001. The subject in-situ generalization, and the role of case in driving computations. Linguistic Inquiry 32(2): 192-233. Aissen, J. 1999. Markedness and subject choice in optimality theory. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 17: 673-711. Anagnostopoulou, E. 1999. Person restrictions. Paper presented at the 21st GLOW Colloquium, ZAS-Berlin, March 29 [GLOW Newsletter 42: 12-13]. Anagnostopoulou, E. 2003. The Syntax of Ditransitives. Evidence from clitics Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Anagnostopoulou, E. 2005. Weak and strong person restrictions: A feature-checking analysis. In In L. Heggie and F. Ordonez (eds), Clitics and Affixation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Arad, M. 1999. On the nature of v: Evidence from object experiencer verbs. Paper presented at the 22 GLOW Colloquium, Berlin March 1999. Baker, M. 1996. The Polysynthesis Parameter. Oxford: OUP. Bejar, S. and M. Rezac. 2003. Person licensing and the derivation of PCC effects. Ms. University of Toronto. Benveniste, E. 1966. Problèmes de linguistique générale. Paris: Gallimard. Bianchi, V. 2003. On the syntax of personal arguments. Paper presented at the XXIX Incontro di Grammatica Generativa, Urbino, 13-15 February 2003. Bittner, M. 1994. Case, Scope and Binding. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Bobaljik, J. 1992. On ergativity and ergative parameters. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 19: 45-88 Bobaljik, J. 2004. Towards a Ф-free Syntax? Paper presented at the MIT Ling-Lunch, May 13. Bobaljik, J. and P. Branigan. 2006. Eccentric agreement. In Ergativity: Emerging issues, D. Massam, A. Johns and J. Ndayiragije (eds.), 47-77. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Bok-Bennema. R. 1991. Case and Agreement in Inuit. Dordrecht: Foris. Bonet, E. 1991. Morphology after Syntax: Pronominal clitics in Romance languages. PhD dissertation, MIT. Bonet, E. 1994. The person-case constraint: A morphological approach. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 22. The Morphology-Syntax Connection: 33-52. Bruening, B. 2001. Syntax at the edge: Cross-Clausal Phenomena and the Syntax of Passamaquoddy. PhD dissertation, MIT. Chomsky, N. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 2000. Minimalist inquiries: The framework. In R. Martin, D. Michaels and J. Uriagereka (eds), Step by Step, 89-155. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 2001. Derivations by phase. In Ken Hale: A life in Language, M. Kenstowicz (ed.), 1-52. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Collins, C. 1997. Local Economy. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. DeLancey, S. 1981. An Interpretation of split ergativity. Language 57: 626-657. Dixon, R. M. W. 1994. Ergativity. Cambridge: CUP.

Chapter 2. From hierarchies to features

Embick, D. 1998. Voice systems and the syntax/morphology interface. Papers from the UPenn/ MIT Roundtable on Argument Structure and Aspect, MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 32: 41-72. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Hale, K. 1970. The passive and ergative in language change: The Australian case. In Pacific Linguistic Studies in Honor of Arthur Capell [Pacific Linguistic Series], S. Wurm and D. Layscock (eds), pp. 757-81. Harley, H and R. Noyer 1998. Licensing in the non-lexicalist lexicon: Nominalizations, vocabulary items and the encyclopedia. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 32: 119-137. Haspelmath, M. 2001. Explaining the ditransitive person-role constraint: A usage-based approach. Ms., Max-Planck-Institut für evolutionäre Anthropologie, Leipzig. Holmberg, A. and T. Hróarsdóttir. 2002. Agreement and movement in Icelandic raising constructions. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 69: 147-168. Jelinek, E. 1993. Ergative ‘Splits’ and Argument Type. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 18: 15-42. Johns, A. 1993. Symmetry in Labrador Inuttut. In Papers on Case & Agreement I, MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 18,J. D. Bobaljik and C. Phillips (eds), 43-57. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Kayne, R. 1975. French Syntax. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Kayne, R. 2000. Parameters and Universals. Oxford: OUP. Kratzer, A. 1994. On external arguments. In Functional Projection,s E. Benedicto and J. Runner (eds), 103-130. Amherst MA: GLSA. Kuno, S. 1976. Subject, theme and the speaker‘s empathy - a reexamination of relativization phenomena. In Subject and Topic, C. Li (ed.), 417-44. New York NY: Academic Press. Laka, I. 1993. Unergatives that assign ergative. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 18: 149-172. Mahajan, A. 1993. The ergativity parameter: Have-be alternation. Proceedings of NELS 24. Marantz, A. 1991. Case and licensing. In ESCOL `91: Proceedings of the Eighth Eastern States Conference on Linguistics, G. F. Westphal, B. Ao and H.-R. Chae (eds). Distributed by the ESCOL Publications Committee. Marantz, A. 1997. No escape from syntax: Don’t try morphological analysis in the privacy of your own lexicon. Paper presented at the 21st Penn Linguistics Colloquium. To appear in the University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 4.2. University of Pennsylvania. Müller, G. 2004. Argument encoding and the order of elementary operations. Ms. IDS Mannheim. Presented at the 27th GLOW Colloquium in Thessaloniki, Greece. Murasugi, K. 1992. Crossing and Nested Paths: NP-movement in accusative and ergative languages. PhD dissertation, MIT. Nash, L. 1995. Portée argumentale et marquage casuel dans les langues SOV et dans les langue ergatives: l‘exemple du géorgian. Thèse de doctorat, Université de Paris VIII. Nash, L. 1996. The internal ergative subject hypothesis. Proceedings of NELS 26: 195-210. Ormazabal, J. and J. Romero. 2001. Agreement restrictions. Ms. University Basque Country (EHU)/Basque Center for Language Research (LEHIA) and U. of Alcalá/U. Autónoma de Madrid. Perlmutter, D. 1971. Deep and Surface Structure Constraints in Syntax. New York NY: Rinehart & Winston Inc. Postal, P. 1966. On so-called “pronouns” in English. In Report of the 17th Annual Roundtable Meeting on Linguistics and Language Studies, F.P. Dineen (ed.), 177-206. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press. [reprinted in Reibel, D.A. and S.A. Schane (eds). 1969. Mo-

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dern Studies in English. Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall]. Richards, N. 1997. What Moves Where When in Which Language? PhD dissertation, MIT. Ritter, E. 1995. On the syntactic category of pronouns and agreement. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 13: 405-443. Schütze, C. 1997. Infl in Child and Adult Language: Agreement, case and licensing. PhD dissertation, MIT. Silverstein, M. 1976. Hierarchy of features and ergativity. In Grammatical Categories in Australian Languages, R.M.W. Dixon (ed.), 112-71. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies and New Jersey: Humanities Press. [Reprinted in Features and Projections, P. Muysken and H. van Riemsdijk (eds), 163-232. Dordrecht: Foris. 1986. Taraldsen, T. 1995. On agreement and nominative objects in Icelandic. In Studies in Comparative Germanic Syntax, H. Haider, S. Olsen and S. Vikner (eds), 307-327. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Ura, H. 1996. Multiple Feature-Checking: A theory of grammatical function splitting. PhD dissertation, MIT. Wierzbicka, A. 1981. Case marking and human nature. Australian Journal of Linguistics 1: 4380. Wiltschko, M. 2003. Person hierarchy effects without a person hierarchy. Ms. University of British Columbia. Woolford, E. 1997. Four-way case systems: Ergative, nominative, objective and accusative. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 15: 181-227.

chapter 

Finiteness and the relation between Agreement and Nominative Case Gülşat Aygen Northern Illinois University

This paper revisits the phenomenon “finiteness” both as nominative case and an opaque syntactic domain. It redefines finiteness as consisting of features at both C and T domain. It follows Chomsky (2005, to appear) in that it proposes that agreement is a C(omplementizer) feature. It proposes that agreement on C is involved in licensing Nominative subjects only in the presence of Epistemic Modality on the T(ense) head. In languages where subject-verb agreement is morphologically manifest, such morphology marks the mood category of the clause. The crucial empirical evidence for the claim comes from a comparative study of lesser-studied Turkic languages, e.g. Tuvan, Kazakh, and better-studied languages, e.g. European Portuguese, Hungarian, and French. The phase properties (Chomsky 2000, 2001) of finite clauses are also accounted for by this proposal.

1.

Introduction

The phenomenon of finiteness includes two interdependent conditions: the presence of a nominative subject and of a syntactic domain out of which syntactic operations are restricted or banned. Starting from the early 1970’s, the presence of tense as a syntactic category has been established as the major ingredient of finiteness. Tensed-S Condition and the Specified Subject Condition (Chomsky 1973) defined such domains. In the early 1980’s (Chomsky 1981, George and Kornfilt 1981), agreement was introduced as a parameter of finiteness. The goal of this article is to revisit and redefine this syntactic phenomenon, and question the parametric variation. Section (2) gives an overview of the syntactic significance of Nominative case licensing in the literature and in Turkish linguistics. Section (3) provides arguments from Turkic languages that underlie the proposal that Epistemic Modality feature at I(nfl) and Mood at (C) are components of nominative case licensing; agreement morphology is proposed to be marking the presence and absence of a [+mood] agreement feature on C. Section (4) presents the feature configuration and the syntactic mechanism involved in Nominative case licensing as well as the phase properties of finite

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CPs. Section (5) extends the proposed analysis to other languages. Inflected Infinitives with nominative subjects in Indo-European languages are discussed in section (6). Section (7) discusses the attested prediction of the proposed analysis, namely the ECM Hypothesis in a number of languages. Section (8) discusses the theoretical implications and concludes the discussion.

2. Tensed-S Condition and Specified Subject Condition In generative linguistics finiteness as tense or agreement has been studied as defining a syntactic domain: as such, tense or agreement creates an island for clause-external syntactic operations. For instance, it has been observed that raising is impossible from a finite clause in English; even when raising out of a non-finite clause, the result is ungrammatical if the raising crosses a c-commanding subject (1&2). In the Extended Standard Theory, these effects were explained by two conditions: the Tensed-S Condition and the Specified Subject Condition (Chomsky 1973), which are later called Finite Clause Effect and Specified Subject Effect respectively. (1) *They seem that left (cf. ‘They seem to have left’) (2) *Kim is likely for it to appear to have left. (cf. ‘It is likely for Kim to appear to have left’)

2.1 Tensed-S Condition in Turkish It was observed that Turkish allows raising out of finite, i.e. tensed clauses unlike English (Kornfilt 1977, Moore 1998 among others): (3) Biz-Øi san-a [ proi içki iç-ti-k ] gibi görün-dü-k. We-nom you-dat alcoholic drink drink-perf-1pl like appear-perf-1pl ‘We appeared to you to have drunk alcohol’ Extraction of a nominative subject was observed to be disallowed from finite clauses as predicted by Finite Clause Effect in Turkish as well as English (4) (Mulder 1976, Kornfilt 1977, Moore 1998): (4) * Ercan-Øi Kürşat-Ø [ti kek-i ye-di] san-ıyor. Ercan-nom Kürşat-nom cake-acc eat-past think-prog ‘Ercan thinks Kürsat ate the cake’ *in the intended reading Si S [ti O V ] V

Chapter 3. Finiteness and the relation between Agreement and Nominative Case

2.2 Nominative Case licensing Another property of Finite/Tensed Clauses is that they license lexical subjects in the Nominative Case (5), whereas structures that lack Tense, i.e. ECM, have Accusative subjects licensed by the higher verb (6): (5) I understand that he will be late. (6) I consider him to be late. However, as clearly argued in the influential work of George and Kornfilt (1981), Turkish facts are problematic for regarding tense as a nominative case licensing/finiteness marking category. George and Kornfilt (1981) duly argue that tense is not the relevant finiteness parameter in Turkish, and enable the major break from tense-based finiteness and opacity approach within generative linguistics (along with Chomsky 1981, Rouveret and Vergnaud 1980.) The first problem with a tense-based approach is that ECM structures in Turkish seem to bear the same tense morphology as a finite clause. Consider the root clause in (7): (7) Kürşat-Ø gel -di -Ø. Kürşat-Nom come -Past -3s ‘Kürşat came/has come’ As far as the surface form goes, the finite complement clause in (8) below is identical to the root clause in (7): (8) Kürşat-Ø [ben-Ø gel -di -Ø] san -dı -m. Kürşat-Nom I-Nom come - Past -3s think -Past -1s ‘Kürşat thought I came/have come’ These finite complement clauses are selected by a set of verbs that also select ECM complements, and ECM predicates seem to be inflected for “tense” as well (9): (9) Kürşat-Ø [ben-i gel -di –(m)] san -dı -m. Kürşat-Nom I-Acc come -Past -3s think -Past -1s ‘Kürşat thought I came/have come’ If tense is what licenses nominative case in Turkish, we would expect a nominative subject in (9) just like in (8). This observation has brought the idea that agreement rather than tense could set the finiteness parameter in Turkish-type languages (George and Kornfilt 1981). However, if agreement is the sole licensor of subject case; we would still expect a nominative subject in (9). At this point, the three-way distinction in dialects of Modern Turkish needs to be presented. In reported data, there are three positions as to the nature of agreement in Turkish ECMs: compulsory agreement in ECMs (Pullum 1975), i.e. Dialect A, Compulsory non-agreement in ECMs (Aissen 1974, 1979 , G&K 1981, Kornfilt 1985 and further work), i.e. Dialect B; and optional agreement in ECMs

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(Kural 1993, Zidani-Eroglu 1997, Aygen 2002a, 2003b,d, 2004a), i.e. Dialect C. George and Kornfilt (1981) base their study on Dialect B, and they argue that the lack of agreement renders a clause non-finite. The nature of agreement in Turkish ECMs is obviously a manifestation of some deficiency of ECMs in dialects B and C, but a theory of agreement needs to account for all parametric variations. I will attempt to propose a theory of agreement and finiteness that can account for all three dialectal variations in Modern Turkish as well as other Turkic languages.

2.3 What is Nominative Case and what licenses it? Nominative subject case is argued to be assigned/ licensed by a functional head.1 The parametric variation on this issue is attributed to the nature of the functional head or the relevant feature on the TP that assigns/licenses the subject case. In English-type languages it is argued to be T(ense)P(hrase) (Stowell 1982, and others) or a tense feature on T and C (Pesetsky and Torrego 2001); in Turkish-type languages it is argued to be the Agr(eement)P(hrase) (Kornfilt 1984, 2002, Raposo 1987, among others). It has also been argued that it is the TP cross-linguistically that bears the phi features and that Agreement cannot be an independent maximal projection (Iatridou 1990). Within the most recent minimalist framework (Chomsky 2005, to appear), agreement is regarded as a C(omp) feature (as proposed in Aygen 2002a/4b, Miyagawa 2004). In this system, the relationship between C and T is one of selection, and T inherits the agreement features from C. In all the claims about case on subject, the concept of finiteness as nominative case is the crucial ingredient of the analyses; and nominative case is dependent on both tense and/or agreement features.

3. What marks finiteness in Turkic languages? The majority of the work done on Turkish maintains the George and Kornfilt (1981) parametrization that analyzes nominative case-licensing to be solely dependent on the presence of what is called the “verbal” agreement morphology on the predicate of clauses. I will propose an alternative perspective based on Modern Turkish as well as other Turkic languages that will unify the analysis of both English-type and Turkishtype languages: neither tense nor agreement can be the sole factor in determining the case on the subject. The significant observation in Kornfilt (1977) and George and Kornfilt (1981) that tense cannot account for the Turkish facts needs to be maintained. It must also be maintained that agreement is involved in nominative case licensing, hence finiteness; however, it is not the sole licenser. In the following section, I will show that Epistemic Modality feature at I(nfl)/T(ense) is one of the two obligatory components of a Nominative licensing finiteness feature in Turkish, accompanied by an agreement feature at

Chapter 3. Finiteness and the relation between Agreement and Nominative Case

C. I will also argue that agreement morphology marks the mood category of the clause in Turkic languages.

3.1 Epistemic Modality as Nominative Case licenser in Modern Turkish In Modern Turkish, the same verbs select for either finite complement clauses or non-finite complement clauses with ECM Accusative subjects. The predicates of such complement clauses that are identical in terms of ‘tense’ and ‘agreement’, as may be observed in (10) below. (10) a. Nominative-Subject Complement Clause (Declarative) Ben-Ø [sen-Ø gel-di-n] san-dı-m. I-Nom you-Nom come-Perf/Past-3sg think-Perf/Past-1 s.agr ‘I thought you came/have come’ b. Accusative-Subject Complement Clause (Declarative) Ben-Ø [sen-i gel-di-(n) ] san-dı-m. I-Nom you-Acc come-Perf/Past-3sg think-Perf/Past-1 sg ‘I thought you came/have come’ Agreement morphology in (10a) belongs to the Verbal-Paradigm (of Kornfilt 1984, and subsequent work) that is argued to license Nominative Case in Turkish.2 Although (10a&b) look identical on the surface, they must have a different syntactic structure to allow the difference in the subject case. A reasonable way to address the structure within these complement clauses is to see what kind of inflectional material they allow. Interestingly, Nom-subject clauses, e.g. (10a), allow all kinds of inflectional material, namely tense, aspect, modality and agreement morphology. Acc-subject clauses, e.g. (10b) do not allow Epistemic Modals.3 Modal morphemes in Turkish are ambiguous among various types of modality, unless disambiguated by a modal adverb located at the Spec ModP (Aygen-Tosun 1998, 2000): (11) a.

Kürşat-Ø gel -ebil -ir -Ø. Kürşat-Nom come -Mod -aor -3sg i. Kürşat can come. (abilitative) ii. Kürşat may come. (epistemic) iii. Kürşat may come. (permissive)

The epistemic modal reading is allowed in nominative-subject clauses as may be observed in (12) below: (12) Epistemic Modals in Nominative-Subject Constructions Ben-Ø [Kürşat-Ø gel-ebilir-Ø] san-dı-m. I-Nom Kürşat-Nom come- epistemic/deontic think-Perf/Past-1 s.agr i. ‘I thought Kürşat could come’ (that it is likely that he would come).

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ii. ‘I thought Kürşat could = was able to come’ ¥ Deontic / Epistemic The epistemic modal reading is not allowed in accusative-subject complements as observed in (13) below. The only available reading is a deontic one. (13) Accusative-Subject Constructions Ben-Ø [Kürşat-ı gel-ebil-ir-di] san-dı-m. I-Nom -Acc come-ability-aor-Past think-Perf/Past-1 s.agr i. * ‘I thought Kürşat could come’ (that it is likely that he would come). ii. ‘I thought Kürşat could = was able to come’ ¥ Deontic / * Epistemic As for other Turkic languages, we observe the same distributional properties. In Tuvan, ECM construction allows deontic modality (14a) and does not allow epistemic modality (14b); whereas, a Nom-Subj construction allows either one (14c): (14) a.

Amur [Çeçen-ni kel-ir ujurlug] dep Amur Çeçen-acc come-aor deontic postp. ‘Amur thought Çeçen had to come’ ¥ Deontic b. * Amur [Çeçen-ni kel-ir çadavas] dep Amur Çeçen-acc come-aor epistemic postp. * Epistemic reading: ‘Amur thought that it was possible that Çeçen would come.’ c. Amur [Çeçen kel-ir ujurlug/ çadavas dep Amur Çeçen-nom come-aor deon./epistemic postp. i. Amur thought that Çeçen had to come. ¥ Deontic ii. Amur thought that Çeçen could come. ¥ Epistemic

podaan. thought

podaan. thought

podaan. thought

The distribution of inflectional morphemes in Nominative-Subject Constructions and ECMs illustrated above suggests that Nominative Case is licensed in structures that allow Epistemic Modality in Turkic languages. It is plausible to hypothesize that epistemic modality is involved in nominative case licensing at I(nfl)/T(ense).5

3.2 Agreement paradigms in Turkic languages: Agreement as a mood marker at C In this section, I will present the agreement paradigms in Turkic languages and argue that agreement morphology marks the presence/absence of mood, i.e. the CP layer in the structure or the type of mood available at CP. The contribution of the proposed classification lies in the fact that it is based on clause structure rather than similarities in surface form and that it helps account for different clause types in Turkish and other Turkic languages.6

Chapter 3. Finiteness and the relation between Agreement and Nominative Case

Following is a table of agreement paradigms in Turkish and other Turkic languages: (15) Agreement Paradigm in Turkish/Kazakh (Turkic):6 a. Turkish Agreement

Person

Singular

1st

-(I)m

-(A)yIm

-(y)Im

-(I)m

2nd

-n

-(AsIn)

-sIn

-(sI)n

3rd

-Ø

-(A)

-Ø

-(s)I

1st

-k

-AlIm

-(y)Iz

-mIz

2nd

-nIz

-(As)In

-sInIz

-nIz

3rd

-lAr

-(A)lAr

-lAr

-lArI

Plural

I

II

III

IV

b. Kazakh Agreement

Person

Singular

1st

-(I)m

mIn;bIn;pIn

-mIn;bIn;pIn -(I)m

2nd

-ŋ

-sIŋ

-sIŋ

-(I)ŋ

3rd

-Ø

-Ø

-Ø

-(s)I

1st

-k/q

--yIq/-yIk mIz;bIz;pIz

-mIz;bIz;pIz

-(I)mIz

2nd

-ŋIz

-sIz

-sIz

ŊIz

3rd

-lAr

-Ø

-Ø

-sIŋ

Plural

I

II

III

IV

In previous syntactic research restricted to Modern Turkish, the paradigm in (I) has been called the ‘verbal paradigm’; paradigm (II) is omitted from discussion; and (III) and (IV) have been collapsed into a ‘nominal paradigm’ (Kornfilt 1984, and subsequent work). Agreement has been argued to be the sole case licenser: the verbal one in (I) licensing Nominative case and the nominal the Genitive. I argue that this is not the case and that the paradigm in (I) is not restricted to verbal predicates, and it does appear with substantive predicates in the conditional as may be observed in (16); the paradigm (III) and (IV) differ in terms of the structures they occur in: (III) occurs in clausal and (IV) in phrasal constructions. In (16) below, it is clearly observed that these paradigms correspond to mood types:

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(16)

I [+indicative] [+conditional] Biz gel-di-k We come-past-1p ‘We came’7

II [optative]

III [substantive]

Biz gel-elim we come-1pl ‘Let’s come’

Biz iyi-yiz we fine-1pl ‘We’re fine’8

IV [phrasal] Biz-im ev-imiz we-gen house-1pl ‘Our house’

Biz gel-se-k We come-cond-1p ‘If we come, …’

[Biz-im gel-dig-imiz] we-gen come-asp-1p ‘[the fact/the time] that we came’

Biz iyi-yse-k We fine-cond-1p ‘If we’re well, …’ Briefly, the first paradigm, previously called the ‘verbal paradigm’ does not necessarily appear on verbal predicates; it necessarily appears on [+Indicative] and [−Indicative, +Conditional] clauses. Paradigm (II) refers to the optative; (III) is reserved for substantive predicate constructions; and finally (IV) is the phrasal possessive paradigm. The distribution of the agreement paradigms in terms of the type of clauses they appear in justifies the claim that agreement morphology marks mood in clausal constructions. In other words, the choice of Agreement Paradigm is dependent on the mood feature of a clause. (17) Agreement Paradigms in Turkish/Kazakh (Turkic) (Aygen 2005): Agreement Singular

Plural

Mood1

Mood2

Mood3Substantive

-/øMood/Posss

1st

-(I)m

-(e)yim

-(y)Im

-(I)m

2nd

-n

-(esin)

-sIn

-(sI)n

3rd

-Ø

-(e)

-Ø

-(s)I

1st

-k

-elim

-(y)Iz

-mIz

2nd

-nIz

-(es)in

-sInIz

-nIz

3rd

-lAr

-(e)lAr

-lAr

-lAr

Person

Mood1 appears on Non-Optative constructions: (18) a.

[+Indicative] Clauses (i) [+indicative] root clauses (ii) [+indicative] finite complement clauses (iii) [+indicative] ECMs (optionally)

Chapter 3. Finiteness and the relation between Agreement and Nominative Case

b. [−Indicative, +Conditional] (i) verbal predicates (ii) substantive predicates Mood2 appears only on Optatives: (19) [−Indicative, −Conditional], i.e. Optative (i) verbal predicates (ii) copula be +substantive predicates Mood3 appears only on the substantive predicates of [+indicative] clauses: (20) [+Indicative] clauses (i) copula be + substantive predicates Based on this distributional argument, I propose (21): (21) There are two types of Agreement Paradigms in Turkish: Clausal and Phrasal (Possessive): a. Clausal Agreement marks mood in Turkish and has three paradigms: Agreement ru Clausal Phrasal rgu z----m I II III IV (i) I = [+Indicative] verbal, [−Indicative,+Conditional] verbal+substantive (ii) II = [−Indicative, −Conditional] verbal+substantive (iii) III = [+Indicative] substantive (iv) IV = Null Mood similar to Phrasal Agr in form and may appear on subordinate clauses b. Phrasal Agreement, i.e. Possessive marks possessive in phrases, [−mood] by definition. A similar distribution is observed in other Turkic languages, e.g. Kazakh, Tuvan, Kazan Tatar, Azerbeidjani, Turkmen, Kirghiz, and Altay to name a few. The agreement morphology marking mood variations is not unique to Turkic languages. Similar observations were made for Chamarro (Chung 1998: 26-7).

3.3 Types of mood I propose that Mood is marked by agreement morphology and as such refers to a syntactic feature on the head of the clause (Comp). Semantically, it serves to distinguish the clauses in terms of the attitude someone has toward what it expresses. The default mood /clause type is [+Indicative].

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(22) Types of mood represented in the syntax as [±] agreement features on C: Types of Mood: ei Indicative9 Non-Indicative ei Imperative/Optative Conditional (Subjunctive) The correlation of Nominative Case with the presence of agreement morphology marking mood and the epistemic modality in Turkic allow us to propose (23): (23) Nominative case licensing involves the same syntactic features: a. An agreement feature on C (inherited by the selected T) b. a tense/epistemic modality feature (on T/Infl) The morphological manifestation of these features is as the following: Agreement morphology manifests the mood category; tense/epistemic modality morphology manifests itself as a tense or epistemic modality morpheme and varies parametrically. Semantically, tense and epistemic modality is the same creature: tense is a kind of epistemic modality (Lyons 1997). This analysis accounts for [−Indicative] Clauses with a nominative-subject in Turkish. If the proposal in (23) is correct, it is the presence of an agreement [+Mood] agreement feature in both C and T (24) that satisfies (23a).10 Considering the interdependence of Mood and Modality (Kamp 1981, Heim 1982),11 (24) also satisfies (23b): we have both the C(omp) and the T(ense) components of the nominative-case licensing system in the structures below: (24) Nominative subject in [−Indicative] Clauses a. Nominative-Subject Conditional Sen- Ø sőyle-r-se-n, ben- Ø parti-ye gid-eceğ- im. You-NOM tell-mod-cond-2sM I -NOM party-DAT go-fut/mod-1sM ‘If you say (so), I will go to the party’ b. Nominative-Subject Optative Ben-Ø [ Hasan- Ø gel-sin] iste-di-m. I-NOM Hasan -NOM come-3sM want-perf-1sg.AgrV The structure and features in (24) provide an account for the long-observed fact that finite/non-finite distinction is marked by the complementizer in subordinate clauses: that introduces finite clauses, whereas, for introduces non-finite ones. In our system, C selects a T with the relevant features, hence the ungrammaticality of the following examples in English: (25) a. *I know that he go/him to go. b. *I want for he to go/he goes.

Chapter 3. Finiteness and the relation between Agreement and Nominative Case

4. Finiteness as nominative case and phases Finiteness is defined by the following conditions: (26) a. the presence of nominative subjects b. the presence of a syntactic domain in which syntactic operations are not allowed or restricted. If the condition in (26a) is satisfied only in CPs with the relevant features, i.e., epistemic modality (a T feature) and mood (an agreement feature on C), then the null hypothesis is that such CPs are phases (Chomsky 2001, and further work). Simply put, phases are syntactic units that are not accessible to further operations: (27) Phase Impenetrability Condition (Chomsky 2000: 22, 2001: 10-11): In a strong phase HP, in the configuration [ZP Z … [HP α [ H YP]]] ZP the next strong phase: a. The domain of H (here YP) is not accessible to operations at ZP, but only H and its edge. b. Interpretation/evaluation for PH1 (HP here) is PH2 (ZP). According to (27), only the C and its Specifier are accessible. If our hypothesis that [+Mood] Agr feature on C and tense/epistemic modality on T is what makes a CP a phase is correct, we would find Nominative constructions where external syntactic operations are not allowed: English subjunctives behave like that. We would also expect to find non-Nominative constructions with possibly [+ Mood] on C yet [–Modality] on T, where external syntactic operations are allowed: Turkish embedded clauses behave exactly like that (Aygen 2003a,c, 2004a). In this respect, the syntactic structure of root clauses and nominative-subject complement clauses needs to be identical in terms of relevant features and phase properties. The question I address here is whether they behave as phases. Consider the root clause in (28) below: (28) Kürsat-Ø gel-di-Ø. Kürsat-Nom come-Perf/Past-3 s.agr ‘Kürşat came/has come’ As far as the surface form goes, the nominative-subject complement clause in (29) below is identical to the root clause in surface form in (28): (29) Ben-Ø [ Kürşat-Ø gel-di-Ø] san-dı-m. I-Nom -Nom come-Perf/Past think-Perf/Past-1 s.agr ‘I thought Kürşat came/has come’ A syntactic property that distinguishes root clauses from embedded finite clauses is that the occurrence of a Question Particle anywhere in the structure makes a root clause an interrogative, as may be observed in (30). This is because a root clause con-

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sists of a CP, a single phase, and the Q-feature is deleted at C:12 (30) a.

Ahmet-Ø gel-di mi? Ahmet-Nom come-Perf QP ‘Has Ahmet come?’ b. Ahmet-Ø mi gel-di? Ahmet-Nom QP come-Perf ‘Is it Ahmet who has come?

The occurrence of a QP in embedded finite clauses does not yield to a question reading of the higher clause (31): (31) a.

Sen-Ø Ahmet gel-di mi diye düşün-dü-n you-nom Ahmet-Nom come-Parf/Past QP Comp think-Perf-2sg ‘You wondered if Ahmet has come’ b. Sen-Ø Ahmet-Ø mi gel-di diye düşün-dü-n you-nom Ahmet-Nom QP come-Perf Comp think-Perf/Past-2sg ‘You wondered if it is Ahmet who came’

The examples in (31) indicate that the Q-feature is deleted within the lower CP, which must be a phase. The Q-feature is no longer active; the lower CP is no longer accessible for further syntactic operations, and the higher clause cannot be a question. In contrast, the occurrence of a QP in non-finite (reduced) complement clauses makes the higher clause an interrogative: (32) a. Sen [ Ahmet-in gel-diğ-in]i mi düşün-dü-n? you-Nom Ahmet-Gen come-Asp-3sg-Acc QP think-Perf-2sg ‘Have you wondered if Ahmet has come? b. Sen [ Ahmet-in mi gel-diğ-in]i düşün-dü-n? you-Nom Ahmet-Gen QP come-Asp-3sg-Acc think-Perf-2sg ‘Have you wondered if it is Ahmet who has come?’ The embedded clause in (32) is a reduced clause consisting of an Asp dominated by a DP (Aygen 2002a/4b). As such they are non-finite and are not predicted to be opaque, i.e. to create a phase. This prediction is borne out in (32): the Q-feature is deleted at the higher C, yielding the interrogative reading of the matrix clause. The finite embedded clause in (31), however, gets only a quoted direct question reading, i.e. the Q particle can delete a Q feature on C within its phase, not in the higher clause. The observation that the occurrence of a QP in an embedded clause does not yield a question reading of the matrix provides evidence that embedded finite clauses are opaque/impenetrable domains just like root clauses. It is clear from the examples above that nominative-subject complement clauses are phases, but reduced genitive-subject clauses are not. Since the reduced clauses lack both the C and T components of nominative case and finiteness, they cannot con-

Chapter 3. Finiteness and the relation between Agreement and Nominative Case

stitute a phase. Evidence from agrammatic aphasia support this analysis as noted in Yarbay, et al (2005),

4.1 Syntactic Mechanism As for the syntactic mechanism involved, I agree with Pesetsky and Torrego (2001) in that head movement, e.g. T-to-C or overt phrasal movement of the subject phrase is the mechanism in English-type sentences. In Turkic languages where there is no T-toC, Agreement must be the relevant mechanism. Pesetsky & Torrego argue that T-to-C movement is the mechanism that allows the uninterpretable Tense (henceforth uT) feature in C to be deleted and the Nominative case on the subject to be licensed.13 The claim that there is a V-T-C movement in Turkish is restricted to the arguments in Kural (1993), which are refuted in Aygen (2003a,c, 2002a,b). The claim that V-T moves as high as C movement in genitive-subject clauses (Hiraiwa 2001) is refuted by Turkic data in Aygen (2002a/4b). Based on the theoretical and empirical arguments in the abovementioned work of the author, and the lack of any further arguments in favor of the T-to-C movement in the Turkish literature, the working assumption here is that there is no T-to-C in Turkish. Adopting Chomsky (2005, to appear) and Aygen and Quinn (2005), I will argue that Agreement features reside on C, and the relationship between C and T is one of selection. C with phi features that are [+Mood] select a T with finite, i.e. [+tense] (in English) or [+epistemic modal] (in Turkic) features. T bears the same phi features as C: as noted in Chomsky (to appear), and T might inherit them from C; alternatively, one can imagine C selecting a T with the relevant features. Such a structure would be a finite CP: (33)

CP ru C’ ru C (TP/MODEpistemicP) [ φ +mood)] ru D T’ [iφ] ru T vP [φ+mood] [+ tense/modal] ru v’ ru v VP ru V ……..

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The phi features at T and C are unvalued. When the subject DP with interpretable and valued phi features moves to Spec TP for case reasons, the phi features on T are valued. The phi features on C are also valued via Agree relation with T. In Turkic languages in which the verb is at T, the verbal complex values and deletes its uninterpretable and unvalued phi features in a Spec-Head relation with the subject DP. In languages that lack a rich agreement system marked with overt morphology, e.g. English, T-to-C is obligatory in certain structures: Inversion in Counterfactuals (Aygen 2003a) and Interrogatives. Unless there is an overt complementizer at C that marks the clausal mood, i.e. the finite (that) or non-finite (for) nature of it, inversion is obligatory to delete the uninterpretable phi features at C. A feature is uninterpretable if there is no phonological content to it. In Turkic, the Agreement morphology marks [±Mood]: hence the weak nature of the feature and the lack of head movement. If the u phi features at C are not strong , constituents can only move to Spec CP motivated by their own uninterpretable features.

4.2 Can agreement be the sole licenser? Testing grounds: Embedded imperatives Regarding agreement to be the sole local licenser of subject case runs into trouble with Turkish embedded imperative structures. Remember that such a theory bases its claim on dialect B of Modern Turkish where agreement morphology is not allowed in indicative ECMs. Consider (34) below where lack of agreement corresponds to ungrammaticality of ECM-Acc subject, and presence of agreement corresponds to grammaticality in an ECM with an accusative subject. Note that there is no dialectal difference in imperative ECMs in Turkish. In Turkish embedded imperatives in (34), regardless of the presence of agreement within the lower clause, either nominative or accusative case is allowed: (34) Ben [o-Ø / on-u gel-sin] iste-di-m I-Nom s/he-nom / s/he-acc come-agr want-perf/past-1sg ‘I wanted him/her to come’ If we assume agreement to be the sole licenser, we cannot account for the accusative subject in (34), whereas the prediction of the proposed analysis is that nominative case cannot be licensed in the absence of the second component, i.e. epistemic modality, In such structures, accusative subjects are predicted, which is attested in (35) below. When epistemic reading is available, we observe a nominative subject (35a); when the epistemic reading is not available, agreement alone cannot license the nominative subject (35b): (35) a.

Ben [ o-Ø gel-ebil-sin] iste-di-m I-Nom s/he-nom come-mod-agr want-perf/past-1sg ‘I wanted (it to be possible that )s/he to come’

Chapter 3. Finiteness and the relation between Agreement and Nominative Case

b. * Ben [ on-u gel-ebil-sin] iste-di-m. I-Nom s/he-acc come-mod-agr want-perf/past-1sg ‘I wanted her/him to be able to come’ * ‘I wanted (it to be possible that)s/he to come’ Following structures illustrate feature configurations in (35a) and (35b): (36) a.

b. * lacks the T component features: CP CP ru ru C’ C’ ru ru C (TP/MODEP) C (TP/MODEP) [ φ +mood)] ru [ φ +mood)] ru DP T’ DP T’ [ iφ] ru [ iφ] ru T vP T vP [φ+mood] [+ tense/modal] …… [φ+mood] [− tense/modal]

Revisiting the dialectal variation with regards to the presence of agreement in ECMs, the following explanation is in order: Since ECM structures lack one of the two components of nominative case/finiteness, namely, epistemic modality, the presence of the agreement is of no consequence. Therefore, Dialect A and C allow its presence since it does not necessarily mark the clause as finite. Dialect B may be disallowing it to mark the non-finiteness of the clause.14 Our proposed analysis accounts for all the dialectal variations. In the absence of the T component of finiteness features (36b) , the presence and the morphological marking of the C component may be allowed (Dialect A and C) or disallowed (Dialect B).

5. Can this analysis be extended to other languages? In this section, I discuss English subjunctives and other tense-less structures, Hungarian and Arabic, where mood is shown to be relevant for nominative case licensing. I argue that the proposed analysis is supported by the facts of the aforementioned languages.15

5.1 English subjunctives [–T/–Agr] as Finite Clauses with Nominative Subject English subjunctive clauses bear neither tense nor agreement yet have nominative subjects (37). This fact can be accounted for by the proposed analysis: There is an overt mood marked by the type of verb that selects the subordinate CP; based on the syntac-

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tic evidence presented in Hwang (1997), we know that these structures bear a covert modal head: (37) [–T/–Agr] and Nominative Subject I insist that she be on time.16 Analyses that base their finiteness on tense and/or agreement only cannot account for (37). Secondly, if Nominative is an indication of ‘finiteness,” the subjunctive clauses are expected to be finite, too. The distribution of complementizers that and for (Hwang 1997) clearly show that subjunctives are finite clauses. That introduces finite clauses, whereas for introduces non-finite ones (Chomsky and Lasnik 1977).17 Subjunctives in English always take that, never for: 18 (38) *I insist for she be on time. The third argument comes from Anaphor binding (Hwang 1997). Anaphors are not allowed in the subjects of finite clauses (Tensed-S Condition in Chomsky 1973, and NIC in Chomsky 1980). Compare (39a vs. b): (39) a. *The guysi told that each otheri went to the party. b. *The guysi insisted that each otheri go to the party. Another piece of evidence comes from the Island effects in tensed finite clauses and present subjunctives. Compare (40) and (41), where the behavior of tensed clauses is identical to that of subjunctives. This behavior indicates that subjunctives consist of CPs that are phases: (40) The effects of extraction out of a finite subordinate clause a. Whati did you insist that she cut ti ? b. ? Who did you insist that cut the cake? c. Who did you insist cut the cake? d. * How did you insist that she cut the cake? (41) The effects of extraction out of a subjunctive clause a. What did you think (that) Sue cut? b. ? Who did you think that cut the cake? c. Who did you think cut the cake? d. * How did you think Sue cut the cake? In brief, the syntactic similarities between tensed clauses and subjunctives in English suggests that the same feature, plausibly agreement as [+mood] at C and T and modality at T might be responsible for Nominative Case as well as other syntactic behavior patterns that have been attributed to tensed finite clauses. 19

Chapter 3. Finiteness and the relation between Agreement and Nominative Case

5.2 Classical Arabic (Benmamoun 1992, 2000, and P&T 2001): Mood as nominative case In Classical Arabic, the morphology of the nominative subject does not co-vary with the tense of the sentence. The suffixes that mark nominative case are identical to the “mood” morphology of the imperfective indicative verb (Benmamoun 1992, 2000, cited in P&T 2001). You may observe the data in (42): (42) Classical Arabic Singular ţ-taalib-u the student-NOM ya-ktub-u 3M-write-IND

Dual ţ-taalib-aan the-student-DUAL.Nom ya-ktub-aan 3M-write-DUAL.IND

Plural l-mu?allim-uun the-teacher-PL.NOM yu-?allim-uun 3M-teach-PL.IND

5.3 Tense-less English20 In the next section, I will discuss Mood, Modality and Tense in English tense-less structures (Enç 1991 and Pesetsky 1992) and argue that temporal interpretation is not necessarily tense-based. Epistemic modals that mark finiteness do not get involved in the temporal interpretation mechanism as well. As such, the binder of a temporal variable and the feature that licenses Nominative and hence marks finiteness are not on the same head.

5.3.1 No present tense in English Enç (1991) (cited in Pesetsky 1992) argues that the way we can detect hidden mood markers is by their interaction with factors connected to tense. She discusses past and present tense uses of a stage-level predicate like sing:21 (43) a. Mary sang the Marseillaise. b. Mary sings the Marseillaise. The past tense example in (43a) may be true, if there is an interval prior to the time of utterance in which Mary sings the Marseillasie. Enç notes that if the form in (43b) is interpreted analogously as present tense, we expect (43b) to have a reading, which is true if Sally sings during the time of utterance. There is no such reading. (43b) can only be interpreted as something like (44a) or (44b): (44) a. Mary always sings the Marseillaise. b. Mary generally sings the Marseillaise. In (44), there are numerous intervals in which Mary is singing depending on the adverb of quantification. Enç proposes that such verbs contain an open position identifiable with Kratzer’s l-position, and it has to be bound. 22 The past tense morpheme and the adverbs of quantification have the capacity to bind the l-position associated with sing:

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(45) Mary sang the Marseillaise. Past1 [ sing ( Mary, song 1)] (46) Mary always sings the Marseillaise. Always1 [sings (Mary, song, 1)] There is no present-tense analogue to the past-tense morpheme with the capacity to bind the open l-position. Sentences interpreted as present tense are interpreted due to a default procedure that identifies the tense of time-less sentences with the evaluation time. Pesetsky (1992) refers to the so-called “present tense” in English as “tenseless,” which he distinguishes from “non-finite.” When there is no adverb or other binder in a tense-less finite sentence, the result is an unbound l-position: (47) Mary sings the Marseillaise. * [sings (Mary, French) ] If my claim that Nominative Case licensing is dependent on [mood marking] agreement at C and modality at T is correct, a tense-less clause can indeed have a nominative subject and be grammatical as may be observed in (47). Furthermore, the absence of an l-place in individual-level predicates means that there is no temporal position that needs to be bound. This I take to be an indication of no tense to denote temporal information. 23 Enç (1991)’s arguments presented in this section provide an insight into structures where lack of tense does not render the structures non-finite. If finiteness is marked with Nominative Case, the relevant finiteness feature is licensed by mood and modality, which are present in any of these constructions. The spatio-temporal l-place is bound by implicit adverbs of quantification for a temporal interpretation.

5.3.2 Modals The question Enç discusses is what binds the l-place in if-clauses licensed by an epistemic modal like must; that is, what allows the temporal interpretation in structures like (48) below: (48) a. If John talks to Mary, he must drink champagne. b. If John sings that out of tune, he must sing in the shower. c. If Sue breaks her leg, she must ski with the children. Either the modal in the matrix clause binds the l-place associated with the predicates in (48) or else some other element does. The examples in (48) have only a generic interpretation for the antecedent and consequent clauses; therefore, the epistemic modal must can not be a binder; the binder must be an implicit adverb. The same is observed in similar examples as root clauses (49): (49) a. Sally must drive to school. b. John must sing in the shower. c. They must ski with the children.

Chapter 3. Finiteness and the relation between Agreement and Nominative Case

In the epistemic reading of must, the un-tensed verbs in (49) are interpreted as generic, which is expected if an implicit adverb of quantification is the only available binder for the l-place of verbs. In these environments, Enc (1991) assumes an existential closure binding the l-place. The existential closure is triggered by the tripartite logical form (quantificational term, restriction, nuclear scope in Heim (1982,1988) that is motivated by the presence of a modal). What licenses the Nominative case in such modal constructions where overt tense morphology is absent is the finiteness feature on the Tense Phrase that I have argued to have a Modal nature. Enç (1981) notes that not all epistemic modals behave like this. The “emotive” modal should in a factive clause binds an l-place like tense. It is shown that this is not a property of factives in general but a property of should as may be observed in (51a&b), which lacks should. The embedded verb can receive only a generic interpretation, whereas no such interpretation is necessary with should in (50): (50) a. That John should sing the Marseillasie is upsetting. b. I resent it deeply that you should sing the Marseillasie. (51) a. That John sings the Marseillaise is upsetting. b. I resent it deeply that you sing the Marseillasie. Pesetsky (op cit) does not have an explanation for the difference between must and should in this respect. In certain factive clauses a characteristic epistemic modal appears to act like tenses and adverbs of quantification in binding the l-position posited by Kratzer (1989) and Enç (1981) for stage-level predicates.24 The generic interpretation of the embedded factive clauses might be explored through the resemblances of generic and factive operators, which I will not comment on. The lack of generic interpretation in structures with the modal should might similarly be due to the presence of an overt modal that binds the l-place. The difference between must and should is apparently due to the epistemic nature of must, since only the epistemic reading occurs in contexts where the verb is interpreted as a generic. The least we can say is that, as noted above, epistemic modals are not l-binders, and in structures where they occur, l-place is bound by an implicit quantificational adverb. When the l-place is bound by a quantificational adverb, the adverb might behave as a generic operator. With should however, l-place is bound by the non-epistemic modal, hence no generic interpretation. If a Tense Head that is basically a kind of epistemic modality head is responsible for Nominative Case licensing, then what Enç shows above in terms of the incapability of epistemic modals in binding the l-place indicates that the Nominative Case licensing head is not necessarily involved in temporal interpretation. Such an approach is significant in terms of its implications for the functions attributed to tense head and tense in general so far. 25

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5.4 Hungarian Note that in Hungarian, tense and mood are in complementary distribution (Antal 1977, cited in Kiss 1994). Kiss (1994) argues that tense and mood are alternative realizations of the same abstract Tense head, the semantic function of which is to anchor a proposition in some of the possible worlds. Their approach shares the insight of the proposed theory in that mood: epistemic modality and tense are involved in the head we call TP. In my approach, mood and epistemic modality/tense feature is the same feature on C and T Head. Kiss (1994) distinguishes two types of mood and two types of tense: (52) Two types of mood (Kiss 1994) Mood ru Pres Cond Past Cond Real poss Irreal poss Under this assumption, present conditional and past conditional are two different moods, or rather, two different tenses: “one basically expresses real possibility, the other, irreal possibility.” Therefore, tense in Hungarian can be dependent or independent: (53) Two types of tense (Kiss 1994) Tense ru Independent Dependent ru rgup Pres Past real irreal Imp Subjunctive Dependent tenses include real conditional, irreal conditional, imperative, and subjunctive. Kiss also argues that infinitives may be analyzed as having dependent tense. Independent tenses can be realized as present or as past. The distribution of grammaticality in data (54) below, all of which include a long operator movement, exhibits a regular pattern: (54) a. ?? Kiti gondol-sz, hogy elnök lesz ti ? whom think-you that president become-pres.3sg ‘Who do you think becomes president?’ b. Kiti akar-sz, hogy elnök leg-yen ti ? whom want-you that president become-subjunc.3sg ‘Whom do you wish to become president?’ c. Kiti szeret-né-l, ha elnök len- ne ti ? whom like-cond-you if president become-cond.3sg ‘Whom would you like if president became?’

Chapter 3. Finiteness and the relation between Agreement and Nominative Case

d. Kiti akar-nak megválaszta-ni elnök nek ti ? whom want-they elect-infin president-dat ‘Whom do they want to elect president?’ Extraction is marginal in only (54a), the sentence in which the embedded clause has independent tense. Kiss (1994) argue that what blocks extraction in (54a) is the intervening TP projection with the feature [+independent]. I agree with Kiss (1994) in that these facts can account for dependency of clauses. I would analyze these data in terms of mood differences. The subordinate clause in data (54a) is [+Indicative], whereas those in data (54b-c) are [–Indicative]. If we base our analysis on these restricted data, we can simply argue that [+Indicative] subordinate clauses are islands for extraction whereas [–Indicative] subordinate clauses are not. Despite the island effects, all subordinate clauses with any mood feature are finite in terms of licensing Nominative subject in their clauses except for the infinitival in (54b). If we assume that infinitive clauses are not CPs and therefore do not bear a mood feature, it follows that mood and tense morphology in Hungarian are the manifestations of a finiteness feature that licenses Nominative case. These observations on Hungarian support the proposed theory that finiteness is a mood/Epistemic Modality feature that occurs on both C and the T head. I will depart form Kiss’ (1994) classification of types of mood and argue that there are two mood features relevant for our syntactic issues at hand: feature configurations on various types of clauses and how these configurations can account for certain syntactic problems such as finiteness in terms of Nominative case and the difference between root clauses and subordinate clauses in terms of syntactic and semantic (in)dependency.

6. Inflected Infinitives with Nominative Subjects In this section, I will discuss non-Altaic languages, i.e. European Portuguese Inflected Infinitives, Greek, and Catalan, that have been argued to have Agreement as a parameter of finiteness and show that my claim that agreement is not a parameter of finiteness accounts for facts of these languages as well as Turkic languages.

6.1 European Portuguese (Raposo 1987) One of the most commonly discussed languages where agreement is a parameter of finiteness is European Portuguese because EP has Inflected Infinitives (henceforth IIs) where the subject is in the Nominative and the only overt inflectional morphology in these structures is Agreement.

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(55) European Portuguese Inflected Infininitives (Raposo 1987) Sera difficil [ eles aprovarem a proposta] It will be difficult they to-approve-Agr the proposal’ The major claim of Raposo (1987) that discusses the issue is the following: (56) Agr in its Infl node must be case marked if it is to assign Nominative Case to the subject of its clause. Crucially, only if Infl raises to C where a governor external to the embedded clause may assign case to it. The necessity of Infl to raise C could as well be a reflex of Infl and C bearing the same phi features and/or Infl deleting its phi features against C. Raposo (1987 and later Raposo and Uriagereka (1990) (henceforth R&U 1990) argue that Infl transmits its Nom case licensing property to Agreement. Consider (57a&b) below (from R&U 1990): (57) a. ?*[e] Infl foram considerados [Agr [ os meninos ] inteligentes]. Were considered the children intelligent b. O Luis considera [Agr [ os meninos ] inteligentes]. Luis considers the children intelligent In (57a), nominative case is not licensed, and in (57b), an ECM Acc subject is licensed. Consider that Raposo and Uriagereka (1990) assume that lexical heads do not have specifiers and as such are not barriers for government. This explains the fact that VP is not a barrier. R & U (1990) account for the ungrammaticality of (57a) by arguing that AgrP is a barrier for government and hence the unavailability of Nominative Case. The problem with this analysis is assuming AgrP to be a barrier in (57a) but not in (57b) [as well as (58) below]. If Agr is a case licensing head, and it gets case via transmission from Infl, how come Nominative is possible by this mechanism in (57b) and not in (57a)? (58) below is the structure assumed for (57a&b)? (58)

I’ ei I VP ei considerados AgrP ei NP Agr’ Os meninos ei Agr inteligentes

The external syntactic distribution of IIs is as follows: they occur as complements of epistemic (think, believe, etc) and declarative (say, claim, etc) matrix verbs; never with volitional verbs (wish, want). Note that volitionals are Counterfactuals, and as such belong to a different Mood. Raposo (1987) and R&U (1990) account for this distribution by arguing that epistemic verbs subcategorize for CPs. In these structures

Chapter 3. Finiteness and the relation between Agreement and Nominative Case

T-to-C is obligatory for Agr to be case-governed. If Agr moves to C, it is implausible for AgrP to be a barrier.

6.2 PIC–prepositional infinitival constructions in EU (Raposo 1989) PICs have a different distribution than IIs; in fact, they are in complementary distribution with IIs: (59) a.

PICs do not occur as – a clausal subject in expletives – a complement to factive and epistemic/declarative verbs b. PICs occur – in isolation (example 60) – in subject position (example 61) – as a complement of volitional predicates (example 62)

(60) Os meninos a fumarem! Isso e um horror. The children Prep smoking! That’s awful. (61) Os meninos The children (62) Eu I

quero want

a fumarem Prep smoking

e is

[os meninos a the children Prep

um a

espectaculo sight

horrivel. awful.

trabalharem ja] working now.

(63) illutrates a PIC in the local context of a matrix transitive verb is an ECM: (63) Eu I

vi-osi saw

[eci them

a Prep

trabalhar(em)] working

Interestingly, the agreement morpheme is given as optional just like the Turkish ECM in Dialect A. Raposo (1989) clearly states that it cannot be Agr licensing case to the subject in (63); it identifies an empty category controlled by the lexical subject as the subject of the clause. The only empty category to be controlled from a higher clause is a PRO. The problem with this account is that, considering that Agr is possible in this structure, how come PRO is licensed? Another theoretical issue is that we do not know what happens to Nominative Case feature. In Chomsky (2000), an uninterpretable case feature would cause the derivation to crash if it is not deleted, and its deletion is possible by an agree relation of the head with a DP that bears the same feature. Licensing properties of pro in fact is a problem that needs to be investigated within the recent framework. We would have to assume that null pro also bears features and allows a deletion of the uninterpretable feature of the head. Another property of PICs in EP is the following: (64) pro is impossible within PIC, possible within II a. * Eu vi [ pro a roubar(em) o automovel]. I saw pro Prep stealing the car

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b. Eu vi [ pro roubarem o automovel]. I saw pro to-steal-Agr the car Raposo (1989) accounts for the contrast in (64) by arguing that pro must be licensed and governed by Agr; Agr does not govern the subject of PIC because of the preposition. Note that Agr and the infinitival verb are available in both constructions. Raposo and Uriagereka (1990) argue that AgrP is a barrier in (65a) for government of Infl on the Subject NP whereas Infl can assign Nom case in (65b): (65) a. ?*Ontem em Beirut ficaram [os soldados feridos]. Yesterday in Beirut became the soldiers wounded b. Ontem em Beirut ficaram [os soldados sem armas] Yesterday in Beirut became the soldiers without guns The structure in (66) illustrates the example in (65b): (66)

I’ ei I VP ei V PP ficaram ei NP P’ [esses soldados] ei P NP g g sem armas On the other hand, the occurrence of a preposition is regarded as a barrier to account for the ungrammaticality in (65a) above. The contradiction is that the preposition in the examples (61-63), however, is not regarded as a barrier. Putting aside the problems with the Agreement-based analysis of Raposo (1987) and R&U (1990), I argue that the proposed analysis can account for European Portuguese facts as well as the Turkic facts. Empirical evidence from Catalan and French further support the proposed analysis of nominative case.

6.3 Catalan [–Indicative] [–T/+Agr] In Catalan (Picallo 1984, cited by Iatridou 1993) there is a [–T/+Agr] combination in the subjunctive, where +Agr is argued to be the Nominative licenser: (67) vols que els nens/ec want/2sg that the children/NOM ‘You want that the children eat potatoes’

mengin eat

patates potatoes

Chapter 3. Finiteness and the relation between Agreement and Nominative Case

The embedded clause with the nominative subject is not only [+mood], therefore [+NOM] in the C domain but also [+modal] by virtue of occurring within the modal domain of the higher verb ‘want,’ therefore [+Modal] in the T domain. There is no need to resort to the presence of agreement morphology to account for Nominative licensing.

6.4 French (Reuland 1983, Vinet 1985, Mensching 2000) In the French sentence in (68), although no overt Agreement, Reuland (1983) assumes it is responsible for Nominative case. (68) [La France batter le Brésil], ce serait inconceivable The France to-beat the Brazil, this would-be inconceivable ‘France beating Brazil would really be inconceivable.’ (Reuland 1983) Note that there is subjunctive mood marked with the ‘serait’ as well as the epistemic modal evident from the possibility reading. (69) Jean sortir sa vielle Plymouth, là, on aurait du fun. J. to-take-out his old P. there one would have of the fun ‘If Jean took out his old Plymouth, we would really have some fun.’ (Vinet 1985) An observation made by Vinet (1985) is that constructions such as (69) always have a conditional meaning. Conditionals license nominative cross-linguistically. The interdependency of the subjunctive and modality (i.e. the requirement of a modal in English consequent clauses), suggests the Nominative licensing Mood + modality feature in conditionals. A brief summary of the languages discussed is given in table (70): (70) Table of languages where Mood/Modality correlate with Nominative subject Language-Nominative Subject Constructions

Mood

Modality

Turkish

+

+

English - subjunctives, modals

+

+

Catalan - Inflected Infinitives

+

+

French - Inflected Infinitives

+

+

Classical Arabic

+

?

Hungarian

+

+

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7.

The prediction of the proposed analysis: The ECM Hypothesis

The prediction of the proposed analysis, namely the ECM Hypothesis, is stated in (71) below: (71) The ECM Hypothesis Structures that lack either one of the components of nominative case/ finiteness, i.e. agreement marking mood, as well as tense/epistemic modality, are ECMs. Their subject case is exceptionally case marked by a clause external functional head. Otherwise they are finite and bear nominative subjects. Turkish complement clauses and relative clauses (reduced prerelatives) are ECM clauses according to this hypothesis. They lack any functional category higher than Aspect and these AspPs are headed by a DP. Because the external functional head is a nominal one, their subjects bear genitive case (Aygen 2002a/4b, among others): (72) a.

Hasan-in sen-i sev-dig-i-ni Hasan-Gen you-Acc love-Asp-3sg ‘I know that Hasan loves you.’ b. Hasan-in sev-dig-i yemek Hasan-Gen love-Asp-3sg food ‘the food that Hasan loves’

bil-iyor-um. know-Prog-1sg

Evidence from other languages indicates that the ECM Hypothesis holds crosslinguistically.

7.1 Further languages where the ECM Hypothesis is attested: Greek, European Portuguese, and English The ECM Hypothesis is attested in Greek. European Portuguese and English ECM constructions. Iatridou (1993) discusses Agr as a possible case licenser in Greek and shows that it is not possible.26 Consider (73) and (74) below: (73) Greek-ACC subject vlepo to Kosta na see DET Kosta/ACC ‘I see Kostas fry fish (74) Greek-NOM subject elpizo o Kostas na hope DET Kostas/NOM ‘I hope Kostas fries fish’

(Iatridou 1993) tiganizi fries

psaria fish (Iatridou 1993)

tiganizi fries

psaria fish

If Kostas were replaced by ta pedhia/ the children, the embedded verb would bear

Chapter 3. Finiteness and the relation between Agreement and Nominative Case

3rd person plural form tiganizun, and this holds for both (73) and (74). This casts doubt on the possibility that [+Agr] is a case licenser. Based on the ungrammaticality of insertion of a past tense morpheme to (73&74) Iatridou (1993) argues that [+T] is a case licenser (75&76): (75) * idha/vlepo ton Kosta na tighanize psaria (I) saw/see Kosta/ACC fried fish (76) elpizo o Kostas na tiganise psaria hope Kostas/NOM fried/3sg/past fish ‘I hope Kostas fried fish’ Note that the presence of past tense is not the only parameter that is different in (76): One could argue that the matrix verb ‘hope’ is one that introduces possible worlds, that is, one that creates a modal context for the Nominative to be licensed. The ungrammaticality of (75) with past tense could be accounted for the unavailability of tense, i.e. a form of epistemic modality in Greek ECM complements. I consider [+T] of Iatridou (1993) to be an epistemic modality feature in Greek, based on this argument on restricted data. In European Portuguese, we observe that [–indicative] subordinate contexts are non-finite unless there is a modal: nominative subject PICs occur as root clauses and complements of volitional predicates, two environments where the presence of mood is required: [± indicative] in root clauses and [+indicative] in subordinate ones.27 In [–Indicative] clauses, the structure is non-finite and becomes an ECM complement. (77) Eu I

vi-osi saw

[eci them

a Prep

trabalhar(em)] working

(78) Eu I

quero want

[os the

meninos children

a Prep

trabalharem working

ja] now.

I would like to present two observations on the contrastive data in (77) and (78): the accusative subject, i.e. ECM complement clause, occurs within the domain of a non-modal matrix verb, ‘see,’ whereas the nominative subject complement clause in (78) is within the domain of a modal verb, ‘want.’ The contrast in (77) and (78) is similar to the Modern Greek data in (75) and (76) above because the same contrast is discussed with the same ECM predicates. The contrast between (77) and (78) is predicted by the ECM Hypothesis: The contrast is similar to the dialect in which agreement is optional in Turkish. The example in (77) lacks the modal context provided by the verb ‘want’ in (78), hence the ECM in (77). The optionality of Agr in (77) is similar to Turkish ECMs, and they may mark optionality of mood. The syntactic distribution of PICs in European Portuguese indicate that they are possible within a [–Indicative/+ Conditional/Subjunctive] Mood, that is, in structures where C is marked [−mood] and cannot license Nominative subject; hence, they become ECM constructions. I-to-C is not triggered because C does not have a [+mood] agreement feature. It is also possible, as has been proposed before, that

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ECMs do not have a CP layer at all. Therefore, the presence of agreement morphology need not be directly related to subject case licensing in either IIs or PICs. As for English, no Modal morpheme is allowed, although they are selected by verbs introducing possible worlds (i.e. believe); it is not possible to detect the present or absence of Mood in English ECMs because there is no agreement allowed in infinitives. It is quite safe to say it is non-Mood until we find a way to test it. As may be observed in (79c), let alone epistemic modality, deontic modality is not allowed within the ECM: (79) a. I consider/assume him to be/ to have been absent b. I consider/assume him to be/ to have been going to the party. c. * I consider/assume him to have to be absent/to be able to go to the party. There is also a category of ECM selecting verbs that provide an epistemic modal domain in English, i.e. believe. In this type of verbs, lack of agreement/mood would account for the lack of Nominative case. It is not easy to determine whether English ECM clauses are specified both for mood and epistemic modality. Consider the two classes of ECM predicates in English in (80): (80) Two classes of ECM predicates in English: a. believe-class (consider, assume) I believe this hypothesis to be true. b. want- class (wish, desire, hate) I hope for Robin to come early. Believe-class ECM predicates attribute epistemic statements as prepositional attitudes [+epistemic]:28 (81) I believe this axiom to be necessarily true. I consider him to possibly be dangerous. They are incompatible with for: (82) a. I believe/assume/consider (*for) John to be dangerous. b. the belief/assumption [*for John to be dangerous]/ [that John is dangerous] Want-class ECM predicates, on the other hand, allow for: (83) I wish for John to be happy. Crucially, they allow for only in the absence of a punctual reading aspect (Pesetsky 1992): (84) [Pesetsky’s (191-3)] a. John would hate/must hate for his students to smoke in class.

Chapter 3. Finiteness and the relation between Agreement and Nominative Case

b. John always hates for his students to smoke in class. c. * John hated for his students to smoke in class. (85) a. John always hated for his students to smoke in class. b. * John hated for his students to smoke in class yesterday. Note that (85a) is grammatical as a generic past, e.g. in a eulogy; out if it is a proposition about John’s attitude towards an actual event. Pesetsky (1992) notes that want-class verbs and for co-occur with modals or generic operators: this condition is irrealis mood that is a lexical property of want-class verbs. Based on these arguments we can argue that there are two types of ECMs in English, neither of which is specified both for mood and epistemic modality, which is predicted by the proposed analysis: (86) a. believe-class [epistemic] not specified for mood. b. want-class [+mood]=irrealis not for [epistemic] at least A brief summary of the languages mentioned in terms of their mood/modality features in ECM constructions are given in Table (87): (87) Mood and modality in ECMs Language

Mood

Modality

Turkish

±

−

English

−

− ‘want’; + ‘believe’

European Portuguese

±

−

Greek

+

−

8. Theoretical implications and conclusions The major theoretical implication of this research is a redefinition of “finiteness” as nominative case and an opaque syntactic domain. It provides an alternative account for nominative case licensing that excludes the Tense vs. Agreement based parametrization among various constructions inter-/intra- languages. It also shows that the presence of nominative case licensing features create a CP phase. This analysis provides a uniform account of Nominative Case in both declarative and subjunctive clauses in both English-type languages and Turkish-type languages. Including C [Mood] as well as the T [Modality/Tense] system into the Nominative licensing operations simplifies the theory for languages where T-to-C (Pesetsky and Torrego 2001) or Agr-to-C (Raposo 1987, 1989) is argued to be the syntactic operation. For Turkic languages where there is no T-to-C, licensing is an Agree operation. The parametric variation among languages consists of the morphological manifestation of these features and the syntactic mechanism involved to value unvalued fea-

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tures and delete uninterpretable ones. In Turkic languages, the C domain is manifested by agreement morphology that marks mood. An alternative would be an overt complementizer at C. The syntactic mechanism is T-to-C in English and Agree in Turkic. With the movement of the subject DP to Spec TP, the phi features on T in English or the verbal complex [V+Asp+T] in Turkic get valued. C enters an Agree relation with the valued T and deletes its phi features. To conclude, in this article, I have accounted for Turkic facts and the tense-less English structures as well as the inflected infinitives in Indo-European languages. I have provided a unified account of finiteness and nominative case licensing with the attested prediction of the analysis that the lack of either C or T component of the relevant features, the structures become ECMs.

Notes 1. I use “licensed” as a general terms for any syntactic process, e.g. checking/deletion, etc, involved in case assignment. 2. The proposed analysis of Nominative case licensing suggests that these dialectal differences are not directly relevant to the topic, contrary to the previous analyses of ECM (work cited above). My proposed analysis of agreement morphology is a manifestation and a marker of the presence and absence of mood in ECMs. Based on my argument that ECMs lack the I/T component of finiteness feature – Epistemic Modality, presence or absence of the other component on C – mood marked with agreement – does not alter the capacity of the clause to license nominative case. Consequently, the proposed analysis does not hinge on these dialectal differences, and accounts for all of them. 3. The grammaticality judgements on Turkish data in this research are not solely based on the judgements of the author. They reflect the responses of seventeen non-linguists who are native speakers of Turkish living in Turkey. Grammaticality judgements for examples from other Turkic languages belong to the informants of the author during a fieldwork trip to Central Asia. 4. Note that when the Split-Infl hypothesis of Pollock (1989) was discussed on Turkish facts, it was argued that Epistemic Modality and Tense is a hybrid functional head (Aygen-Tosun 1998, 2000, following Georgi and Pianesi 1998) in Turkish. Furthermore, Lyons (1977) defines Tense as a specific kind of Modality. In his approach, present, past and future are defined in terms of [± factivity] and [± remoteness]. Remoteness is relative to the moment of utterance: (a) Tense as a kind of Modality (Lyons 1977) (i) Present is a product of factivity and non-remoteness. (ii) Past is a product of factivity and remoteness. (iii) Future is a product of non-factivity and non-remoteness. The major advantage of this approach is that it captures the difference in the epistemic status of past and future. Past can be True or False, whereas Future can be neither. Propositions with a factivity property can have a truth-conditional value; on the other hand, the so-called future statements, bearing no factivity do not have a truth-conditional value.

Chapter 3. Finiteness and the relation between Agreement and Nominative Case

Considering that tense logic is developed out of modal logic, it is not surprising to find languages where this congruency relation between modality and tense explicit in some languages. For instance, tense logic & modal logic are indistinguishable in most Native American Languages. Hockett (1958) and Lyons (1977) note that what is described as tense is in fact epistemic modality in Hopi. Therefore, I will adopt Lyons (1977) and include counterfactual structures as the fourth kind of Epistemic Modality with the features [+remote] and [−factive]. This approach finds a natural explanation under the widely accepted distinction between non-counterfactual (or non-factual) and counterfactual conditionals (Iatridou 2000, Aygen 2003c) (b) Kinds of Modality and the corresponding conventional terms of “tense’ and conditionals Epistemic Modality wo Factivity

Non-Factivity

ru

ru

[+Rem] Past Present

[−Rem] [+Rem] Cfs Fut

[−Rem]

Note that in Hungarian, tense and mood are in complementary distribution (Kiss 1994). Kiss (1994) argues that tense and mood are alternative realizations of the same abstract Tense head, the semantic function of which is to anchor a proposition in some of the possible worlds. Her approach shares the insight of the proposed theory in that mood, epistemic modality and tense are involved in the head we call TP. 5. Previous syntactic accounts (Lees op cit, Kornfilt 1984, and relevant subsequent work on Turkish linguistics cited elsewhere in this research) have either posited auxiliary and copular verbs to account for the distinctions or have restricted their analysis to indicative clauses only. My proposed classification might seem radical, though in reality it is not. The comprehensive work of Lees (1960, 1965, 1968) and Deny (1921) categorizing agreement paradigms according to mood has been overlooked until Sezer (2002) and Aygen (2002a/4b). 6. Aygen (2002a/2004b) on further data and arguments on Agreement in Tuvan, Khakas, Altay and Kazakh. See also Sezer (1981). 7. In most dialects of Modern Turkish outside Istanbul, substantives use this paradigm in verbal indicative clauses as well: (i) Biz eyi-yik We fine-1pl ‘We’re fine’ 8. See footnote (7) above. In those dialects, there is no separate paradigm for substantives. Such constructions belong to Indicative Mood. 9. In Root Clauses, the traditional, informal notion of ‘certainty’, calls for the indicative and breaks down to two components: a prototypically factive modal context and a modal force of necessity. These two are within the core use of indicatives in non-embedded contexts (Portner 1999). Note that this classification is relevant for Turkic languages and may vary parametrically. 10. Rizzi’s (1997) Finite Phrase at the lowest projection of the split CP that expresses a specification of finiteness as mood distinction, nominative case and tense.

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Gülşat Aygen 11. The connection between mood and modality in dynamic semantics (Kamp 1981, Heim 1982): (i) A clause has to be interpreted with respect to a parameter, a modal accessibility relation R, which encodes the force of the clause. (ii) A mood establishes which types of relations are appropriate for a clause. (iii) Because of the modal nature of the accessibility relation, there is a tight connection between mood and modality. 12. The syntactic position of the QP changes the focus of the sentence. 13. See Aygen (2002b/2004) for an alternative analysis that accounts for non-bridge verbs like mutter that are not accounted for by P&T (2002)’s analysis. 14. Crucially, Imperative refers not only to the mood but particularly to the illocutionary force of the proposition that does not necessitate the presence of modality, whereas other mood categories (subjunctive, declarative, etc) are semantically dependent on the presence of modality (Kamp 1981, Heim 1982). This unique property of the Imperative allows a structure with no modality, regardless of the presence of a [+Mood] agreement feature; hence the Acc-subject. 15. Diachronic evidence (Miller 2002) also proposes that in a variety of Indo-European languages, such as Portuguese, Hungarian, Welsh, Modern Greek, West Greenlandic, among others, to argue that mood and agreement morphology is part of what makes a clause finite. 16. English present subjunctives have not been thoroughly studied. The work that discusses these constructions has not presented a uniform account. Emonds (1976) and Culicover (1976) argue that subjunctive lacks tense or Aux and is a non-finite clause. Chierchia (1988) defines it as a special type of clause different from a typical finite or non-finite clause in terms of the featural properties of its INFL. See Hwang (1997) for a discussion and a proposal for Nominative licensing in English present subjunctives. 17. See also Hwang (1977), and also Muysken and van Riemsdijk (1986) for German and Dutch. 18. Frajzyngier (1995) argues that Complementizers constitute a part of the system of modality markers or, more specifically, that they encode epistemic, deontic and other types of modality. 19. See Hwang (1977) for other similarities between tensed clauses and subjunctives. His arguments are based on the distribution of sentential adverbs that require finiteness, as well as the obligatory nature of an overt subject in both tensed clauses and subjunctives. Hwang argues that this approach finds support from Spanish and Rumanian as well. 20. This section relies heavily on Enç (1991) and Pesetsky (1992). Enç (1991) is taken from the excerpts and discussion in Pesetksy (1992) because the work of Enç is inaccessible. Enç (1991) builds on Kratzer (1989) and provides a new account of differences between stage- and individual-level predicates in sentences generally thought to be marked for present tense. 21. Tenses are taken to denote intervals. 22. Kratzer (1989) calls this position a spatio-temporal location. See Kratzer (1989) and Pesetsky op cit. endnote 105. 23. But as Pesetsky shows, the converse is not true: past tense morpheme occurs freely with individual-level predicates; it does not bind an open l-place but modifies the time of the sentence in some other way as in (i): (i) Mary knew French.

Chapter 3. Finiteness and the relation between Agreement and Nominative Case

Secondly, past tense sentences with stage-level predicates may receive a generic interpretation as well. If the generic interpretation arises from an implicit adverb of quantification, then past tense does not bind the l-place so as to leave it free to be bound by adverb, as in (ii): (ii) Mary (generally) sang the Marseillaise. Past [know (Mary, French)]. If and when clauses licensed by adverbs of quantification co-occur with bound l-places in tense-less finite clauses: (iii) a. b.

If Bill says merci, he pronounces it correctly. When a Moroccan speaks French, he speaks it well.

Copular and progressive be, as well as perfective have, count as individual-level predicates even if their complement is stage-level: (iv) a. b. c.

Mary is singing the Marseillaise. Mary is drunk. Mary has sung the Marseillaise.

24. Pesetsky (op cit) proposes a non-finite analogue to should in infinitival complements. 25. Tense might be relevant neither as a feature for Nominative Case licensing, i.e. finiteness, in my terms, nor as a sole binder for a variable responsible for temporal interpretation. I am leaving this potentially promising approach for further work. 26. In languages such as these, where Nominative Case is assumed to be licensed by tense in other environments, i.e. root clauses, we would run into a theoretical problem. In root clauses, we would have either two heads (T and Agr) or two features to be deleted to license Nominative. This is not compatible with a framework where case licensing is in fact a feature matching and deletion process. 27. Discussed in (Rouveret and Vergnaud 1980, Chomsky 1981, Raposo 1987, 1989, and Raposo and Uriageraka 1990). 28. I thank C.-T James Huang, Jon Nissenbaum and Adam Makkai for the data and discussion on English ECMs.

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References Aissen, J. 1974. Verb raising. Linguistic Inquiry 5: 325-366. Aissen, J. 1979. The Syntax of Causative Constructions [Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics] New York NY: Garland. Aygen-Tosun, G. 1998. The Split INFL Hypothesis in Turkish. MA thesis, Bogazici University, Istanbul. Aygen-Tosun, G. 2000. The specifier positions of functional categories in Turkish. In Studies on Turkish and Turkic Languages, C. Kerslake and A. Goksel (eds). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Aygen, G. 2003a. Extractibility and the nominative case feature on tense. In Studies in Turkish Linguistics. A. S. Ozsoy, D. Akar, M. Nakipoglu-Demiralp, E. E. Taylan and A. Koc (eds), 81-94. Istanbul: Bogazici University Press. Aygen, G. 2003b. Epistemic modality and mood as nominative case feature in Turkic languages. Chicago Linguistics Society (CLS). April 2002. University of Chicago, Chicago. Aygen, G. 2003c. T-to-C and overt marking of counterfactuals: Syntactic and semantic implications. In Harvard Working Papers in Linguistics X: 1-18. C. Bowern, (ed.). Aygen, G. 2003d. Extractibility and the nominative case feature on tense. In Studies in Turkish Linguistics, A.S. Ozsoy, D. Akar, M. Nakipoglu-Demiralp, E.E. Taylan and A. Koc, (eds), 81-94. Istanbul: Bogazici University Press. Aygen, G. 2004a. V-to-T-to-C: Extractable subjects and EPP. In Proceedings of the Western Conference on Linguistics (WECOL), Vol. 12, V. Samiian (ed.), 65-80, University of California, Fresno. Aygen, Gülşat. 2002a/4b. Finiteness, Case and Clausal Architecture. PhD Dissertation, Harvard University, Cambridge. (Appeared in) MITOPL v 23, Cambridge, MA. Aygen, G. and C. Quinn. 2005. Finiteness revisited: Mood as a [±] dependent mood feature at C. LSA 2005 Meeting, Oakland, CA. Aygen, G. 2005. Finiteness, case and agreement. In The Proceedings of West Coast Conference in Formal Linguistics (WCCFL), V. Chand, A. Kelleher, A. J. Rodriguez and B. Schmeiser, (eds), 57-70, Somerville MA: Cascadilla. Benmamoun, E. 1992. Functional and Inflectional Morphology: Problems of projection, representation and derivation. PhD dissertation. UCLA. Benmamoun, E. 2000. The Feature Structure of Functional Categories: A comparative study of Arabic dialects. Oxford: OUP. Chierchia, G. 1988. Topics in the Syntax and Semantics of Infinitives and Gerunds. New York NY: Garland. Chomsky, N. 1973. Conditions on transformations. In A Festschrift for Morris Halle, S. Anderson and P. Kiparsky (eds), New York NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Chomsky, N. and H. Lasnik. 1977. Filters and control. Linguistic Inquiry 8: 425-04. Chomsky, N. 1980. Rules and Representations. New York NY: Columbia University Press/Oxford: Blackwell. Chomsky, N. 1981. Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris. Chomsky, N. 2000. Beyond explanatory adequacy. MITWPL 20. Chomsky, N. 2001. Derivation by phase. In Ken Hale: A life in language. M. Kenstowicz (ed). Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 2005. Three factors in language design. Linguistic Inquiry 36(1): 1-22

Chapter 3. Finiteness and the relation between Agreement and Nominative Case

Chomsky, N. Forthcoming. On phases. In Foundational Issues in Linguistics Theory, C.P Otero et al. (eds). Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Chung, S. 1998. The Design of Agreement. Chicago IL: Chicago University Press. Culicover, P. W. 1976. Syntax. New York NY: Academic Press. Deny, J. 1921. Grammaire de la langue torque. Paris: Ernest Leroux. Emonds, J. 1976. A Transformational Approach to English Syntax: Root, structure-preserving and local transformations. New York: Academic Press. Enc, M. 1981. Tense without Scope: An analysis of nouns as indexicals. PhD dissertation, The University of Wisconsin-Madison. Enç, M. 1991. Semantics of specificity. Linguistic Inquiry 22(1): 1-25. Frajzyngier, Z. 1995. A functional theory of complementizers. In Modality in Grammar and Discourse, J. Bybee and S. Fleischman (eds). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. George, L. and J. Kornfilt. 1981. Finiteness and boundedness in Turkish. In Binding and Filtering, F. Heny (ed), 105-128. London: Croom Helm. Georgi, A. and F. Pianesi. 1998. Tense and Aspect: From semantics to morpho-syntax. Oxford: OUP. Heim, I. 1982. The Semantics of Definite and Indefinite Noun Phrases. PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Hiraiwa, K. 2001. On nominative-genitive conversion. In A Few from Building 39, O. Matshusanksy and E. Guerzoni (eds.), MITWPL 39: 66-123. Hockett, C. 1958. A Course in Modern Linguistics. New York NY: MacMillan. Hwang, K. 1997. Nominative and Default Case Checking in Minimalist Syntax. PhD Dissertation, University of Washington. Iatridou, S. 2000. The grammatical ingredients of counterfactuality. Linguistic Inquiry 31(2): 231270. Iatridou, S. 1993. About Agr(P). Linguistic Inquiry 21(4): 551-577. Kamp. H. 1981. A theory of truth and semantic interpretation, In Formal Methods in the Study of Language, J Groenendjik, T. Janssen and M. Stokhof (eds), 277-322. Kiss, Katalin E. 1994. Sentence structure and word order. In, The Syntactic Structure of Hungarian [Syntax and Semantics 27], F. Kiefer and E. Katalin Kiss (eds). New York NY: Academic Press. Kornfilt, J. 2002. Functional projections and their subjects in Turkish clauses. In The Verb in Turkish, E. Taylan, (ed.), 1-45. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Kornfilt, J. 1997, Turkish. London: Routledge. Kornfilt, J. 1984. Case Marking, Agreement and Empty Categories in Turkish. PhD dissertation, Harvard University. Kornfilt, J. 1977. A note on subject raising in Turkish. Linguistic Inquiry 8: 736-742. Kratzer, A. 1989. Scope or pseudo scope? Are there wide scope indefinites? In Events in grammar, S. Rothstein (ed.), 163-96. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Kural, M. 1993.V-TO(-I-TO)-C in Turkish. UCLA Occasional Papers in Linguistics 11. F. Beghelli and M. Kural (eds). Lees, R. B. 1960. The Grammar of English Nominalizations. The Hague: Mouton. Lees, R. B. 1965. Turkish nominalization and a problem of ellipsis. Foundation of Language 1(2): 112-121. Lees, R. B. 1968. The Grammar of English Nominalizations. The Hague: Mouton. Lyons, J. 1977. Semantics. Cambridge: CUP.

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Mensching, G. 2000. Infinitive Constructions with Specified Subjects: A syntactic analysis of the Romance languages. Oxford: OUP. Miller, G. 2002. Nonfinite Structures in Theory and Change. Oxford: OUP. Miyagawa, S. 2004. On the EPP. MITWPL, M. McGinnis and N. Richards (eds). Moore, J. 1998. Turkish copy-raising and A-chain locality. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 16: 149-189. Mulder, J. 1976. Raising in Turkish. In Proceedings of the Second Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, C. Cogen, (ed), 298-307. San Diego CA: UCSD. Muysken, P. and H.C van Riemsdijk. 1986. Features and Projections. Dortrecht: Foris. Pesetsky, D. and E. Torrego. 2001. Tense to C: Causes and consequences. In Ken Hale: A life in language, M. Kenstowicz (ed.), 355-426. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Pesetsky, David. 1992. Zero syntax part II: Infinitival complementation. [http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/pesetsky/infins.pdf] Pollock, J.-I. 1989. Verb movement, universal grammar and the structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry 20: 365-424. Portner, P. 1999. The semantics of mood. GLOT International 4: 3-9. Pullum, G. K. 1975. On a nonargument for the cycle in Turkish. Linguistic Inquiry 6: 494-501. Raposo, E. 1987. Case theory and Infl-to-Comp: The inflected infinitive in European Portuguese. Linguistic Inquiry 18: 85-109. Raposo, E. 1989. Prepositional infinitival constructions in European Portuguese. In The Null Subject Parameter, O. Jaeggli and K. Safir (ed.), 277-305. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Raposo, E and J. Uriagereka. 1990. Long-distance case assignment. Linguistic Inquiry 21(4): 505537. Reuland E. 1983. Governing –ing. Linguistic Inquiry 14(1): 101-136. Rizzi, L. 1997. The fine structure of the left-periphery. In Elements of Grammar: Handbook of generative syntax, L. Haegeman (ed.), 287-331. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Rouveret A. and J.R. Vergnaud 1980. Specifying reference to the subject. Linguistic Inquiry 11(1): 197-202. Sezer, E. 2002. Finite inflection in Turkish. In The Verb in Turkish, E. Taylan (ed.), 1-45. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Sezer, E. 1991. Issues in Turkish Syntax. PhD dissertation, Harvard University. Stowell, T. 1982. The tense of infinitives. Linguistic Inquiry 13. Vinet, M. 1985. Lexical subjects in French infinitives. In Selected papers from the XIIIth Linguistic Symposium on Romance, L. D. King and C.A. Maley (eds), 407. T. Yarbay-Duman, G. Aygen, N. Ozgirgin and R. Bastiaanse. 2005. Object scrambling and finiteness in Turkish agrammatic production. Talk given at Science of Aphasia VI, Helsinki, August 27. Zidani-Eroğlu, L. 1997. Exceptionally case-marked NPs as matrix objects. Linguistic Inquiry 28(2).

chapter 

Case and agreement with genitive of quantification in Russian* Željko Bošković University of Connecticut

The paper examines case and agreement with Russian genitive of quantification, which is assigned within numeral NPs. I show that the central properties of Russian numeral NPs in which genitive of quantification is assigned (GQ NPs), including the optionality of agreement with GQ subjects and the impossibility of agreement with GQ subjects involving approximative inversion, can be accounted for while keeping the categorial status of GQ NPs constant, contrary to the standard analysis, where agreeing and non-agreeing GQ subjects are assumed to differ in their categorial status. The source of the optionality of agreement with GQ subjects is located in the numeral’s case properties. I also show that several rather complex case and agreement paradigms in Russian can be accounted for while maintaining the hypotheses that Russian morphological case is a direct reflection of abstract Case and that Russian morphological agreement is a direct reflection of abstract agree(ment), which provides evidence for these hypotheses.

1.

Introduction

The paper examines one of the thorniest issues of Russian morphosyntax, namely case and agreement with genitive of quantification (GQ). GQ is the term used to refer to the genitive case higher numerals in Russian assign to the noun that follows it in structural case contexts, GQ assignment being blocked in inherent case contexts. Example (1) illustrates GQ. The example illustrates another interesting property of Russian GQ NPs: when they function as subjects, they only optionally agree with the verb. (1) Pjat’ devušek rabotali/rabotalo tam. five girls(gen) worked(pl)/(sg) there The goal of the paper is to examine structure and case/agreement properties of Russian numeral NPs. To account for the difference between inherent and structural case in the context of GQ, I will appeal to θ-theory and economy. Regarding the optionality of agreement with GQ subjects I will locate its source in the numeral’s case properties,

100 Željko Bošković

which will enable me to keep the categorial status of GQ subjects constant, contrary to the standard analysis, where agreeing and non-agreeing subjects are assumed to differ in categorial status. I will also explore consequences of my analysis for theories of agreement and case. In section 2, I examine case, and in section 3, I turn to agreement. Section 4 is the conclusion.1

2. Case Examples in (2)-(4) show what happens when a numeral NP occurs in a structural case context in Russian. (Since the numeral one never assigns GQ and always agrees in case with the following noun, I illustrate only the case agreeing, non-GQ option for this numeral.) (2) Ivan kupil odnu mašinu. Ivan bought one(acc) car(acc) (3) Ivan kupil pjat’ Ivan bought five

mašin. cars(gen)

(4) * Ivan kupil pjat’ Ivan bought five

mašiny. cars(acc)

With one, both the numeral (Q) and the noun receive their case from the verb. However, with higher numerals like five, the noun receives genitive, referred to as GQ.2 This pattern is traditionally interpreted as indicating that only higher numerals have the ability to assign GQ. As for inherent case contexts, when a numeral NP occurs as an object of an inherent case assigning verb, both the noun and the numeral (one as well as higher numerals) bear the inherent case in question. (5) Ivan Ivan (6) Ivan Ivan (7) * Ivan Ivan

vladeet owns vladeet owns vladeet owns

odnoj one(instr) pjat’ju five(instr) pjat’ five

fabrikoj. factory(instr) fabrikami. factories(instr) fabrik. factories(gen)

The descriptive generalization is that GQ overrides structural ((3)-(4)), but not inherent case ((6)-(7)). It is well-known that there is a VP/PP parallelism in this respect, accusative assigning Ps patterning with accusative assigning Vs, and non-accusative Ps with non-accusative Vs. (8) čerez odnu minutu / in one(acc) minute(acc) /

pjat’ five

(9) o odnoj knige about one(loc) book(loc)

pjati knigax five(loc) books(loc)

/ /

minut minutes(gen)

Chapter 4. Case and agreement with genitive of quantification in Russian

There are many analyses of GQ. For space reasons I will discuss here only Franks (1994), which builds on the insights of Babby (1987) (on Russian GQ, see also Babby 1980, 1984, 1985, 1986, Bailyn 2003, Bošković in press, Corbett 1979, 1983, Franks 1995, 2003, in press, Franks and Pereltsvaig 2004, Halle 1994, Neidle 1988, Pesetsky 1982, Rakhlin 2003, and Rappaport 2001, among others). Franks takes Russian morphological case to be a reflex of abstract case. He assumes Chomsky’s (1986) theory of the latter, on which structural case is assigned at SS and inherent case at DS, and proposes GQ is a structural case in Russian. In (3)-(4), both the V and Q could assign case to books at SS. The Q assigns its case because it is closer (i.e. it is a closer Case-assigning governor) to books.3 As for (6)-(7), here the V assigns its inherent instrumental at DS, before the case-assigning ability of the Q is activated. Hence, factory bears instrumental. Franks’s analysis elegantly captures the above paradigm. However, it faces several theoretical problems. One obvious problem concerns its reliance on DS/SS, given Chomsky’s (1995) arguments that these two levels should be eliminated. In the next section I will present a modification of Franks’s analysis which does not require appealing to DS/SS (see also fn. 3). The analysis will still be in line with Franks’s position that morphological case reflects abstract Case, which makes Russian, and more generally Slavic, a great tool for studying abstract Case. I will also follow Franks in assuming that locality is responsible for GQ in (3). In other words, the Q rather than the V assigns case to the following noun because it is closer to it. Before discussing how this locality effect exactly works, let us consider why the locality effect is apparently voided in inherent case context.

2.1 Genitive of quantification in inherent case contexts Recall that Franks (1994) accounts for the overriding effect of inherent case on GQ by adopting Chomsky’s theory of inherent case, which is crucially based on assuming DS, a theoretically problematic assumption. I will therefore adopt a modification of Franks’s account of the overriding effect of inherent case which will also be based on Chomsky’s (1986) approach to inherent case, but will not require appealing to DS. Following this approach to inherent case, I assume a verb that assigns inherent case will θ-mark its object iff it assigns it the inherent case in question. The GQ derivation from (7) then cannot converge because the inherent case-assigning V will fail to θmark its object. Since economy of derivation compares only convergent derivations (see Chomsky 1993), the fact that case-licensing of factory is more economical in (7), where factory is case-licensed by the Q, than in (6), where it is case-licensed by the verb (more precisely, case-licensing of factory requires shorter movement in (7) than in (6), see section 2.2.) is irrelevant: the only available option is the one on which the verb assigns instrumental case to its object, i.e. (6). This option is therefore forced. The overriding effect of inherent case is thus accounted for without appealing to DS/SS. In the next section I turn to the overriding effect of GQ on structural case. I will also address the issue of the structural representation of numeral NPs in Russian.

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102 Željko Bošković

2.2 Genitive of quantification in structural case contexts Let us now consider more closely the claim that the Q rather than the V assigns case to the following N in (3)-(4) because it is closer to it. To see how the locality analysis works we will need to become more precise about the structure of the constructions under consideration.4 It is well-known that one in examples like (2) and higher numerals in inherent case contexts like (6) (that is, all non-GQ assigning numerals) are morphologically similar to adjectives, agreeing with the following noun in case and φ-features (gender and number). To represent this agreement, I adopt one of the traditional analyses of adjectives for such numerals, namely, I assume that they are APs located in SpecNP, undergoing spec-head agreement (SHA) with the noun.5 (10) [NP AP [N’ N]]

AP pattern

For GQ assigning numerals, the simplest analysis seems to be to assume that they project a QP taking NP as their complement, which they case-mark, on a par with case-assigning verbs and prepositions. (11) [QP [Q’ Q NP]]

QP pattern

Franks (1994), however, argues that this analysis has to be modified to account for case properties of numeral NPs occurring in the complement of the distributor po. Po is a preposition whose complement is distributed over some individuated argument. (12) Každyj učenik polučil po odnomu rublju. each student received distributor one(dat) ruble(dat) Franks argues that po assigns structural dative, which I also assume. With one, both the numeral and the N bear dative. As for five, both options in (13) are acceptable, while (14) is not. (13) po dist. (14) * po dist.

pjat’/pjati five/five(dat) pjati five(dat)

rublej rubles(gen) rubljam rubles(dat)

On the (somewhat archaic) dative option, five gets case from po. As for the pjat’ option, Franks (1994) argues pjat’ is a caseless form here since no case but dative can be assigned to it in this context. More precisely, being inside a PP, a PP-external case assigner cannot case-license it since outside case licensing relations quite generally cannot penetrate into a PP. On the pjat’ option, (13) can be analyzed on a par with (3) (see (11)). The pjati option, however, raises an interesting problem. Assuming the same element cannot at the same time assign case and be assigned case, as Stowell (1981) argues,6 the dative option in (13) provides evidence that the Q does not itself assign GQ. Rather, Franks argues for the structure in (15), where po case-marks (in an ECM

Chapter 4. Case and agreement with genitive of quantification in Russian 103

configuration) five, with a null head assigning GQ. (15) [PP [P’ Po [QP pjati(dat) [Q’ e NP]]]] Adapting this proposal to the structures in (10) and (11), we get the following structures for the AP and the QP option respectively (I refer to the null, GQ assigning head as F for ease of exposition, leaving its precise nature open). (16) [PP [P’ Po [FP QP [F’ F NP]]]]

QP pattern (i.e. GQ pattern)

(17) [PP [P’ Po [FP [F’ F [NP AP [N’ NP]]]]

AP pattern (i.e. case-agreeing pattern)

On the QP pattern, instantiated by (13), the numeral is located in SpecFP, with F assigning case to the NP. As before, on the AP option, instantiated by (14), the numeral is located in SpecNP, undergoing SHA with the N. For the sake of uniformity, I propose that FP is always present on both the QP and the AP option.7 I furthermore propose that, similar to V (V+v for Chomsky 1995), F assigns case to its complement only if it has a specifier. In other words, I am extending the independently needed mechanism responsible for Burzio’s generalization to F.8 I furthermore assume that the feature that determines whether a numeral is adjectival or not is not present in the numeration (see Bošković 1997 for an analysis where some elements (i.e. functional elements) are not present in the numeration). A consequence of the assumption is that since they have the same numeration (and do not cause a truth-conditional difference), (16) and (17) “compete” with respect to economy of derivation.9 Let us then consider how case-licensing will proceed in the structures in question. We have several possibilities: First, case-licensing will be either covert or overt. If the former, the NP will either undergo feature movement to F in (16)10 and po in (17), as in Chomsky’s (1995) system, or covert phrasal movement, as in Chomsky’s (1993) system (see below for discussion of its landing site), or undergo Agree with the case assigners without actual movement, as in Chomsky’s (2000) system. If caselicensing movement is overt, the NP in (16) would undergo overt phrasal movement to (additional) SpecFP or to the Spec of an AgrP immediately dominating FP (if AgrPs are not eliminated from the grammar). As for (17), under the overt movement analysis, the NP would move to either SpecPP or the Spec of an AgrP dominating PP (AgrpP).11 I will simply assume that case-licensing in the examples under consideration takes place through feature movement. The reader should, however, bear in mind that the gist of the analysis to be given can be maintained under the alternative accounts summarized above. Recall that under the Move F analysis, the NP in (16)(17) undergoes feature movement to its case assigner. The non-GQ structure in (17), where the NP is case-licensed by po, will then have the derivation in (19), with the NP undergoing Move F to po. On the other hand, the GQ structure in (16), where the NP is case-licensed by F, will have the derivation in (18), with the NP undergoing feature movement to F.

104 Željko Bošković

(18) [PP [P’ Po [FP QP [F’ F NP]]]]

QP pattern

(19) [PP [P’ Po [FP [F’ F [NP AP [N’ N]]]]

AP pattern

Obviously, the case licensing movement of the NP is shorter on the QP derivation than on the AP derivation. I therefore suggest that given economy of derivation, which requires every movement to be as short as possible, the availability of the former blocks the latter. In other words, the QP (i.e. GQ) pattern is forced in structural case contexts.12 To sum up, since case licensing is more economical on the QP than on the AP option, everything else being equal the QP (i.e. GQ) option is preferred, hence the ungrammaticality of (14). Note that, as in Franks’s analysis, under the current analysis pjati is assigned dative by po, while pjat’ is a caseless form in (13). This will become important in section 3, where I argue that pjat’ is ambiguous between a syncretic nominative/accusative form (which is its standard analysis; note that it morphologically fits the paradigm as a nominative/accusative form) and a caseless form. An important distinction between the current and Franks’s analysis in light of the discussion in section 3 is that under the current analysis, the object of po has the same categorial status on both the dative and the caseless option in (13). For Franks, the numeral is always in the Spec of a null Q, the QP being dominated by a DP only on the pjat’ option. Due to the presence of the DP the numeral is too deeply embedded within the complement of po to be case licensed by it. On the dative option, the QP is not dominated by a DP, as a result of which the numeral is located in the Spec of the complement of po, a familiar ECM configuration. Positing a categorial distinction between the pjati and pjat’ options to account for (13) is actually unnecessary. Franks assumes that po only optionally assigns dative, which suffices to account for the two options in (13). The FP analysis can be easily extended to the VP ((3)-(4)) and the PP case ((8)(9)). As in the po-construction discussed above, the AP option is less economical than the QP option (i.e. it requires longer movement) in the VP/PP contexts. The parallelism between po constructions and their VP/PP counterparts is in fact complete if we assume that pjat’ is ambiguous between a caseless form and a syncretic nominative/accusative form. Pjat’ in (3) and (8) can then be either a caseless form or an accusative form, on a par with the two options in (13). Recall also that the QP option is ruled out in inherent case environments like (6)-(7) and (9) for θ-theoretic reasons, as discussed earlier.13 To sum up the discussion so far, I have presented an account of the GQ paradigm in Russian that, in contrast to Franks’s (1994) analysis, does not require appealing to DS/SS and adopting case assignment (instead of case checking) and case percolation (see fn. 3). Under the current analysis, the GQ option is forced in inherent case environments for θ-theoretic reasons, while the non-GQ option is forced in structural case environments by economy of derivation. Throughout the discussion I’ve maintained the assumption, also adopted by Franks, that morphological case reflects abstract Case,

Chapter 4. Case and agreement with genitive of quantification in Russian 105

which makes Slavic, which abounds with case morphology, a perfect tool for exploring Case theory. The fact that we have been able to account for a rather complex paradigm while maintaining the assumption in question provides evidence that the assumption, which also seems inherently more interesting than its alternative (no relation between morphological and abstract case), is on the right track.

3. Agreement I now turn to agreement in GQ constructions, confining myself to contexts where GQ is assigned (the QP option). As noted in Franks (1994), Russian numeral subjects only optionally agree with the verb. (20) Dvadcat’ samolëtov pereleteli/pereletelo granicu. twenty planes(gen) flew.across(pl)/(sg) border Franks argues that on the singular (sg) option, the subject is a QP and stays in SpecVP, with SpecIP being filled by a null expletive (we are dealing here with a transitive expletive structure), while on the plural (pl) option, the subject is a DP and moves to SpecIP.14 He gives a number of arguments for a height distinction between sg and pl subjects (see also Pesetsky 1982 and Neidle 1988). Thus, he shows only pl subjects can bind subject-oriented anaphors (22) and control PRO in examples like (23)-(24). Furthermore, the Comp-trace effect is operative only with pl subject extraction (25), which follows if pl subjects are extracted from SpecIP and sg subjects from SpecVP (see Koopman and Sportiche 1991). (21) Pjat’ ženščin smotreli/smotrelo na Ivana. five women(gen) looked (pl)/(sg) at Ivan (22) Pjat’ ženščin smotreli/*smotrelo na sebja. five women(gen) looked (pl)/(sg) at themselves (23) PRO vozvraš čajas’ domoj, pjat’ mal‘čikov zašli/*zašlo v magazin. returning home, five boys(gen) dropped.in(pl)/(sg) to store (24) Pjat’ ženščin staralis’/*staralos’ PRO kupit’ ètu knigu. five women(gen) tried (pl)/(sg) to.buy this book (25) Skol’ko čeloveki Ivan dumaet čto ti pročitalo/*pročitali ètu knigu? how.many people(gen) Ivan thinks that read(sg)/(pl) this book Though most of these tests are not completely conclusive and/or are based on phenomena that are not very well-understood (the strongest argument may be the one based on (25)),15 there does seem to be an issue to be accounted for here, so I will also assume a height difference between sg and pl subjects (see section 3.2. for an account of this difference that does not assume a difference in the categorial status between agreeing and non-agreeing numeral subjects).

106 Željko Bošković

3.1 Approximative inversion Bearing this in mind, I turn to the approximative inversion construction (AXP), where the noun appears before a GQ assigning numeral and where the sg option is forced.16 (26) Studentov pjat’ * sdali/sdalo èkzamen. students five passed(pl)/(sg) exam ‘About five students passed the exam.’ To account for (26), Franks (1994) argues AXP involves NP adjunction and stipulates that an NP can adjoin to QP, but not to DP. (Recall that for Franks, a sg subject is a QP, and a pl subject a DP.) I’d like to propose an alternative analysis that maintains Franks’s claim that AXP involves adjunction but eliminates the stipulation in question, always allowing AXP adjunction to the maximal projection of the numeral phrase. This is in fact a necessary step to take under the suggestion made in section 2 that all numeral NPs have the same categorial status (we then cannot make a distinction between sg and pl subjects with respect to their categorial status), which is certainly a simpler position to take than its alternative, on which different numeral phrases would have different categorial status. The alternative analysis of the obligatoriness of the sg option with AXP is based on Takahashi’s (1994) claim that adjunction to the head of a nontrivial chain is disallowed, since as a result of such adjunction, the head of the chain and copies left by its movement would no longer be identical.17 Takahashi’s ban rules out the derivation on which the numeral phrase moves to SpecIP (the agreeing option) and then the NP adjoins to it in (26). The problem does not arise on the derivation on which the subject stays in SpecVP (the non-agreeing option). What about the derivation on which NP adjoins to the numeral phrase before the latter moves to SpecIP? On this derivation the copies of the subject in SpecVP and SpecIP are identical, so that Takahashi’s ban is not violated. However, this derivation is ruled out if adjunction not only can be acyclic (i.e. late), but in fact must be acyclic, as argued in Stepanov (2001a,b), since AXP adjunction then could not precede movement of its target to SpecIP. The current analysis of agreement in AXP should then be taken as providing additional evidence for Stepanov’s late adjunction hypothesis.18 Note also that AXP is possible with objects, which is not surprising assuming that they need not move.19 (27) Ivan kupil knig pjat’. Ivan bought books(gen) five ‘Ivan bought about five books.’ Interestingly, Franks (1995) notes that AXP is impossible with inherently case-marked numeral objects and objects containing one, which have the AP pattern structure (see (10)/(17). Note that (28)-(29) are acceptable without AXP.) (28) a. * Direktor upravljaet fabrikami pjat’ju. director manages factories(instr) five(instr) ‘The director manages about five factories.’

Chapter 4. Case and agreement with genitive of quantification in Russian 107

b. * Oni privezli tonnu odnu. they brought ton(acc) one(acc) ‘They brought about one ton.’ I suggest the ungrammaticality of (28) should be related to the fact that AXP is impossible with (non-postposed) adjectives, as Yadroff and Billing’s (1998) (29) shows (see this work for relevant discussion). (29) * knig pjat’ starinnyx books(gen) five old ‘about five old books’ Recall that under the current analysis, numerals in case-agreeing examples like (28) are treated like adjectives, i.e. they are located in the same position as prenominal adjectives. It is then not surprising that, like adjectives, they block AXP. (Note that under the proposal that adjectives and adjectival numerals are located in SpecNP, AXP in (28)-(29) cannot involve movement of a maximal projection. For relevant discussion, see also Bošković 2005a).20 To summarize, in this section I have presented an account of the obligatoriness of the sg option with AXP based on Takahashi’s ban on adjunction to moved elements and Stepanov’s late adjunction hypothesis. We have also seen that, like case-marking properties of numerals in the complement of po and the binding/control data from (22)-(24) (see fn. 15), the obligatoriness of the sg option with AXP can be accounted for without assuming different categorial status for various numeral NPs. In the next section we will see that the same holds for the optionality of agreement with non-AXP numeral subjects.

3.2 On the optionality of agreement with Russian numeral subjects I now return to the optionality of agreement in (20). Recall that on Franks’s analysis, the categorial status of the subject differentiates the sg and pl options (more precisely, it is responsible for the height difference between the two kinds of numeral subjects, which is in turn responsible for the agreement difference). I would like to propose that what differentiates the sg and pl options is not the subject’s categorial status, but whether or not nominative is assigned, in line with Chomsky’s proposal (see George and Kornfilt 1981 for the original suggestion and Wurmbrand and Bobaljik 2003 for a recent discussion) that nominative and subject agreement are correlated. Strong evidence for the correlation is provided by (30)-(31) (see also Franks 1994 for relevant discussion). (30) Pjat’ ètix five these(gen) (31) Èti pjat’ these(nom) five

devušek girls(gen) devušek girls(gen)

rabotali/rabotalo worked(pl)/(sg) rabotali/*rabotalo worked(pl)/(sg)

tam. there tam. there

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In (31), where the nominative case is clearly assigned, the sg option (i.e. non-agreement) is unavailable, which provides strong evidence that assignment of nominative induces agreement (see below for a more detailed analysis of the case options for the demonstrative in (30)-(31)). What about (30)? Under Franks’s QP/DP analysis, where agreeing subjects are DPs and non-agreeing ones QPs (cf. also fn. 14), we can assume that the DP projected by a null D that dominates the numeral phrase bears nominative, which forces the agreement option, given nominative-agreement correlation. However, taking the morphological-case-as-a-reflex-of-abstract-Case hypothesis seriously disfavors positing a hidden nominative (see also Bošković 2005a for arguments against the presence of DP in Russian NPs). Moreover, I will show below that once we take the nominative-agreement correlation seriously, there is no need to posit a categorial distinction between non-agreeing and agreeing numeral subjects. To that end, I will adopt the FP analysis from section 2, on which the categorial status of numeral subjects is kept constant not only in GQ constructions, but also in constructions where GQ is not assigned (i.e. on this analysis, all numeral NPs have the same categorial status). I will argue that in (30), the pl (agreeing) option is the only possibility in the presence of a nominative. The sg (non-agreeing) option is the only possibility in the absence of a nominative due to the correlation between nominative case and subject agreement. The analysis is based on the claim that pjat’ is morphologically ambiguous between a syncretic nominative/accusative form, which is its standard analysis (recall that pjat’ morphologically fits the case paradigm as a nominative/accusative form), and a caseless form, evidence for the latter being provided by (13), where pjat’ cannot bear either nominative or accusative, po being a dative case assigner (see the discussion in section 2.2).21 In light of the proposal, illustrated in (32), consider (33). (32) Pjat’:

a. nominative

b. accusative

c.caseless

(33) Pjat’ devušek rabotali/rabotalo tam. five girls(gen) worked(pl)/(sg) there The proposal is that on the sg option we are dealing with the caseless pjat’, and on the pl option with the nominative pjat’. In other words, subject-verb agreement is never optional. If pjat’ bears nominative case it is obligatory, and if it is caseless it is impossible. In constructions like (31), the presence of the nominative then forces the pl option. Let us spell out the analysis in more detail. Recall that the categorial status of numeral phrases is always FP, with F assigning GQ and the numeral (QP) located in SpecFP. Consider then the abstract structure in (34), which represents the agreement option for (33). (34) I {pl}

[FP

QP [F’ F NP]]]] {nominative, pl}

I agrees with the QP, which is plural, and checks nominative case of the QP. Given that, as argued by Franks (1994), agreeing subjects, like the one in the derivation under

Chapter 4. Case and agreement with genitive of quantification in Russian 109

consideration, move to SpecIP, while non-agreeing subjects remain in SpecVP, there are now two options, which depend on the status of the EPP in Russian (or the grammar more generally). a. There is no EPP (or it does not hold in Russian), but nominative requires licensing in SpecIP, as argued in Bošković (2002, 2005b) and Epstein and Seely (1999).22 The QP, which needs to move to SpecIP, pied-pipes the FP the way the wh-phrase pied-pipes the whole DP in Whose books did you buy? (It is possible that F may be an affix on Q(P), just like ’s is an affix on who, which would license pied-piping.) b. The EPP holds (or optionally holds in Russian, see below), and is correlated with agreement in Russian. QP, which agrees with I hence must move to SpecIP, pied-pipes FP (see above). The non-agreeing option for (33), which involves a caseless Q, is represented in (35). (35) I {sg}

[FP

QP [F’ F NP]]]] {caseless, pl}

Since I does not case-check the QP it cannot agree with it. The numeral phrase does not move to SpecIP. We have the following options to complete the derivation of (35). a. There is no EPP (or it does not hold in Russian), so SpecIP remains unfilled. I bears default 3.p.sg. b. The EPP holds, SpecIP being filled by a null expletive. I either bears default 3.p.sg specification or agrees with the expletive (regarding agreement, on the latter option the expletive would behave like the agreeing French expletive il (and bear nominative), rather than English there). c. The EPP optionally holds in Russian, but it is correlated with agreement. Assuming that I bears the default 3.p.sg specification, since there is no agreement/nominative case-checking, the EPP would not hold in (35), hence SpecIP can remain empty. The optionality of agreement in (33) is thus accounted for. The important feature of the analysis is that the category of the subject is kept constant. In contrast to Franks (1994), under the current analysis the numeral phrase has the same category in agreeing and non-agreeing constructions. What differentiates the two is the case of the numeral, a nominative numeral obligatorily leading to the agreement option and a caseless numeral to the non-agreeing option. The crucial ingredient of the analysis is the correlation between agreement and nominative case. We have seen that once the correlation, which has strong independent justification, is taken seriously there is no need to posit a categorial distinction between agreeing and non-agreeing numeral subjects. Recall also that, in addition to the optionality of agreement with numeral subjects, the obligatoriness of the non-agreement option with AXP subjects (see section 3.1.), the bind-

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ing/control data from (22)-(24) (see fn. 15), and case-marking properties of numerals in the complement of po (see section 2.2.), all of which have been previously argued to require positing a categorial difference between various numeral phrases (see Franks and Pereltsvaig 2004), can be accounted for without positing such a difference.23 Turning now to slightly more complicated examples, consider (36), which contrasts with (30). (36) * Pjat’ five

èti devušek rabotali tam. these(nom) girls(gen) worked(pl) there

Why can’t a post-numeral these bear nominative, in contrast to a pre-numeral these (see (31))? I suggest that we are dealing here with a defective intervention effect, on a par with English (37). (37) a. * Studentsi seem it was told ti that Mary knows French. b. * There seem it was told students that Mary knows French. To demonstrate that (36) and (37) can be accounted for by the same mechanism, let us first consider Chomsky’s (2000) account of (37). The relevant part of (37) is given in (38). (38) I φ-features (uninter.)

it φ-features (interp.) no case

students φ-features (interp.) case (uninterp.)

It prevents students from checking uninterpretable φ-features of I.24 Given Chomsky’s Activation Condition, which requires X to have an uninterpretable feature to be able to undergo movement/feature checking, it cannot check φ-features of I (its uninterpretable case feature, which would have made it visible for checking, has already been checked off ). However, since it has φ-features and is closer to I than students, which could in principle check φ-features of I, it prevents students from entering into a relation with I. This is an example of defective intervention (it is defective because the intervener cannot do the job itself; still, it prevents another element from doing it.) (36) can be accounted for in the same way. Consider (39), which gives the relevant part of (36). (During the discussion below the reader should bear in mind that we can prevent I from licensing nominative on these by preventing it from agreeing with these, given the nominative-agreement correlation. Note that I will discuss only the caseless Q derivation, since if five checks I’s nominative case there will be no source for the nominative on these, so this derivation is easily blocked.) (39) I five F φ-features (uninterp.) φ-features (interp.) no case

these φ-features (interp.) case (uninterp.)

Just like I could not enter into a φ-feature checking relation with students in (38) due to the intervening it, I in (39) cannot enter into a φ-feature checking relation with these

Chapter 4. Case and agreement with genitive of quantification in Russian

due to the intervening five, which asymmetrically c-commands these. Like it in (38), five in (39) itself cannot check φ-features of I since being caseless, it is inactive. Still, it prevents these from checking φ-features of I (the nominative case of these would be checked as a reflex of φ-feature checking) because five bears φ-features and is closer to I than these. (36) and (37) thus receive completely uniform accounts. In particular, we have seen that Chomsky’s defective intervention account of (37) readily extends to (36). This point is of some theoretical importance. Defective intervention is not particularly conceptually appealing. It seems that the null hypothesis should be that X blocks Y from entering into a relation with Z only if X itself can do the job in question, which is not the case with defective intervention. As a result, there have been attempts to analyze (37) without employing defective intervention, the hope being that this would enable us to dispense with the mechanism altogether. Particularly interesting is Vukić’s (2003) analysis of (37), which makes no use of defective intervention. In fact, having accounted for (37) without defective intervention, Vukić argues that the mechanism in question should be dispensed with. However, since in his account of (37) Vukić crucially appeals to the expletive nature of the intervener, his analysis of (37) cannot be extended to (36). (36) thus may provide evidence that defective intervention is indeed needed (see also Chomsky 2000 regarding a somewhat different case from Icelandic and Boeckx 2000b for an analysis of the Icelandic data that does not involve defective intervention). Note that the intervention problem from (36) does not arise in (31), where these also bears nominative but it precedes five, which means that five is not closer to I than these.25 Notice also that, as expected, with demonstrative-initial numeral NPs, the agreement must be with the demonstrative, as Neidle’s (1988) (40)-(41) show. (Note that the pl form of the verb cannot express gender distinctions.) (40) Dvadcat’ odin student prišel/*prišli. twenty-one student(nom.masc.sg) came(masc.sg.)/(pl) (41) Èti dvadcat’ odin student prišli/*prišel. these(nom) twenty-one student(masc.sg) came(pl)/(masc.sg) Recall that one, and the same holds for higher numerals ending in one, does not assign GQ. Furthermore, numerals ending in one require the following noun to be singular, and the same holds for the verb agreeing with one-numeral NPs. This is illustrated in (40). Significantly, the presence of a nominative plural these forces plural agreement on the verb. This is expected under the current analysis. Adopting one of the options for the pre-numeral demonstrative from fn. 25, under the current analysis (41) has the structure in (42) (recall that one-numerals, which are adjectival in nature, are located in SpecNP). (42)

[IP [FP Èti F [NP dvadcat’ odin student]] prišli]

Since the demonstrative asymmetrically c-commands the NP it is closer to I prior to movement to SpecIP, hence the demonstrative, rather than the NP, undergoes agreement with the verb.

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(41) is also interesting in that it represents a rare case of disagreement within a traditional noun phrase. Notice also that assuming that the maximal projection of the traditional noun phrase should be considered an extended projection of the NP, we cannot assume φ-features of the NP percolate upward to the extended projection of the NP (FP in (42)). If this were the case the FP in (42) would be masc.sg. Given Fukui’s (1997) approach to locality, on which XP is closer to a c-commanding element Y than anything XP dominates, the verb (more precisely, I) would then also have to be singular.26 I conclude, therefore, that the extended projection of the NP in (41) cannot have the same φ-feature specification as the NP itself. Finally, note that even in the case of disagreement within the traditional NP, the verb (more precisely, I) agrees with the structurally highest element bearing φ-features within the NP. Interestingly, as noted in Franks (1994, 1995), in contrast to Russian, the demonstrative is marked for genitive in SC even when it precedes a numeral in a GQ configuration. (43) Ovih/*ove pet djevojaka radi tu. these(gen)/(nom) five girls(gen) works here I suggest that the difference should be correlated with another difference between Russian and SC. As shown in (44a), taken slightly modified from Franks (1995), and (44b), inherent case must be preserved under passivization in SC, but not in Russian. (The verb in (44a-b)assigns instrumental case. The reader is referred to Fowler 1987 for relevant discussion of Russian). (44) a.

Fabrika/*fabrikoj upravljaet-sja našimi druz’jami. factory(nom)/(instr) manages-refl. our(instr) friends(instr) ‘The factory is managed by our friends.’ (Russian) b. Fabrikom/*fabrika se upravlja od strane naših drugova. factory(instr)/(nom) refl. manages by our(gen) friends(gen) ‘The factory is managed by our friends.’ (SC)

We may be dealing here with a situation where two cases are assigned to the same NP, instrumental (before movement) and nominative (after movement). However, for morphological reasons only one can be overtly realized. SC realizes the first case (instrumental) and Russian the second case (nominative). The contrast between (43) and (31) can be accounted for on a par with (44): these receives two cases, genitive (in its base position, presumably via SHA with the N) and nominative (after movement in front of the numeral; following Franks (1994), I assume that these is generated below the numeral, but can move to its left). As in the case of (44), in SC the first case (genitive) is morphologically realized and in Russian the second case (nominative). (For discussion of agreement with numeral subjects in SC, the reader is referred to Leko 1986, Franks 1994, 1995, Wechsler and Zlatić 2003, and Bošković in press.)

Chapter 4. Case and agreement with genitive of quantification in Russian

4. Conclusion I have presented an account of GQ in Russian which, in contrast to Franks’s (1994) account, does not require appealing to DS and SS, adopting case percolation and case assignment instead of case checking, and assuming different categorial status for various numeral subjects. Throughout the paper, I have maintained the hypotheses that Russian morphological case is a direct reflection of abstract Case and that Russian morphological agreement is a direct reflection of abstract agree(ment). The fact that we have been able to account for several rather complex case and agreement paradigms while maintaining these hypotheses provides evidence for the hypotheses in question, which, as noted above, seem inherently more interesting than their alternatives (no relation between morphological and abstract case, and morphological agreement and abstract agree(ment)). I have also provided additional evidence for the obligatory late adjunction hypothesis, the correlation between nominative case and subject agreement, and the mechanism of defective intervention.

Notes * I thank Steven Franks, Sandra Stjepanović, participants of my seminar at the University of Connecticut, and the audience at the 5th European Conference on Formal Description of Slavic Languages (University of Leipzig) for helpful comments, and Lydia Grebenyova and Arthur Stepanov for help with the data. 1. The paper examines only GQ in Russian. GQ in other Slavic languages does not work in exactly the same way as in Russian. In fact, there are several rather interesting differences among Slavic languages regarding case and agreement in GQ constructions. The reader is referred to Bošković (in press) for relevant discussion of Serbo-Croatian (SC) (i.e. for an extension of the analysis of Russian GQ given below to SC) and Franks (1995, in press) for a broader Slavic perspective. 2. Pjat’ is assumed to be either a syncretic nominative/accusative or a caseless form; see Franks (1994). For the moment I disregard the issue, returning to it in section 3. Note also that I ignore paucal numerals 2-4, due to the controversy regarding whether they pattern with one or five. (Compare Babby 1987 and Franks 1994 with Rakhlin 2003. Rakhlin argues that what is standardly analyzed as gen.sg. GQ with 2-4 is actually paucal nominative/accusative.) 3. See Franks (1994) for details of the analysis. Let me just note that assuming case assignment rather than Case checking and adopting case percolation are crucial ingredients of Franks’s analysis, both of which are unnecessary under the analysis presented below. The reader is referred to Bošković (in press) for an argument that case checking is empirically superior to case assignment based on GQ in SC. I provide a case where a traditional case assigner (P) checks case against a traditional case assigner (V), a state of affairs which I show can be easily accommodated under the case checking theory, but not under the case assignment theory, due to the inherent asymmetry in the case licensing relation that holds under the latter approach. 4. Note that both the implementation of the locality analysis and the structure of numeral NPs adopted below are rather different from Franks’s (1994) analysis.

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Željko Bošković 5. The analysis to be given below can be restated under other analyses of adjectives, including Abney’s (1987) A-as-the-head analysis. For discussion of the structural position of Slavic adjectives, which includes arguments against an Abney-style analysis for Russian and SC, see Bošković (2005a). 6. In the case-checking approach, such an element would have to be doubly lexically specified for case. 7. I thus differ from Franks (1994), who assumes his null Q head only for the po construction. For him, GQ numerals are sometimes specs and sometimes heads. For me, they are uniformly specs (see also Franks and Pereltsvaig 2004). There is another reason (in addition to uniformity) to posit FP not only for all GQ examples, but also for the non-GQ structure in (17). Consider (i), where the predicative NP can be either nominative or instrumental. (i) Ivan byl durak/durakom. Ivan was fool(nom)/(instr) ‘Ivan was a fool.’ Franks and Pereltsvaig (2004) argue that on the instrumental option, the predicate NP is in fact a bare NP, while on the nominative option it contains additional functional structure. Significantly, even the presence of adjectival numerals forces the nominative option, although adjectives are in principle not incompatible with the instrumental option. (Note that higher numerals ending in one behave like one in relevant respects, i.e. they are adjectival. The numeral cannot be naturally used in the context in question. What is important for us is the nom/instr contrast. See section 3 regarding agreement with twenty-one.) (ii) a.

b.

Oni byli ?? dvadcat’ odin umnyj mal’čik/*dvadcat’ odnim they were twenty one(nom) smart(nom.sg) boy(nom.sg)/twenty one(instr) umnym mal’čikom. smart(instr.sg) boy(instr.sg) ‘They were twenty-one smart boys.’ Oni byli umnye mal’čiki/umnymi mal’čikami. they were smart(nom.pl) boys(nom)/smart(instr.pl) boys(instr)

If Franks and Pereltsvaig’s proposal regarding the nom/instr alternation in (i) is correct, (ii) can be interpreted as indicating that the presence of a numeral forces the presence of a functional projection above NP, which I take to be FP. (It is possible that F and the numeral have to undergo feature-checking at some point, regardless of whether the numeral is a Q or an adjective.) 8. We can think of the Fs in (16)-(17) as the active (case-assigning) F (16) and passive/ergative (non-case assigning) F (17). (In work in preparation I extend the FP analysis from (16) to adnominal genitive, placing its “assigner” in SpecFP.) 9. I appeal here to Chomsky’s (1995) assumption that only structures with the same numeration can be evaluated together with respect to economy of derivation. 10. Note that this would be shorter movement than movement to po. 11. See Bošković (2001, 2004b,c) for arguments for the existence of an AgrP in PPs. I argue case assignment “within” PP proceeds in the same way as “within” VP. More precisely, I argue for the existence of overt object shift (movement to SpecAgrpP) in the traditional PP, on a par with object shift (movement to SpecAgroP) in the traditional VP. 12. The above analysis relies on global economy (i.e. comparison of derivations). However, it is

Chapter 4. Case and agreement with genitive of quantification in Russian

possible to eliminate the globality. If, being a potential case licenser, F always counts as a potential target for movement of the NP, movement to po for case licensing would be a dispreferred option even in (17) itself, i.e. no comparison with (16) would be needed. (However, failure of proper case licensing on the shorter derivation in (17) should not take it out of the comparison set). Note also that I assume that the choice of case a noun is taking with from the lexicon, dative or genitive in the case in question (under the checking theory, the noun would enter the computation fully inflected for case, unless we assume Chomsky’s 2000 case valuation), does not affect syntactic computation. This is a standardly held assumption, motivated by (i), where Last Resort prevents a pronoun from moving from a case position to a case position although the original case position cannot license the case the pronoun is inflected with, and (ii), an instance of superraising where a nominative element is an intervener for accusative Case-licensing movement. (In other words, what matters for syntactic computation is that an NP has case, not which case it has. This is made explicit in Chomsky 2000.) (i) * Hei seems to ti Peter is ill. (ii) * I believed himi to seem it was told ti Mary is sleeping. 13. I assume that an inherent case verb has to assign its case to the whole argument, including the N, to be able to θ-mark it. More precisely, I assume that FP is ignored regarding θ-role assignment (inherent case as well, given their association) since it is semantically inert. The relevant phrases, then, are those that are immediately dominated by FP (those where the first XP dominating them is FP), i.e. Spec and complement of FP. (This could be instantiated through θ-feature percolation from these positions to FP.) Note also that assuming Freidin and Babby’s (1984) Principle of Lexical Satisfaction, which requires verbs that are lexically specified as assigning inherent case to assign it, instead of Chomsky’s (1986) approach to inherent case, which ties together inherent case and θ-role marking, would not suffice here since under the former (but not under the latter) approach we would incorrectly rule in (i), where the verb assigns instrumental, but not to the whole argument. ((ii) is also problematic; see also Franks 2003, in press.) (i) *Ivan vladeet pjat’ju fabrik. Ivan owns five(instr) factories(gen) Note that argumenthood is irrelevant to po-constructions like (the dative) (13), since po is not a θ (and inherent case) assigner. (See Franks 1994. Recall that Franks argues po assigns structural dative). However, since po is not semantically inert it cannot be ignored like FP can (see the above discussion). This means that the instrumental case of the verb in Babby’s (1986) example in (ii) has to be checked against po, which is impossible. (pjat’ju/pjati) (ii) *Oni vladejut [PP po inostrannym jazykom/ they know dist. foreign(instr) language(instr) five(instr)/five(dat) inostrannymi jazykami]. foreign(instr) languages(instr) 14. Franks thus assumes only DP subjects move to SpecIP (cf. also Pesetsky 1982). Note that adapting the proposal to the current analysis would entail positing a DP above the FP in (16) only on the agreement/movement to SpecIP option. 15. The problem with the anaphor test is that we find the same pattern with non-subject oriented anaphors. (i) Pjat’ studentov pomogali/*pomogalo drug drugu. five students(gen) helped(pl)/(sg) each other

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The anaphor in (i) is c-commanded by the matrix subject regardless of whether the latter is located in SpecIP or SpecVP. One way to account for (i) is to adopt Chomsky’s (1986) anaphor movement hypothesis, assuming the anaphor undergoes LF movement to the matrix I. As a result, only the pl subject, located in SpecIP, c-commands it. A similar analysis is applicable to (24) if PRO moves to the matrix I, as argued in Martin (1996). 16. Franks (1994) notes that, as expected given the discussion in the previous section, AXP subjects cannot bind subject-oriented anaphors and control PRO. 17. Takahashi demonstrates that the claim has ample empirical motivation. Among other things, he shows that it captures the subject condition effect and, more generally, the impossibility of movement out of moved phrases. 18. One of Stepanov’s arguments for late adjunction concerns (ii). (i) shows that adjunction can be late. According to Lebeaux (1988), the condition C violation in (ia) arises before wh-movement. The problem does not arise in (ib) because the clause containing John is an adjunct, hence can be inserted acyclically after wh-movement. Stepanov argues that the fact that, in contrast to (iib), condition A is apparently violated in (iia) provides evidence that the adjunct clause must in fact be adjoined after wh-movement (given late adjunction, the lawyers cannot bind each other at any point of the derivation.) I refer the reader to Stepanov (2001a,b) for an explanation why adjunction must be late, which applies to both base-generated adjunction (as in (iia)) and adjunction via movement (as in (26)). (i) a. * Which argument that Johni is a genius did hei believe? b. Which argument that Johni made did hei believe? (ii) a. * What evidence that each otheri’s friends brought up at court did the lawyersi refuse to talk about? b. The lawyersi refused to talk about the evidence that each otheri’s friends brought up at court? 19. AXP also seems to be possible with scrambled elements, which is expected under base-generation analyses of scrambling such as Bošković and Takahashi (1998) (see also Bošković 2004a for its application to Slavic). 20. There is an alternative analysis of the contrast in (27)-(28). Suppose that Russian has overt object shift, i.e. that objects case-licensed by V move overtly to SpecAgroP (or SpecvP). Given that, as Stjepanović (1997) argued based on SC, inherently case-marked NPs do not differ from structurally case-marked NPs in this respect, the object in (28), which is case-marked by the verb, has to move overtly, in which case AXP in (28) violates Takahashi’s ban on adjunction to moved elements (Note that inherent case-assigning Ps pattern with inherent case-assigning Vs in disallowing AXP to their complement, see Franks 1995:170. The above analysis can be extended to PPs given Bošković’s 2004b,c arguments that case licensing by Ps proceeds in the same way as case licensing by Vs; more precisely, I argue that in languages in which verbal objects move overtly to SpecAgroP, prepositional objects move overtly to SpecAgrpP.) As for (27), it also violates Takahashi’s ban on the derivation on which the numeral is case-licensed by the V since on this derivation the whole object has to move overtly (see section 3.2., where I argue that the case licensing movement of the numeral pied-pipes the whole numeral NP). However, (27) is grammatical on the caseless numeral derivation, on which no part of the object is case licensed by the verb, hence no movement to SpecAgroP takes place. The object shift analysis can also explain the fact that AXP is possible with adjuncts even when they bear inherent case (cf. Franks 1995), given the standard assumption that adjuncts never move for case reasons. (I assume that

Chapter 4. Case and agreement with genitive of quantification in Russian

AXP in (ia) involves adjunction to the maximal projection of the traditional PP.) (i) a.

b.

My pridëm časov v pjat’. we arrive hours(gen) at five ‘We shall return at about five o’clock.’ Ubili ego vystrelami pjat’ju. killed him shots(instr) five(instr) ‘They killed him with about five shots.’

This fact remains unexplained on the parallelism-with-adjectives analysis. On the other hand, this analysis can easily explain a contrast with AXP in argumental PPs, illustrated by Franks’s (1995) (ii): while such AXP is fully acceptable with Ps that assign structural case (iib), it is degraded with Ps that assign inherent case (iia), where the numeral is adjectival. This contrast is problematic for the overt object shift analysis since PP arguments should not have to undergo overt movement. (ii) a. ?? On rabotal zadačami nad pjat’ju. he worked problems(instr) on five(instr) ‘He worked on about five problems.’ b. Ja verju bogov v pjat’. I believe gods(gen) in five ‘I believe in about five gods.’ 21. As discussed in Babby (1987), in Old Russian, pjat’ was a feminine noun. In Modern Russian it has been reanalyzed as a Q. It is possible that the reanalysis has not been fully completed, the case-marked option for pjat’ being a remnant of the Old Russian nominal pjat’. (Note that the reanalysis has been completed in SC, where higher numerals lack the case-marked option altogether, see Franks 1995 and Bošković in press.) 22. For arguments against the EPP in general, see Boeckx (2000a), Bošković (2002, 2005b), Epstein and Seely (1999), Grohmann et al (2000), and Martin (1999). (Note that, as argued in Stjepanović 1999, 2003, under certain well-defined circumstances nominative NPs that move overtly to SpecIP can be pronounced in a lower position in PF (through lower copy pronunciation), which means that PF realization in a lower position does not necessarily rule out the possibility of overt syntax movement to SpecIP for subjects. In fact, Slavic postverbal subjects may quite generally involve lower copy pronunciation, see Bošković 2005b and Stjepanović 2003.) 23. Franks and Pereltsvaig (2004) suggest that bol’šinstvo ‘majority’ is problematic for the current analysis. See, however, Bošković (in press) for an account of bol’šinstvo (and tysjača ‘thousand’) that is fully in line with the current, no-difference-in-the-categorial-status analysis. 24. Since Agree is a prerequisite for Move (see Chomsky 2000), I disregard below movement of students to SpecIP in (37a) (a violation occurs already when I undergoes Agree with students, see below), focusing on the agreement relation between matrix I and the NP, which is in fact the only relevant relation in (37b). 25. There are several possibilities for analyzing (31). One possibility is that these is located in an additional SpecFP. Another possibility is that FP is dominated by another projection which hosts these. Note that the demonstrative still must be part of the subject, i.e. it does not move outside of the subject, since clausal adverbs cannot intervene between the demonstrative and five. Furthermore, movement to SpecIP still has to pied-pipe the whole subject. (i) * Èti včera pjat’ devušek rabotali/rabotalo tam. these(nom) yesterday five girls(gen) worked(pl)/(sg) there

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Željko Bošković 26. Prior to movement to SpecIP, i.e. at the point when Agree between I and the numeral subject takes place, FP would be the closest element with φ-features to I. If FP is considered inactive to undergo Agree (see the above discussion of the Activation Condition), it would still block Agree with a lower element, so that we should get here default 3.p.sg specification on the verb (the same point could actually be made with respect to (34)).

References Abney, S. 1987. The English Noun Phrase in its Sentential Aspect. PhD dissertation, MIT. Babby, L. 1980. The syntax of surface case marking. In Cornell Working Papers in Linguistics 1, W. Harbert and J. Herschensohn (eds), 1-32. Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics, Cornell University. Babby, L. 1984. Case conflicts and their resolution. Cornell Working Papers in Linguistics 6, W. Harbert (ed.), 1-21. Ithaca NY: Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics, Cornell University. Babby, L. 1985. Prepositional quantifiers and the direct case condition. In Issues in Russian Morphosyntax, M. Flier and R. Brecht (eds), 91-117. Columbus OH: Slavica Publications. Babby, L. 1986. The locus of case assignment and the direction of percolation: Case theory and Russian. In Case in Slavic, R. Brecht and J. Levine (eds), 170-219. Columbus OH: Slavica Publications. Babby, L. 1987. Case, prequantifiers, and discontinuous agreement in Russian. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 5: 91-138. Bailyn, J. 2003. Genitive case is (always) quantificational. Presented at the 5th European Conference on Formal Description of Slavic Languages, University of Leipzig. Boeckx, C. 2000a. EPP eliminated. Ms., University of Connecticut. Boeckx, C. 2000b. Quirky agreement. Studia Linguistica 53: 227-250. Bošković, Ž. 1997. The Syntax of Nonfinite Complementation: An economy approach. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Bošković, Ž. 2001. On the Nature of the Syntax-Phonology Interface: Cliticization and related phenomena. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Bošković, Ž. 2002. A-movement and the EPP. Syntax 5: 167-218. Bošković, Ž. 2004a. Topicalization, focalization, lexical insertion, and scrambling. Linguistic Inquiry 35: 613-638. Bošković, Ž. 2004b. Be careful where you float your quantifiers. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 22: 681-742. Bošković, Ž. 2004c. Object shift and the clause/PP parallelism hypothesis. In Proceedings of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 23, V. Chand, A. Kellher, A. J. Rodriguez and B. Schmeiser (eds), 99-112. Sommervile MA: Cascadilla. Bošković, Ž. 2005a. On the locality of left branch extraction and the structure of NP. Studia Linguistica 59: 1-45. Bošković, Ž. 2005b. On the locality of Move and Agree: Eliminating the Activation Condition, Generalized EPP, Inverse Case Filter, and the Phase-Impenetrability Condition. UConn Occasional Papers in Linguistics 3. [Distributed by MIT Working Papers, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT, Cambridge, Mass.] Bošković, Ž. In press. A minimalist account of genitive of quantification. Proceedings of the 5th

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European Conference on Formal Description of Slavic Languages. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Bošković, Ž. and D.Takahashi. 1998. Scrambling and last resort. Linguistic Inquiry 29: 347-366. Chomsky, N. 1986. Knowledge of Language: Its nature, origin, and use. New York NY: Praeger. Chomsky, N. 1993. A minimalist program for linguistic theory. In The View from Building 20, K. Hale and S. J. Keyser (eds), 1-52. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 1995. Categories and transformations. In The Minimalist Program, 219-394. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 2000. Minimalist inquiries. In Step by Step: Essays on minimalism in honor of Howard Lasnik, R. Martin, D. Michaels and J. Uriagereka (eds), 89-155. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Corbett, G. 1979. Predicate Agreement in Russian. Birmingham: Department of Russian Language and Literature, University of Birmingham. Corbett, G. 1983. Hierarchies, Targets and Controllers: Agreement patterns in Slavic. University Park PA: Pennsylvania University Press. Epstein, S. and D. Seely. 1999. Spec(ifying) the GF subject. Ms., University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan University. Franks, S. 1994. Parametric properties of numeral phrases in Slavic. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 12: 570-649. Franks, S. 1995. Parameters of Slavic Morphosyntax. New York NY: OUP. Franks, S. 2003. Case features, markedness, and quantification. In Proceedings of the 4th European Conference on Formal Description of Slavic Languages, P. Kosta, J. Błaszczak, J. Frasek, L. Geist and M. Żygis (eds), 579-599. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Franks, S. In press. A Jacobsonian feature based analysis of Slavic numeric quantifier genitive. Journal of Slavic Linguistics. Franks, Steven, and Asya Pereltsvaig. 2004. Functional categories in the nominal domain. In Proceedings of Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 12, O. Arnaudova, W. Browne, M. L. Rivero, and D. Stojanović (eds), 109-128. Ann Arbor MI: Michigan Slavic Publications. Freidin, R. and L. Babby. 1984. On the interaction of lexical and syntactic properties: Case structure in Russian. In Cornell Working Papers in Linguistics 6, W. Harbert (ed.), 71-104. Ithaca NY: Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics, Cornell University. Fukui, N. 1997. Attract and the A-over-A Principle. In UCI Working Papers in Linguistics 3, L.C.S. Liu and K. Takeda (eds), 51-67. Irvine CA: University of California. George, L. and J. Kornfilt. 1981. Finiteness and boundedness in Turkish. In Binding and Filtering, F. Heny (ed.), 105-127. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Grohmann, K., J. Drury and J. Castillo. 2000. No more EPP. In Proceedings of WCCFL 19, R. Billerey and B. D. LilleHaugen (eds), 139-152. Somerville MA: Cascadilla. Halle, M. 1994. The morphology of numeral phrases. In Proceedings of Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 2, S. Avrutin, S. Franks and L. Progovac (eds), 119-143. Ann Arbor MI: Michigan Slavic Publications. Koopman, H. and D. Sportiche. 1991. The position of subjects. Lingua 85: 211-259. Lebeaux, D. 1988. Language Acquisition and the Form of the Grammar. PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Leko, N. 1986. Syntax of Noun Headed Structures in Serbo-Croatian and Corresponding Phrasal Structures in English. PhD dissertation, Indiana University. Martin, R. 1996. A Minimalist Theory of PRO and Control. PhD dissertation, University of Connecticut.

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120 Željko Bošković Martin, R. 1999. Case, the extended projection principle, and minimalism. In Working Minimalism, S. Epstein and N. Hornstein (eds), 1-25. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Neidle, C. 1988. The Role of Case in Russian Syntax. Dordrecht: Reidel. Pesetsky, D. 1982. Paths and Categories. PhD dissertation, MIT. Rakhlin, N. 2003. A case against case conflicts. Presented at Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 12, University of Ottawa. Rappaport, G. 2001. The grammatical relation of animacy in a formal model of Slavic morphology. Presented at the 4th European Conference on Formal Description of Slavic Languages, University of Potsdam. Stepanov, A. 2001a. Cyclic Domains in Syntactic Theory. PhD dissertation, University of Connecticut. Stepanov, A. 2001b. Late adjunction and minimalist phrase structure. Syntax 4: 94-125. Stjepanović, S. 1997. Is inherent Case structural? In Proceedings of Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 5, M. Lindseth and S. Franks (eds), 295-311. Ann Arbor MI: Michigan Slavic Publications. Stjepanović, S. 1999. What do Second Position Cliticization, Scrambling, and Multiple Whfronting have in Common? PhD dissertation, University of Connecticut. Stjepanović, S. 2003. A word-order paradox resolved by copy deletion at PF. Linguistic Variation Yearbook 3: 139-177. Stowell, T. 1981. Origins of Phrase Structure. PhD Dissertation, MIT. Takahashi, D. 1994. Minimality of Movement. PhD Dissertation, University of Connecticut. Vukić, S. 2003. On Features and the Minimal Link Condition. PhD dissertation, University of Connecticut. Wechsler, S., and L. Zlatić. 2003. The Many Faces of Agreement. Stanford CA: CSLI. Wurmbrand, S. and J. Bobaljik. 2003. Relativized phases. Ms., University of Connecticut. Yadroff, M. and L. Billings. 1998. The syntax of approximative inversion in Russian (and the general architecture of nominal expressions). In Proceedings of Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 6, Ž. Bošković, S. Franks and W. Snyder (eds), 319-338. Ann Arbor MI: Michigan Slavic Publications.

chapter 

How sentences grow in the mind Agreement and selection in efficient minimalist syntax* John Frampton and Sam Gutmann Northeastern University

In the syntax, well-formed expressions are generated by a non-deterministic recursive procedure. In the brain, in real time, well-formed sentences are generated by some non-deterministic mental procedure. We address one aspect of the connection between these procedures. In most varieties of minimalist syntax, the recursive procedure which generates syntactically well-formed sentences has the property that partial derivations can be constructed which are doomed; no later choices can lead to a well-formed sentence. The derivation can have entered a blind alley, but this fact can only be determined by trying all of the possible continuations allowed by the grammar, a possibly infinite set. In an attempt to narrow the gap between the recursive procedure which defines the syntax and plausible mental procedures, we consider the hypothesis that the recursive procedure in the syntax has the property that blind alleys are immediately detectable on the basis of properties of the representation, not on the basis of the failure to find a successful continuation to a well-formed sentence. We explore the consequences of this hypothesis for the operations Agree and Select.

The title above is intentionally provocative. In spite of the title, it is not our intention to propose a model of performance. The “growth of sentences” will be considered at a significant level of abstraction and the discussion will be limited to syntax. But we do want to make clear our methodological bias. It is commonplace that generative grammar answers the question of how language makes “infinite use of finite means.” But work in syntax often pays little attention to elucidating how finite syntactic means are, or even could be, brought to bear in generating grammatical sentences. Our goal in this paper is to be as explicit as possible about how finite means are employed to construct grammatical sentences. For several years, we have been pursuing the idea that the architecture of the language faculty is such that the syntactic computations required to build well-formed

122 John Frampton and Sam Gutmann

sentences are very straightforward and efficient. We stress that the focus is syntactic computation at a certain level of abstraction. The model of syntax that we propose is not a performance model in any sense. In performance, many factors not considered here would have to be brought into play. We have nothing to say about how this should be accomplished. In spite of this, we think that it is possible to get some idea of how the syntactic model that we propose might be integrated into a theory of performance. Since performance is part of the empirical domain which theories of syntax should ultimately shed some light on, we take this to be support for the proposals that will be made. Since the view of syntax which is developed in this paper touches on issues of the appropriate level of abstraction for grammatical theories, it is useful to outline the view that underlies the proposals which follow. “Level of abstraction,” as used here, indicates how far the theory is abstracted away from a theory of performance. In spite of the fact that syntactic theories are inevitably set at a significant level of abstraction, we do assume two desiderata for syntactic theory. They are meant to enunciate a particular research program, not to give an a priori statement of a truth that all research programs must or should adhere to. Like all methodological assumptions, they are to be judged by the theory they lead to. We will offer little argument in their favor at the outset. The first desideratum is that the theory should be usable by a theory of performance. Of course, in the absence of a theory of performance, it is not easy to judge what is usable and what is not. Nevertheless, the extent to which a syntactic theory is plausibly usable by, or incorporable in, a theory of performance argues in its favor, in our view. The second (related) desideratum is that the theory should account for how, from the syntactic side, the language faculty makes “infinite use of finite means.” We take such an account to be the defining property of generative syntax, viewed as the study of the syntactic aspects of the language faculty, which is finite. Syntactic theories which are based on free generation and filtering completely ignore the question of how syntax knowledge might be brought to bear in performance. It is not easy to see how this might be accomplished if syntactic knowledge is limited to filters on representations. Versions of the Minimalist Program which rely on numerations face a similar problem. Numerations simply transfer the question of how successful derivations can be constructed to the question of how successful numerations can be built. But the latter question is part of syntactic theory and cannot be avoided. In GB theory and earlier theories, the job of syntax was to transform a given Dstructure into an S-structure; an input-output problem. -theory generated D-structures and syntax operated on these deep structures. The question of computational efficiency or plausibility for an input-output problem is well-defined because the task is well-defined. Since Chomsky (1994), with the elimination of D-structure, the issue of computational efficiency is much more subtle. For a given input-output problem, the notion of computational efficiency is well-defined, but in the absence of such a problem, how is “efficiency” to be understood? Chomsky’s notion of a “numeration” provides some grounding for considerations of efficiency, since it recreates a kind of

Chapter 5. How sentences grow in the mind

input-output problem. But it suffers from the considerable problem, fatal in our view, that it offers no guidance about how viable numerations can be assembled. Most numerations will not lead to a well-formed output. We take the view that sentences grow, partially determined by syntax but partially nondeterministically; choice of lexical items at various points in the derivation is nondeterministic. Any discussion of efficiency in lexical choice belongs to a theory of pragmatics and we will have nothing to say about it. In spite of the difficulty in posing the question of efficiency outside the context of a clearly defined input-output problem, we will identify certain characteristics of theories of the syntactic computation as fatal to the efficient growth of sentences and propose a syntax in which sentences grow efficiently. Besides the nondeterministic choice of lexical items, the proposed syntax consists of two operations: merger driven by selection (where selection is understood in the broadest sense of specifying what heads a given head must or can immediately dominate) and agreement (which may be accompanied by movement or merger). We take the view that merger is driven by selection (rather than free, with the semantic interface/component discarding ill-formed structures) because of our demand that syntax be efficient. There is also empirical support for this view: selectional restrictions appear to be highly local. If they were imposed by the semantic interface/component after the full syntactic tree was handed over, there would be no reason to expect local as opposed to global constraints. Section 1 contains a discussion of efficient sentence growth, and the role of selection is elaborated in Section 8. The core of syntax, however, is agreement, and the bulk of this paper (Sections 27) is devoted to detailing a theory of the mechanisms of agreement, including feature sharing (Frampton and Gutmann 2000) and the distinction between phi and delta agreement (Frampton and Gutmann 1999), and explaining how the theory operates, both in “ordinary” cases and in challenging examples involving expletives and Icelandic quirky case.

1.

The interplay of local syntax and interface conditions

Our intention is to work out a version of minimalist syntax for which it is clear how the syntactic theory might be incorporated into a performance theory. Before discussing the details of the proposed architecture, it is useful to make clear what we see as the crucial problem in syntactic computation, from the standpoint of efficient computation. We will assume a bare phrase structure framework in which morphemes are chosen in the course of the derivation. A derivation proceeds by operations/steps of various kinds: 1. choice of a morpheme; 2. merger driven by argument structure or selection; 3. agreement, which may or may not be accompanied by merger or movement.

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We will say that an operation acts on a state and transforms it to a new state. Some of the states that the growth of a sentence traverses may consist of multiple disconnected representations. In the derivation of the woman saw the man, for example, the DP α = [ the woman ] may be formed before the phrase β = [ v* [see [ the man ]]] is formed. Here, v* is the transitive verbalizer. At some point in the derivation, the state of the computation consists of two disconnected phrases. The word “state” is used to emphasize the nature of the intermediate points in syntactic derivations. It is used also to keep contact with the idea that our view of syntactic derivations is that they model (at a more or less considerable degree of abstractness) the sequence of states that the brain goes through in producing a sentence. Syntax has two components: Local Narrow Syntax (LNS) regulates the possible transitions, and the Interface Conditions (IC) determine whether a state is a wellformed terminal representation (wftr). Some of the kinds of conditions that have been proposed, by one researcher or another, for LNS and IC are listed in (1). (1) 1. Local Narrow Suntax (LNS) a. conditions on what can merge with what (Θ-Criterion, subcategorization, selection in general); b. conditions on what can agree with what; c. conditions under which agreement induces movement; d. locality conditions on agreement and movement; and e. the architecture of the cycle. 2. Interface Conditions a. a prohibition against uninterpretable features; b. Case filter; c. Θ-Criterion; d. various conditions on chains; and e. a requirement that well-formed terminal state consists of a single phrase of a certain type One can think of the growth of a sentence as the successful step by step extension of a path through a labyrinth of possibilities determined by the LNS, ending at a representation which satisfies interface conditions. The path starts at the empty state and, since it is successful, ends at a wftr. It could be that some states which the LNS can reach are doomed, with no subsequent sequence of operations admitted by the LNS in Figleading to a wftr. Doomed states are indicated by a the gravestone symbol ure 1 on the next page. The key to the efficient growth of sentences is the avoidance of doomed states. Doomed states require backtracking, the computation must be undone and returned to an earlier state. This introduces inefficiency and complexity into the computation. The state underlying (2), for example, is doomed: (2) it to seem John to be here

Chapter 5. How sentences grow in the mind

The subject of the embedded clause does not have case. Under standard assumptions on the locality conditions on agreement and the changes of state permitted by the LNS, there is no sequence of operations under which the subject can ever get case. Ø

rip

rip

rip

rip

rip

rip

rip

rip

rip

rip

rip

rip

rip

rip

rip

rip

rip

Figure 1 The state is doomed. Successful growth must either avoid such doomed states, or the grammar must somehow be provided with a “doom detector” so that the hopeless process can be stopped, backtracking undertaken, and the derivation sent off down a new path through the labyrinth. We take the strong point of view that the growth of sentences depends on the LNS being powerful enough to avoid transitions (without lookahead) to doomed states.1 We began the exploration of this idea in Frampton and Gutmann (2002), calling it“crashproof syntax”. We begin by considering a case-assignment problem which under early Minimalist Theory proposals made the immediate detection of doomed states impossible.

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2. The problem of case assignment to participles Explaining the mechanism of case assignment in examples like (3) has been central to the development of syntactic theory for many years. (3) a.

Civilians(3pl,nom) are believed(pl,nom) to have been injured(pl,nom) b. They believed civilians(3pl,acc) to have been injured(pl,acc). c. There are believed(pl,nom) to have been injured(pl,nom) civilians(3pl,nom) d. They believed there to have been injured(pl,acc) civilians(3pl,acc).

.

For ease and clarity of presentation, assume here a variant of English which allows expletives constructions as needed in (3) and displays participle agreement for number and case as in some Germanic languages (Icelandic, for example). The history is much too long and involved to review, but some high spots are worth highlighting. In the late 80s, the prevailing view was that in the movement cases (3a,b), participial number agreement was done cyclically as the nominal raised through the specifier of a participial head. In the highest position, a “case-marking position,” case was assigned and percolated down the chain to the participial heads. For (3a), for example, the derivation looked like (4): (4)

T

...

Prt

...

Prt

...

civilians

For the expletive cases, (4c,d), since the results appear to be so similar to the raising cases, appeal was made to some kind of abstract chain formation or coindexing. Number agreement percolated up this abstract chain and case percolated down it. From the standpoint of efficient computation, the early proposals of Chomsky’s Minimalist Program (henceforth MP) were mixed. On the one hand, the bare phrase theory of opened up the possibility of an efficient algorithm deriving wftrs. On the other, the reliance on numerations partially begged the question since there did not appear to be any algorithm for constructing successful numerations. A reliance on comparison of derivations presented further obstacles to efficient computation of wftrs. Frampton and Gutmann (1999) overcame these difficulties, but case assignment remained a problem. The feature-checking proposals of Chomsky 1995, Chapter 4, are difficult to reconcile with efficient computation, since the LNS can allow derivations to progress deep into a cul-de-sac. Under those proposals, the nominal is inserted with a case feature, which must be checked in the course of the derivation. According to this proposal, both (5a) and (5b) would be valid intermediate representations.

Chapter 5. How sentences grow in the mind 127

(5) a. believe [ there to have been injured(pl,nom) civilians(3pl,nom) ] b. believe [ there to have been injured(pl,acc) civilians(3pl,acc) ] The problem from the standpoint of avoiding doomed states is that the states in (5) are transformed to doomed states if the “wrong” case checker is merged into the derivation. The mode of operation of the theory is simply to exclude those derivations by an output filter which bars unchecked features or somehow cancels a derivation if cases clash. Feature checking produces massive overgeneration and filtering rather than anything that could be called the growth of wftrs. Chomsky’s “Derivation by Phase” (2000, henceforth DBP) elaborates a theory of agreement which is much more suited to efficient computation. First, the agreement mechanism is feature valuation, not feature checking. Second, the participial head is assigned case (i.e. has its case feature valued) directly by the accusative case assigning head, not by agreement with the nominal. These assumptions allow the problem discussed above in relation to (5) to be overcome. In the derivation of (3), for example, the nominal civilians enters the derivation with a valued φ-feature and an unvalued case feature, while the participial head enters with an unvalued number feature and an unvalued case feature. Prt probes and values its φ-feature in the configuration: (6)

Prt φ[ ] Case[ ]

injure

civilians φ[3pl] Case[ ]

Later in the derivation, the transitive preverb (associated with believe) probes in the configuration: (7)

vtrs φ[ ]

believe

...

Prt φ[pl] Case[ ]

injure

civilians φ[3pl] Case[ ]

Chomsky proposed that, in spite of the apparent intervention effect, vtrs can see past Prt and agree with civilians, valuing its case feature Acc in the process. The circumvention of the intervention effect relies on the observation that participles are inflected only for number, not for person. In Chomsky’s terminology, they do not carry “full φ-features.” See DBP for the details. While ingenious, this solution is not sufficiently general. It does not extend, for example, to (3b) above. See Frampton, et al (2000) for a detailed discussion of the problems. The next section proposes a modification of the DBP theory of agreement that permits a satisfactory solution to the case problem. The leading idea is that the φ-features on Prt and the nominal in (6) become identical in the course of the derivation. Not simply identically valued, but identical. Agreement with the φ-feature associated with Prt is simultaneously agreement with the φ-feature associated with the nominal because the same φ-feature is associated with both heads. Under this theory, there is no intervention which must be overcome.

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3. Feature Sharing For the present, we consider only the features which play a role in the DBP case system: number, person, and case features. This feature system will be modified later, but these three features from the DBP system are sufficient to illustrate the idea of feature sharing. We begin with Num and, for the sake of simplicity, consider a language in which there is only singular and plural number. Features are usually thought of as properties. If the syntactic terminal α “has” the feature Plural, we understand this as meaning that the plurality value of α is plural. Essentially, this supposes the existence of predicates PLURAL and SINGULAR which are true or false of syntactic terminals. The introduction of the idea of an unvalued number feature complicates this picture. One approach is to extend the idea above and introduce a third predicate UNVALUED-NUMBER. Another alternative, which we pursue, is to consider number features to be objects, not properties. We suppose that there is a class of objects called number features. The predicates SINGULAR and PLURAL are true or false of number features, not directly of syntactic terminals. There is no core predicate UNVALUED-NUMBER. We can say that a syntactic terminal has an unvalued number feature if it “has” (i.e. contains) a number feature for which neither SINGULAR nor PLURAL is true. If a syntactic terminal A with an unvalued number feature probes and agrees with a syntactic terminal B for number, the operation can be (and usually is) thought of as (8). The change is minimal, simply valuing the number feature of A. A (8) Num []

B ... Num

A ...

Agree →

[pl]

Num

B ...

[pl]

Num

...

[pl]

Since we assume that number features are objects, not properties, there is another way to view the agreement process. A (9) Num []

B ... Num [pl]

A ...

Agree →

...

B Num

...

[pl]

We pursue this approach to agreement. Agree induces feature sharing, with matching features coalescing into a single shared feature, which is valued if either of the coalescing features is valued.2 If this idea is extended to all of the features which enter into agreement relations (at least number, person, and case in DBP), the agreement process induces operations like that shown below:

Chapter 5. How sentences grow in the mind 129

A

B

A

(10) Num Case ... Per Num Case ... []

[]

[3]

[pl]

Agree → ...

[]

B Per Num Case [3]

[pl]

...

[]

There are two things in particular which should be noted. First, the unvalued features coalesce in exactly the same way that a valued feature coalesces with an unvalued feature. Agreement is feature sharing, independent of value. Agree is blind to feature values. Second, the linear order on the feature tier is of no hierarchical or linear significance. The representation is symbolic, with the features under each node label organized into a set. The representation (10b) above could just as well have been depicted as (11). They are variant diagrams of identical syntactic representations. A

B

(11) Num Case … [pl]

Per

[]

…

[3]

Now consider agreement between the syntactic terminal nodes A and B above and a third terminal node T. Assume that T is a nominative case assigner. Agreement with T will result in valuing a Case feature. (Henceforth we will omit the ellipsis marks which indicate features not entering into the agreement process. It should be assumed that such features may be present.) A

B

T

(12) Per Num

Num

Case

Per

[]

[pl]

[]

[3]

[]

Agree →

B Num Case Per [pl]

[nom] [3]

Application of Agree in (12) is straightforward. Some features are now shared between three syntactic terminals. Note that feature sharing has a major impact on how intervention is thought about. In (12), it makes no sense to think of the number feature of A intervening between the number feature of T and the number feature of B. This will be crucial in what follows. With a mental picture of (10) and (12) now established, a more compact notation will be employed, which is intended to summarize both (11) and (12). (13)

T Per* Num*

A Num* Case*

B Per[3] Num[pl] Case*

The diagram (13) is intended to convey considerably more information than simply the final representation. Asterisked features are those which were initially unvalued on

130 John Frampton and Sam Gutmann

the head they appear underneath. In the final representation, of course, all the Num features have coalesced into a single shared feature, which is valued. Sharing is indicated by the connectors joining features. Note that there is no deletion of features, only coalescence of features. Note also that the representation (13) has the potential to be misleading if the representational convention is not understood. The three Num features connected by horizontal lines in (13), for example, represent a single shared feature, not three different features related in some way. We can go further in making the notation compact if we observe that the Case feature need not be indicated at all. The fact that A and B are case-marked is determined by the fact that they share a φ-feature with a case assigner. In our view of agreement, this is the essence of the case-marking relation. In the diagram, both the Per and Num features of B are linked to T and the Num feature of A is linked to B. The diagram is therefore: (14)

T Per* Num*

A Num*

B Per Num

Eliminating Case as a feature removes an awkward asymmetry from the theory. Unvalued Person and Number features are valued by agreement with a valued counterpart. Case was valued by a different mechanism. What we are now proposing is that Case is not a syntactic feature at all. Structural case morphology is determined by the featural linking which is the residue of agreement. The original insight that agreement is the basis of structural case assignment is due to George and Kornfilt (1981). We take this to its logical minimalist conclusion and remove structural case features from the syntax entirely. Structural case is assigned in the mapping from syntax to morphology. A head which a nominal shares its φ-feature with determines the structural case of the nominal if the head is a case-assigning head. Under this view of case assignment, traditional formulations of the Case Filter are untenable. A replacement will appear in the next section. If a nominal is not assigned case in this way, and is not assigned inherent case, and there is no default mechanism for assigning case, and if the morphology rejects nominals which have not be assigned a case feature, then the derivation containing that nominal will fail at the morphological interface. This is not sufficient, however, to capture the full range of Case Filter effects. The notion of inactive element plays a major role in the DBP theory of locality. Inactivity is determined in that theory by valuation of a case feature. This is not an option if case features are eliminated. This will have major implications for the theory of locality which will be developed later. To illustrate the mechanism being proposed, consider the full derivation of (3b). The intervention problem is straightforwardly bypassed. Selected steps in the derivation are given. In order to allow the linear representation to indicate some of the hierarchical structure, specifiers are indicated by a left delimiter on their left.3 The Tense of raising infinitives is denoted by Tr. We assume that Tr initially has an unvalued φ-feature.

Chapter 5. How sentences grow in the mind

(15) They believed civilians(3pl,acc) to have been injured(pl,acc). 1. Prt injure φ* be Prt φ*

injure

civilians φ

2.

Tr have -en φ*

civilians φ

3.

〈 civiliansj Tr have -en be Prt φ φ* φ*

injure tj

4. 〈 they vtrs believe 〈 civiliansj Tr have -en be Prt φ φ* φ φ* φ*

injure tj

The derivation finishes with merging the matrix T and further agreement. On line 3 above, movement was carried out. Because of feature sharing, however, this plays no role in the derivation. We could just as well have left the nominal in place, as in (16). Linking (in the sense of sharing features), which persists, identifies potential landing sites. Placement in surface form can be determined at the point of spellout on the basis of shared features.4 (16) 1. 2.

Tr have -en be Prt injure civilians φ* φ* φ 〈

they

vtrs believe φ*

Tr have -en be Prt injure civilians φ* φ* φ

4. δ-agreement The previous section motivated the idea of feature sharing as a way to surmount a technical problem with DBP’s proposal for replacing the idea of feature checking and deletion with feature valuation. We will not, however, pursue the DBP framework of assumptions. Instead, we return to the theory elaborated in Frampton and Gutmann (1999, henceforth CC) and use the idea of feature sharing to simplify it. Much of the complexity of CC came from the insistence that the theory adequately account for expletive insertion and for quirky case phenomena. The DBP framework drives the formation of NP-chains (we use the term descriptively) by φ-feature agreement, with the EPP determining which instances of φ-agreement trigger movement. In CC, we took the position that the formation of NP-chains headed by a quirky case element shares so many properties with the formation of NP-chains headed by a structurally case marked element that this view cannot be correct. The key diagnostic for quirky case-marked nominals is precisely the absence of agreement.5 Instead, we will suppose that two features are relevant to the case/agreement system. The first is just φ, which comes in valued and unvalued varieties. Possible values

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John Frampton and Sam Gutmann

are the usual person, number, and gender (or noun class) values. The second will be called δ. It also comes in valued and unvalued varieties. It will be δ-features, rather than φ-features, that play the major role in specifying what movement occurs. In many cases, δ-agreement is entirely parallel to φ-agreement. But in pure expletive constructions (i.e. there-type expletive constructions) and quirky case constructions, the δagreement structure is different than the φ-agreement structure. Before we advance a tentative proposal for what values δ assumes, it is worth emphasizing that the syntax is concerned only with a certain calculus of δ and φ-features and the links they establish between heads. Actual feature values do not come into play until the syntactic structure is mapped to a morphological structure. It will be clear from the role that δ-features play in what follows that a natural candidate for δfeature values is some kind of a definiteness marker. The verbal morphology of a few languages has morphological marking which indicates a definiteness/indefiniteness contrast for the object. Hungarian is one well-known example. Lieber (1992) discusses Kálmán’s (1965) analysis of the Uralic language Vogul, which has such morphology.6 We speculate that this morphology reflects the values of the δ-feature. δ* and φ* will be used as compact notations for unvalued δ and φ-features. Suppose for a start that nominals enter the syntax with valued δ and φ-features and the structural case assigners initially have δ* and φ*, unvalued counterparts of δ and φ. “Nominal” here is a somewhat imprecise designation for the phrases that enter the case/agreement system, arguments and nominal expletives (it in English). Following CC, we suppose that the derivation is built up by alternate applications of Select and Attract. Heads are introduced into the syntax by applications of Select, so that they never appear except with whatever phrases they select. After Select applies and introduces a head into the syntax, it merges with the phrase that it selects. The unvalued features of that head are then satisfied by applications of Attract. We call the head which is the locus for applications of Attract the pivot. All unvalued features of the pivot must be satisfied before the derivation can proceed to a new application of Select. The introduction of a pivot, combined with its Select and Attract operations, constitutes a cycle.7 As in CC, Attract finds targets of attraction by first conducting a top-down search from an unvalued feature of the pivot, seeking a feature which matches this feature. If a matching feature is found, the top-down search stops and the unvalued pivot feature and the feature which was found by the search are coalesced and a shared feature results. If no matching feature is found, or if one is found and coalescence has taken place, but the unvalued feature of the pivot remains unvalued because the feature it coalesced with is itself unvalued, then an “external search” (i.e. outside the current representation) is allowed in order to value the unvalued feature of the pivot. This will be discussed more fully when we consider expletives, which enter the derivation when a top-down search from the pivot fails to value the unvalued pivot feature and an external search is undertaken. In no case does the top-down search from the pivot proceed after a matching feature has been found, even if agreement with that feature is impos-

Chapter 5. How sentences grow in the mind

sible for some reason, or if agreement does not succeed in valuing the unvalued feature of the pivot. This is the view of “intervention effects” which we proposed in CC. To illustrate this view of the agreement process, consider first (17a). The derivation is represented by the diagram (17b). Recall that (17b) is actually a (partial) representation of the derivation, not simply the final representation. There are no unvalued features in the final representation. The connections between the features and their initial status with respect to valuation indicates some of the derivational history. In the final representation, the connected features have coalesced into a single valued feature, shared by the relevant heads. (17) a. Sally likes Mary. b. T 〈 Sally vtrs δ* δ δ* φ* φ φ*

likes

Mary δ φ

There are several comments to make about (17). As proposed above, movement has not been indicated, just agreement. Movement is determined by properties of the heads, on the basis of the feature sharing which agreement establishes. It is a striking advantage of realizing agreement as feature sharing that it succeeds both in simplifying the representation, by eliminating redundant features, and incorporating a partial history of the derivation into the representation. For the purposes of this paper, we leave open the question of whether movement takes place cyclically, or by phase, or not until the final representation is spelled out. Agreement, of course, is carried out cyclically as the representation is built up by merger. There is no direct indication of structural case, which is determined post-syntactically on the basis of feature sharing. We assume that the requirement that nominals are case-marked is a morphological requirement, not a syntactic requirement. Indeed, Icelandic assigns (default) nominative case post-syntactically to nominals which are neither inherently case-marked nor in an appropriate feature sharing relation with an appropriate head. We shall see shortly that alongside of “case marking” in the standard sense, which has the usual morphological reflex, there is a strict syntactic requirement that nominals share a δ-feature with a suitable head. This generally has no morphological reflex, but is crucial in the case/agreement system. The next example illustrates both ECM and Tr (raising T). We assume that Tr has both an unvalued δ-feature and an unvalued φ-feature. Tr must therefore be distinguished from tensed T other than by its δ and φ-features. (18) T δ* φ*

〈

Mary δ φ

vtrs δ* φ*

expect

Tr δ* φ*

〈 Bill δ φ

vtrs δ* φ*

like Sally δ φ

Consider this derivation at the point just after Select has introduced vtrs into the computation, with its selected VP complement and selected subject.

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134 John Frampton and Sam Gutmann

(19) 〈 Mary δ φ

vtrs δ* φ*

expect

Tr δ* φ*

〈 Bill δ* φ*

vtrs δ* φ*

like

Sally δ φ

The δ and φ-features of Tr and the nominal Bill have coalesced, so that when vtrs looks down the tree for a δ or φ-feature to attract, it sees only these features, which are valued. It does not make sense to ask if they are features of Tr or features of the nominal. They are both. If we consider an Icelandic counterpart, with the additional complexity of participle agreement, we see that feature sharing makes case assignment to the participle entirely natural. The φ-feature which is shared by the nominal, the participle, and Tr, is attracted to vtrs. (20) We expect them(acc,pl) to-have been seen(acc,pl). ... vtrs expect Tr to-have been Prt see δ* δ* φ* φ* φ*

them δ φ

This analysis is a big improvement over CC, where examples of this kind forced us to conclude that case features must be present from the start, and checked by a higher case-checking head. Chomsky’s idea of feature valuation, coupled with feature sharing, allows a much simpler account.

5. Chains, the Chain Condition, and locality Feature sharing, triggered by Attract, links heads via shared δ and φ-features. It builds structures like (21), which is one of the linked sets of heads created by feature sharing in (20). (21) vtrs φ*

Tr φ*

Prt φ*

people φ

We call the set of four linked heads in (21) a φ-chain. An F-chain is the maximal set of heads containing a particular feature (F). An element of a chain is called its head if all the members of the chain are in its maximal projection. We will call δ and φ-features, either valued or unvalued, nominal agreement features. This will usually be abbreviated to agreement features if the context makes it clear that nominal agreement is the issue. Note carefully that δ-agreement is given equal status with φ-agreement. Details will follow, but in order to orient the reader, we begin with a paragraph which previews the role of “case assignment” in the theory we are proposing. There is a class of heads, which we call TE-heads, which plays a crucial role in making arguments visible to the interpretive system. They play a role with respect to both δ-chains and φ-chains. Every δ-chain must be headed by a TE-head. This is a strict syntactic

Chapter 5. How sentences grow in the mind

requirement. Some nominals, inherently case-marked, enter the derivation associated with a morphological case feature.8 Morphological case is assigned to other nominals in the post-syntactic mapping to morphology if they are in a φ-chain with a TE-head, the particular morphological case being determined by the type of that TE-head. This is structural case assignment. There is no syntactic requirement that a nominal be in a φ-chain with a TE-head. Other nominals, neither inherently case-marked nor structurally case-marked, can be assigned default case post-syntactically. It would be highly desirable to be able to characterize the class of TE-heads independently, then go on to describe the role they play in the case/agreement system. Unfortunately, this is beyond our abilities, and we are forced to simply list the TEheads (finite T, vtrs, ... ). The prefix “TE” indicates that we have some hope that their characterization can be connected with the temporal/event structure. Based on the observation that participles are inflected for number, but not for person, Chomsky identifies the case-assigning property with bearing both person and number features, which he calls “full φ-features.” In our view, the behavior of quirky case nominals in Icelandic, which we discuss in a later section, makes this untenable. López (2002) gives another argument against the view that having full φ-features is directly correlated with the ability to assign case. He observes that in some Bantu languages, agreement with the subject surfaces morphologically on both tense and an aspectual head which precedes the verb. Significantly, agreement is for both person and number, and noun class (NC). He gives (22), from Kiswahili.9 (22) Juma a-ta-kuwa a-me-pika Juma {3s, NC1}-future-be {3s, NC1}-perfective-cook ‘Juma will have cooked food.’

chakula food

The diagram (23) shows the agreement structure we assign to (22). (23) T δ* φ*

be

vasp φ*

〈 Juma δ φ

vtrs δ* φ*

cook

food δ φ

The crucial point for the present discussion is that the perfective aspectual head has full φ-features (both person and number), in Chomsky’s terminology, but is not a case assigner. We therefore assume that the correlation between full φ-features and the ability to assign case is not direct. This is important to what follows, since we assume that T and Tr both have (initially unvalued) both δ and φ-features, where here (and henceforth) T denotes finite T and Tr denotes raising T. The fact that T is a TE-head, but Tr is not, must be due to the former’s finiteness, not simply the fact that it bears both δ and φ-features. Consistent with their identical syntactic feature structure, it will become clear in the next section that in the theory we develop, T and Tr have identical syntactic behaviors. They are distinguished not by their syntactic behavior, but by their role in determining the interpretability of the chains they appear in.

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136 John Frampton and Sam Gutmann

5.1 The Chain Condition, locality Various devices have been proposed to constrain the locality of agreement in the development of the Minimalist Program: inactivity, phases, the Minimum Link Condition (perhaps integrated into the mechanism of agreement), and many variations on these themes. All three devices are employed in DBP. All these devices are aimed at ensuring that chains of only a particular kind are built. The concerns for chain well-formedness go back to Chomsky (1981) and the early development of GB-theory. Consider, for example, (24). (24) *Mary was believed t likes Sally. At one point in the development of GB theory, this was ruled out by supposing that A-chains could contain only one “case position.” But that requirement failed to explain (25). (25) *It seems Mary to be believed t likes Sally. The additional requirement that the “head of an A-chain” must be in a case position was used to rule out (25). Combining these two requirements led to the condition: (26) The head, and only the head, of an A-chain is in a case position. We will shortly propose that a version of (26) plays a key role in minimalist syntax. Rather than rule out examples like (24) and (25) by conditions on chains, the thrust of the MP was to try to build the architecture of the theory in such a way that it was forced to produce chains of the kind that are found, and only this kind. The feature checking mechanism, in its original form, made it automatic that movement stopped when case was assigned. With the move to a theory of agreement based on attraction, the burden fell to the locality conditions mentioned above, a notion of “inactivity,” and the idea that certain phrases were frozen by spellout which applied at various points in the derivation (Chomsky’s notion of “phases”). The approach which we will take is a partial return to the GB idea that conditions on chain well-formedness play a direct role in the syntax. Well-formed chains are not simply an epiphenomenon, but the direct expression of core interface requirements. Well-formed chains are part of the ontology of objects recognized by post-syntactic processes. Ill-formed chains are not. But there is a major difference between the role that conditions on chains play in the syntactic architecture we propose and the role they played in GB-theory, particular in its Move-α variant. In GB-theory, chain conditions were imposed as derivational constraints, in the sense that operations which introduced violations of the conditions were blocked. They were part of LNS. Rather than a derivational constraint, we will assume that (27) is part of IC, the post-syntactic interface conditions. Its effect is to mandate a one-to-one correspondence between δfeatures and TE-heads as an interpretability condition at the output interface.

Chapter 5. How sentences grow in the mind

(27) Chain Condition: every δ-chain is headed by a TE-head and every TE-head is the head of a δ-chain. A TE-head with both δ and φ-features will turn out to head both a δ-chain and a φ-chain, which may be distinct. Since we assume a computational process in which each step in a derivation is locally determined, with no comparison of derivations, failure at the interface/output has no effect on the step-by-step derivational computation. A derivation which violates IC is simply an ill-formed derivation. Although IC cannot directly determine the course of a derivation, we will argue that it does play a central role in determining the design of LNS and an important role in shaping the syntactic lexicon. The assumption that syntax is computationally efficient implies that the computation avoids doomed states, ones that will violate (27) at the interface, for example. This places restrictions on LNS. It also restricts the syntactic lexicon, eliminating heads from the syntactic lexicon which have a feature structure or selectional properties which lead to doomed derivations. In addition to the locality which is implicit in the mechanics of the Attract algorithm, we also assume (28). It is a reincarnation of the “Tensed-S Condition” of early GB theory. (28) C-Complement Opacity (CCO): after a C-cycle is completed, the complement of C is inaccessible to Attract. C-Complement Opacity is part of Local Narrow Syntax. Clearly, (28) is related to Chomsky’s notion of a “phase.”10 Chomsky (2000, p. 106) proposed that locality is in part the consequence of cyclic spellout. Under this theory, the complements of certain heads, phasal heads, are transferred to phonology (“spelled out”) at certain points in the derivation. Spellout syntactically isolates this material from higher material. In spite of its conceptual appeal, there is reason to doubt the theory of locality which Chomsky’s theory of phases leads to. Legate (2003) shows that the evidence adduced to establish that transitive preverbs are phasal equally establishes that participial preverbs are phasal. But case-marking in expletive constructions in which the object of a passive must be case marked in a configuration in which multiple participial heads intervene between the object and the case assigner is incompatible with Prt being phasal. Consider, for example: (29) a. There is believed to have been killed many people. b. [Prt believe to have been [Prt kill many people]]. In the derivation of (29a), the case-assigner for the nominal many people still has not been introduced into the derivation at the point that (29b) is formed. If participles establish phases, the nominal is buried inside multiple phases. The locality conditions we propose are fairly weak; only (28) and the locality that derives from the mechanics of the Attract algorithm. Much of the burden of ensuring that well-formed outputs are achieved therefore falls on the lexical choices that are

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138 John Frampton and Sam Gutmann

made in the course of building the derivation. A derivation is built by a sequence of cycles. In each cycle, a head (called the pivot of the cycle) is introduced into the derivation and its selectional requirements are satisfied by merger. The unvalued features of the pivot then probe and coalesce with matching features. If unvalued features of the pivot remain, the derivation terminates unsuccessfully. If no unvalued features of the pivot remain, either a new pivot is introduced or the derivation is terminated successfully. We can symbolize the derivational process as: (30) Select , (Attract)*, Select , (Attract)*, Select , (Attract)*, … The applications of Attract in (30) are largely automatic, with little optionality. What determines whether or not a successful derivation is constructed are the applications of Select, in particular, the properties of the lexical choices that are made at each step. In order to illustrate this, consider the derivation of (31a), at the point in the derivation given in (31b). (31) a. It seems that Sally likes Mary. b. T 〈 Sally vtrs like Mary δ* δ δ* δ φ* φ φ* φ It is crucial that at this point in the derivation that the TP (31b) be embedded as a C-complement. If not, continuing the derivation of (31a) leads to (32a) and then (32b). T seem T δ* δ* φ* φ*

〈 Sally δ φ

vtrs δ* φ*

like

Mary δ φ

b. T seem T δ* δ* φ* φ*

〈 Sally δ φ

vtrs δ* φ*

like

Mary δ φ

(32) a.

Instead of expletive insertion, the matrix T agrees into the embedded clause and a Chain Condition violation occurs: the lower T, a TE-head, is forced into a δ-chain with another TE-head. If (31b) is embedded as a C-complement, the derivation continues to (33a) and (33b) results. C-Complement Opacity provides the needed isolation between the embedded clause and the matrix TE-head. (33) a.

T seem δ* φ*

C

T δ* φ*

〈 Sally δ φ

vtrs δ* φ*

like

Mary δ φ

Chapter 5. How sentences grow in the mind 139

b. it δ φ

T seem δ* φ*

C

T δ* φ*

〈 Sally δ* φ*

vtrs δ* φ*

like

Mary δ φ

We will return later to discuss expletive insertion in more detail. Here we simply note the fact that the C in (33a) prevents the matrix T from valuing its agreement features (i.e. δ* and φ*) by agreement with or into its complement, so that the only way that they can be valued is by attracting an expletive from outside its complement, shown in (33b). Note that seem does not always select a CP complement. The clausal complement of seem in (34) is not a CP. (34) Mary seemed t to like Sally. For the raising verb seem, the choice of CP or TP is straightforward. If the embedded clause is headed by Tr, it cannot be a C-complement. If it is headed by a case-assigning T, then it must be a C-complement. The crucial point for selection is that only C selects finite T.

5.2 Burzio’s Generalization The demonstration above that a certain clausal complement must be a CP complement relied on the fact that the absence of a C would lead to an ill-formed chain in the output. The complementizer was needed to protect a δ-feature inside the embedded clause from fatal agreement. The empirical facts which are described by Burzio’s Generalization have precisely the same source. A TE-preverb requires a subject in order to protect its δ-feature from fatal agreement with clausal Tense (either T or Tr). In order to see this, consider a typical example of the kind of preverb which Burzio’s Generalization (under a modern interpretation) identifies as absent from the syntactic vocabulary. Suppose, for example, that vʹ has δ and φ-features (i.e. assigns accusative case), but does not select a subject. A derivation would start out along the lines of (35a), then proceed to (35b) after clausal Tense is merged. The continuation is forced and yields the hopeless (35c). The continuation is forced because, as we will examine more closely in the next section, expletive insertion is not called on unless unvalued features of the pivot (the T which has just been introduced into the derivation in this case) cannot be valued by agreement into (or with) the complement of the pivot. It is hopeless because the Chain Condition requires vʹ to be the head of its δ-chain. (35) a.

b. T δ* φ*

vʹ δ* φ*

grow

tomatoes δ φ

vʹ δ* φ*

grow

tomatoes δ φ

140 John Frampton and Sam Gutmann

c.

T δ* φ*

vʹ δ* φ*

grow

tomatoes δ φ

It is clear that unless the preverb has a subject with a δ-feature, the derivation will be ill-formed. The preverb will not end up as the head of its δ-chain, but the Chain Condition demands that a TE-head must be the head of a δ-chain. A subject δ-feature is needed to shield the δ-feature of the preverb from attraction by T. This is just the empirical fact which Burzio’s Generalization describes. Compare (35) with the case where the preverb has a subject with a δ-feature. (36) Sally(nom) grows tomatoes. T 〈 Sally vtrs grow δ* δ δ* φ* φ φ*

tomatoes δ φ

A TE-preverb necessarily has a φ-feature, because the Chain Condition demands that it head a δ-chain. This preverb must then have a subject with a δ-feature.11 Burzio’s Generalization has been a major embarrassment to theories of case and Achain formation. It has simply been an unexplained fact about the syntactic vocabulary (the morphemes which the lexicon makes available to the syntax). The fact that we can derive Burzio’s Generalization (to the extent that it is stated precisely and is valid) from the Chain Condition is a major argument in favor of our idea that the Chain Condition is part of IC, with no role in LNS. As we proceed, we will see that other crucial facts about δ-chains also follow from the Chain Condition, so the Chain Condition is not simply an alternate way to stipulate Burzio’s Generalization. It appears to be a real explanation for the empirical facts which Burzio’s Generalization describes.

5.3 Local avoidance of output violations One of our aims in developing the kind of the computational architecture that we did in CC was to make the computation of derivations straightforward. We eliminated comparison of derivations because of the computational complexity this introduces. We avoided numerations for the same reason. For a given numeration, no derivational complexity is added. But most numerations will not lead to a successful derivation. How are “good numerations” chosen? Constructing derivations relative to a given numeration is a way to transfer complexity out of the derivational computation onto the problem of constructing numerations which allow successful derivations. Similarly, our proposal here that the Chain Condition, part of IC, plays a central role in syntax threatens the idea of “derivational simplicity.” In principle, the characteristics of IC could be such that derivations themselves are simple and straightforward, given lexical choices, but the lexical choices (of functional material, in particular) which must be made in order to build a successful derivation cannot be made on the basis of local in-

Chapter 5. How sentences grow in the mind

formation. Essentially, this would reintroduce serious computational complexity into the system, somewhat like that introduced by comparison of derivations. Fortunately, as far as we have been able to determine, the derivational choices that must be made can be done locally. It would be most desirable if the selectional properties of the syntactic vocabulary are sufficient to ensure well-formed chains. This may be close to being to true. We have already seen examples. The fact that only C selects finite T prevents a Chain Condition violation, as does the requirement that vtrs selects a subject. We return to this question in Section 8.

6. Expletives There is a cluster of interpretive properties related to information structure: new information, focus, nonspecificity, and indefiniteness. In what follows, we will call this simply focus. Two types of configurational interpretation of focus have been widely discussed in the literature. One type is movement to the specifier of a focus head, with interpretation tied to the specifier position of this head. Another type, discussed most prominently by Diesing (1992), ties a focus interpretation to certain VP internal positions. Movement to Spec[X] for some focus head ties movement to the interpretive properties of the target position. The DBP analysis of object shift in Icelandic (OS), which derives from Holmberg (1999), proposes a significant innovation in syntactic theory by allowing movement possibilities to be tied directly to the interpretive properties of the source position of the movement rather than the target position. Since the network of assumptions on which it is based differs in a number of key respects from the theory developed here, particularly because phases and movement to the edge of phases play such a large role in the DBP analysis, we will not attempt to review the details of the analysis here. Instead, we try to extract the conceptual core of the analysis and then use it to give an account of there-type expletive constructions. The core idea is that nondeterminism can be introduced into the syntactic computation on a language specific basis by allowing an alternative to the standard syntax. Choice of the alternative must have interpretive consequences. We can think of it as being licensed by these consequences for interpretation. Icelandic assigns a focus interpretation to VP-internal objects, provided the verb has raised out of the vP. Icelandic has a syntactic option for avoiding this focus interpretation. Chomsky proposes that the option is to treat the transitive preverb as if it had an EPP feature. The position of object shift is higher that Spec[vtrs], but Chomsky assumes that Spec[vtrs] is a necessary escape hatch on the way to the higher position that the shifted object ends up in. Employing this option carries with it interpretive implications. It signals that a VP internal focus interpretation is being avoided. Choice of the syntactic option is therefore anomalous if the verb has not raised, because if it has not raised there is no focus interpretation to avoid. This is Holmberg’s Generalization. If we consider there-type expletive constructions in English, the complementa-

141

142 John Frampton and Sam Gutmann

rity is striking. In these constructions, exceptional syntax, non-movement to Spec[T], is associated with a focus interpretation. Icelandic licenses exceptional movement to Spec[v] in order to avoid a focus interpretation. English licenses exceptional nonmovement to T with in order to force a focus interpretation. Under the plausible assumption that the expletive itself is irrelevant to semantic interpretation, it must be the case that the focus (indefinite/nonspecific) interpretation is associated with particular configurations. In English, a focus interpretation is associated with the predicate internal subject position of certain predicates. Corresponding to exceptional agreement-induced movement to Spec[v] in Icelandic, English has exceptional non-movement to T. In Icelandic, the exception is licensed to avoid a focus interpretation, while in English it is licensed to avoiding the possibility of a non-focus interpretation. A non-focus interpretation of the nominal is possible in (37a), but not in (37b). (37) a. Someone T be [t in the room]. b. There T be [someone in the room]. The next step is to identify the nonstandard derivational option that is allowed in English in order to ensure that the relevant nominal remains predicate internal. There are two possibilities. It could be that EPP-forced movement associated with δ-agreement is annulled and that there is inserted strictly as a phonological filler of Spec[T], with no agreement with T. One might imagine that the derivation of there is someone in the room is: (38) T be someone in the room → T be someone in the room φ φ* φ φ* δ* δ δ* δ → 〈 there T be someone in the room φ* φ* δ* δ* The expletive in (38) cannot be inserted with a δ-feature, because a Chain Condition violation would result. δ-chains must be headed by a TE-head. The possibility of there with no δ-feature, however, is a fatal flaw in an analysis along these lines. There would be nothing to stop the derivation of there seems there to be someone in the room, which must be ruled out. At the point in the derivation given in (39), the same motivation that licensed non-movement and there-insertion in the embedded clause (keeping someone in a focus position) would license it in the higher clause. (39) T seem φ* δ*

〈

there

Tr be φ* δ*

someone φ δ

in the room

The result would be there seems there to be someone in the room. Another approach seems more promising. Up to this point, we have assumed that when valued and unvalued features coalesce, the result assumes the value of the valued

Chapter 5. How sentences grow in the mind 143

feature. Suppose that now, as an option, coalescence of δ* and δ can produce a shared unvalued δ-feature, rather than a shared valued δ-feature. Call this exceptional feature sharing (EFS). Like the Icelandic option, it is licensed by its effect on the resulting interpretation. Consider now the derivation of there is someone in the room, which exploits EFS. (40) T be someone in the room φ* φ δ* δ

→

T φ* δ*

be

someone φ (δ)*

in the room

The (δ)* is used to indicate a formerly valued feature which becomes unvalued as a result of EFS. Crucially, the δ-feature of the pivot T remains unvalued, so it probes again. Since it cannot be valued internally (and only if it cannot be valued internally), it can be valued by attracting an element directly from the lexicon.12 The element must be an expletive, because this is unselected merger. Assume that there has a valued (nonspecific) δ-feature. The derivation above continues to: (41)

〈 there δ

T be φ* δ*

someone φ (δ)*

in the room

CC gave accounts of (42a) and (42b) without relying on numerations. These accounts are not valid under the assumption that it is EFS that is responsible for keeping the nominal in its base position. (42) a. *There seems someone to be t in the room. b. *There seems there to be someone in the room. An EFS-based account is, however, straightforward. EFS is only licensed as an option to keep nominals in a position to which an indefinite/nonspecific interpretation is assigned. Under the entirely plausible assumption that it is only predicate internal positions which can be assigned the special interpretation, (42a,b) are immediately ruled out. EFS cannot be employed to keep a nominal in an embedded Spec[T] position and it cannot be employed to keep an expletive in this position.13 A further advantage to basing expletive insertion on EFS licensed by a forced focus interpretation is that it gives an immediate account of why expletives are never associated with the object of a transitive verb. Since the standard syntax keeps objects in their base position, no exceptional syntax with the same result is licensed. Expletive insertion (of the there-type) can only occur as a reflex of employing EFS to prevent δagreement with an EPP-head. The next task is to work through a variety of expletive constructions and show that the predictions which are made about raising and φ-agreement correspond to the empirical facts.

144 John Frampton and Sam Gutmann

(43) There seem to be some people in the room. a. Tr be some people (δ)* δ* φ* φ b.

c.

T seem δ* φ*

in the room

〈 there δ

Tr δ* φ*

be

some people (δ)* φ

in the room

〈 there δ

Tr δ* φ*

be

some people (δ)* φ

in the room

Agreement with an expletive is forced in the Tr cycle in order to value the δ-feature of Tr. Recall that we assume that all pivot features must be valued cyclically, so the first pivot whose δ-feature cannot be satisfied internally attracts an expletive. In Icelandic, as opposed to English, there is a much wider array of surface positions/configurations which receive a focus interpretation. Consequently, there is a much wider array of expletive constructions. In addition to stage-level predicates, the nominals in the object position of unaccusatives and passives can take part in EFS. The subject of transitive preverbs can also take part in EFS. The interaction of expletives and participle agreement in Icelandic proceeds without complication, illustrated in (44) and (45). (44) There were(pl) seen(pl,nom) many people(pl,nom). 〈 there T be Prt see many people(pl,nom) δ δ* (δ)* φ* φ* φ (45) He expects there to have been seen(acc,pl) many people(acc,pl). ... vtrs expect 〈 there Tr to-have been Prt see many people δ δ δ* (δ)* φ* φ* φ φ In some Icelandic sentences, there is both exceptional movement of an object out of the vP in order to avoid a focus interpretation and exceptional non-movement of a vP-internal subject of a transitive preverb in order to force a focus interpretation. Example (46a) is from Jonas (1996:37). She shows that the VP is (46b), with traces indicated by parentheses. The adverb never marks the left edge of the VP and the position of the predicate red shows that the subject has not been extraposed. (46) a. There painted the house never any students red. b. [any students (v) (paint) (the house) red]VP

Chapter 5. How sentences grow in the mind

Exceptionally, the house has raised out of the VP in order to avoid a focus interpretation, with any students remaining in the VP (by means of EFS) in order to force a focus interpretation. Although this explains the main outlines of the relationship of expletive insertion and focus interpretation, there are significant problems concerning optional intermediate positions which we note, but cannot pursue here. One problem is how to account for the variations in (47). The judgments are for the Icelandic equivalents. The one order which is acceptable in English is the one order which is unacceptable in Icelandic. (47) a. There have many cars been sold at this auction. b. There have been sold many cars at this auction. c. *There have been many cars sold at this auction. It is not at all clear how to account for the apparent syntactic optionality with no interpretive reflex. One possibility is that the core structure is (47b) and that a superficial surface transformation shifts the object to the left; obligatorily in English and optionally in Icelandic.14 The different landing site in Icelandic, directly to the right of T, might be the result of the fact that in Icelandic, there is a general resistance to material appearing between auxiliaries and the verb. Even adverbs are disallowed. In concluding this section, it should be pointed out that in a system in which attract operations are never optional, and in which unvalued features drive attraction, the device of EFS is a minimal solution to the design problem of allowing a nominal to share its δ-feature with T (or Tr) without triggering movement. It is a minimal solution in the sense that feature sharing and the entire agreement mechanism are already in place. The change in the syntactic system is minimal.

6.1 Nominal expletives The examples above exploited attraction of a pure expletive (there in English) to value the δ-feature of a pivot whose φ-feature was valued. If the pivot has unvalued δ and φ-features, a nominal expletive is used in English (and the Germanic languages generally) to simultaneously value both unvalued features of the pivot. An example in which nominal expletive it raises is given in (48). (48) It seems to be likely that the earth is flat. a. Tr be likely [that the earth is flat] δ* φ* b.

〈 it δ φ

Tr be likely [that the earth is flat] δ* φ*

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146 John Frampton and Sam Gutmann

7.

c.

T δ* φ*

seems

〈 it δ φ

Tr be likely [that the earth is flat] δ* φ*

d. 〈 it

T δ* φ*

seems

〈 (it) δ φ

Tr be likely [that the earth is flat] δ* φ*

Quirky case in Icelandic

If a nominal shares its φ-feature with a TE-head, that head determines the structural case of the nominal. Quirky case constructions in Icelandic, like (49), in which help assigns dative case to its object, do not manifest subject/verb agreement. The verb always appears with 3sg agreement. (49) Us(dat,1pl) was(3sg) helped. The most straightforward assumption is that the subject does not share its φ-feature with T. We suppose that inherently case-marked arguments in Icelandic have a φ-feature, but that it cannot be shared, presumably because the case of the argument is already determined. Unlike structural case, inherent case is determined by selection. In (49), for example, Icelandic help selects a dative complement. The nonsharability of the φfeatures of inherently case marked arguments is akin to a constraint against multiple case-assignment, familiar in many syntactic frameworks. The φ-feature is visible to the syntax, even though it is not sharable. Visibility is important because we assume that φ*-probing searches for the first visible φ-feature, and no further (i.e. no deeper). Inherently case-marked nominals will therefore block φ*-probing into their complements without themselves being the targets of φ*-attraction. This effect has important consequences for dative experiencer constructions, discussed below. If we attempt to derive (49), however, it is clear a further assumption must is needed. If nothing else is assumed, a derivation of (49) fails early, as shown in (50). We denote the nonsharable φ-feature of an inherently case-marked nominal by φ0. The participial Prt in (50) cannot value its φ*-feature. (50) Prt φ*

help

us(dat) δ φ0

Icelandic, however, has a mechanism for rescuing (50). As we saw with pure and nominal expletive insertion in the last section, the grammar provides some mechanisms for valuing unvalued features on the pivot, in case they have not been valued cyclically. Icelandic has two last resort mechanisms for eliminating unvalued φ*-features.

Chapter 5. How sentences grow in the mind 147

An unvalued feature of raising Tr is simply deleted. For other pivots, a pure feature, φ with the default value 3s, is attracted to the pivot. In effect, there is expletive φ-agreement. A φ-feature which gets default valuation is nonsharable, just like the φ-feature of an inherently case-marked nominal. The continuation of (50) is then: (51) Prt

help

φ*-φdflt

us(dat) δ φ0

→

T be δ* φ*-φdflt

Prt

help

φ*-φdflt

us(dat) δ φ0

In (51), we assume that the matrix T does not value its φ*-feature by sharing with the lower φdflt. ECM constructions make it clear that φdflt is nonsharable, like the φ-feature of quirky case nominals. (52) You believed us(dat,1pl) to have been helped(nom/*acc,sg). If defaulted φ-features were sharable, we would expect (53a), with Prt in a φ-chain headed by vtrs. Structural accusative case would be assigned to the participle. Instead, we assume that φdflt is not sharable, so (53b) results. The nominative case which appears on the participial is default nominative case, which we assume is assigned morphologically if no other case is assigned structurally (i.e. via φ-agreement with a TEhead) or inherently.15 (53) a. * You believed us(dat) to have been helped(sg-dflt,acc). ... vtrs believe Tr to-have been Prt help δ* δ* φ* φ* φ*-φdflt

us(dat) δ φ0

b. You believed us(dat) to have been helped(sg-dflt,nom-dflt). ... vtrs believe Tr to-have been Prt help us(dat) δ* δ* δ φ*-φdflt φ*-φdflt φ0 Expletive constructions are also possible: (54) There was(3sg-dflt) helped(sg-dflt,nom-dflt) many people(3pl,dat). there T be Prt help many people(dat) δ δ* (δ)* φ*-φdflt φ*-φdflt φ0

7.1 Dative experiencers, exceptional φ-valuation The quirky surface subjects discussed in the last section enter the structure as selected verb complements. Icelandic also has surface subjects which enter the structure as selected inherently case marked specifiers of preverbs. The class of so-called dativenominative verbs have an experiencer preverb vexp which selects an inherently dative

148 John Frampton and Sam Gutmann

marked subject (the experiencer) and a VP-complement. Sentences like (55) pose no problems for the feature sharing analysis that has been developed. (55) Okkur líkaði strákarnir. us(dat,1pl) like(3sg) the-boys(nom,3pl) ‘we like the boys’ The structure is: (56) T 〈 us δ* δ φ*-φdflt φ0

vexp δ* φ*-φdflt

like

the-books δ φ

We suppose that the experiencer vexp has a δ*-feature, but differs from vtrs in not having a δ*-feature. The φ-feature of the quirky subject is visible, but not sharable. Spellout displaces the dative subject to the pre-T position. Default agreement on T, as in (56), is what the theory developed to this point leads us to expect. In fact, however, although default agreement is preferred by a few speakers and rejected by only a few, the majority of speakers appear to favor agreement if (and only if) the object is 3rd person. See the careful discussion in Sigurðsson (1996). Since the default is 3sg, this effect is only evident if the object is 3pl. In place of (56), most speakers prefer (57). (57) Mér líkaði strákarnir. me(dat,1sg) like(3pl) the-boys(nom,3pl) ‘I like the boys’ The connection between the object and T in (57), passing over/through the dative experiencer, is indicated by a dotted line in the representation below. (58) T δ* φ*

〈 me δ  φ0

vexp δ*

like

the-boys δ φ

We will maintain the view that the intervening φ-features of the dative experiencer block φ-sharing in (58), so that the object nominal must therefore get default nominative case since it is not in a case chain with T. We assume, however, that Icelandic has an exceptional φ-valuation (EΦV) mechanism which, under some conditions, can be used in place of default valuation as a last resort mechanism for rescuing structures with unvalued φ-features which cannot be valued by the ordinary mechanism of feature sharing. The dotted link in (58) is not meant to indicate feature sharing, only the relation between the source and target of valuation. The relation shown by the dotted line cannot be feature sharing because if an infinitival version of (58) is embedded under an ECM verb, it is nominative case which appears on the object, not accusative case from the ECM verb. If the relation were feature sharing, accusative case would be expected since the nominal would enter a φ-chain with the accusative case assigning preverb in the higher clause.

Chapter 5. How sentences grow in the mind 149

We view EΦV as a peripheral repair mechanism which Icelandic has grafted onto the core feature sharing mechanism, with extensive ideolectical and/or dialectical restrictions on its range of application. Particularly because of the complexity introduced by the range of variation, space issues preclude a thorough discussion of these restrictions. But a rough sketch is possible. EΦV applies in expletive variations of (58) as well. (59) Þad líkaðu/*líkaði there liked(pl/*sg) 〈 there δ

T δ* φ*

einhverjum þessir sokkar. someone(dat) these socks(nom)

〈 someone (δ)*  φ0

v δ*

like

these socks δ φ

EΦV also applies long distance: (60) Jóni virðast/*virðist vera talðir lika hestarnir Jon(dat) seem(pl/*sg) be believed(pl) like horses(pl) ‘Jon seems to be believed to like horses.’ T seem [ Tr δ* δ* φ*

be believe [ Tr 〈 Jon δ* δ  φ0

v δ*

like

horses ] ] δ φ

Recall that we assume that the φ*-feature of Tr is removed by deletion if it is not valued by sharing. EΦV is blocked by multiple dative interveners. (61) Mér *virðast(pl)/virðist(sg) Jóni vera talðir lika hestarnir me(dat) seem(*pl/sg) Jon(dat) be believed(pl) like horses(pl) ‘Jon seems to me to believed to like horses.’ T 〈 me vexp seem [ Tr be believe [ Tr 〈 Jon v like horses ] ] δ* δ δ* δ* δ* δ δ* δ  φ0 φ φ*  φ0 In all of the examples considered to this point, the source φ-features are purely nominal. That is, they are features of a nominal category and no other. This is not always the case. While the results are simple in case the source features are purely nominal, with EΦV applying if there is a single intervener and failing to apply if there are multiple interveners, φ-features which are not purely nominal are much less robust sources of EΦV. We start with (62), in which the source φ-feature is not purely nominal, but shared between a nominal and raising Tense. (62) Manninum virðast/virðist hestarnir vera seinir the-man(dat) seem(3pl/3sg) the-horses(3pl) be slow ‘It seems to the man that the horses are slow’

150 John Frampton and Sam Gutmann

T 〈 the-man vexp δ* δ δ*  φ0 φ*

seem [

Tr δ* φ*

be

horses slow δ φ

]

In somewhat more complex examples with source features that are not purely nominal, EΦV is blocked altogether: (63) Það *virðast/virðist einhverjum manni hestarnir vera seinir. there seem(*pl/sg) some man(dat) the-horses(nom) be slow ‘It seems to some man that the horses are slow.’ 〈 there δ

T 〈 some man δ* (δ*) φ*  φ0

vexp seem [ Tr be δ* δ*  φ*

horses slow ] δ φ

(64) Hverjum *virðast/virðist hestarnir vera seinir. who(dat) seem(*pl/sg) the-horses(nom) be slow ‘To whom does it seem that the horses are slow.’ C wh

〈 who wh δ* δ φ*  φ0 T

vexp δ*

seem

[ Tr be horses slow ] δ* φ*

δ φ

The zigzag connection between C and who in (64b) is meant to indicate only that there is some wh-relation, without specifying precisely how wh-chains are constructed. The intuition we pursue is that EΦV fails in (63) and (64), but not in (62), because the former configurations are more complex in some way than the latter configuration. We make this precise in the following way. Recall that expletive insertion is a last resort mechanism for satisfying an unvalued δ-feature. We interpret this to mean that it follows φ-valuation in (63). At the point of φ-valuation, the relevant structures of (62), (63), and (64), are (respectively): (65) a.

T 〈 the-man ... δ* δ φ* φ0

b. T 〈 some man ... δ* (δ*) φ* φ0

c.

T 〈 who ... + wh δ* δ φ* φ0

In (65a), the intervener has its chain requirements satisfied. This is not the case in (65b), whose case chain is not yet well-formed because of the unvalued δ-feature, or in (65c), which has a wh-feature that must enter a well-formed wh-chain. The generalization we draw from this is that EΦV whose source is not purely nominal is optionally possible, but only if the chain requirements of the intervener have already been satisfied. Examples (60) and (61) are from Schütze (1993), who first noticed the constrast between the (near) impossibility of agreement in (61) and the (near) obligatory agreement in (60). His account is along different lines. Holmberg and Hróarsdóttir (2003)

Chapter 5. How sentences grow in the mind

discuss (62– 64) and provide an account of the contrast between the absence of agreement in (63) and (64) and the possibility of agreement in (62).16 Bobaljik (2004) pointed out the importance of distinguishing the cases in which the dative intervener is in the same clause as the source φ-features from those in which it is not. In our terms, this is the difference between a purely nominal source of EΦV and one that is not.

7.2 δ-agreement and structural licensing Examples like (62–64) above have implications for the grammar-internal mechanism which is responsible for the displacement of nominals at the surface, which we will call the EPP. The issue is the surface position of hestanir in the linearized output, to the left of vera. In the theory proposed here, manninum shares a δ-feature with “raising T” (Tr). Spellout treats Tense (both finite T and raising Tr) exceptionally, spelling out a nominal with a shared δ-feature in the pre-Tense position unless all such nominals have already been spelled out.17 This, we propose, is the core of the EPP. Crucially, it is δ-agreement, not φ-agreement, that is responsible for leftward displacement. The following example (from Sigurðsson, 1991) makes the point even more sharply that δ-agreement is the issue, because neither the finite matrix T, nor the embedded raising Tr, nor vexp, are involved in φ-agreement with a nominal. (66) a.

Mundi þér virðast bátunum hafa verið bjargað? would(3sg) you(dat) seem the-boats(dat) have been rescued ‘Would it seem to you that the boats were rescued? b. C T would 〈 you vexp seem Tr to-have been rescued the-boats δ* δ δ* δ* δ φ*-φdflt φ0 φ0

We suggest that whatever particular form of the EPP is adoped, a satisfactory account of the surface location of bátunum in examples like (66) requires the recognition of some form of nominal agreement apart from φ-agreement (i.e. some version of what we call δ-agreement). It has been known since Sigurðsson (1991) and Freiden and Sprouse (1991) that quirky subjects in Icelandic are subject to some structural licensing condition akin to structural case assignment. Note that in (51), (53b), and (54), although the quirky nominal is isolated from sentential φ-agreement, it participates normally in δ-agreement. In (66), both nominals are involved in δ-agreement, but neither is involved in φ-agreement. Every head which has a δ-feature is required to be in a chain with a TEhead, according to (27). It is this requirement of δ-agreement with a TE-head that is behind “structural licensing.” Consideration of the full range of examples which have been adduced to demonstrate structural licensing apart from case requirements is beyond the scope of this paper, but one example will suffice to show what is at stake. Freiden and Sprouse gave examples like (67), in Icelandic.

151

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John Frampton and Sam Gutmann

(67) *[ them(dat) to have been helped ] is likely. They pointed out that, because the subject of the sentential subject in (67) is inherently case marked, the sentence cannot be ruled out as a violation of a case condition. Considerations of this kind led to speculation that inherently case marked nominals in Icelandic must be assigned covert structural case in some way. In order to account for (67), we must establish that them(dat) cannot share its δ-feature with the matrix T, the only available TE-head. If the embedded clause is not headed by a C, we get: (68) T be likely Tr δ* δ*

to have been helped them δ

In this case, them raises and we get (69), not (67). (69) Them(dat) is likely to have been helped. If, on the other hand, the embedded clause is headed by a C, C-Complement Opacity blocks T/them δ-agreement.18

8. Selection: A local solution to a global problem The previous sections have built up a theory of the structural case system. The heart of it is the feature-sharing theory of agreement, the Chain Condition, and the locality which results from intervention and C-Complement Opacity. The Chain Condition is part of IC (Interface Conditions). Feature sharing and locality are part of LNS. In this section we return to the concern of Section 1, growing derivations that do not get trapped in culs-de-sac. Here, we concern ourselves primarily with the syntactic issue, putting aside discussion of an analogous interpretive issue. A leading idea of the Minimalist Program is that the LNS is an optimal solution to the problem of designing a computational system which produces outputs which are interpretable at the interface. In some of Chomsky’s writings, other factors influencing the design of LNS are suggested. One is that the computational system produce a rich array of structures, allowing a rich array of possible semantic interpretations. Another, of special interest here, is that the computational system be efficient. There are several examples of how the design of LNS directly reflects properties of the IC. Feature valuation is the most transparent example. Chomsky has suggested that the source of syntactic movement is to be found in demands that the interpretive system makes on the relation of linear order and interpretation. The connection is not direct. The need for displacement, as a design problem, leads to the mechanism of unvalued features, feature valuation, and EPP properties. The mechanism is a solution to the design problem, exploiting the fact that valued features are already part of the system (it is supposed). Since unvalued features would be unintelligible at the output

Chapter 5. How sentences grow in the mind

interface, they must be kept internal to the syntactic computational system by eliminating them in the course of the derivation. The design of the LNS directly reflects this. Features are valued cyclically. After a pivot is chosen, all its unvalued features must be valued before the cycle terminates. Note that the interface condition plays no role in the syntactic computation. The LNS never produces states with unvalued features, so the interface condition has no role to play as an output filter. A second example, much more complex, is the EPP, the grammar-internal mechanisms responsible for nominal displacement to a “surface subject” position. Let us assume that the EPP reflects some kind of interface condition on surface order. Chomsky has suggested that it is a “theme/rheme” requirement of some kind. Assuming this, we ask how this output condition is reflected in the design of LNS. The issue is subtle, because the LNS itself does not determine the surface position of underlying categories. Nevertheless, the underlying vocabulary and the LNS must furnish the means by which Spellout can position phrases in such a way that the interface condition is satisfied. One crucial property of the underlying vocabulary is that every Tense head has an δ*-feature. The design of LNS contributes by satisfying the IC by providing Spellout with structures with shared features which can be accessed to determine surface placement. The interface requirement is the root cause for some of the architecture of LNS and Spellout, but the interface requirement plays no direct role in the syntactic computation. It is important to note that the mechanisms which the LNS adopts to generate outputs which satisfy the needs of the interpretive component are not perfect. These mechanisms are part of the LNS and Spellout in order to force a certain “theme/rheme structure.” But they overshoot the mark. From the standpoint of the interpretive component, is a man in the room, with no EPP displacement to the pre-Tense position, should be perfectly fine. It should be interpreted exactly as there is a man in the room. The EPP mechanisms are overly broad. Nevertheless, they constitute the device adopted by the grammar. The LNS is forced to introduce another mechanism, EFS and expletive insertion, in order to compensate for the effects of the overly broad EPP. This failure of a perfect fit between the interpretive system and LNS is what we have come to expect of the biology of interacting systems. Our analysis of Burzio’s Generalization is along the same lines. A preverb which is inserted with an unvalued δ-feature will inevitably cause a violation of the Chain Condition if it does not have a subject with a δ-feature. Insertion of such a preverb will produce a doomed state. This is inconsistent with the assumption that the LNS efficiently calculates a wftr. How are doomed states of this variety avoided? Like the local implementation of the EPP condition on surface order, it is implemented by granting certain properties to certain heads and making the LNS sensitive to those properties. The property is selection, of a subject in this case. The syntax is sensitive to selectional properties of heads and ensures that these properties are satisfied when the head is inserted into the syntax. The syntactic vocabulary is restricted to ensure that preverbs with a δ-feature select a subject.19 From this perspective, selection in the syntax is a minimal solution to the design problem of avoiding doomed states.

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154 John Frampton and Sam Gutmann

Because of C-Complement Opacity, complementizers must have selectional properties in order to avoid doomed states. Non-TE complementizers (in English, complementizers other than for) must select a TE Tense. Otherwise, the doomed state that Jack to be happy could be formed. It is doomed because C-Complement opacity prevents Jack from ever sharing its δ-feature with a TE-head, so that a Chain Condition violation at the interface is inevitable. On the other hand, a TE complementizer must select a non-TE Tense head. Otherwise, for Jack is happy could be produced. Although all of the cases in (70) have been discussed at one point or another, it is useful to review the status of each of these representations. (70) a. * Jack seems that (Jack) is happy. b. * It seems that Jack to be happy. c. * It seems [Jack to be happy]IP C-Complement Opacity implies that (70a) is underivable. Agreement is impossible into the complement of that, forcing it-insertion. Selection makes (70b) underivable, since C does not select Tr. Since there is no C-Complement Opacity in (70c), matrix T will agree with Jack, so Jack will raise and there is no possibility of inserting a nominal expletive. Hence, (70c) is underivable. Note that in each case in (70) the sentence is underivable in the framework we propose. Crucially, it is not the case that the sentence is ruled out by one or another interface condition. The derivations which might yield the sentences in (70) never reach the interface. In each case, a property of the LNS diverts the derivation away from a doomed state along a path that leads to a syntactically well-formed result. The LNS incorporates the IC into its mechanics, which is exactly what we should expect from a system that is designed to efficiently carry out derivations which lead to a well-formed terminal representation. Finally, it is also important to note that a particular kind of redundancy is inherent in the way that the Minimalist Program is posed. The characteristics of the LNS are taken to follow (in a loose sense) from the properties of the interface, the assumption of efficient computation, and the assumption that the syntax is capable of producing a rich variety of syntactic structures (hence possible meanings). It should not be surprising that properties of LNS directly (or indirectly) reflect properties of IC, introducing a kind of redundancy. That is exactly what we should expect. So, at the cost of allowing inefficient computation, complement selection could be done away with and (70b) rejected at the interface. Similarly, subjectless δ-agreeing preverbs could be admitted into the syntactic vocabulary, and the structures they lead to rejected at the interface (as a Chain Condition violation). This would eliminate some redundancy, but the cost would be inefficiency in the computation. We have suggested that the apparent redundancy between the properties of LNS and IC is only apparent. The properties of IC should be viewed as design conditions for the mechanisms of LNS. The fact that the properties of LNS mirror the properties of IC is a sign of good design, not an indication of theoretical redundancy. The shape

Chapter 5. How sentences grow in the mind

that a theory is forced to assume if redundancy between LNS and IC is eliminated is clear: free derivation and IC filtering. This turns things on its head. In order to get such a system to work, the mechanisms which the LNS utilizes in order to meet interface requirements must be reinterpreted as interface conditions themselves. The EPP, for example, must be looked at as an interface requirement rather than an LNS mechanism for producing outputs which satisfy interface requirements. The properties of the interpretive component which the EPP is devoted to satisfying/exploiting have nothing directly to do with features. Feature valuation is only a means to an end.

Notes * Thanks to Eric Reuland and Michael Starke for their organization of the 2001 TILT conference at which this material was presented in its present form. Some of the material in this paper had appeared in an unpublished manuscript titled “Agreement is Feature Sharing” (2000) and some of it is based on Frampton and Gutmann (2002). The analysis of expletives presented at TILT 2001, however, is entirely new. Thanks also to the spirited TILT audience for their comments, as well as to an MIT “LingLunch” audience. Thanks to Cedric Boeckx, Noam Chomsky, Julie Legate, and Charles Yang for comments on various points in the analysis. 1. This may be too strong. It excludes derivational output constraints on operations, which require computation of the output, then (perhaps) one step backtracing if the output does not have the desired property. A weaker position, more easily defensible, therefore less interesting, is to allow one step backtracking: transitions to doomed states are possible, but the it must be immediately detectable that no continuation by transitions allowed by the LNS can lead to a wftr. 2. See López (2002) for a notion of “co-valued features” which has some similarity to the idea of feature sharing. 3. If there are no branching specifiers, this notation allows unambiguous representation of tree structure without using bracketing, as shown in (i) below. If there are branching specifiers, some bracketing is required, as shown in (ii). In the tree structures, the branching maximal projections are labeled and their heads are underlined and boldfaced. In each case, the linear display uniquely determines the corresponding tree structure. i. 〈 A

B

C 〈D〈E

F

G

ii.

A 〈 [B

Max

C] D

E

Max

A

A B

Max

Max C

B

Max

Max

C D

E

D E F

G

4. The idea that there is a single position for a phrase α plus a range of other potential Spec[X] positions indicated only by a relation between α and various Xs is not unlike the DBP idea of “occurrences.” We analyze the spellout of such structures in unpublished work with Julie Legate.

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156 John Frampton and Sam Gutmann 5. It is possible that one could pursue the idea that quirky case elements fully agree, but for one reason or another the agreement is not overtly displayed. This does not seem to us to be a promising alternative. 6. According to Lieber, quoting from Kálmán: Vogul verbs can occur in two different sorts of conjugations: the Indefinite (subjective) conjugation, and the Definite (objective) conjugation. The later is used when the object is “defined,” which is “1. when it is preceded by a demonstrative pronoun ... 2. when it has a possessive suffix ... 3. when the object is a personal pronoun ... 4. when it is already known or has been previously mentioned ... 5. when the object is in a subordinate clause” (Kálmán 1965:53). 7. See also Collins (2002) for a similar view of the cycle. 8. Inherent case is determined by selection. There is no appeal to “case assignment”, feature sharing or case checking. 9. The source is Carstens and Kinyalolo (1989). 10. In unpublished work with Julie Legate, we integrate C-Complement Opacity into a general theory of Spellout. 11. If there are multiple preverbs, the condition that must be met in order to avoid an ill-formed chain in the output cannot be stated in terms of properties of individual preverbs. We cannot claim, for example, that a preverb which has a δ-feature necessarily has a subject with a δ-feature. It could be, for example, that v1 introduces the external argument and v2 assigns accusative case, so that structures [Sub v1 v2 V Obj] would not run afoul of the Chain Condition. 12. Alternatively, the expletive could have already been introduced into the computation as an isolated phrase. It neither selects nor has probing features, so it can be introduced with no other effect than adding a disconnected phrase to the current state of the computation. 13. This recalls Collins’ (1997) idea of using a condition on chain extension to explain (70). Once the nominal moves out of the VP, there is no motivation for EFS, so the chain must extend. 14. Something along the lines of the DISL operation proposed in DBP (2001: 30). 15. Icelandic has an array of default mechanisms which are used to support quirky subjects. Default agreement was discussed earlier. These are repair mechanisms which solve the problem of efficient computation in Icelandic. Without them, syntactic computations would enter doomed states. 16. They also point out that (i) is possible. (i) Hverjum hafa hestarnir virst vera seinir? who(dat) have(3pl) horses(3pl) seemed to-be slow The subject of the embedded clause is displaced to the left and, surprisingly, there is plural agreement. In our view, this is not EΦV. The displacement is a spellout phenomenon and the agreement is post-spellout under adjacency. Post-spellout agreement makes sense because spellout, as we analyze it in unpublished work with Julie Legate, linearizes morphemes, but does not carry out vocabulary insertion. 17. Spellout in a higher position is also possible. Since linearization proceeds top-down (in our view), linearization in a higher position is simply prior linearization. 18. This furnishes an argument that CPs can participate in agreement/movement, but IPs cannot. 19. Preverbs with a δ-feature which do not select a subject are not banned by any principle of the grammar. But they will not persist in the lexicon because they are not usable.

Chapter 5. How sentences grow in the mind

References Bobaljik, Jonathan. 2004. Towards a Φ-Free Syntax? MIT LingLunch presentation. Carstens, V. and K. Kinyallolo. 1989. On IP-Structure: Tense, Aspect, and Agreement. Ms., Cornell University. Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris. Chomsky, Noam. 1994. Bare Phrase Structure. MIT Occasional Papers in Linguistics 5, MIT Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge: MIT Press. Chomsky, Noam. 2000. Minimalist Inquiries: the Framework. In Step by step: Essays on minimalist syntax in honor of Howard Lasnik, eds. Rogers, Martin, David Michaels and Juan Uriagereka. Cambridge: MIT Press. Chomsky, Noam. 2001. Derivation by Phase. In Ken Hale, A Life in Language, ed. Kenstowicz, Michael. Cambridge: MIT Press. Collins, Chris. 1997. Local Economy. Cambridge: MIT Press. Collins, Chris. 2002. Eliminating Labels. In Derivation and Explanation in the Minimalist Program, eds. Epstein, Samuel and Daniel Seely. Oxford: Blackwell. Diesing, Molly. 1992. Indefinites. Cambridge: MIT Press. Frampton, John and Sam Gutmann. 1999. Cyclic Computation, a Computationally Efficient Minimalist Syntax. Syntax 2.1 1–27. Frampton, John and Sam Gutmann. 2000. Agreement is Feature Sharing. Ms., Northeastern University. Available at http://www.math.neu.edu/ling. Frampton, John and Sam Gutmann. 2002. Crash-Proof Syntax. In Derivation and Explanation in the Minimalist Program, eds. Epstein, Samuel and Daniel Seely. Oxford: Blackwell. Frampton, John, Sam Gutmann, Julie Legate, and Charles Yang. 2000. Some Inconsistencies in the DBP Feature Valuation Algorithm. Available at http://www.math.neu.edu/ling. Freiden, Robert and Sprouse, Rex. 1991. Lexical case phenomena. In Principles and Parameters in Comparative Grammar, ed. Robert Freiden. MIT Press: Cambridge. George, Leland and Jaklin Kornfilt. 1981. Finiteness and Boundedness in Turkish, in Binding and Filtering, ed. Frank Heny, 105–127. Cambridge: MIT Press. Holmberg, Anders. 1999. Remarks on Holmberg’s Generalization. Studia Linguistica 53.1: 1–39. Holmberg, Anders and Thorbjörg Hróarsdóttir. 2003. Agreement and movement in Icelandic raising constructions. Lingua 113: 997–1019. Jonas, Dianne. 1996. Clause Structure and Verb Syntax in Scandinavian and English. Harvard University dissertation. Kálmán, B. 1965. Vogul Crestomathy. Indiana University Publications, Uralic and Altaic Series, vol. 46. The Hague: Indiana University and Mouton. López, Luis. 2002. Agreement: Locality and Feature Valuation. In Formal Approaches to Universals ed. Artemis Alexiadou. Linguistik Aktuell 49: 165–209. John Benjamins. Legate, Julie. 2003. Some Interface Properties of the Phase. Linguistic Inquiry, 34.3: 506–516. Lieber, Rochelle. 1992. Deconstructing Morphology. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Schütze, Carson. 1993. Towards a Minimalist Account of Quirky Case and Licensing in Icelandic. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 19, 321–375. Sigurðsson, Halldór. 1991. Icelandic case-marked Pro and the licensing of lexical arguments. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 9.2, 327–363. Sigurðsson, Halldór. 1996. Icelandic Finite Verb Agreement. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 57, 1–46.

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chapter 

Agreement configurations In defense of “Spec head”* Hilda Koopman UCLA

This paper argues that “Spec head” agreement, construed as agreement under left to right Merge is not only a possible agreement configuration, but probably the only agreement configuration, contra Agree (Chomsky 2001).The first part addresses DP internal agreement in Maasai and English. The attested agreement patterns within the Maasai DP fall out from Spec head agreement (Koopman 2003a, 2003b). Attested and unattested agreement patterns fall out from the syntactic hierarchy and the derivation. English long distance agreement in the DP does not support Agree, as agreement can be triggered early in the derivation. The second part of the paper discusses individual cases that have been taken to provide support for Agree. I will show how each case is in fact consistent with Spec head, where the following play an important role: agreement can be triggered under pied-piping, accounting for long distance agreement in Tsez (Polinsky and Potsdam 2001) and agreement can be triggered low in the derivation, as in English existential constructions. A case study of nominative objects in Icelandic implements a Spec head account, and argues on the basis of morphological evidence that these constructions should be analyzed as double nominative constructions, with the verb agreeing with two nominatives. The analysis bears on the nature of inherent case (an argument is presented that inherent case must be decomposed), the structural location of nominative case, clausal structure, silent expletives, default agreement, double agreement and intervention effects. The latter are shown not to bear on Agree.

1.

Introduction

Agreement is the phenomenon where two elements co-vary in features. It is uncontroversial that the relation between the element that provides the features and the target on which agreement is spelled out is subject to locality. The issue is what notion of locality is relevant: is it sisterhood (Spec head or government), or left to right sister-

160 Hilda Koopman

hood with the source to the left of the target (Spec head agreement), c-command with the closest target in a local domain (Agree), or c-command within a certain domain (no intervention effects)? How many types of formal agreement relations are there? Can the Spec head relation even be formalized? Chomsky (2001) argues for Agree but also suggests that besides Agree “there is presumably a similar but distinct agreement relation, concord, involving Merge alone.” (Chomsky 2001: fn5). The latter leaves open the possibility that agreement can be triggered under Merge in other cases as well. In modern theories of phrase structures (Kayne 1994, Chomsky 1995), Specifiers merge with a sister XP. If Specifiers are universally to the left, agreement under Merger with XP yields in essence the traditional Spec head agreement hypothesis.1 On theory internal grounds, it is therefore a definite possibility that agreement is not just sometimes but in fact always a by-product of Merge. The question that must therefore be answered is whether Agree is theoretically and empirically motivated. Can agreement indeed be triggered under c-command? If so, how local is Agree? Is agreement sensitive to intervention effects (Boeckx 2000), and if so, should intervention effects be captured by Agree or should they fall under the general theory of locality (Rizzi’s (1990, 2002) Relativized Minimality or Chomsky’s (1995) Minimal Link Condition? Are there indeed two different ways of getting agreement, under Merge with an XP and under c-command? This paper addresses these questions and consists of two main parts. A brief general section on the agreement configuration sets the stage. Section 2 discusses agreement phenomena within the DP, and argues on the basis of agreement patterns within Maasai DPs (Koopman 2001, 2003a, 2003b), that agreement within DPs should be handled in the same way as agreement within clauses. The traditional Spec head hypothesis (agreement under Merge with XP) yields an optimally elegant and simple account for the observed agreement patterns within the Maasai DP, which fall out from the structure and derivation. There is no need to assume a different mechanism for “concord”. While an Agree account can be formulated, it is redundant and more seriously, it is arbitrary in that it fails to capture possible and impossible agreement systems. Section 2.3 deals with agreement within the English DP, which may provide evidence for Agree. However, the analysis of Maasai provides new insights into the derivation of the English DP, and apparent long distance agreement falls out from Spec head at an early stage in the derivation. The second part of the paper deals with the question if Agree is necessary in addition to Spec head, and evaluates arguments from the literature that have been taken to support Agree. Arguments that establish the existence of Agree must show that the relevant (left right) relation between the trigger and the target does not hold at any point in the derivation, and that Agree has effects that cannot be reduced to movement. Section 3.1 discusses long distance agreement in Tsez (Polinsky and Potsdam 2001), section 3.2 long distance agreement in English existential constructions, and section 4 is a case study of nominative objects and long distance agreement in Icelandic. As I will show, a Spec head analysis can be motivated and independently supported in each of these cases. The specific points this paper will argue for are listed below.

Chapter 6. Agreement configurations

(1) a.

Agreement is established in a strictly local left right configuration at some point in the derivation, with the trigger to the left of the target.2 b. Agreement can be triggered under pied-piping, giving rise to certain cases of apparent long distance agreement . c. Agreement can be triggered low in the derivation, giving rise to apparent long distance agreement. d. Apparent arguments in favor of Agree based on intervention effects only hold in specific syntactic contexts and do not carry over to simpler cases. Intervention effects do not bear on Agree, but on restructuring.

1.1 The agreement configuration There are different proposals in the literature as to what configuration leads to agreement: Spec head (Kayne 1989, Koopman 1992, Mahajan 1989, Koopman and Sportiche 1991, Chomsky 1991, Sportiche 1990, Sportiche 1998), government (Koopman and Sportiche 1991 among others) and Agree (Chomsky 2000, 2001). The Spec head configuration has been widely held to represent the canonical agreement configuration: (2) If Y agrees with XP, XP and Y are or have been in a Spec head relation in the course of the derivation This hypothesis is compatible with theories that assume Agr nodes, and theories that do not. If Spec positions are to the left of their sisters (XP) and merge with XP (Kayne 1994, Chomsky 1995), we can reformulate (2) as (4): (3) If XP agrees with Y, YP has merged with XP in the course of the derivation (4)

YP 3 XP YP 3 Y

It has also been argued that agreement can be established under Government (Koopman and Sportiche 1991, and others), a notion that is based on c-command. (5) Government: Y [ZP XP [ Z [ WP In (5), Y governs its sister ZP, the Spec of its sister, XP, and the head of the complement, Z. With the shift from the complement position to the Spec position as the general licensing configuration in the early nineties, these two notions are unified under Spec head in Chomsky (1995), Koopman (1992). If agreement can be established under

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162 Hilda Koopman

government, we expect the following generalization to be correct: (6) If XP agrees with Y, XP is a sister of Y or XP is merged with ZP, which is merged with Y. Chomsky (1998, 2000) shifts the licensing configuration back from the Spec position to the complement relation, and abandons Spec head in favor of Agree, a process that requires c-command between the agreement bearing head Y and a triggering DP that is the closest DP to Y in a local domain. (7) a. Agree: Y [ … DP … ] b. If Y agrees with DP, DP is the DP closest to Y in a local domain. Agreement under Government and Agree allow a direct complement of Y to trigger agreement on Y under Merge. It predicts that we should find languages in which the verb only agrees with what has been merged as its complement, and never with higher specifiers. It predicts that prepositional languages should exhibit prepositional agreement patterns as easily as postpositional languages3, or that we find languages where only the theme of a noun can trigger agreement. To the extent that we do not find such languages, I will assume that the following generalization is correct4: (8) Y never agrees with its immediate sister XP. This leads to an immediate problem for Agree (indeed what would be easier than agreeing with one’s complement), and it necessitates a reformulation of (6), with the part excluded by (8), crossed out: (9) If XP agrees with Y, XP is merged with ZP, which is merged with Y (3) and (9) can be further collapsed, with the linear order derived by an additional step of movement. This paper is based on the hypothesis that these are the only configurations that lead to agreement. I will refer to this as the Spec head hypothesis. (10) If XP agrees with Y, XP is merged with YP, or XP is merged with ZP which is merged with YP (or XP is merged with WP, which is merged with ZP which is merged with YP, etc) (11) a.

YP 3 XP YP 5

b.

YP 3 ZP YP 3 3 XP r Y

The configuration in (11b) is the canonical pied-piping configuration (Webelhuth 1992, Koopman and Szabolcsi 2000, Koopman 2005b). There is tension in recent development as to whether a single Specifier or adjunction is allowed or not. This depends on what the basic atoms of syntactic structures are. I will assume that only a single Specifier is allowed, a view that is consistent with the non-lexicalist decompositional view in conjunction with the highly articulated nature of syntactic structures5.

Chapter 6. Agreement configurations

2. DP internal agreement: agreement patterns in Maasai DPs In Koopman (2001, 2003a, 2003b), I argued that DPs in Maasai (and universally) are essentially relative clauses, following Bach (1968) and Campbell (1996) among others. This proposal generalizes Kayne’s (1994) proposal for relative clauses and post nominal possessor constructions to all DPs: DPs are always D CPs, never D NPs. This analysis was inspired by the morphosyntax of the Maasai “noun”, and the complex asymmetric agreement patterns found within the Maasai DP. In a nutshell, a Maasai “common noun, like “ol dia” ‘dog’ is a D CP structure, a bit like a free relative: ol (= x, x is) dia (dog). It contains a nominal predicate (dia ‘dog’) and its subject, the external argument of the noun (x) (ol). ol and dia distribute as two independent syntactic constituents, and thus provide particular insights into the structural make-up of DPs and DP internal derivations. The following sections focus on how the complex asymmetric agreement patterns within the Maasai DP arise, spell out the basic structure of DPs and discuss how the DP internal derivation in conjunction with the Spec head account for agreement yield the exact agreement patterns, and only these. Section 2.3 contrasts the account with an Agree account, and section 2.3 extends the analysis to English DP and DP internal agreement.

2.1 Agreement patterns within DPs headed by a common noun A “simple” common noun in Maasai, i.e. the form used as the citation form, is in fact a complex structure with several overt morphemes6. Simple Ns, as the ones listed below, are used as the citation form, as predicate nominals, and as DPs with a generic, indefinite, or definite interpretation, depending on the environment. (12) asg.m (13) pl(14) sg.f(15) ()pl

l m m  F  F

- ni boy sg.acc -  boy pl.acc  goat. sg.acc -  goat- pl.acc

‘a boy’ ‘boys’ ‘a (she) goat’ ‘goats’

The nominal root is lexically specified for gender, and followed by a number suffix. It is flanked by tones that vary with the case, number, and tonal class of the noun7. There are two surface case forms in Maasai: nominative, which is used for subjects of tensed sentences, and for the object of (the unique) P, and accusative (or non nominative). All other DPs, including predicate nominals, citation forms, possessors and accusative DPs show up with non-nominative case. I gloss this case accusative, following Tucker and Mpaayei (1955).

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The surface constituent structure of the case bearing noun in (15) is presented in (16), with phonologically overt material underlined. I have argued elsewhere that this structure is built from an underlying syntactic hierarchy case>number>gender> (class)>N by (phrasal) movement (Koopman 2003a, 2003b), and delivered to spell out for vocabulary insertion, in accordance with late insertion models. (16)  [L [[ kinefem ] pl ] H(acc)]

goats’

(17) case> number> gender> N [caseP [ [ N gender] number] case]case ]]] (=dia) I will refer to this complex structure as the caseP. This is the syntactic representation of what in minimalist practice would be called a lexical item N, consisting of the ordered features (((N gender) number) case), with “checking” built in from the inside out. The following points are important: –

Morphological case is merged early in the derivation, and not at the D level. This accounts for the fact it triggers agreement on dependents within the DP. The same is true for Icelandic (section 4).

–

caseP is a phrasal constituent; this allows:

–

establishing a parallel between agreement within DPs to agreement in clauses (as a relation between a triggering phrase) and a dependent.

–

treating the constituent parts as phrases (numberP and genderP), which can trigger agreement in the right contexts.

–

drawing a parallel between the distribution of the caseP and subjects in clauses.

The nominal root is preceded by article-like elements  and n. These are composed of two morphemes, one which covaries with gender and number (ms. sg’ fem.sg) and one which cova with gender (l (ms)/n (fem) respectively. The morphemes that make up the article lead independent lives.  is part of the masculine relative pronoun,  is homophonous with 3rd person subject agreement (feminine gender is the unmarked form in Maasai),  occurs as a (productive) plural number suffix, n is part of the feminine relative clause marker, and l occurs in possessive constructions with masculine possessed nouns. We are thus dealing with two “heads” that agree partially with the features of the noun, a phenomenon that looks like “partial” agreement. (18) partial agreements: O agrees with the N in number and gender l agrees with the N in gender Two important comments: First,  and n are independent syntactic constituents, and not nominal prefixes. They are separated from the case bearing noun by the demonstrative root, by a small set of adverbs (temporal adverbs and the high adverb

Chapter 6. Agreement configurations

‘oshi ‘usual’), and the quantifier other (which has the form of a reduced relative clause). And second, these elements are not Ds, even if in traditional grammars they are classified as articles. Although they occur at the left edge of the DP, their occurrence is not linked to any specific semantic interpretation: “articles” must occur in citation forms, predicate nominals, indefinites, generics, compounds, definite DPs etc8. This hybrid behavior, I have argued, follows from the fact that they move to the left periphery of DPs, but start out very low in the DP, local to the NP predicate. Quantifiers, Numerals, and Adjectives follow the head noun in the universal hierarchical order (Cinque 2000, 2005). They agree in case, number and gender with the caseP. If we partition the DP, we find three well-defined agreement regions within DPs: all dependents to the right of the triggering (caseP) exhibit full and obligatory agreement, the articles on the left edge left show partial agreement, and the intervening parts fail to show any agreement. (19) a.

[[gender

] Dem Adv … [ Case[Number[Gender-N]]] NumeralPCase APCase

gender

number

Num

b. agreement regions: partial | no … | agreement trigger | agreement agreement

Num

full agreement

If one considers the possible combination of agreement features in Maasai, only three of the 6 possibilities occur: 9, 10 (20) gender gender, number gender, number and case No elements agree just for case, or just for plural, or for case and gender; no postnominal elements agree partially, and no pronominal elements agree completely. The question is why this state of affairs should hold. Consider the agreement patterns in (19) again. If the partially agreeing element on the left periphery has in fact moved from a position deep within the DP, the structural agreement pattern can be brought out more clearly: (21) undoing the movement of ol into the left periphery: Dem Adv [ Case[Number[Gender-NP]]] Numeral gender APgender [XP Ogender lgender ] number

number

case

case

number

In Koopman (2003a, 2005a) I argued that these orderly agreement patterns reflect the structural make-up of the DP and the derivations, in conjunction with Spec head agreement. Gender, number and case are syntactic projections, which serve to “grow” the morphological complex noun yielding the structure in (17). It appears that there are three ordered agreement cycles within the Maasai DP, with the gender agreement cycle most embedded, followed by the number agreement cycle, and the case agree-

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166 Hilda Koopman

ment cycle. These cycles correspond to the constituent structure of the caseP. The agreement patterns reflect the parts of the NP that are present at the respective cycles (genderP at the gender cycle, numberP at the number cycle and caseP at the case cycle: feature complexes are built by agreement, see Koopman (2001), agreement is copying of the features of the trigger onto the element it merges with). Since the caseP trigger occurs to the left of all agreeing elements, and since no elements that are hierarchically higher than the trigger agree, these patterns follow from the movement patterns in conjunction with Spec head. No element that is merged higher hierarchically than the trigger agrees since it is never in a left right merge relation with the trigger (except for “other” which agrees like a relative clause and which precedes the noun. I assume it is moved there). Elements to the right of the trigger must all agree, because of the history of the derivation. The partial agreement of the articles is in fact total: they agree fully in the respective cycles, when higher projections are simply not yet available. The agreement patterns thus reflect the history of the derivation, and the atoms of structure. I take this to be an important empirical result, which all theories of agreement must capture. The following section spells out the structure and derivation of the Maasai DP, setting the stage for a comparison with an Agree account in 2.3. Section 2.4 discusses how a Spec head account can deal with long distance agreement within the English DP.

2.2 The Maasai DP: structure and derivation (Maasai) DPs are always relative clauses of the form D CP (Koopman 2003a, 2003b, 2005a). They contain a nominal small clause predicate, with a (silent) external argument x, embedded under a (non verbal) copula, be. I abstract away here from the fine structure of the number and gender cycles, and collapse ol etc into Agrbe, an element that fuses pronominal agreement features and the non verbal predicate be (not unlike the pronominal copula some languages exhibit on the one hand, and a wh-pronoun on the other (‘who is a boy , what is a table’): (22) [DP D [CP

C [IP

I case [ [ Agrnumber Agrgenderbe

[ .. [ x boy]]

Be is embedded in an IP that provides a structural subject position, and a CP, which is the complement of D. CP attracts the constituent that contains x, and the (phrasal) predicate beP (Maasai is a VSO, i.e. predicate first, language, see Koopman (2005a)). (23) summarizes the derivation, and the text below comments on each step in the derivation:

Chapter 6. Agreement configurations 167

(23)

DP 3 beP 3 4 D “CP” ol 3 beP (3) 4 Adv IP ol 3 NPi 3 4 Agrbe/number ayeni 3 [e]i 3 o Agrbe/genderP 3 [e]i 3 l beP 3 3 SC 3 (i) Predicate inversion: x NP (ii) NP-movement: (iii) A’ movement: (iv) Movement from Spec, CP to Spec, DP (predicate fronting)

(24) PF: /oldia/

LF ~ which is a boy, the x such that x is a boy

Comments: (i) Predicate Inversion. The predicate dia ‘boy’ is raised by predicate inversion into the specifier of be. It is of course well-known that predicate inversion occurs in the environment of be, (cf. Moro (1997) the picture on the wall is the cause of the riot; the cause of the riot is the picture on the wall). Predicate Inversion moves over the intervening subject, yielding an apparent minimality violation, which is overcome by the overt presence/raising of be or some linker (see Den Dikken (1998)). It is the application of predicate inversion that distinguishes the Maasai DP from the English one (see 2.5 below, from Koopman (2003a: 106-107)) (ii) NP movement. Because of predicate inversion, the nominal predicate behaves as the highest NP specifier. If there is a clausal subject position within the DP, i.e. an I position endowed with an EPP feature, the predicate NP will be at-

168 Hilda Koopman

tracted, and undergo regular NP movement to Spec, IP, raising through the Specifier positions of Numeral phrases and APs. As a consequence of this derivation, these line up in the merged hierarchical order Num>AP (Cinque 2000). Note that the NP that undergoes movement to the case position (Spec, IP) is also the NP carrying case morphology, further suggesting a link between Spec, I, structural subject and case. The following tree illustrates the IP part of the derivation (with a mixture of English and Maasai glosses ayook=boy-pl il= masculine plural)11: (25)

IP 3 CaseP 3 NumP 4 I[EPP] ayooki 3 [e]i 3 Num AP twocase, 3 number gender [e] 3 i A beP nice case, 3 number gender [e] 3 i 3 il [e]i

The moved NP (in fact caseP) triggers obligatory agreement in number gender and case on numerals and adjectives to its right. It must do so on each of them because of the locality of NP movement. As is well known, NP movement triggers obligatory agreement on heads when the NP moves through their local Spec position. This analysis thus reduces obligatory nominal “concord” to Spec head agreement and the locality of NP movement. It also yields an account for the fact that dependents merged higher than Spec, IP will not show any agreement with the caseP, since there is no point in the derivation where the required spec head relation exist (Koopman 2001). (iii) The presence of I, probably a silent T node, can be detected though presence of high (temporal) adverbs. (iv) Predicate fronting. The (remnant) beP (ol) predicate fronts as a phrase to the C level. This yields the general predicate initial order in Maasai. The fronted constituent does double duty: it contains what the C level attracts (the predicate beP), as well as the external argument of the nominal predicate, x, which will be locally bound by any appropriate operator (D, indefinite, a generic operator, a negative operator, etc) . Predicate fronting to the C region skips over filled intermediate Spec positions and head positions, a standard prop-

Chapter 6. Agreement configurations 169

erty of local phrasal movement to the C region. The fronted predicate targets a position to the left of the Spec, IP, and to the left of “other”, the high adverbs and demonstrative roots, very high in the expanded CP region (see Koopman (2005a)) : (26) [ol] Dem

(Adv)

(other) [dia]

(iv) Movement from Spec, CP to Spec, DP. It is difficult to determine if the predicate raises to Spec, DP, since D is silent. However, at least for demonstratives it is likely that this additional step of movement takes place, since ol shows up to the left of demonstrative roots (and in plural cases, the spell-out is sensitive to the fact that it is in Spec, Dem). (27) ol (Dem) ol (Adv)

(other) [dia]

(v) head movement: head movement plays no role in deriving the linear orders. It may play a role in enabling predicate inversion. (v) Spec head agreements: DP agreement patterns (=concord) fall out from the structure and the derivations: dependents to the right of the caseP will fully agree, because of the derivations. Dependents to the left of the caseP will not, because they are never in a Spec head relation with the triggering DP. The element on the left edge agrees partially, simply because it represents extremely “early” DP internal agreement. Differences between types of DPs follow from the type of D that heads the DP on the one hand, and from the type of predicate that the IP contains on the other. DPs headed by common nouns contain a nominal small clause, possessor constructions a possessive small clause, and relative clauses a full verbal projection (see Koopman (2003a, 2003b, 2005a) for further details).

2.3 An Agree account? The previous analysis can be translated directly into an Agree account, with Probes located in positions where they c-command the trigger (the Goal), and the right feature combinations assigned to each Probe. No intervention effects are observed, except for the step of predicate inversion, which conforms to Den Dikken’s (1998) generalization that a step of predicate inversion always requires an overt copula-like element (a linker) to facilitate the inversion. There are technical problems that arise, like what for instance is the feature that leads to phi completeness inside the DP, how to build the idea of different agreement cycles into the system, but these seem pretty much dependent on particular decisions about implementation. One important fact that the Agree account needs to capture is the idea that “assignment” of features reflects the derivation: as I argued, agreement in a cycle is always total, and never partial. It is thus predictable which agreement features particular categories will carry, and

170 Hilda Koopman

what the possible patterns of agreement are. Thus, my analysis excludes the following agreements systems: (28)

* NPgender, number, case * NPgender, number, case

Numbergender, case Number case

APcase APcase gender number

It also excludes assigning different features to elements that are merged in the same cycle, or case agreement at the lowest cycle (i.e. a language exactly identical to Maasai with the left edge only expressing case). It seems unclear to me how an Agree account can achieve these results in a principled fashion, and on these grounds the left to right merge account seems clearly superior and less arbitrary. However, it may be objected that other languages may in fact directly support the Agree approach and thus discredit the Spec head approach. This issue is taken up in the next section.

2.3 The English DP: an argument for Agree? On the difference between Maasai and English DP The proposal that agreement is always triggered under Spec head runs into trouble with the apparent long distance agreement within the DP in English: (29) a. these three large American cars b. this large American car.

[Dem [Num [A [A [N ]

The fact that in English the noun remains low within the DP, seems to provide clear evidence for Agree, as agreement between D and NP cannot be treated as reflecting a direct Spec head relation between the NP and the Dem (assuming the Dem is merged in the D region) under standard analyses. However, if the Spec head hypothesis is correct, and if the D and Dem are merged high, it must be the case that the agreement on D is mediated by some third element, which is in a local relation with the NP at some point in the derivation. The analysis for Maasai offers insight into the question of how to construe the difference between the Maasai and English DP. The basic difference between Maasai and English can be attributed to whether predicate inversion or subject raising applies within the low part of the DP, with agreement between the predicate and its external argument occurring before predicate inversion. This is illustrated in the parallel Maasai and English derivations in (30) on the next page. The derivations start at the point where the external argument of the NP predicate x has agreed with the NP predicate under Merge: [xsg [dogs]. Boldface indicates ultimately pronounced. In step 4, the constituent that contains the external argument (xsg) of the NP is attracted to Spec, CP/DP, presumably to get bound by the D. (The structure above does not indicate the additional predicate fronting to the CP region in Maasai). Because of this movement, agreement on D can be treated as a reflection of agreement with the silent external argument. Note that the location of the constituent containing x varies depending on whether predicate inversion applied or not, yielding movement to D/CP from a low position in Maasai, but from the subject position in English. The latter is

Chapter 6. Agreement configurations

(30) 1.

Movement to subject position be : predicate inversion dogsg

be [ xsg dogsg ] (Maasai)

x(sg)

be [ xsg dogsg ] (English)

NP mvt (subject raising) 2.

3.

4.

NP-mvt (Maasai and English) dogg big xsg big NP-mvt to Spec, IP (Maasai and English) dogsg [ dogsg big xsg [ xxg big Movement of x to Spec, CP, and Spec, DP [ D [be x C [ dogsg [ dogsg big

[xsg [Dthis [

xsg C [ xsg

[ xxg

big

[ dog(sg) be [ x sg dogsg ]] (Maasai) [ xsg be [ xsg dogsg ]] (English) [ dog(sg) be [ x sg dogsg ]] (Maasai) [[ xsg be [ xsg dogsg ]] (English) [ dog(sg) be [ x sg dogsg ]] (Maasai)

[[ xsg

be [ xsg dogsg ]] (English)

precisely what Campbell (1996), who proposed DPs contain a small clause argued for: movement of PRO from the subject position of the DP to Spec, DP. Thus, if the discussion in this section is on the right track, the syntax of DPs will not provide much insight into Spec head versus Agree, as there are basically two parts in a DP that can trigger agreement, either some pronominal like element which agrees with the NP, or the “NP” itself. So far then, the discussion supports Spec/head-left to right merge as the only agreement configuration. The next sections examine specific cases that have been argued to support Agree over Spec head.

3. Long distance agreement Do we really need Agree in addition to Spec head, i.e. agreement under left to right Merge (10)? In this section, I examine three empirical arguments in favor of Agree, and show that each case is compatible with agreement under Merge (i.e. Spec head agreement) under entirely reasonable hypotheses about the underlying syntactic structures and derivations.

3.1 Agreement under government as agreement under pied-piping Polinsky and Potsdam (2001) present a strong argument in favor of agreement under government/local c-command, based on a crosslinguistically unusual agreement pattern of Long distance agreement in Tsez, a Nakh-Daghestanian language spoken in the Caucasus. Tsez is a head final SOV language, with an ergative-absolutive case system.

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172 Hilda Koopman

The verb agrees with the absolutive in class, and absolutive agreement head precedes the verb. The ergative subject asymmetrically c-commands the absolutive argument. From the examples presented in the paper, we can extract the following surface configuration, with the agreement trigger and the agreement morpheme boldfaced: (31) (DP erg) DPabsi… Agri V T.Evid C There is considerable evidence that Kayne’s (1994) antisymmetry proposal is correct: head final languages are not the symmetrical counterpart of head initial languages, and head final is a derived property. The surface order in (31) is therefore compatible with Spec head, since the trigger precedes the agreement. Absolutive complement CPs in Tsez also trigger absolutive agreement. As Polinsky and Potsdam (2001) show, a distinction must be made between two types of absolutive complement CPs, a finite CP and a nominalized past participle clause. The latter allows an absolutive DP, which is the primary topic, to trigger agreement instead of the clausal CP that contains it, the former is opaque, and always triggers clausal agreement (Polinsky and Potsdam’s 56a, 56b, 58)). (The gloss in the following examples is adjusted so as to reflect the participial nature). (32) A primary topic in a nominalized participial absolutive complement can trigger agreement outside the CP (32b). a. enir [ užā magalu bāc’ruŀi] r-iyxo mother boy bread.III.ABS III.eat-PSTPRT.NMLZ.IV IV-know ‘The mother knows the boy ate the bread.’ b. enir [ užā magalu bāc’ruŀi] b-iyxo mother boy bread.III.ABS III.eat-PSTPRT.NMLZ III-know ‘The mother knows the bread, the boy ate.’ (33) A primary topic in an absolutive finite CP can never trigger agreement outside: eni-r [ už- magalu b-ac’-si-λin] *b/r-iyxo mother-DAT boy-erg bread.III.ABS III.eat-PST-EVID-C *III/IV knows ‘The mother knows that the boy ate bread.’ Polinsky and Potsdam establish through surface constituency tests that the agreement-triggering topic is unambiguously within the complement clause at spell-out. Tsez does not have long distance scrambling, and no A’ movement from CP. In addition, neither covert raising nor a “shadow” pronoun in Spec, Agr can be empirically supported. Therefore, they conclude, the absolutive topic is never in a Spec head relation with the agreement probe, and absolutive agreement cannot have been triggered under Spec head agreement. Instead the probe must be able to look ‘inside” the CP that it is in an agreement relation with, where it can only “reach” the (primary) absolutive Topic, i.e. the element at the left edge at the relevant level of representation. They show furthermore that participial clauses that contain a non absolutive primary topic, or a wh-phrase block long distance agreement. This, they argue, can

Chapter 6. Agreement configurations

be explained if agreement requires “government”, or under Agree, as an intervention effect: these elements intervene between the absolutive topic and the probe. These data thus constitute a strong empirical argument in favor of agreement under c-command/government. There is an alternative analysis for these data, however, which is compatible with the surface constituency, the Spec head hypothesis, and the intervention effects. We saw in section 1 how the government configuration can be reduced to the Spec head configuration, if agreement can be triggered under pied-piping. In the case under discussion, this would be clausal pied-piping (Koopman and Szabolcsi 2000, Koopman 2003b 2005b). As Polinsky and Potsdam show, Topics are arguably in Spec, Top. The left peripheral Spec position is the core configuration for pied-piping (Webelhuth 1992, Koopman and Szabolcsi 2000). If the nominalization C participates in agreement, but none of the other high heads do, the agreement patterns follow. I have labeled the Merged structures fully, with the Spec as “adjunct”. Agreement under Merge copies the features of the left sister onto the right sister. Features of a phrase are features of the head of the phrase, (this is what it means to be the head of a phrase); hence Agr carries the same feature as AgrP: (34) Agreement with absolutive CP (agreement under merge) AgrP[IV] 3 AgrP[IV] CP[IV] 6 3 AgrIV(know) Absolutive agreement with a primary topic Topic within the CP comes about by recursive application of agreement: the CP in (35) will raise to Agr. (35) Absolutive agreement with (primary) embedded Topic, and nominalizer: CPabs, +Nabs, III 3 TopPabs,IIII CP +N,abs abs,III 3 3, DPabs, III TopP C+N,abs abs,III 3 TOPabs, III Some of the intervention effects follow straightforwardly: long distance agreement will be blocked if a non-absolutive element has been topicalized, or if a non-absolutive wh-phrase occurs in the left periphery, since these occupy the highest leftperipheral position instead (non absolutives never trigger agreement in Tsez). Hence only clausal agreement is possible, because the absolutive Topic is not the leftmost Spec position (intermediate nodes not labeled).

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(36)

CPIV 3 XP 3 3 C+N,abs , IV DP 3 X TopPabs,III 3 DPabs, III 3 TOPabs, III

Finally, tensed complement clause are introduced by a different C, and agreement with an embedded absolutive Topic is never possible. According to my proposal this must be because this C can never be in an agreement relation with the TopicP. It could be the case that the C is simply of a type that cannot agree, or that this CP is obligatorily embedded under a D which carries IV (this recalls old analysis of CPs as it CP structures). This will yield only a single type of agreement. (37) [it [D [it [CP[ TopP [ IV

]C]]

Polinsky and Potsdam discuss a similar percolation approach in footnote 17, and argue against it on the grounds that when the absolutive CP is pronominalized, only III agreement is possible12. It is unclear what this argument shows, since we don’t really know how clausal pronominalization works. If pronominalization requires a structure as in (37), with CP silent, we would expect only class IV to be available on structural grounds. Pending further research13, I conclude that the pied-piping alternative is a serious alternative to Government/Agree, thus strengthening the point I made in section 1 that agreement under government can be reduced to Spec head agreement. As this discussion shows, the difference between Government and Spec head is simply very difficult to establish on the basis of cases where the triggering DP is to the left of the agreement bearing head, because of the existence of pied-piping, which allows embedded features to become features of the containing category, a property which I have argued is mediated by agreement.

3.2 Long distance agreement: English Let us now turn to cases where agreement spans a much bigger syntactic distance: long distance agreement typically found in existential constructions: (38) a. There seem to be many problems with agreement b. There seems to be a problem with agreement Under Agree, the T can simply send out a Probe and value the phi- and case features under local c-command. The expletive is merged directly in Spec, TP to satisfy the

Chapter 6. Agreement configurations

EPP. This is compatible with the standard small clause analysis of the there-insertion construction (Stowell 1978). The Spec head hypothesis runs into problems with agreement, and solutions range from Case transmission along a CHAIN (Chomsky 1981), to covert LF NP movement, replacing the expletive (Chomsky 1986), to (overt) movement of the phi-features of the associate (Chomsky 1995), to Agree, which is in some ways similar to Case chains. If Spec head is correct, however, it must be the case that there is either overt movement of some category carrying the phi-features, or that a local spec head relation between there and the associate at some point in the derivation. The early agreement solution is compatible with Moro’s (1997) proposal which I adopt here (it is also compatible with Hazout 200414). Moro argues that there is merged as a predicate and ‘becomes’ a subject through predicate inversion15 which targets the clausal subject position. Moro draws a parallel between existential constructions and the inverted copula constructions. Moro shows that there has the distribution of a predicate (albeit an inverted one), and behaves just like an inverted predicate in inverse copula constructions. Since predicate inversion requires the presence of a landing site, (39b), and (39d) are out because there is no landing site for predicate inversion. (39) a. b. c. d.

May believes the cause of the riot to be John * Mary believes the cause of the riot John I believe there to be a problem * I believe there a problem.

The stranded argument behaves like a subject, and disallows extraction. The locative PP in examples like (40a) does not show the behavior of a predicate, which we would expect under the small clause analysis. It behaves like an adjunct, in the sense it can be optional. PP small clause predicates are always obligatory, but the PP coda in existential constructions is not. (40) a. Many copies of the book were in the studio b. * Many copies of the book were c. were many copies of the book (in the studio) Since the associate and there are in a Spec head/left right relation at the point of Merge, or at a very early point in the derivation, agreement can be subsumed under local Spec head, with the agreement trigger to the left of the predicate. The associate is stranded low in the structure and has the distribution of the complement of be. There will of course behave like a structural subject, because of the effects of predicate inversion. This proposal immediately accounts for the ungrammaticality of partial raising of the associate (41c) (Moro 1997: 121): (41) a. There seems there to be a man in the room b. I expect [there to be a man in the room] c. * There seems a man to be in the room

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176 Hilda Koopman

The associate fails to raise, because there must undergo predicate raising, and thereby bleeds NP movement of the associate. (42) There seems [ there to [be [ a man there] ]in the room] This is an important result. Attempts to capture the absence of partial raising under the standard analysis of there insertion constructions all require additional theoretical principles. Chomsky (1995) proposes to block (41c) by the Economy principle Merge over Move. This principle is only motivated by the need to exclude partial movement of the associate. Thus, an analysis in which there starts out in a local relation with the associate early in the derivation and raises to subject position, simply renders Merge over Move superfluous. Strong additional support for the non predicative status of the PP is presented in Zwart (1992). Dutch predicative PPs cannot be extraposed, but argumental/adjunct PPs can be. The locative PP in existential constructions can be extraposed, and patterns like non-predicative PPs16. In conclusion, predicate inversion accounts for the subject properties of existential there. However, rather than being merged directly in Spec, TP, there moves into that position. Long distance agreement in existential constructions is therefore compatible with the very local type of configuration that Spec head imposes. This analysis raises the question of how one can account for the so called intervention effects in agreement configurations with there (Boeckx 2000, Holmberg and Hróarsdottir 2003, among others). I will return to this subject in section 4.

4. Icelandic Some of the strongest evidence for Agree comes from Icelandic where agreement on the finite verb is triggered by a nominative object and a quirky subject occupies the subject position (S refers to Sigurđsson): (43) Henni bötnuðu verkirnir. (Dat Nom) She.dat better-past-pl the.pains.nom pl `She recovered from the pains.’

(S 1991.(51c))

The nominative object behaves like a structural object and is never in a Spec head relation with the c-commanding T. If nominative comes from T, the agreement relation must be established under c-command. This cannot be achieved locally, because of intervening syntactic structure. I will argue that the nominative case on the object is not determined by the (high) T. More particularly, I will argue on the basis of the morphological structure, that the nominative object in (43) is in a local Spec head relation with a nominative head that is low in the structure. Morphological evidence support the idea that these structures contain two nominative TPs, with the morphological complex verb agreeing twice. In order to motivate this proposal, I first elaborate on several aspects of the syntactic

Chapter 6. Agreement configurations 177

structures of Icelandic: how to treat inherent and structural cases, the need to decompose the subject position into two positions (Cardinaletti 2004), and the need for silent expletives. The discussion in the following sections relies heavily on the extensive literature on Icelandic, in particular on the various papers in Maling and Zaenen (1990), and on Sigurđsson (1989) and (1996), and Schütze (1997).

4.1. Agree and intervention effects As is well-known, Icelandic has nominative objects with experiencer verbs: (44) Henni leiddust strákarnir. her(D) bored.3spl the boys(N) `She found the boys boring.’

(Dat Nom)

Under a standard Agree story, T values its case and phi features under Agree, and the dative experiencer raises to subject position to satisfy T’s EPP feature. (45) Tu. nom, u.phi, EPP

DPdat, phi features DPu nom, phi features

DPdat Tu. nom, u.phi, EPP

DPdat, phi features DPu nom, phi features

Agree must take place after movement of the dative DP, since the dative DP does not intervene and block agreement in number. This seems inconsistent with the hypothesis that features get eliminated as early as possible. When a dative experiencer is indefinite, and stays lower than T, plural agreement appears to be blocked, as shown by the following example from Holmberg and Hróarsdottir (2003). Note that there appears to be speaker variation with respect to the judgment in (47) (Halldór Sigurđsson, personal communication). (46) Mér virðist/ virðast tNP [ hestarnir vera seinir] me.dat seem.sg/seem.pl the.horses.nom be slow ‘It seems to me that the horses are slow.’ (47) Það virðist/ *virðast einhverjum manni [ hestarnir vera seinir] expl seem.sg/ seem.pl some.dat man.dat the.horses.nom be slow ‘It seems to some man that the horses are slow.’ Plural agreement cannot cross an intervening experiencer, and this is explained under an Agree story as an intervention effect. The phi features of the dative intervene between T and the nominative DP, and allow T to only delete the uninterpretable case features on the DP: they interfere with valuing Ts phi-features. Consequently, the unvalued features of T will be valued in the default way, yielding third person singular agreement. Although the intervention effects at first sight bring strong support for Agree, it meets with what I believe is a fatal problem17: with simple experiencer verbs, a da-

178 Hilda Koopman

tive experiencer never acts as intervening between the verb and the nominative object (thanks to Halldór Sigurđsson for providing the following examples)18: (48) a.

þađ líkuđu mőrgum þessir tómatar. expl liked.3PL many.dat these.nom tomatoes.nom ‘Many liked these tomatoes.’ b. þađ leiddust sumum þessar rædur. expl found.boring.3Pl some.dat these.nom speeches.nom ‘Some people found these speeches boring.’

The same is true for passive constructions, as the famous example from Zaenen, Maling and Thráinsson (1984) shows: (49) þađ voru konungi gefnar ambáttir í vetur expl were.3pl king.dat given.nom.pl slaves.nom in winter ‘There was a king given maidservants in winter.’ (ZMT: 113 (50a)) It also holds for auxiliary constructions: (50) þAđ hafa sumum leist þessar rædur expl have.pl some.dat bore these speeches.nom ‘Some people have found these speeches boring.’ The following sums up the distribution of intervention effects: (51) a.

monoclausal dative nominative structures do not show intervention effects b. auxiliary constructions/passive constructions do not show intervention effects c. raising constructions show intervention effects; these are subject to interspeaker variability.

It is unclear how long distance Agree can ever capture (51). Thus, either agreement can apply anywhere in a local domain (but is blocked over a clausal boundary), or the derivations are considerably more complex than Agree presupposes. In the next sections, I show how a Spec head analysis can capture (48) within the theory of agreement developed in this paper, in conjunction with a reasonable account of case and agreement (4.2). I return to nominative objects in section 4.3. Impersonal passives and existential constructions will be left out of discussion, as I assume these can be analyzed as discussed in section 3.2.

4.2 Case and agreement Icelandic has a rich system of morphological cases (nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive), and extensive DP internal nominal agreement. This reflects merger of morphological case deep within the DP, as in Maasai. Within the assumptions underlying

Chapter 6. Agreement configurations 179

his paper, the morphological Case features of the DPs, which we can think of as the features that have been added to the NP, must be “matched” with the case features of Case heads in the clausal spine, and this is achieved by moving the DP to Spec positions of designated Case heads. Thus, a nominative DP must move to Spec, Nom, an accusative to Spec, Acc, a dative to Spec, Dat, and a genitive to Spec, Gen, the latter two very much very much in the spirit of Kayne’s (1994, 2000) general proposals for functional prepositions. Elements which are in a local Spec head relation with the DP will agree in features, hence trigger agreement in the course of the derivation. This analysis of morphological case presupposes that all Icelandic cases behave in the same way, i.e. they share the property of moving to the Spec position of designated case heads. This does not appear to be correct. Nominative and accusative case behave like structural cases and dative, genitive and accusative like inherent or lexical cases. What this means is that for nominative and accusative case, it is predictable on the basis of the derived structure whether some DP will be nominative or accusative. For lexical case, it is a particular predicate that plays the determining role, and it is assumed that these DPs do not move to clausal case heads. As for agreement, all cases can trigger agreement on dependents, but only nominative DPs can trigger subject verb agreement. I will sketch a modular account for Icelandic case that maintains the simple theory of case outlined above. The apparent differences between structural and inherent cases do not fall out from the way the grammar handles the two types of cases , but from the specific positions where they occur in the clausal spine. As I will argue, thematic roles and case must be decomposed, even in the case of inherent case. The difference between structural and inherent cases is due to other properties of the structure: nominative and accusative are case heads in the context of a TP, where T makes a local syntactic subject position available, and the subject property must be decomposed in two parts (Cardinaletti 2004). Inherent cases are case heads introduced by particular vP shells19.

4.2.1 Inherent case Zaenen and Maling (1990) show an important fact about inherent case and thematic property: one can occur without the other. This is illustrated in (52) below: some inchoative verb alternations show no preservation of case, but dative and genitive idiosyncratic case marking is preserved under passive. (52) a.

Skipstjórinn sőkkti skipinu (Zaenen and Maling 1990: 143) the.captain.nom sank the.ship.dat ‘The captain sank the ship’ b. skipiđ sőkk the.ship.nom sank ‘The ship sank’ c. Skipinu var sőkkt af skipstjóranum the.ship.dat was sunk by the.captain.dat ‘The ship was sunk by the captain’

180 Hilda Koopman

The dative case thus depends on the presence of the v shell, not of the VP shell, where the theme argument is introduced. If passive voice is merged higher than vP, a reasonable assumption, since only verbs with an agentive external argument can be passivized20 the dative case will be preserved under passivization because of the derivation. This translates Zaenen and Maling’s (1990: 142) basic insight: “We account for the case marking by assuming that idiosyncratic case marking takes place at a level that precedes passive, namely, at the end of the θ-component, and that, like all case marking, idiosyncratic case marking is preserved once it is assigned.”. Consider the following simplified mappings for over: (52), from the following hierarchy of merger: Nom > T > Voicepassive> Dat> v >VP. Nom conflates the nominative case head as well as the structural subject position, an issue we return to below. (the fact that the external argument cannot raise to the syntactic subject position in passives is indicated by striking out the argument; Participial morphology, V to T movement, and additional intervening structure and movements are omitted.) (53) a.

NOM

T

b. NOM

T

c.

T

NOM

[

DAT

[vP captainnom

v [VP V shipdat (52a)

[

V shipnom

(52b)

[ PASS [ DAT [vP captain v [VP V shipdat

(52c)

These structures can also capture a morphological generalization. As Zaenen and Maling show, the only criterion that correlates with whether individual inchoative/causative verb pairs do or not preserve case is a morphological one. Verbs that preserve case have identical past and participle form. Verbs that don’t typically have different paradigms for past tense and participles in the two environments (cf. the past tense in (52a) is preserved under passive (52b) sőkkti and sőkk). This generalization follows from the structures above, if the two different spell-out forms of the past tense of sink reflect the different syntactic structures [[V]T] for (52b) or [ [V[v]T] for (52a) .Verbs that have an inherent case marked theme in both unaccusative and transitive contexts, will have identical morphology, because inherent case is always minimally introduced by a separate shell, i.e. they always result in the morphological structure [ [V[v]T] and never in the structure [V]T]. Thus, some verbs can be bare VPs, others cannot but must be dominated by an additional shell structure (which I refer to generally as vP shell). To conclude: (54) Thematic structure and case are never conflated, but always decomposed

Chapter 6. Agreement configurations

4.2.2 Nominative case, quirky subjects and agreement What happens to the structural Nom in (53c), when the dative raises and becomes the syntactic subject? Is Nominative only projected where needed, or is it a necessary property of all tensed clauses? I will argue for the latter: nominative must be present and agreement is triggered by a silent expletive. It is well-known that only nominatives can trigger subject agreement on the verb, but other cases cannot. In the absence of a nominative DP, the finite verb carries 3rd person singular agreement, often called ‘default’ agreement: (55) a.

b

Okkur vantađi vinnu us.acc lacked.sg a-job.acc ‘ We lacked a job.’ þeim batnaði. them.dat recovered.sg `They recovered.

(Acc Acc)

(Dat)

How should the notion of “default’ agreement be construed theoretically? The idea of a morphological default seems incompatible to me with basic assumptions of the Minimalist Program: a finite verb in Icelandic carries (uninterpretable) tense and agr features, which must be valued before the interfaces against an element that bears these features. Merger of a silent nominative expletive that “triggers/values” agreement is simply the null hypothesis: what principles could prevent the language learner from postulating a silent expletive? I discuss some possible objections to this analysis below, as well as some historical reasons as to why this is not the standard analysis for Icelandic. Quirky subjects in Icelandic behave as syntactic subjects, i.e. as occupying the highest A position in the clause (Zaenen, Maling and Thráinsson 1985, Jónsson 1996, among many others). Although many other languages, like German for example, have superficially similar quirky subject constructions (dative nominative constructions), the quirky subject behaves quite differently: in Icelandic it can be controlled, and reduced under conjunction reduction, in German this is impossible. The tacit assumption in the literature is that the quirky dative is in subject position in Icelandic, but in a Topic position in German, or in languages that have overt expletive pronouns in this configuration. (This raises the important question how we should account for the Icelandic German contrast: see section 4.4 for a proposal). In earlier stages of the theory (pre VP internal subject), there was a unique clausal structural subject position. If the quirky DP was occupying that position in Icelandic, there was simply no room for another silent syntactic element that triggered 3rd singular agreement on the verb. This led to the conclusion that this third person form must be forced in some different way: it is present because of the needs to the morphology: i.e. it is a morphological default form. This argument no longer carries force: theories either admit multiple specifiers or multiple heads with single specifiers. A second objection is that this expletive nominative pronoun in Icelandic must be silent. Besides an overt expletive merged in CP, and a silent arbitrary pro (people/we). Icelandic

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182 Hilda Koopman

seems to have silent nominative expletives in precisely the contexts we may expect21 (in contexts without a topic or a subject of the predication.). We know from other languages that expletives can be silent. Since other languages have overt nominative expletives with precisely these verbs, it is difficult to see what principle exactly would prevent an Icelandic language learner from postulating one. At the core of my analysis then is the idea that an expletive must be merged to check nominative case head, Nom. When Nom is merged, a nominative expletive must be merged with Nom to value the features if there is no local DP available that can carry out this task. Again, this yields a left to right agreement configuration, in accordance with the Spec head hypothesis. Quirky subjects raise to the subject position, i.e. there must be more than one subject position. We minimally arrive at the following decomposition of the preverbal subject field, in agreement with Cardinaletti (2004), who argues that the preverbal subject field must be decomposed into at least two specialized projections, which she calls SubjP (a projection for the subject of the predication)22 and AgrSP, where nominative case is checked and agreement is determined. (for expository convenience, Nom and Agr are collapsed, only nominatives can trigger agreement). (56) Preverbal subject field: [DP subj [explnom, 3 nom [ T Recall that only morphologically nominative DPs can raise to Nom, just as only dative DPs can raise to DAT etc. I will assume that this follows from the “matching” of features. Suppose now that a dative DP is the highest DP in the vP region. It will value its Case feature against the DAT head, and move directly to SubjP, bypassing Nom, providing TP with a subject. A silent expletive must merge in Spec, Nom to match the nominative feature, triggering third person agreement on the verb. (57) [SubjP ship.dat subj [expl [ nom [

T

Nominative subject DPs do double duty. They raise to Nom, and as a result trigger full subject agreement, and then move on to Spec, SubjP to provide TP with a subject. (58) [SubjP ship.nomi subj [ t i

[ NOM [

T …. ti

Quirky subjects thus never trigger subject agreement because they cannot occupy Spec, NOM, a prerequisite for subject agreement. Quirky subjects otherwise trigger agreement, as revealed on floated quantifiers, or on secondary predicates. They are therefore not hidden PPs, nor topped off with a layer of structure that blocks participation in agreement. (59) a.

strákunum leiddist őllum í skóla the-boys.dat bored all-dat.pl.m in school ‘the boys were all bored in school’ (Sigurđsson 1991: 331(6c))

Chapter 6. Agreement configurations

b. Njósnraranum var kastađ einum út úr þyrlunni the-spy.dat was.sg thrown alone.dat out from the-helicopter.dat (Andrews 1990) Note that under this analysis, the nominative must be valued under Spec head (left right merge) by the expletive, which is responsible for the 3rd person copy on T.

4.2.3 Accusative case and quirky case Structural accusative case behaves very similar to nominative. In the usual configurations where accusative case is available, i.e. with an active v that introduces an external agentive argument, accusative case is available in Icelandic, yielding regular nominative accusative patterns. However, morphological accusative case fails to show up if an object carries dative, or genitive (or nominative case, see below), just as nominative case fails to show up with quirky subjects (or more correctly shows up only in the agreement on the finite verb). Yet, these inherently case marked objects distribute like accusatives objects, and undergo object shift and obligatory raising to object for example. (60) Skipstjórinn sőkkti skipinu ekki the-captain.nom sank the.ship.dat not ‘The captain didn’t sink the ship.’ We can understand this in exactly the same way as we understand nominative case, if we follow Collins and Thráinsson (1996) and assume that structural accusative structures are similar to nominative case structures, i.e. they are a species of TP, but with an ACC case head. As TPs, they contain a “Subj” position. Only accusative DPs can move to ACC. The highest subject DP in the local domain will be attracted to Subject, if it is an inherently case marked DP, a silent expletive will satisfy the features of ACC. There is never a morphological reflex with an accusative expletive in Icelandic. (61) a.

I love the shipacc … [SubjP ship.acc subj [ ti [ acc [ b. The captain sank the ship … [SubjP ship.dat subj [expl [ acc [

T T [dat v

Thus, because of the hierarchy of merger Acc> T> Dative/Gen, inherently case marked DPs bleed accusative case, but behave like all accusative objects, because they are forced to raise to the subject position of the accusative TP.23

4.2.4 Nominative case in infinitival CPs Nominative case is available not only in tensed environments, but also in infinitivals (Sigurđsson 1989, 1991, 1996). Infinitival complements headed by ađ show the same case patterns as tensed causes, with PRO carrying all cases, including nominative (Yip et al 1987, Sigurđsson 1991: 337). This can be concluded from nominative floated

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184 Hilda Koopman

quantifiers, and agreement with main predicates which can never be triggered by inherent case marked subjects, as shown in (62) and (63): (62) Strákana langađi til ađ komast allir í veisluna the boys.acc wanted.sg for to get all.nom.pl.ms to the-party ‘The boys wanted to get all to the party (63) Stákanumun hafđi veriđ kalt / *kőlldum the-boys.dat.pl have.sg been cold.sg cold.dat Structural nominative case is therefore available within infinitival clauses of this type. Not all types of infinitival complements license internal nominative case. Raising-toobject verbs license structural accusative: since nominative case is not preserved under raising, nominative cannot be available internal to the infinitival. Since Chomsky (1981), it is commonly assumed that control complements are CPs and raising complements are TPs. We can characterize the contexts in which clause internal nominative case is available as CPs. Clauses which lack a CP level lack the possibility of licensing internal nominative Case. (64) Nominative case is only available within CP This point becomes important in the discussion of long distance agreement in dative nominative raising constructions.

4.3 Nominative objects 4.3.1 Why simple experiencer verbs are not that simple Nominative objects are attested with experiencer verbs, either ‘simple’ verbs or raising to subject verbs, and can be derived from dative accusative double object constructions via passivization. There are two important clues for the analysis. First, the context for nominative objects is severely restricted: there are only dative nominative verbs, and no genitive nominative verbs nor accusative nominative verbs (Zaenen and Maling 1990, Sigurđsson 1991). Secondly, many (though not all) of the nominative object experiencer verbs and raising verbs carry particular voice morphology (-st), traditionally called “middle voice” (leiđast, ‘bore’, virđist (seem), sýnast, (‘appear’). This morphology follows the inflected verb forms (Anderson 1990) (leiddu-st ‘bore.past.pl-st’, leiđum-st bore-pres.pl-st, leiđ-a-st (bore.inf.st). Given the syntactic approach to morphological structure building underlying this paper, this has syntactic consequences. If the morphology is derived by regular head movement, or roll up movement, the morphology must reflect the following syntactic structure, with the finite or infinitival TP merged below the head that is spelled out as –st.24

Chapter 6. Agreement configurations

(65) [Voice -st [subj [ NOM [T ] [ VP st pl past

]

In the structure in (63), –st can be likened to C: what is important is that it selects for a finite tensed complement that contains Nom, as the morphological form indicates. The argument of V will be nominative since that is the only local available case, yielding a nominative object, which triggers agreement on T, (V picks up the morphology: this is not indicated below): (66) [Voice- st [ DPi [subj [DPi NOM [T ] [ VP V DPi ] Dative experiencer verbs with nominative objects that do not carry overt voice morphology will be assumed to share the same structure, but with a phonological silent voice. Nominative objects occur only with dative experiencer verbs25. We take this to show that the structure in (65) can be only selected by a v shell which introduces a dative experiencer. This vP in turn will be dominated by the main TP, either finite or infinitival, as vPs always are, and a Subj position and a Case position that depends on T (Nom or Acc). Within each TP, the highest argument is locally attracted to the subject position, the Nom position of the higher T is satisfied by Nom, as a dative cannot move to this position: (67) Dative subject [subj Nom T [ Dat [ exp v [ Voice(st) [TP

Nominative object Subj Nom T [ themenom V it

At no point in the derivation does the dative experiencer intervene, thus capturing the absence of intervention effects with these types of verbs (51a). Under the proposed analysis, experiencer verbs with nominative objects are double nominative structures, which agree both with a 3rd person expletive and a nominative theme (these structures conform to Collins and Thráinsson (1996), with each shell dominated by TP). The heads in the two TP cycles are “compressed” into a single complex verb, which is doubly marked for nominative agreement (cf. Schütze (2003)).26 The compression makes double agreement hard to see. We turn to this fact in the next section.

4.3.2 Double nominative agreement With dative nominative verbs, the verb carries either third person singular or third person plural depending on the features of the nominative object. The verb however cannot overtly express first or second person features of the object, unless the verb form is homophonous with both 3rd person subject and 1st or second person (Sigurđsson 1996): (68) a.

henni leiddust þær her.dat bored.pl they.nom ‘She was bored with them.’

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186 Hilda Koopman

b. Henni * leiddumst / ?* leiddust / ?* leiddist við. her.dat bored.pl bored.pl bored.s we.nom When the spelled out form is homophonous with the third person singular, as Sigurđsson (1996) shows, the sentences improve. Sigurđsson links the apparent chaotic nature of the judgments to the two slightly differing paradigms of these verbs: (69) Sg 1 Sg 2 Sg 3 Pl 1 Pl 2 Pl 3

líkaði, líkaðir líkaði líkuðum líkuðuð líkuðu

leiddist leiddist leiddist leiddumst leiddust leiddust

Speaker judgments show that the boldfaced líkaði is compatible with a first person object or a third person object (but not with any other object). Leiddist is compatible with a first, a second or a third person object. This is exactly what we expect if the verb agrees with both the nominative object and the 3rd person expletive (as argued in Schütze (2003)). The only survivors are forms where the spell-out forms is compatible with all features specifications. Since these features are morphosyntactic agreement features (i.e. uninterpretable features) that arise as a byproduct of the derivation, no problems arise with the interpretation. (70) Double agreement configurations (only double agreement indicated) líkaði is compatible with [[like + 1st] +3rd] [[like + 3rd sg] +3rd] leiddist is compatible with [[bore +1st]+ 3rd], [bore +2st]+3nd], [[bore + 3rd sg], 3rd] líkuðu is compatible with [[like+3rd pl]+3rd] leiddust is compatible with [[ bore+3rd pl] +3rd] Thus, these quite opaque morphological agreement facts bear on the double agreement analysis, and find a simple structural explanation, which is consistent with late spell out models of morphology. In keeping with the morphological forms of the verbs, Nom is merged low in the structure and agreement is triggered low as well. 27

4.3.3 Plural climbing If nominative is merged lower than the experiencer v, we expect only the structure that spells out the “verb” to be sensitive to agreement with the nominative object agreement. This is incorrect, as we can see from auxiliary structures. When the complex verb enters into a compound tense, the auxiliary obligatorily agrees in number with the nominative. (71) Hafa einhverjum leiđst þessar rædur. (Dat Nom) have.pl someone.dat bored.pl.st these speeches.nom `Has someone found these speeches boring?’

Chapter 6. Agreement configurations 187

Thus, the complex experiencer verb passes its agreement features on to the auxiliary. I will call this “plural climbing” to bring out the parallel with Romance clitic climbing. I will assume that plural climbing arises as a by-product of complex verb formation. Koopman and Szabolcsi (2000) propose that complex verb formation always requires a local Spec head relation between the restructuring predicate and the predicate of its complement. If that predicate carries plural agreement features, plural climbing can again be triggered under Spec head. In other words, a nominative object DP will trigger agreement on all the verbs in a restructuring domain, because of two different processes: regular nominative agreement triggered low in the structure, and copying of agreement features agreement as a byproduct of complex verb formation.

4.3.4 Raising verbs Let us next turn to raising verbs. Recall what we have so far established: many experiencer verbs and raising verbs carry special voice morphology (-st). -st (Voice) takes a TP with VP as its complement, and some experiencer verbs project a silent voice. TP(nom) can be selected by an experiencer v, which introduces dative case. Experiencer constructions are double nominative and double subject agreement constructions. Raising verbs without an experiencer trigger obligatory raising: (72) Ólafur virðist [t vera gáfaður] Olaf.nom seem.3S be intelligent ‘Olaf seems to be intelligent.’

(H&H 24a)

(73) *þađ virðist [ Olaf vera gáfaður] þađ seems.3S Olaf be intelligent This is because pure raising verbs lack vP shells that introduce case. The clausal complement of the raising verb must be a TP28 and hence lacks an internal nominative position. Raising is obligatory just as short movement to subject position is obligatory. With dative nominative experiencer raising verbs, the experiencer shell embeds VoiceP which provides a nominative TP with a subject position. The dative experiencer must raise to the local Subj position, since it is the closest DP. The verb can agree with the plural nominative (74a), but it can also always carry third person singular in this context (74b): (74) a.

Mér virðast tNP hestarnir me.dat seem.3PL the.horses.nom ‘It seems to me that the horses are slow.’ b. Mér virðist tNP hestarnir me.dat seems.s the.horses.nom ‘It seems to me that the horses are slow.’

vera seinir be slow vera seinir be slow

These facts follow from the basic structure of the dative nominative experiencer verbs, if we assume in addition that in this context, raising verbs can take either a TP or a CP

188 Hilda Koopman

clausal complement. (74a) has the structure in (75) with seem selecting a TP:

(75) [ Subj

Nom T [ Dat [exp v [TP Subj t Nom T Voice [VPseem [TP horses be slow] me.Dat it horsespl.nom

(74b) has the structure in (76) with seem selecting a CP. (This structure is further refined below.) (76) [ Subj

Nom T dat me [Voice[ [ Subj Nom T [ seem [CP Subj Nom horses.nom ] me.dat it [ [ it [ horses.Nom

Thus, seem never agrees with the nominative horses: it agrees with an expletive. The nominative case on horses is checked internal to the infinitival CP, a possibility that Icelandic allows (4.2.4.). Further questions arise as to derived constituency. If the T within the VoiceP requires a Subj, it should attract a subject. I will assume it does attract the CP which contains horses. In some sense then, the expletive is the clausal expletive it, which we know can occur with CPs, but never with TPs. (77) [ Subj

Nom T dat me v [Voice [ [ Subj Nom T [ seem [CP Subj Nom horses.nom ] me.dat it [ [ CP[horses it [

The double agreement on the verb is simply double agreement for two third person expletives. According to this analysis, then, sentences with or without object agreement have different structures, as expected under the Spec head analysis. This is further supported by two facts: first and second nominatives are always fine if the raising verb carries singular agreement (Sigurđsson 1996). Since the verb does not agree with the nominative, but with an expletive, and the nominative is licensed in the CP complement, the verb is insensitive to the features of the nominative. (78) a b

Henni virtist / * virtumst [CP við her.dat seemed.sg seemed.pl we.nom Henni hafði / *höfðuð fundist [CP þið her.dat had.s had.pl found you.nom

vera be vera be

duglegar]. industrious duglegar]. industrious

Secondly, whether the verb agrees with the nominative object correlates with different behavior under the Binding theory, as discussed by Taraldsen (1992, 1995). When the nominative object agrees with the raising verb in number, a principle B effect arises:

Chapter 6. Agreement configurations 189

(79) Konunum fundust þaer vera gáfađar women-the.dat seemed-pl they.nom be gifted.nom.fem.pl (Principle B) ‘The womeni though theyj were smart.’ When it does not, no Principle B effect arises. (80) Konumum fannst [CP þaer vera gáfađar ] women-the-dat seems.s they.nom be gifted.nom.fem.pl ‘The women though theyi, j were smart.’ This follows straightforwardly from their different structures, with raising out of an TP complement in (79), but not in (80). (81) [ Subj Nom [dat exp v [ Voice[[ Subj Nom T [ find [TP they be gifted] woman-dat it [ theyi ti [TP ] (82) [ Subj Nom [dat exp v [Voice[ [ Subj Nom T [ think[CP theynom be gifted] woman-dat it [[CP theynom .. it Icelandic does not allow A- movement of the nominative over an intervening experiencer with these types of verbs: (83) * hestarnir virðast mér [ t veraseinir] horses.nom seem.pl me.dat be slow ‘Horses seems to me to be are slow.’ This follows once the underlying merged structures for these particular cases are taken into consideration: there is ample evidence that with certain predicates the dative experiencer end up in the highest A-position in the verbal spine. Once we take this into account, all movements of lower DPs over the experiencer dative are excluded with these particular predicates. (84) [TP Subj Nom T [ Dat [exp v [Voice[ [TP Subj Nom T [ seem [TP horses be slow] We can also understand Schütze’s (1997) cases where agreement with the nominative fails: (85) Mér virđist virđast Jóni vera taldir me.dat seems.s seem.pl John.dat to.be believed.nom.pl líka hestarnir. like horses.nom.pl ‘It seems to me that John is believed to like horses.’ This derivation contains the form : Johndat be(pl) believed(pl) to like horses(nom). Nominative case on horses is determined within the like clause, as a function of voice, which is lower than the experiencer shell. Horses therefore trigger plural agreement on the infinitival form of like: which is carried up to the passive participle form of believe through complex verb formation (which transmits it to be: if this portion of the struc-

190 Hilda Koopman

ture is finite, be will show obligatory plural agreement with horses). This structure is embedded under the experiencer verb, yielding the following: (86) [Subj Nom dat T [ me v [Voice [ Subj Nom T seem [ TPJohndat bepl [me.dat it [ me [ [ Johndat it [ John The verb must be singular because both the TP segments contain an expletive, i.e. both TP segments agree for singular. This raises a problem though. Why cannot the plural be transmitted from be to seem under complex verb formation? It cannot be assumed that this agreement is optional, as we have seen it is obligatory in compound tenses for example. I believe the answer lies in the way the properties of Nom can be satisfied. The only element that is locally available to check the nominative case head is the expletive, which triggers singular agreement. This leads to a conflict that within the same TP segment the verb must agree for singular (with it) and carries plural. I will therefore assume that the only derivation that converges is one where seem takes a CP complement: (87) [Subj Nom dat [ me [me.dat it

v

[Voice[Subj Nom T seem [ CPJohndat bepl [ [ CP Johndat…] it [

So far then, the long distance agreement facts can be captured successfully under the Spec head hypothesis, with a nominative DP in a local relation to a Nom head, in conjunction with an independently supported analysis of the hierarchical structure that underlies these cases. In addition to Spec head agreement between the trigger and the target, a second source for agreement must be assumed, which I have called ‘agreement climbing’ i.e. agreement with a plural predicate triggered under complex verb formation (also reduced to Spec head agreement). This hypothesis successfully captures the absence of intervention effects in monoclausal contexts, and in contexts with compound tenses. Agreement failures follow from the structure (a nominative DP cannot reach the relevant Nom position).

4.3.5 Intervention effects in raising constructions I have so far shown that dative experiencers do not structurally intervene between the position where nominative agreement is determined and the attracted DP. If correct, the question arises how to capture the so-called intervention effects that are found for some speakers with raising to subject verbs, but not with simple experiencer verbs or passivized double object constructions. This effect is shown in the following example from Holmberg and Hóarsdóttir (2003):29 (88) Það virðist / * virðast einhverjum manni [ hestarnir vera seinir] expl seem.sg seem.pl some.dat man.dat the-horses.nom be slow.nom ‘It seems to some man that the horses are slow.’ When the experiencer is an indefinite, a singular DP, (or in certain cases a trace of whmovement30), plural agreement appears to be blocked. When a plural DP intervenes,

Chapter 6. Agreement configurations

the intervention effects are quite weak: (89) ?Það finnast mörgum stúdentum tölvurnar ljótar expl find.pl many.dat students.dat the computers.nom ugly.nom ‘Many students find the computers ugly.’ These facts are surprizing under the story I have developed so far since the experiencer never structurally intervenes. Indefinite experiencers occur to the left of the verb in compound tenses, and behave differently from indefinite themes, bringing further support to the idea that experiencers are always introduced by the higher vP shell, and do not intervene between NOM and the nominative object. (90) Það hafa sumum leist (* sumum) þessar rædur expl have.pl some.dat boring some.dat these.nom speeches.nom ‘Some people have found these speeches boring.’ It seems therefore unlikely that this effect is due to intervention for nominative case and agreement. In the present account, it must rather be due to the way agreement is carried up under complex verb formation. In the latter case, the experiencer shell does intervene in the structure. It is as if the experience shell allows plural climbing parasitically on the features of its specifier. The theoretical challenge then is to provide a principled account for the fact that “tight” restructuring with simple experiencer verbs and passive constructions has different surface effects from restructuring under raising verbs. Future research will have to yield further insight into these issues, and yield a clearer picture of speaker variation, and the grammars of individual speakers, both within Icelandic as well as crosslinguistically.

4.4 Icelandic and German quirky subjects In 4.2.4 we saw that infinitival CPs must contain PRO, which starts out its life with morphologically case. As is well known, Icelandic has quirky PRO, in addition to nominative PRO (Sigurđsson 1991): (91) Ég vonast til að verða hjálpað I.nom hoped for C be helped ‘I hope to be helped.’ Under the proposal here, there is no difference between these two instances of PRO from the point of view of the external syntax. The uninterpretable case features have been deleted below the Subj position that hosts PRO. (92) a. [Ii hope [ C[ PROi Subj it be Pass PROdat dat help] b. [Ii hope [ C[ PROi Subj PROnom NOM PRO speak] Interestingly, this analysis is not incompatible with GB analyses which requires PRO to be “caseless”, i.e. protected by a particular type of C. Given the proposals in this

191

192 Hilda Koopman

paper, caselessness can arise in two ways: either the uninterpretable case features have been deleted, below the highest A-position, or they have never been added in the first place. The German verb help takes an inherent dative as well, but quirky case marked PRO impossible: (93) * Ich hoffe [PRO geholfen zu werden] I hope helped to be ‘I hope to be helped.’ This can be excluded if the dative in German is not a DP, as in Icelandic, but in fact a PP with a silent P. If so, (93) can be ruled out by whatever principle excludes PRO from being the complement of P. (94) * Ich hoffe [PP*[ [Pe] PRO]] geholfen zu werden] I hope helped to be ‘I hope to be helped’ (95) * I spoke [to PRO] Additional support comes from Italian dative nominative constructions, where the dative is visibly marked by a P: (96) a Gianni piaceva molto la musica to Gianni pleased much the music ‘Gianni liked music a lot.’ Cardinaletti (2004) shows, that the dative raises to Subj. As in German, a dative subject cannot be controlled (Adriana Belletti, Anna Cardinaletti, personal communication): (97) * Gianni cerca in tutti i modi di piacere questo tipo di musica Gianni tries in all the ways to like this kind of music ‘Gianni tries hard to like this kind of music.’ The difference between Icelandic and German/Italian PRO then should be related to the category that raises to the subject position, DP or PP. A further difference between German and Icelandic falls out from the proposed structure and the difference in category between Icelandic and German. In Icelandic, (but not in German), a quirky subject can be missing under coordination. (Rőgnvaldsson 1990): (98) a.

Ég hafði mikið að gera og (mér) var samt ekki hjálpað I had a.lot to do and me-dat was nevertheless not helped ‘I had a lot to do but nevertheless I was not helped.’ b. Þeim líkar maturinn og (þeir) borða mikið they.dat like.3S the.food and they.nom eat.pl much ‘They like the food and eat much’

Chapter 6. Agreement configurations 193

Again, this follows if both subjects are DPs, and if coordination is coordination of NomP (or SubjP with a silent operator in the second conjunct, as in Munn (1993)). As shown above, the case feature of the DP that raises to Subj has been deleted prior to raising to Subj: (99) [SubjP they- Subj [NOMP it Nom they dat [and [NomP they Nom

]

This type of analysis is only possible if quirky case marked DPs are DPs; if they are PPs, as in German, this pattern will be excluded, as ATB is only possible if the categories are identical.

5. Conclusion In this paper, I have defended the hypothesis that agreement is triggered under Merge of a triggering DP to a XP, a hypothesis that I have referred to as the Spec head hypothesis. I have shown that this hypothesis must be available on theoretical grounds. Whether Agree is available as well, in doubtful: long distance agreement can be captured successfully under Spec head, with agreement either triggered under pied-piping, or early in the derivation. “Agreement climbing” i.e. agreement with a plural predicate triggered under complex verb formation, can also be reduced to Spec head agreement given the theory of complex verb formation in Koopman and Szabolcsi (2000). This hypothesis successfully captures the absence of intervention effects in monoclausal contexts in Icelandic, and in contexts with compound tenses. Agreement failures follow from the structure (a nominative DP cannot reach the relevant Nom position, forcing (null) expletive insertion). A residue of intervention effects remain unaccounted for. These occur over clausal boundaries and generally seem to be related to restructuring, and not to the theory of agreement. Arguments that show the need for Agree in UG must show that the relevant (left right) relation between the trigger and the target does not hold at any point in the derivation, and that Agree has effects that cannot be reduced to movement. In so far as this cannot be shown for the cases we considered, and alternative analyses can be empirically supported, it looks more and more likely that Spec head is the only agreement configuration. If correct, this has important analytical consequences for the type of syntactic derivations that hold. Thus, syntacticians should not ignore agreement patterns, since agreement patterns and agreement asymmetries provide important insights into the properties that syntactic structures and derivations must have.

194 Hilda Koopman

Notes * This paper is a further development of Koopman (2001, 2003a, 2003b), and finds its historical roots in my paper on Babbara case chains (Koopman (1987), published as Koopman (1992)). The core ideas on modern Icelandic where developed in a course on Agreement at the (2004) Egg summer school in Cluj and in a UCLA seminar (fall 2004). I would like to thank all participants for their feedback and comments. Special thanks go to Ananda Lima, Anoop Mahajan, Dominique Sportiche, Carson Schütze, and to Halldór Sigurđsson for generous e-mail discussions and feedback on the fascinating subject of Icelandic agreement. 1. See also Zwart (2004, this volume). This leaves room for further issues, as to whether agreement heads can exist for example. I will assume in this paper they do, though absolutely nothing hinges on this. 2. (1a) directly captures agreement asymmetries where agreement is only possible when a DP has moved sufficiently high into the structure. These will not be discussed in this paper (see Kayne (1989), Koopman (2003a, 2003b), Hallman (1999)). 3. See Kayne (1994: section 5.3) for discussion of a typological asymmetry with postpositions showing agreement frequently, but prepositions never. (Never seems to be too strong, the single P of Maasai for example shows full agreement with a DP complement). 4. This suggests a direct link to Kayne’s (2003) proposal that an immediate complement of Y may not move to Spec, YP. 5. See the introduction of Rizzi (2004) for particular helpful perspective on points of tension between the so aptly called “cartographic” approach and the Minimalist Program. 6. Maasai nouns fall into three distinct classes: proper names, pronouns, and common nouns ( ‘dog’ , alayénì ‘boy’,  ‘goat’). Proper names and pronouns do not have overt “determiners”, and trigger slightly different agreement patterns. The discussion here is restricted to common nouns. 7. For a table that includes the approximately 300 nouns in Tucker and Mpaayei (1955) Maasai English dictionary see Koopman (2001). 8. See Greenberg (1978) on the determiner cycle. 9. For a more detailed account and discussion of apparent exceptions see Koopman (2003a, 2003b). The phonological spell out of singular number covaries with gender. Plural forms are invariant. 10. This recalls Greenberg’s (1963) universal 32: ‘Whenever a verb agrees with a nominal subject or object in gender it also agrees in number.’ 11. I assume (contra Cinque (1999)) that these adjectives are heads, not specifiers. 12. Thisfollows up on my suggestion made after aUCLA presentation. See also Koopman (2003b). 13. I have abstracted from the extensive scrambling that Tsez exhibits. 14. Hazout (2004) argues that there cannot be a predicate, because it is not clear what its semantics is, and because it is not clear why it has to undergo obligatory predicate inversion. Hazout does not address any of the empirical arguments that Moro presents in favor of this account. If the existential operator requires the argument to remain within its scope, and is this operator is part of the existential predicate (be there), it is not difficult to see why the associate cannot raise. In order for the features of the associate to be licensed, there must agree with it, and move in

Chapter 6. Agreement configurations

search of a feature licenser. 15. Predicate inversion has been an extremely powerful tool in the analysis of DPs over the past decade, furthering the understanding of DPs and possessor constructions considerably. (see in particular Den Dikken (1998, 2006). 16. Zwart also shows that transitive expletive constructions in Dutch call for a traditional expletive insertion analysis. Here the agreement is mediated by the DP which is to the left of the V. 17. The same point is made independently in Bobaljik (2005) who develops a theory where agreement is post-syntactic and can apply anywhere within a clause. 18. The verb can carry singular agreement here as well; this is generally the case with these two experiencer verbs. 19. In addition to principles that regulate the distribution of morphological cases, there are principles that determine whether the head of an A-chain must be pronounced or not, and where it must be pronounced. These are the principles of the Case module of the GB theory. Thus the subject of a tensed clause is nominative, movement of a DP to the subject position is obligatory, and the subject of an infinitival CP complement is PRO. As scholars working on Icelandic have repeated many times (Maling 2001, Sigurđsson 1991, 2000, among others), the two notions of case cannot be conflated. 20. Yip et al (1987), Maling and Zaenen (1990): only verbs with an external agent argument can be passivized, or pysch verbs of the type with an experiencer object of the type (this bothers Bill). Stative passives (also called unpassives) do not preserve case, suggesting VP is the complement of stative Voice. 21. Modern Icelandic also has V first declaratives in certain root and embedded contexts (Sigurđsson 1990), in contexts where one would expect to find it or there. Sigurđsson (1990) states that V1 declaratives are quite rare in the spoken language, and occur in narratives (they are quite common in casual newspaper narratives, such as sports news). (i) existential constructions (silent there) a. (þađ) voru oft langar umræđer á fundunum (S 1990: 48-49) (þađ) were often long discussions at the-meetings ‘there were often long discussions at the meetings’ (ii) expletive constructions: atmospheric verbs it (silent quasi argument it) (þađ) rigni því sennigela mikiđ á morgun (S 1990: 49) rains thus probably much tomorrow (iii) extraposition contexts (It ..CP) : (því) er sinnlegi ađ rigni mera á morgun (S 1990: 52) thus is likely that rains heavier tomorrow Thus, it is likely that it will rain heavier tomorrow. In addition, Icelandic has a silent arbitrary plural PRO. 22. This raises a further issue as to how we should really understand this notion (subject of predication). I will not address this issue here. 23. Contrary to dative and genitive cases, inherent accusative is never preserved when the predicate that dictates accusative is passivized (Zaenen and Maling 1990: 145(16)). Inherent lexical accusative is preserved when embedded in the complement of a passivized raising to object verb (id): (i) a.

Stormurinn the-storm.nom

blés blew

strompinn af the-chimney.acc off

húsinu the-house

195

196 Hilda Koopman blés af húsinu strompinn chimney.acc blew.3s off the-house c. Strompurinn var blásinn af húsinu the chimney.nom was blown off the house d. bátana er taliđ hafa brotiđ í spón the-boats.acc is believed have broken into pieces Structural accusative case is never available in Icelandic passive constructions (although it is in the new passive constructions (Maling and Sigurjondottir (2002)) which looks like the Maasai passive (Greenberg 1978). Thus, passive and accusative Case are in complementary distribution on the “same” predicate, and the question is why. It would follow if accusative depends not on the presence of an active v, but on the presence of a particular voice head, call it Active, a voice that Austronesean languages encode overtly. All predicates with inherent accusative would contain an active Voice head (and ib would read literally as: it blew the chimney off the house). Accusative is never preserved under passivization (ic), because active and passive voice are in complementary distribution. (id) is non problematic, because active voice is on the lower predicate, and passive voice on the higher one. b.

24. Anderson (1990) presents a phonological argument that voice is closer to V than the inflectional heads. This would not change my main arguments substantially. The surface form 3v-1t2voice from the hierarchy Tense>voice>V is well attested crosslinguistically (see also Koopman (2005a)). 25. As well as passivized double object constructions; these will not be addressed here. 26. Zaenen and Maling (1990) note that inherent case is never preserved under middle voice. Note that this suggest that the –st Voice structure can only be merged on top of VP, and not on top of vP. 27. First and second objects should be better in infinitivals, since these show no person inflection (Schütze 2003). Sigurđsson (2004) discusses the fact that these do get better, but are not perfect. Comparative judgments for individual speakers with the finite and infinitival forms of verbs like like and bore should shed further light on how individual grammars behave. 28. We will see below that in certain cases it can be a CP as well. These cases always involve the presence of another vP shell. It remains to be understood what forces/allows TP/CP complement selection. 29. This judgment is not shared by all Icelandic speakers (Halldór Sigurdsson personal comm.). 30. The data about wh-traces are unclear and hard to reproduce. The intervention effects of indefinite, singular and plural can be reproduced (Boeckx 2000), and are quite solid (See Koopman (2004) for a summary of judgments by 19 native speakers of English.)

References Anderson, S. 1990. The grammar of Icelandic verbs in –st. In J. Maling and A. Zaenen (ed.), 235-277. Andrews, A. 1990. The VP-complement analysis in modern Icelandic. In J. Maling and A. Zaenen (eds), 165-187. Bach, E. 1968. Nouns and noun phrases. In Universals in Linguistic Theory, E. Bach and R. Harms

Chapter 6. Agreement configurations 197 (eds), 90-122. New York NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Bobaljik, J. 2005. Where is phi? Agreement as a postsyntactic operation. ms, University of Connecticut. Boeckx, C. 2000. Quirky agreement. Studia Linguistica 54: 354-380. Campbell, R. 1996. Specificity operators in Spec DP. Studia Linguistica 50: 161-188. Cardinaletti, A. 2004. Towards a cartography of subject positions. In The Structure of CP and IP, L. Rizzi (ed.), 116-165. The Cartography of Syntactic Structures Oxford Studies in Comparative Syntax 2. Oxford: OUP. Chomsky, N. 1981. Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris. Chomsky, N. 1986. Knowledge of Language. New York NY: Praeger. Chomsky, N. 1991. Some notes on the economy of derivation and representation. In Principles and Parameters in Comparative Grammar Current Studies in Linguistics 20, R. Freidin (ed.), 417-454. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 1998. Minimalist Inquiries: The Framework. MIT Occasional Papers in Linguistics 15. Cambridge MA: MITWPL. Chomsky, N. 2000. Minimalist inquiries: The framework. In Step by Step. Essays in minimalist syntax in honor of Howard Lasnik, R. Martin, D. Michaels and J. Uriagereka (eds), 89 - 156. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 2001. Derivation by phase. In Ken Hale. A life in language, M. Kenstowicz (ed.), 1-52. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Cinque, G. 1999. Adverbs and Functional Projections: A cross-linguistic perspective. New York NY: OUP. Cinque, G. 2000. On Greenberg’s universal 20 and the Semitic DP. ms, University of Venice. Cinque, G. 2005. Deriving Greenberg’s universal 20 and its exceptions with: Linguistic Inquiry 36(3): 315–332. Collins, C. and H. Thráinsson. 1996. VP internal structure and object shift in Icelandic. Linguistic Inquiry 27(3): 391-444. Den Dikken, M. 1998. Predicate inversion in DP. In Possessives, Predicates and Movement in the Determiner Phrase [Linguistics Today 22], A. Alexiadou and C. Wilder (eds), 177 - 214. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Den Dikken, M. 2006. Relators and Linkers: The syntax of predicate inversion and copulas. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Greenberg, J. H. 1963. Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements. In Universals of Language, J. H. Greenberg (ed.), 73-113. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Greenberg, J. H. 1978. How does a language acquire gender markers?. In Universals of Human Language III, J. H. Greenberg, C. A. Ferguson and E. Moravcik (eds), 47-82. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press. Hallman, P. 1999. The structure of agreement failure in Lebanese Arabic. In Proceedings of the 19th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, R. Billerey and N. Lillehaugen (eds), 178190. Somerville MA: Cascadilla. Hazout, I. 2004. The syntax of existential constructions. Linguistic Inquiry 35(3): 393-430. Holmberg, A. and Hróarsdottir, T. 2003. Agreement and movement in Icelandic raising constructions. Lingua 113: 997-1019. Jónsson, J. G. 1996. Clausal Architecture and Case in Icelandic. PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. (Distributed by GLSA).

198 Hilda Koopman Kayne, R. 1989. Facets of Romance past participle agreement. In Dialect Variation and the Theory of Grammar, P. Benica (ed.), 85-103. Dordrecht: Foris. Kayne, R. 1994. The Antisymmetry of Syntax. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Kayne, R. 2000. Parameters and Universals. New York: OUP. Kayne, R. 2003. Some notes on comparative syntax, with special reference to English and French. ms, New York University. Koopman, H. 1992. On the absence of case chains in Bambara. Natural Language and Linguistics Theory 10: 555-594. Koopman, H. 1999. The internal and external distribution of pronominal DPs. In Beyond Principles and Parameters, K. Johnson and I. Roberts (eds), 91-132. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Koopman, H. 2001. Maasai nominal tones. ms, UCLA. http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/ koopman/koopman.htm Koopman, H. 2003a. The locality of agreement and the structure of the DP in Maasai. In The Role of Agreement in Natural Language: TLS 5 proceedings [Texas Linguistic Forum 53], W. E. Griffin (ed.), 206-227. Austin TX: Texas Linguistic Society. Koopman, H. 2003b. Inside the noun. In Syntax at Sunset: Head movement and syntactic theory, A. Mahajan (ed.), 77-116. Los Angeles CA: UCLA/Potzdam Working Papers. Koopman, H. 2004. Agreement and intervention in English raising constructions. UCLA, http:// www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/koopman/koopman.htm Koopman, H. 2005a. On the parallelism of DPs and clauses: Evidence from Kisongo Maasai. In Verb First: On the syntax of verb-initial languages, A. Carnie, H. Harley and S. Dooley (eds), 281-301. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Koopman, H. 2005b. Korean and Japanese morphology from a syntactic perspective. Linguistic Inquiry 36 (4). Koopman, H. and D. Sportiche. 1991. The position of subjects. Lingua 85: 211-258. Koopman, H. and A. Szabolcsi. 2000. Verbal Complexes [Current Studies in Linguistics 34]. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Mahajan, A. 1989. On the A/A’ Distinction. PhD Dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Maling, J. 2001. Dative: The heterogeneity of the mapping among morphological case, grammatical functions, and thematic roles. Lingua 11: 419-464. Maling, J. and S. Sigurjondottir. 2002. The new impersonal construction in Icelandic. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 5: 97-142. Maling, J. and A. Zaenen (eds) 1990. Modern Icelandic Syntax.[Syntax and Semantics 24]. New York NY: Academic Press. Moro, A. 1997. The Raising of Predicates: Predicative noun phrases and the theory of clause structure. Cambridge: CUP. Munn, A. 1993. Topics in the Syntax and Semantics of Coordinate Structures. PhD dissertation, University of Maryland. Polinksy, M and E. Potsdam. 2001. Long distance and agreement in Tsez. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 19: 583-646. Rizzi, L. 1990. Relativized Minimality. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Rizzi, L. 2002. Locality and left periphery. In Structures and Beyond [The Cartography of Syntactic Structures 3], A. Belletti (ed.), 223-251. Oxford: OUP. Rizzi, L. 2004. On the cartography of syntactic structures. In The Structure of CP and IP, L. Rizzi (ed.), 3- 15 [The Cartography of Syntactic Structures 2, Oxford Studies in Comparative Syntax]. Oxford: OUP.

Chapter 6. Agreement configurations 199 Rőgnvaldsson, E 1990. We need (some Kind of a) rule of conjunction reduction. In J. Maling and A. Zaenen, 349–353. Schütze, C. 1997. INFL in Child and Adult Language: Agreement, case and licensing. PhD dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Schütze, C. 2003. Syncretism and double agreement. In Grammar in Focus. Festschrift for Christer Platzack, L. Delsing, C. Falk, G. Josefsson and H. Sigurðsson (eds), 295-303. Lund: Wallin & Dalholm. Sigurðsson, H. Á. 1989. Verbal Syntax and Case in Icelandic. PhD dissertation, University of Lund. [Published 1992 by Institute of Linguistics, Reykjavík.] Sigurðsson, H. Á. 1990. Declaratives and verb raising in Icelandic. In J. Maling and A. Zaenen (eds), 41-70. Sigurðsson, H. Á. 1991. Icelandic case-marked PRO and the licensing of lexical arguments. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 9: 327-363. Sigurðsson, H. Á. 1996. Icelandic finite verb agreement. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 57: 1-46. Sigurðsson, H. Á. 2000. The locus of case and agreement. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 65: 65-108. Sigurðsson, H. Á. 2004. Icelandic non-nominative subjects: Facts and implications. In Non-nominative Subjects, P. Bhaskararao and K. V. Subbarao (eds). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Sportiche, D. 1990. Movement, agreement and case. In D. Sportiche 1998: 88-243. Sportiche, D. 1998. Atoms and Partitions of Clause Structure. London: Routledge. Stowell, T. 1978. What was there before there was there. In Proceedings of the Chicago Linguistics Society 14: 458-471. Chicago Linguistic Society. Chicago IL: University of Chicago. Taraldsen, K. T. 1992. Agreement as pronoun incorporation. GLOW Newsletter 28: 50 - 51. Taraldsen, K. T. 1995. On agreement and nominative objects in Icelandic. In Studies in Comparative Germanic Syntax, H. Haider, S. Olsen, and S. Vikner (eds), 307-327. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Tucker, A. and J. Mpaayei. 1955. A Maasai Grammar with Vocabulary. London: Longmans, Green and Co. Webelhut, G. 1992. Principles and Parameters of Syntactic Saturation. New York: OUP. Yip, M., J. Maling and R. Jackendoff. 1987. Case in tiers. Language 63: 217-250. Zaenen, A. and J. Maling. 1990. Unaccusative, passive and quirky case. In J. Maling and A. Zaenen: 137-152. Zaenen, A., J. Maling and H. Thráinsson. 1985. Case and grammatical functions: The Icelandic passive. In J. Maling and A. Zaenen: 95-137. Zwart, J-W. 1992. Dutch expletives and small clause predicate raising. In Proceedings of the North East Linguistic Society 22, K. Broderick (ed.), 477-491. Amherst MA: GLSA.

chapter 

Agree in syntax, agreement in signs* Halldór Ármann Sigurðsson Lund University

This paper explores the idea that abstract Agree is a precondition on Merge and an integrated part of it. That is, an element F merges with the structure X only if the relation of Agree holds between the two (the Agree Condition on Merge). The relation of Agree holds between F and X iff X contains an active feature fx that matches F. Move is forced by an inactive intervener  x between F and fx, which, if not crossed by fx, would block matching, F ↔ fx. It follows that Move and Merge are fundamentally different, Move tucking in, as a ‘rescuing operation’ in an already existing structure, whereas Merge adds information to structure, thereby expanding it. Whenever Merge applies, the possibility of agreement arises, i.e. languages make parametric (PF) choices whether or not to signal each instance of Merge morphologically, that is, agreement is in effect a ‘sign of compositionality’. The various agreement phenomena of Icelandic illustrate that agreement involves feature copying processes that take place exclusively in PF. Thus, morphological agreement is quite distinct from (albeit preconditioned by) abstract syntactic Agree. In addition, the Icelandic facts discussed suggest that also ‘head movement’ is confined to PF. If this is on the right track, PF is a multilayered and a highly complex system, producing strings that can be radically different from underlying syntactic structures.

1.

Minimal feature syntax: a general outline

If the syntactic computation proceeds in a single cycle (Chomsky 2000, 2001, 2004, 2005a, 2005b), it must be unterstandable or interpretable to both the ‘standard’ interfaces, here referred to as semantic form and perceptible form, SF and PF, for short.1 This is a very constraining understanding of syntax, as it follows that syntax cannot contain or produce any information that is visible but uninterpretable to the interfaces. The result is seemingly paradoxical: An element like the first person plural we has a phonological shape, [wi:], that is illegible to the conceptual interface (SF), i.e. has no meaning or conceptual form. Conversely, it has semantic content, roughly ‘first

202 Halldór Ármann Sigurðsson

person, plural, ...’ that is not phonetically transcribable (as [+labial], [+voiced], etc.), i.e. has no perceptible form. Much the same applies to elements that are not as purely functional, for instance an item like horse, with semantic features like countable, animate, etc., as well as phonological features. Let us refer to this problem as the Interpretability Puzzle. Chomsky’s solution to this puzzle is basically to have uninterpretable features removed or eliminated prior to the operation transfer, that hands the derivation over to the interfaces. However, this does not solve another and an even more deeply rooted puzzle, the Complexity Puzzle: (1) A ‘lexical item’ is a complex set of perceptible features ([+labial], etc.) and semantic features ([+Plural], etc.). Since these features are mutually incomprehensible and evidently not compatible in any other way, it is a puzzle that they should form a minimal unit together. In other words, even on Chomsky’s feature elimination approach, the ‘complexity problem’ remains, not at the interpretative interfaces but in ‘the lexicon’. It is rather obvious that ‘lexical items’, like we and horse, are not primitives in any sense but complex structures, and it should also be an unquestioned goal of linguistics to develop some understanding of how these complex structures come into being. However, the problem has not yet received any standard treatment within generative linguistics.2 The idea that the sign lexicon somehow is at an intersection between the interfaces, and is thus equally accessible to both of them, goes back to the classical Tmodel and was further developed in the earliest minimalist works (Chomsky 1991, 1993; for a clear presentation see Thráinsson 1996). I shall assume a different view here, where the sign lexicon is entirely on the PF side. On this view, the (narrowly syntactic) computation has access to only a syntactic lexicon, that is to say, a list of lexical roots and syntactic features (and feature built structures), that have no audible or visible content. The computation produces a single string of syntactic information, SI = {sin, sin+1, sin+2, ...}, sent to both the interfaces. The interfaces, in turn, interptret SI in terms of different systems, that is, they translate or transform SI and its elements into different ‘languages’ or codes. For simplicity, I shall here use the notions SF and PF to refer to not only the interfaces themselves (the translating ‘machines’ or systems) but also to the different codes or ‘languages’ used by them (broad PF and broad SF, as it were). Chomsky (see 1995: 277) conceives of semantic or conceptual features, such as human, as directly interpretable by the conceptual interface, whereas formal features such as [+plural] are either interpretable or uninterpretable, depending on whether they are agreeing or not. Thus, in a clause like (2) (2) There were professors seen dancing in the woods. the plural feature of professors is interpretable without further ado, whereas the plural feature of the verb were is an agreeing feature. Hence, the verbal plural is not inter-

Chapter 7. Agree in syntax, agreement in signs 203

pretable to the conceptual interface and must be ‘deleted’ under Agree prior to SF interpretation. It is obvious that we normally do not interpret the verbal plural in (2) such that there were many distinct events of dancing in the woods.3 That is, the clause gets the same interpretation as the clause There was professors seen dancing in the woods, in those varieties of English that allow the latter. Two understandings of this fact come into question. First, the verbal plural might be present in syntax but eliminated from the message sent to SF; this, as already stated, is the possiblity explored by Chomsky in his recent works. Alternatively, we might assume that the verb has no plural feature in syntax, its plural form arising through an agreement or ‘assimilation’ process in PF (an initially plausible assumption in view of the fact that assimilation processes are pervasively evidenced in at least ‘shallow’ PF). Call this the PF approach to agreement. I argued for this PF approach at length in “Agree and agreement: evidence from Germanic” (Sigurðsson 2004a, henceforth A&a), and I shall further pursue it here. On this approach, syntax has no access to inflected forms like were, that is, full-fledged morphophonological forms are formed on the PF side, hence nonexistent elsewhere in language. Also, of course, we must distinguish between morphophonological agreement and the underlying syntactic relation Agree (as already argued in A&a). If this is on the right track, we need to assume that the interfaces add language- or culture-specific features that are not parts of the syntactic computation or narrow syntax, NS. It is uncontroversial that PF does, and it also seems to be the case that SF gets enriched by for instance general logical ‘features’ (implications, etc.) as well as more specific pragmatic features that never enter narrow syntax (see Chomsky 2004: 124125, n. 12). The question of which of the elements and substructures of the interfaces are universal and which are not is an empirical question that can only be answered by extensive comparative and analytic research. My goal here is modest, though. I only need to develop some minimal understanding of the organization of the interfaces in order to be able to address the question of how Agree and agreement work. In doing so, I will be making the reasonable conjecture that elements that get an interpretation (or a legible form) at both interfaces are present in NS. Thus, the pronoun we gets both a PF interpretation, [wi:], and an SF interpretation (‘first person, plural, ...’), suggesting that it is present at and computed in NS.4 In Chomsky’s elimination approach, the plural feature of were in (2) is present in the message sent to PF, but absent from the message sent to SF. In the present approach, in contrast, it is absent from both, that is, exactly the same message, SI, is sent to both interfaces (where it gets entirely different interpretations or realizations, of course). Common to both approaches is that the feature is absent from the SF message. It should be noticed, however, that simply granting that agreeing features are absent from SF does not resolve the interpretability issue; it is an extremely complex issue. As I have argued elsewhere (e.g. in 2004b), even morphologically non-agreeing or ‘basic’ formal features like Person and Tense are not inherently interpretable, but must instead be relatively interpreted (in relation to the basic speech situation or event; that is, these

204 Halldór Ármann Sigurðsson

features ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’ semantically with the features of the speech event). Thus, we can distinguish between at least two types of features of the syntactic lexicon: (3) a.

Inherently interpretable features, such as thing, material, human, and female. The interpretation of features of this sort seems to be constant, independent of other features, that is, although these features have to combine with other features of the syntactic lexicon and hence enter the syntactic computation they are themselves not computed but directly interpretable at SF. b. Relatively interpretable features, such as person, tense, location, and direction. These features are not constants but variables, that is, they must be interpreted or valued in relation to other features, most importantly the features of the speech event.5

In contrast to feature constants, feature variables are thus valued or computed in narrow syntax. For instance, the value of ‘first person’ depends on (roughly) who is the speaker and the value or ‘reference’ of ‘present tense’ depends on the moment of speech (see further Sigurðsson 2004b). PF is evidently layered, that is, it has several sub-interfaces, as sketched in (4), where the arrow reads as ‘transforms into’ (or ‘is interpreted by’): (4) SIn → PF1 → PF2 → PF3 → ... For concreteness and simplicity, I assume that the PF sub-interfaces correspond, roughly, to traditional sign formation (‘word formation’), morphophonology, phonology and phonetics: (5) SIn → Sign formation → Morphophonology → Phonology → Phonetics Possibly, each of these sub-interfaces splits further, but this rough sketch is sufficiently accurate for our limited purposes. At all the PF interfaces, there are processes that take place for mainly or exclusively interface internal reasons, that is, these processes are not or only indirectly motivated in syntax. Most pervasively, merge and assimilation are general properties of all the PF interfaces. Concentrating on only assimilation, for the moment, the phonetic level or interface has assimilation processes like co-articulation, and it is also a truism that the phonological level has assimilation processes. I will here argue that the morphophonological level has processes that are basically of the same general brand, namely agreement. Consider the derivation of a simple structure like (6a), starting out roughly as the simplified numeration in (6b): (6) a. ... the man called ... b. {..., Ty, φx, root/, θroot/-er, root/, Def, …} The numbering of the roots is entirely arbitrary here (but it is perhaps non-arbitrary in reality, that is, in the real syntactic lexicon). root/ and root/ will eventually be

Chapter 7. Agree in syntax, agreement in signs 205

interpreted as ‘the act of calling’ and ‘man’ in SF, and roughly as [kh:ld] and [mæn] in PF. For convenience, we may use the notation in (7) instead of the one in (6b): (7) { ..., Ty, φx, call, θcaller, man, Def, …} Syntax merges θcaller, man, φx and Def in some order, yielding, roughly speaking, the argument ‘definite calling third person singular man’. This argument, call it simply definite calling third person singular man, is consequently merged with call, the resulting structure is then merged with Tpast, and we get the structure in (8):6 (8) ... [Tpast [call [definite calling third person singular man]]] ... It is not really obvious that syntactic computation should proceed any further than this. If it were not to proceed any further, we would have to assume that all subesequent movements, such as verb raising and NP movement, are confined to PF, i.e. that they are strictly speaking non-syntactic and hence invisible at the conceptual interface. I will take the opposite view here, arguing that at least some movements take place for syntactic reasons and are thus visible (and interpretable) to both the major interfaces, SF and PF. In particular, I shall pursue the idea (formulated in Sigurðsson 2005a) that Move is a ‘rescuing’ operation, enabling matching that would otherwise be blocked. As we shall see, however, there are also some movements, such as verb raising, that take place in PF only, but such movements are driven by quite different ‘needs’ than is syntactic Move. Assume this to be on the right track. If so, syntax (i.e., not merely PF) will eventually reverse (8), with (9) as a result: (9) ... [[def ... man] [call [Tpast ]]] … This, then, is the output of the computation, the Syntactic Information, SI, sent to both the major interfaces, subsequently being interpreted roughly as [ð mæn kh:ld] vs. ‘the man called’.7 Notice that the sign called is not a syntactic primitive on this approach. Rather, audible ‘words’ are formed in the sign lexicon on the PF side of language, evidently at the deepest PF interface, identified as the level or interface of Sign formation in (5) above. Thus, there is no syntactic difference between the examples in (10): (10) a.

Regam. (I-)will-rule ‘I will rule.’ b. I will rule. c. Jag kommer att styra. I come to rule ’I will rule.’ d. Ég kem til með að stjórna. I come towards with to rule ‘I will rule.’

Latin

English Swedish

Icelandic8

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Rather, all these examples start out roughly as the numeration in (11) (θruler and φx later on being interpreted as identical to the ‘speaker’): (11) {Ty, φx, rule, θruler, …} That is, the difference between the languages is not syntactic but lexical, where lexical means ‘PF-lexical’ or ‘sign-lexical’ (and not ‘syntax-lexical’).

2. Agree, Merge, matching, Move In minimal feature syntax as sketched above, features are the only syntactic primitives. If so, there are no complex syntactic elements like, say, an Infl node or a T element with concomitant φ-features (whether or not interpretable).9 Any application of Merge adds a single feature F to a feature or a feature built structure X, yielding F[X]; reapplication of Merge adds another single feature G, yielding G[FX], and so on.10 In the spirit of Chomsky’s recent line of thinking (2000 and subsequent), I assume Minimal Design, aiming at a model of the language faculty that is minimal in the sense that it assumes only general properties (of biological and computational systems) and properties that are mandatory to satisfy the interface conditions. This is what Chomsky (2000, 2004: 106ff.) refers to as the ‘strong minimalist thesis’, SMT. It might be too strong, as I will discuss in a moment (and as pointed out in Chomsky 2004). However, aiming at Minimal Design is arguably the only way to proceed along a minimalistic line of reasoning. If so, every assumption that is neither given as a general property of complex systems nor forced by interface conditions needs empirical justification. Chomsky (2004) explores the possibility that Move is a subcase of Merge, referring to it as Internal Merge and to Merge in the more traditional sense as External Merge. Adopting and developing the approach in A&a, I shall here explore another logical possibility of minimizing design, by subsuming Agree under Merge. Thus, I assume the Agree Condition on Merge, ACM, formulated roughly as follows in A&a: (12) Two objects F and X may be merged only if the relation of Agree holds between them Agree, then, is not an operation but a precondition on Merge. We may conceive of it as follows:11 (13) Agree holds between F and X, F the left-hand sister of X, iff X contains an active feature fx, matching F Agree is thus a selectional relationship, not a probe-goal relation. As Chomsky puts it (2001b: 6): “the limitations on Merge follow from selectional and other conditions that are independent.” Matching on the other hand, is a probe-goal relation: F has to be able to ‘look’ into X, that is, it searches or probes for the matching feature value fx within X. Match-

Chapter 7. Agree in syntax, agreement in signs 207

ing is thus an operation, quite distinct from the sisterhood relation of Merge and also from the Agree Condition on Merge. Probing and matching in turn are sensitive to minimality or intervention, an issue I shall return to. The result of Merge/Agree, on the other hand, is like a chemical bond, a combinatory unit with subunits that share some of their outer shell or ‘edge’ features (A&a). Merge itself is an inevitable general property of any system that combines objects. Addition systems generally also apply at least some kind of a compatibility condition on addition, i.e. it is generally the case that only compatible elements can be merged, but the Agree Condition on Merge, ACM, is a more specific condition, so it deviates at least partly from ‘mathematical Minimal Design’. However, it has counterparts in nature, for instance in chemical reactions (as pointed out in A&a), so it might in fact follow from ‘biological Minimal Design’. I leave the issue open here, though. Matching, in turn, is an ‘afterwards’ operation between the combined objects, which also is not a general property of addition, that is, matching is a clear case of deviation from ‘mathematical Minimal Design’. However, inbuilt future reliance is a property of e.g. mammal vision and insect navigation (see Chomsky 2005a on ‘rule-following’). Thus, it seems likely that something like matching, linking ‘past’ and ‘future’ in computational processes, is a general property of biological systems. If so, matching is not a deviation from Minimal Design but an essential part of it. In addition, there is linguistic evidence in favour of matching (partly discussed in sections 3.5 and 4). It is disputable whether binary branching and structural hierarchy (‘tree-structures’ of some sort) follow from Minimal Design, but I shall adopt the standard view that they are Narrow Syntax properties. On the other hand, X’-theoretic notions such as ‘head’, ‘complement’, ‘specifier’, ‘projection’, etc. do not have any conceptual status in minimal feature syntax as pursued here (or in the minimalist program as developed by Chomsky 2004). Even the notion ‘position’ does not make any clear sense in this system (whereas one could make contentful use of the notion ‘space’). In particular, a feature and its left edge space have no correlation with each other, that is, there is no matching correlation between the two, so-called ‘Spec-head agreement’ being a PF displaced reflection of Agree (A&a). Constituency, in the usual PF sense, is yet another notion that does not follow from Minimal Design (see further below). As mentioned above, Chomsky (2004) argues that Move is really an instantiation of Merge, a step that leads to the reintroduction of covert movement (Chomsky 2004: 111): By definition, the operation transfer … applies at the phase level. At this level, internal Merge can apply either before or after transfer, hence before or after Spell-Out S-O. The former case yields overt movement, the latter case covert movement, with the displaced element spelled out in situ. However, allowing both long distance probing/matching and covert movement is redundant and thus an undesirable deviation from Minimal Design. I shall here take the opposite turn, arguing in favour of doing entirely away with covert movement

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(as in Chomsky 2000, 2001).12 The leading idea I shall pursue here (developed already in Sigurðsson 2005a) is that Move is triggered by matching, under conditions to be explicated below. The standard assumption has long been that an attracting probe attracts a category into its Spec position. However, as already pointed out, there are no projections and no fixed positions in the present approach, hence there can be no Spec positions for elements to move into. The alternative is to assume that Move is like (external) Merge in extending structure, in which case merging F to X would not involve insertion of F into an already existing Spec,X, but would instead lead to the extension of X, whereby a new ‘Spec,X’ or ‘Adjunct,X’ (containing F) would be created, as it were (see Chomsky 2004: 109). As far as I can see, however, this second approach defies a fundamental difference between Merge and Move. While Merge of F to the structure X adds information to X, this is not true of Move that applies internal to X (say, from the right tail of X to its left edge). This difference has a structural correlate, I propose, such that Merge extends structure, whereas Move always ‘tucks in’. The structural difference may be illustrated as follows: (14) a. Merge F to [XW]: b. Move F within [XWF]:

F + [XW] [XWF]

→ →

[FXW] [XFWF]

Given this understanding, we can develop an approach where Move indeed does not reduce to Merge but where it is nonetheless preconditioned by Merge. This can be implemented as follows: Recall that Merge is preconditioned by Agree, that is, F can only merge to the structure X if X contains an active feature fx, matching F. As a consequence of Merge, F must thus probe into X, in search of fx. If it finds fx at the left edge of X, Merge is successful without any further ado, that is, matching is local and Move does not take place. However, if fx is more deeply embedded in X, two possibilities arise: Move or Stay. Adopting the approach in Sigurðsson (2005a), I propose that F attracts fx, i.e. that Move takes place, under the condition of Inactive Intervention. That is to say: A probe F checks all elements in X that are potential hosts of its goal feature f, containing an inactive value  x of the searched feature, until it finds a matching one, containing the active value fx, where probing immediately stops. If fx is the only value of f in the Search Domain, movement need not take place (and cannot, except perhaps by pied piping), and a Long Distance Matching correlation arises (as in English subject interrogatives like Who saw the movie?, where wh in the C-domain probes for who but does not attract it). No covert movement takes place. If, on the other hand, the searched structure contains an inactive f value  x, then Move places fx immediately to the left of the highest  x and its inactivating probes, tucking it in there for the purpose of successful matching, F ↔ fx (as in English nonsubject interrogatives, like What did he see?, where the subject has an inactive wh feature).13 Thus, Move differs from Merge in not extending structure. Rather, it takes minimal steps, tucking in or ‘dropping’ fx as soon as possible, that is, in the first or the lowest ‘position’ or space where it is accessible for F ↔ fx.

Chapter 7. Agree in syntax, agreement in signs 209

Syntactic constituency is simply and naturally defined as the outcome of any instantiation of Merge. On the other hand, the widely assumed descriptive notion of surface constituency, taken to figure prominently in ellipsis and movement processes, does not follow (cf. Kayne 1998b). Linguistics has not yet developed any true understanding of ‘PF-constituency’ nor of the notion of a ‘PF-word’ (see also Sigurðsson 2004b). As we shall see in sections 3.4 and 4, however, the formation of ‘lexical signs’ or ‘PF-words’ in at least some cases proceeds by way of roll-up ‘head’ movement in PF.

3. Agreement: The Icelandic case Agreement (including DP internal concord) is an amazingly varied phenomenon, not only cross-linguistically but also language-internally. I shall here limit myself to discussing only Icelandic agreement phenomena. Icelandic has three major types of agreement:14 (15) a. Finite verb agreement b. Predicate agreement (of adjectives, past participles, NPs to an extent) c. Concord of DP internal nominals (articles, adjectives, etc.) The agreeing features are: (16) a. Person (1, 2, 3) and Number (sg, pl) in finite verbs. b. Number (sg, pl), Gender (m, f, n) and Case (N(om), A(cc), D(at), G(en)) in adjectival and past participial predicates, Case in NP predicates. c. Number, Gender and Case in DP internal nominals in general; also Definiteness (def, indef) in DP internal adjectives, adjectival past participles, and ordinals (and, under certain rather constrained conditions, in the same elements when predicative). In the following I give a descriptive overview of the basic facts of these agreement phenomena. Section 3.1 briefly describes finite verb agreement, predicate agreement is the subject of section 3.2, and section 3.3 describes DP internal concord. Section 3.4 contains a general discussion of the described facts, where it is argued that they remain unaccounted for unless we distinguish between syntactic Agree/matching and its various types of agreement manifestations, the latter involving feature copying in PF. This is further substantiated in section 4, where φ-feature matching and the Person Restriction on Icelandic finite verb agreement are discussed.

3.1 Finite verb agreement Each of the agreement types in (15) has subtypes. Finite verb agreement is most varied, having five clearly distinct subtypes (Sigurðsson 1996, A&a). The most central and

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common one is plain nominative subject-verb agreement:15 (17) a.

Við we.N b. Þið you.N c. Við we.N d. Þið you.N

tökum take.pl takið take.pl höfum have.pl hafið have.pl

bókina. book-the bókina. book-the tekið bókina. taken book-the tekið bókina. taken book-the

The number of person/number distinctions varies a bit, depending on the verb. The most common number is five in the indicative past and present and in the subjunctive past, four in the subjunctive present.16 Notice that the active past participle, selected by the auxiliary hafa ‘have’, always shows up in a nonagreeing form, thererby differing from passive past participles (see further below). In addition to plain subject-verb agreement, Icelandic has four types of reverse finite verb agreement, that is, agreement of the finite verb with a nominative to its right, internal to the predicate. We may refer to these types as (the well-known type of) Late Subject Agreement, LSA (with or without expletive það ‘there, it’), Nominative Object Agreement, NOA, Nominative ECM Agreement, NEA,17 and Reverse Predicate Agreement, RPA. These types are illustrated in (18), where the agreement controlling nominative is underlined: (18) a. b. c. d. e.

LSA: LSA: NOA: NEA: RPA:

‘maybe have.3pl come here some linguists.N’ ‘there have.3pl maybe come here some linguists.N’ ‘her.D have.pl probably not liked these comments.N’ ‘her.D have.3pl perhaps seemed [they.N be intelligent]’ ‘then have.2pl it probably only been you.N.pl’

Icelandic examples: (19) a.

Kannski hafa komið hingað einhverjir málvísindamenn. maybe have.3pl come here some linguists.N ‘Maybe some linguists have come here.’ b. Það hafa kannski komið hingað einhverjir málvísindamenn. there have.3pl maybe come here some linguists.N ‘Maybe there have some linguists come here.’ c. Henni hafa sennilega ekki líkað þessar athugasemdir. her.D have.pl probably not liked these comments.N ‘She probably did not like these comments.’ d. Henni hafa kannski virst þeir vera gáfaðir. her.D have.3pl perhaps seemed they.N be intelligent ‘They perhaps seemed intelligent to her.’

Chapter 7. Agree in syntax, agreement in signs

e.

Þá hafið það sennilega bara verið þið. then have.2pl it probably only been you.N.pl ‘Then it has probably only been you.’

As seen, the agreement controller is a late subject (a ‘logical subject’) in (19a, b), an object in (19c), a subject of a nominative ECM infinitive in (19d) and a predicative NP in (19e). In all types of finite verb agreement, the agreement controller must be in the nominative (the Nominative Restriction, cf. Sigurðsson 1996, 2003, A&a). Quirky subjects, such as the datives in (19b, c) never trigger overt agreement. That is, the finite verb shows up in the default 3sg in clauses with a quirky subject unless the clause contains a late nominative with which the verb may agree in number, as in (19). This is highlighted by numerous minimal pairs of the sort illustrated in (20), where there is a variation between not having and having a nominative argument, hence also between default vs. agreeing verb forms:18 (20) a.

Mér var sagt frá þessum atburðum. me.D was.sg said.N/A.n.pl from these events.D ‘I was told about these events.’ b. Mér voru sagðir þessir atburðir. me.D were.pl said.N.m.pl these events.N.m.pl ‘I was told these events.’

I shall return to quirky constructions in section 4. As will be clear from the discussion there, quirky subjects do enter into syntactic matching correlations. Thus, the fact that they are blocked from triggering (local) agreement should plausibly not be accounted for syntactically, but in terms of a PF constraint blocking one and the same element from entering into more than one PF visible feature sharing correlation (see Sigurðsson 2003: 261-262).

3.2 Predicate agreement The canonical type of predicate agreement is simple subject-predicte agreement, here referred to as primary predicate agreement. The agreeing predicate is usually either an adjective or a past participle, as illustrated below: (21) a. b. (22) a. b.

Þeir voru they.N.m.pl Þær voru they.N.f.pl

líklega were.sg líklega were.sg

ríkir. probably rich.N.m.pl ríkar. probably rich.N.f.pl

Þeir they.N.m.pl Þær they.N.f.pl

voru were.sg voru were.sg

líklega probably líklega probably

skammaðir. scolded.N.m.pl skammaðar. scolded.N.f.pl

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Icelandic has gender distinctions in both singular and plural third person pronouns: Hann/hún/það ‘he/she/it’ in the singular, and þeir/þær/þau ‘they’ m/f/n in the plural. These are used as indexicals to refer to inanimate as well as animate arguments in discourse. Thus hann and þeir may refer to e.g. bíllinn ‘car.the’ and bílarnir ‘cars.the’ and hún and þær may refer to e.g. bókin ‘book.the’ and bækurnar ‘books.the’ (but not vice versa, i.e. formal gender agreement must normally be respected, much like in e.g. German). Active past participles selected by vera ‘be’ and verða ‘will be, become’ show the same agreement properties as passive past participles, whereas they show up in a nonagreeing default form (homophonous with the N/A.n.sg form of the inflected past participle) when selected by hafa ‘have’. All present participles end in the invariable - (a)ndi. The three participle types are compared in (23): (23) a.

Hann var orðinn faðir. he was become father N.m.sg ‘He had become a father.’ b. Hann hafði orðið faðir. he had become father ‘He had become a father.’ c. Hann var verðandi faðir. he was becoming father ‘He was a father to be.’

/

/

/

Þeir voru orðnir feður. they were become fathers N.m.pl ‘They had become fathers.’ Þeir höfðu orðið feður. they had become fathers ‘They had become fathers.’ Þeir voru verðandi feður.19 they were becoming fathers ‘They were fathers to be.’

As seen, both the vera ‘be’ + agreeing participle construction in (23a) and the hafa ‘have’ + nonagreeing participle construction in (23b) translate as the English perfect. However, the English perfect is ambiguous between two quite distinct aspectual readings of the Ielandic constructions (also seen in English have gone vs. be gone). The vera-construction has a stative/resultative (‘adjectival’) reading, whereas the hafa-construction has a temporal/eventive reading (‘verbal’ or ‘dynamic’). Thus, hafa selects a non-nominal and hence a nonagreeing participle, while vera selects a nominal, hence an agreeing participle.20 In contrast to adjectives and past participles, predicative NPs have their own gender and number, but they normally agree with their local subject in case, showing up in the nominative in finite clauses but in the accusative in accusative ECM infinitives: (24) a.

Hún var góður prestur. she.N.f.sg was good priest.N.m.sg ‘She was a good priest.’ b. Bítlarnir voru góð hljómsveit. Beatles.the.N.m.pl were good band.N.f.sg ‘The Beatles were a good band.’

(25) a.

Við töldum hana vera góðan prest. we believed her.A.f.sg be good priest.A.m.sg ‘We believed her to be a good priest.’

Chapter 7. Agree in syntax, agreement in signs

b. Við töldum Bítlana vera góða hljómsveit. we believed Beatles.the.A.m.pl be good band.A.f.sg Most adjectives and past participles inflect for the four cases, three genders and two numbers, as illustrated for ríkur ‘rich’ in (26): (26) Sg Nom Acc Dat Gen Pl Nom Acc Dat Gen

Masculine rík-ur rík-an rík-um rík-s rík-ir rík-a rík-um rík-ra

Feminine rík rík-a rík-ri rík-rar rík-ar rík-ar rík-um rík-ra

Neuter rík-t rík-t rík-u rík-s rík rík rík-um rík-ra

This is the most common and regular paradigm type, but there are many other types, some of them with radical phonological reshapings of both the stem and the endings. As seen, the paradigm is not “full”, as there are some syncretisms, e.g. no gender distinction in the dative and genitive plural and no Nom/Acc distinction in the neuter and in the feminine plural, etc. In spite of these syncretisms, the inflection is very rich (13 distinct forms in (26)). In addition, most adjectives and many past participles inflect for definiteness (so-called ‘weak’ inflection, see below) and for degree (with only two forms in the comparative but the same endings in the superlative as in the positive degree, i.e. basically the same endings as in (26)). All in all, the syntactic inflectional possibilities are 144 (4 cases × 3 genders × 2 numbers × 3 degrees × 2 (strong vs. weak)), but distinct forms are commonly 30. Strikingly, however, all this richness is ‘wiped out’ in case the adjective has a nonmonosyllabic stem that ends in a vowel: hissa ‘surprized’, fullvalda ‘sovereign’, hugsi ‘pendent, (deep) in though’, viðeigandi ‘appropriate’, passandi ‘fitting, appropriate’, sveitó ‘provincial’, etc. Adjectives of this sort reject inflection of all sorts. If adjectival agreement is a PF process, as will be argued in section 3.4, it is perhaps not surprising that it is sometimes blocked by purely phonological factors. The basic simple subject-predicate agreement in finite clauses is confined to nominative case forms, as in e.g. (21) and (22). In case the clause contains no nominative argument, adjectival and participial predictes show up in a default nonagreeing N/ A.n.sg form, much as the finite verb shows up in a default nonagreeing 3sg form, as mentioned above:21 (27) a.

Þá var kalt. then was.3sg cold.N/A.n.sg ‘Then it was cold.’

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b. Mér var kalt. me.D was.3sg cold.N/A.n.sg ‘I was freezing.’ c. Okkur var kalt. us.D was.3sg cold.N/A.n.sg ‘We were freezing.’ As we saw in (25) above, nominative agreement is ‘replaced’, as it were, by accusative agreement in accusative ECM constructions. This may be understood such that the basic nominative is overwritten by the accusative in these constructions (Sigurðsson 2005a). Secondary predicate agreement (SPA) differs from the basic primary predicate agreement in three ways: (28) a.

SPA crosses predication boundaries, i.e. it involves a predicate that agrees with a DP that is located in another (higher) predication. b. It is not subject to any case restrictions, that is, it may involve copying of not only the structural cases but also of dative and genitive case. c. Any DP may be the agreement controller or trigger (whereas primary predicate agreement can only be controlled by a local nominative (or accusative in ECM)).

The examples in (29) illustrate this: (29) a.

Prestarnir hittu biskupinn drukknir. priests.the.N.m.pl met bishop.the.A.m.sg drunk.N.m.pl ‘The priests met the bishop drunk (i.e. the priests were drunk).’ b. Prestarnir hittu biskupinn drukkinn. priests.the.N.m.pl met bishop.the.A.m.sg drunk.A.m.sg ‘The priests met the bishop drunk (i.e. the bishop was drunk).’ c. Prestarnir sýndu biskupnum óvirðingu drukknum. priests.the.N.m.pl showed bishop.the.D.m.sg disrespect drunk.D.m.sg ‘The priests showed the bishop disrespect (when he was) drunk.’ d. Prestarnir fóru til biskupsins drukkins. priests.the.N.m.pl went to bishop.the.G.m.sg drunk.G.m.sg ‘The priests went to the bishop (when he was) drunk.’

One way of analyzing facts of this sort is to assume that SPA is transmitted by PRO (cf. Sigurðsson 2002: 710): (30) a. priests.thei met bishop.the [PROi drunk/agri] b. priests.the showed bishop.thei disrespect [PROi drunk/agri] Alternatively, the predicate and the controller start out as a small clause, the predicate

Chapter 7. Agree in syntax, agreement in signs

subsequently being obligatorily stranded under raising of the controller: (31) a. priests.thei met bishop.the [ti drunk/agri] b. priests.the showed bishop.thei disrespect [ti drunk/agri] If the stranding analysis in (31) is on the right track, the SPA involved might be analyzed in a similar vein as agreement of floating quantifiers, that is, as arising as DP internal concord of sorts (see below). Infinitival secondary predicates differ from the ‘simple’ secondary predicates in (29) in that they do not involve obligatory case agreement; in fact, inherent case agreement into infinitives is often degraded (whereas case agreement is obligatory in simple cases as in (29)). This is illustrated in (32): (32) a.

Henni líkaði ekki að vera síðust/??síðastri. her.D liked not to be last.N.f.sg/??D.f.sg ‘She did not like to be the last one.’ b. Við báðum hana að vera síðust/síðasta. we asked her.A to be last.N.f.sg/A.f.sg c. Við skipuðum henni að vera síðust/?síðastri. we ordered her.D to be last.N.f.sg/?D.f.sg

Other secondary predicates that are introduced by a complementizer or a connective of some sort (sem ‘as’, svona ‘so’, etc.) sometimes show similar indeterminacy with respect to case:22 (33) a.

Honum gekk vel sem him.D went well as ‘He did well as a priest.’ b. Honum leið ekki eins him.D felt not like ‘He did not feel like a priest.’ c. Þér verður of kalt you.D will-be too cold

presti/prestur. priest.D/N og presti/prestur. and priest.D/N svona so

berum/ber. naked.D/N

Multiple predicate agreement is attested in ECM and raising constructions, as illustrated below: (34) Ég taldi þá hafa verið sagða hafa verið I believed them.A.m.pl have been said.A.m.pl have been álitna hafa verið ranglega dæmda vera seka. considered.A.m.pl have been wrongly judged.A.m.pl be guilty.A.m.pl ‘I believed them to have been said to have been considered to have been wrongly judged to be guilty.’ (35) Þeir voru taldir hafa verið sagðir hafa verið they.N.m.pl were believed.N.m.pl have been said.N.m.pl have been

215

216 Halldór Ármann Sigurðsson

álitnir hafa verið ranglega dæmdir vera sekir. considered.N.m.pl have been wrongly judged.N.m.pl be guilty.N.m.pl ‘They were believed to have been said to have been considered to have been wrongly judged to be guilty.’ These examples are not very smooth, of course, but they are grammatical and the agreement facts are robust. Multiple predicate agreement provides clear evidence in favor of the PF feature copying approach to agreement pursued here.23 Not only the multiplication of agreement as such argues against a syntactic approach to agreement, so does also the fact that only the the highest predicate in (34), sagða, is obligatorily accusative, that is, the lower ones may alternatively show up in the nominative (álitnir, dæmdir, sekir). Optionality of this sort is unexpected under a syntactic approach to agreement (see also section 3.4). Icelandic secondary predicate agreement has been partly described by several authors (e.g. Friðjónsson 1977, Thráinsson 1979, Andrews 1990, Sigurðsson 1989, 2002, A&a), but no exhaustive description of all the complexities that arise exists. The description above covers only the most central facts.

3.3 DP-internal concord Icelandic DP-internal nominals generally agree in case, number and gender. This is illustrated for several types of modifiers and determiners in (36) (where the varition is however limited to gender, for reasons of space): (36)

N.m.pl strákar boys b. strákarnir boys.the c. allir strákar all boys d. tveir strákar two boys e. sterkir strákar strong boys f. þessir strákar these boys g. strákar(nir) þínir boys(.the) your a.

N.f.pl stelpur girls stelpurnar girls.the allar stelpur all girls tvær stelpur two girls sterkar stelpur strong girls þessar stelpur these girls stelpur(nar) þínar girls(.the) your

N.n.pl börn children börnin children.the öll börn all children tvö börn two children sterk börn strong children þessi börn these children börn(in) þín children(.the) your

Almost all kinds of DP-internal nominals take part in this, including the definite article (Icelandic has no indefinite article), quantifiers and indefinite pronouns, possessive pronouns (in the first and second person singular, the rare first and second person

Chapter 7. Agree in syntax, agreement in signs 217

honorifics, and in the reflexive third person), demonstratives, some interrogative pronouns, the first four cardinals, adjectives and adjectival past participles. In addition, adjectives, adjectival past participles, and ordinals show a definite/indefinite distinction: (37)

N.m.pl sterkir strákar strong boys b. sterku strákarnir stong boys.the a.

N.f.pl sterkar stelpur strong girls sterku stelpurnar strong.girls.the

N.n.pl sterk börn indef strong children sterku börnin def strong children.the

The definite or ‘weak’ inflection, however, shows no gender or case distinctions in the plural and only very reduced case and gender distinctions in the singular (all in all only three singular forms, as compared to mostly ten distinct singular forms in the ‘strong’ indefinite inflection). Multiple concord is demonstrated in (38): (38) a.

[Allir þessir fjórir frægu leikarar] voru duglegir. all these four famous actors were gifted N.m.pl N.m.pl N.m.pl pl.def N.m.pl N.m.pl ‘All these four famous actors were gifted.’ b. Við hittum [alla þessa fjóra frægu leikara]. we met all these four famous actors N A.m.pl A.m.pl A.m.pl pl.def A.m.pl ‘We met all these four famous actors.’ c. Við hjálpuðum [öllum þessum fjórum frægu leikurum]. we helped all these four famous actors N D.pl D.pl D.pl pl.def D.m.pl24 ‘We helped all these four famous actors.’

In contrast to finite verb agreement and predicate agreement, DP concord is commonly strictly local (i.e. the concord source or controller and the targets of concord are commonly adjacent). However, the semipredicates (al)einn ‘alone’ and sjálfur ‘self ’ and quantifiers like allir ‘all, every’, báðir ‘both’ and sumir ‘some’ are often separated from their DPs, as illustrated below:25 (39) a.

Strákarnir höfðu allir keypt bókina. boys.the.N.m.pl had all.N.m.pl bought book.the ‘The boys had all bought the book.’ b. Hún sá þá kannski ekki báða. she saw them.A.m.pl maybe not both.A.m.pl ‘Maybe she did not see both of them.’

218 Halldór Ármann Sigurðsson

c.

Hún sá þá kannski ekki sjálf. she saw them.A.m.pl maybe not self.N.m.pl ‘Maybe she did not see them herself.’ d. Henni hafði aldrei leiðst einni. her.D.f.sg had never felt-bored alone.D.f.sg ‘She had never been bored alone.’ Plausibly, the agreement of elements of this sort arises as DP internal concord, the quantifiers and semipredicates subsequently being stranded under movement of (the rest of) the DP (see Sportiche 1988). As mentioned in section 3.1.2, above, this analysis might also apply to ‘simple’ (non-infinitival) secondary predicate agreement.

3.4 Discussion Even within only Icelandic, morphological agreement is so varied and complex that it is quite obvious, in fact, that we need to sharply distinguish between syntactic Agree and matching and their overt PF agreement exponents. Recall our conception of Merge and Agree in (12) and (13): (12) Two objects F and X may be merged only if the relation of Agree holds between them (13) Agree holds between F and X, F the left-hand sister of X, iff X contains an active feature fx, matching F Overt agreement, on the other hand, is a morphological reflection or ‘translation’ of matching. Whenever Merge/Agree/matching applies, the possibility of agreement arises, that is, languages make parametric choices whether or not to signal each instance of Merge morphologically (i.e. in PF). Matching in the present approach involves interpretation of features that would otherwise remain uninterpreted, not deletion of uninterpretable features. In other words, fx matches F iff fx is valued in relation to F (Sigurðsson 2004b). We may thus conceive of fx as a variable that is assigned value under successful probing by the ‘operator’ F. It is evident, however, that morphological agreement features are not always or even not generally the relevant matching features in syntax. Consider (40): (40) Allir nýir pennar all new pens N.m.pl N.m.pl N.m.pl Whatever the exact structure of the DP may be (see Julien 2005 for a discussion), at least the following elements are involved: (41) [ ... Q ... A ... Num ... N ... ]

Chapter 7. Agree in syntax, agreement in signs 219

Plausibly, the noun penni/pennar ‘pen, pens’ has a number variable, say +/— Plural, that is valued by Num, so in this case the morphology closely reflects syntax.26 However, that is also the end of the syntax-morphology coherence. When merged, Q and A probe for some N internal feature, say something like the categorial feature n; after all, adjectives and quantifiers do select (or are selected by) Ns, not e.g. Vs or Ps. However, Q and A do not overtly agree in ‘n-ness’. Rather, they copy n’s number and gender features and also get the same case as the DP when it is merged in the clausal structure (seemingly by percolation, but see below for another analysis). That is, while the syntactic matching involves ‘n-ness’, the overt agreement involves copying of n’s subfeatures for gender, number and case (the latter arising or being assigned in PF, see below). Gender is a mixed category. Many animate nouns have natural gender: (42) a. Masculine: b. Feminine: c. Neuter:

karl, strákur, hrútur, tuddi: kona, stelpa, ær, kýr: barn, lamb:

‘man, boy, ram, bull’ ‘woman, girl, sheep, cow’ ‘child, lamb’

For most nouns, however, gender is a plain classificational feature with no semantic import. That is, it is like a phonological feature in making an overt distinction between items without itself adding or reflecting any semantics.27 Consider the following examples: (43) a. Masculine: b. Feminine: c. Neuter:

kofi höll hús

penni bók blað

fótur hönd læri

‘hut, pen, foot’ ‘palace, book, hand’ ‘house, (news)paper, thigh’

It thus seems that many animate nouns have the semantic features male or female in addition to their formal gender feature, whereas other nouns have only formal gender: m, f, n (or [+m,—f], etc.). Some animate nouns can either have or not have a semantic gender feature. Thus, masculine maður may mean ‘man (i.e. male human being)’, ‘person’ or ‘human being’ and hestur may mean ‘male horse’ or just ‘horse’ in general. The semantic female/male features are of course visible and interpretable at the conceptual interface, SF, but they are arguably invisible at PF. Rather, any (Icelandic) noun selects and incorporates a formal gender feature (m, f, n or +/— m and +/— f) in PF.28 Most nouns that have the semantic female/male features have natural formal gender, but there are many exceptions, showing that semantic and formal gender are distinct features even in animate nouns: Masculine kvenmaður ‘woman’, neuter fljóð ‘woman’ (poetic), neuter karlmenni ‘strong and courageous man’, neuter naut ‘bull’, etc. Derivational morphology generally overrides semantic gender features, as seen in e.g. the famous German neuter noun for ‘girl’, Mädchen (-chen being a derivational morpheme deciding the formal, neuter gender of the derived noun, irrespective of the noun’s semantic gender).29 In contrast to prevailing assumptions, then, the grammatical or formal gender features, m, f, n, are non-syntactic, being visible/interpretable at PF only. As mentioned

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above, these features may profitably be analyzed as PF noun classifying features. I assume that they are merged with Ns at the second deepest PF level, that is, at the morphophonological level (cf. (5) above), see below. Not only is there evidence that we must sharply distinguish between formal and semantic gender, there is also evidence that morphological number and case are PF features that must be kept strictly apart from syntactic/semantic number and argument-predicate relations. That is, any Icelandic noun incorporates morphological number and case features, in addition to a formal gender feature.30 Morphologically, all three features form a portmanteau morpheme, so n is evidently a feature variable, not getting its final shape until after gender/number/case incorporation in PF. Thus, the phonological and phonetic derivation of penni ‘pen’, where -i is the N.m.sg ending, involves the following steps, with successive roll-up movement in PF (I shall return to PF roll-up movement in section 4): (44) a. b. c. d. e. f.

n-penn m + penn-n sg + penn-n-m Nom + penn-n-m-sg penn-n-m-sg-Nom penni → ...

→ → → → → →

penn-n penn-n-m penn-n-m-sg penn-n-m-sg-Nom penn-i [phn:I]

I am using n here as a short for all the syntactic features matched and incorporated by penn-, including for example a syntactic number category and the (negatively matched) male, female features. Thus, n-penn in (44a) represents a complex syntactic strucure (within which Move may or may not have taken place – I do not take a stand on that here). At the deepest PF level (i.e. (44a)), called Sign formation in (5) above, this structure is transformed into the linguistic sign penn-n, which subsequently is input into the morphophonological processes in (44b-d) and the phonological and phonetic processes in (44e, f). In a language like English, on the other hand, only (44a,c,f) are involved in the phonological and phonetic formation of the noun pen.31 The agreeing N.m.sg adjective nýr ‘new’ in e.g. nýr penni ‘new pen’, in turn, copies the grammatical feature values of penni: /ný-α/ /penn-n-N.m.pl/ → /ný-α-N.m.pl penn-n-N.m.pl/. The same applies to other agreeing nominals. The agreement process is indeed preconditioned by and thereby related to syntactic Agree and matching, but it is crucially a distinct phenomenon, taking place in PF, not in Narrow Syntax, involving copying of feature values, not matching. Case comes from outside of the DP, from where it seemingly percolates to all the ‘case-receptive’ elements within the DP (see the pecolation approach in Sigurðsson 1989). Consider (45): (45) a.

Við keyptum tvær nýjar bækur. we.N bought two.A.f.pl new.A.f.pl books.A.f.pl

Chapter 7. Agree in syntax, agreement in signs 221

b. Við skiluðum tveim we.N gave-back two.D.pl

nýjum new.D.pl

bókum. books.D.f.pl

On the present understanding of agreement as PF feature copying, however, we need not assume the deus ex machina of case percolation. Rather, the head noun gets all its features set prior to agreement, the agreeing items subsequently copying their case, number and gender simultaneously. That is, case agreement is not a different process than gender/number agreement.32 Primary predicate agreement may be analyzed along similar lines. Consider (46), where feminine þær ‘they.N.f.pl’ is supposed to refer back in discourse to bækurnar ‘the books. f.pl’ (Nom or Acc): (46) a.

… bækurnar? Þær hafa líklega verið dýrar. … books.f.pl they.N.f.pl have probably been expensive.N.f.pl

b. … bækurnar? Þær hafa líklega verið seldar. … books.f.pl they.N.f.pl have probably been sold.N.f.pl On standard assumptions, the subjects start out as internal arguments, [expensive X] and [sold X]. When the subject is merged with the adjective or the participle, the latter probe for the subject’s n-feature, in the same fashion as described above for attributive adjectives and other DP internal modifiers and determiners, later on copying the subject’s gender-number-case features in PF. Notice, however, that the subjects are mere n-indexicals in syntax, not getting any value for gender until in PF, where they copy the PF gender feature of the discourse antecedent bækurnar ‘the books’.33 Accordingly, the feature copying of the predicates could not possibly be completed until in PF. On the reasonable hypothesis that gender-number-case agreement is a single process, it follows that no part of it takes place until in PF. Another kind of evidence in favour of seeing gender and hence gender-numbercase agreement as PF phenomena comes from the fact that gender feeds purely phonological processes like the so-called u-mutation shifting [a] to [œ] or [Y] under certain conditions. The relevant conditions are somewhat varying, but, strikingly, there are cases where they involve ‘knowledge’ of gender and number. Thus, lat- [la:th-] ‘lazy’ becomes löt [lœ:th] in precisely the feminine singular nominative and the neuter plural nominative/accusative (see Rögnvaldsson 1981). Multiple predicate agreement, as in (34) and (35) above, illustrates the same as multiple concord, namely that a single noun may be targeted by many probes (a fact that runs counter with the approach in Chomsky 2000, see Carstens 2001 and A&a). Consider simultaneous multiple concord and multiple predicate agreement, as in (47): (47) [Allir all

þessir these

prestar] eru taldir verða útnefndir. priests are believed be nominated

222 Halldór Ármann Sigurðsson

N.m.pl N.m.pl N.m.pl N.m.pl ‘All these priests are believed to get nominated.’

N.m.pl

The subject ‘all these priests’ starts out as the sister of ‘nominated’ ([nominated [all the priests]]). Within the subject DP, both the demonstrative ‘these’ and the quantifier ‘all’ probe for the noun’s (‘priests’) n-feature, and at the clausal level both the participles, ‘nominated’ and ‘believed’ also probe for the n-feature of the noun. In all cases, this probing for n in syntax gets reflected in PF as copying of N’s gender-number-case PF values. Finally, recall the secondary predicate agreement indeterminacy in infinitives, as in (32)=(48): (48) a.

Henni líkaði ekki að vera síðust/??síðastri. her.D liked not to be last.N.f.sg/??D.f.sg ‘She did not like to be the last one.’ b. Við báðum hana að vera síðust/síðasta. we aksed her.A to be last.N.f.sg/A.f.sg c. Við skipuðum henni að vera síðust/?síðastri. we ordered her.D to be last.N.f.sg/?D.f.sg

Inasmuch as both secondary predicate forms are acceptible, there is no semantic distinction between the two, suggesting that the variation arises in PF.34 In sum, there is conclusive evidence that DP-internal concord and predicate agreement are PF processes, preconditioned by but distinct from syntactic Agree and matching. Crucially, the agreeing features are added in PF and are thus not the same features as the ones that are matched in syntax. As we shall see in the next section, Icelandic finite verb agreement displays a much closer correlation between syntactic matching and morphological agreement (the agreeing PF features being ‘the same’ as some of the matched syntactic features). The evidence showing this comes primarily from the much discussed Person Restriction on Icelandic finite verb agreement. Importantly also, the Person Restriction offers evidence, first, that Move in Narrow Syntax is a ‘rescuing operation’ that overcomes potential intervention effects, and, second, that roll-up ‘head’ movement is a very different phenomenon, taking place in PF.

4. Phi-feature matching and the Person Restriction Recall the basic facts of Icelandic finite verb agreement, described in section 3.2: I The agreement controller is always a nominative argument. In the absense of a nominative argument the finite verb shows up in a default form (sg). II The agreement controller is most commonly a (definite) nominative subject that has been raised by NP-movement. This gives rise to plain Subject Agreement, SA. III In the absense of a high (definite) nominative subject, the agreement controller may be a low nominative, either a late ‘logical’ (indefinite)

Chapter 7. Agree in syntax, agreement in signs 223

subject, an object in a Dat-Nom construction, a subject of a nominative ECM infinitive (or small clause), or a predicative NP. This gives rise to four alternative types of reverse agreement: Late Subject Agreement, LSA (with or without expletive það ‘there, it’), Nominative Object Agreement, NOA, Nominative ECM Agreement, NEA, and Reverse Predicate Agreement, RPA. All five agreement types are illustrated, again, in (49): (49) a. b. c. d. e.

SA: LSA: NOA: NEA: RPA:

‘we.N have.1pl come here before’/‘here have.1pl we.N come before’ ‘maybe have.3pl come here some linguists.N’ ‘her.D have.pl probably not liked these comments.N’ ‘her.D have.3pl perhaps seemed [they.N be intelligent]’ ‘then have.2pl it probably only been you.N.pl’

Plain Subject Agreement is unrestricted, showing up to six different person/number forms of the finite verb (most commonly four or five). Reverse Predicate Agreement, RPA, is also unrestricted with respect to person/number of the agreement controller, as partly illustrated in (50): (50) a.

Ert þetta þú? are.sg this/it you.N.sg ‘Is this/it you?’ b. Það erum bara við. it are.pl only we.N ‘It’s only us.’ c. Þá hafið þetta líklega verið þið. then have.pl this probably been you.N.pl ‘The, this/it has probably been you.’

In another respect, however, RPA is highly restricted: It is possible only in clauses with demonstrative þetta ‘this, it’ or það ‘it’ as a subject. Arguably, both þetta and það are devoid of person and number features (hence incapable of preventing the clausal Person and Number ‘heads’ from probing the phi-features of the predicative DPs). The other three types of reverse agreement are all restricted with respect to the properties of the nominative agreement controller itself. Very briefly, the restrictions can be described as follows: (51) a.

Nominative objects (‘me like they’) are exclusively in the 3rd person (with some ‘near-exceptions’, discussed in e.g. Sigurðsson 1996 and Schütze 2003). b. Nominative ECM subjects are possible in all persons (‘her seems.sg we/you (be) intelligent’). However, only 3rd person nominatives may ever trigger agreement of the finite matrix verb (‘her seem.pl they (be) intelligent’). c. Late subjects (‘maybe have come here some guests’) are exclusively nonpronominal, hence exclusively in the 3rd person (usually they must also be indefinite).

224 Halldór Ármann Sigurðsson

The common effect of these restrictions is stated in (52): (52) The finite verb never shows up in an (unambiguously) agreeing 1st or 2nd person form in any of the three constructions (LSA, NOA, NES). This is a remarkable fact that has raised wide interest and much discussion.35 For reasons of space, I shall here only discuss it with respect to monoclausal Dat-Nom vs. Nom-Dat constructions. Three types of predicates are of relevance: I Nom-Dat predicates like hjálpa ‘help’, taking a nominative subject and a dative object: These are very numerous (Barðdal 2001a, Maling 2002). II Dat-Nom predicates like líka ‘like’, leiðast ‘find boring’, taking a dative subject and a nominative direct object (Thráinsson 1979, Zaenen, Maling and Thráinsson 1985, Sigurðsson 1989, 1996, and many others). III Alternating Dat-Nom & Nom-Dat predicates like henta ‘suit’, where either the Nom or the Dat may be either the subject or the direct object (Bernódusson 1982, Barðdal 1999, 2001b, Platzack 1999, Sigurðsson 2005a). First: In the plain Nom-Dat construction, only the Nom can act as a subject, as for instance seen by the fact that it is exclusively the Nom that ‘inverts’ with the finite verb in V2 structures: (53) a.

Líklega hafið þið hjálpað okkur. probably have.pl you.N.pl helped us.D ‘Probably, you have helped us.’ b. *Líklega hafið okkur hjálpað þið.

Notice also that the plain Nom-Dat construction is like any other nominative subject contruction (Nom-Acc, Nom-Dat-Acc, Nom-Gen, etc.) in being entirely unrestricted with respect to person/number agreement. Second: In the pure Dat-Nom construction, only the dative acts as a subject: (54) a.

Líklega hafa henni líkað þeir. probably have.pl her.D liked they.N ‘She has probably liked them.’ b. * Líklega hafa þeir líkað henni.

Third: Alternating Dat-Nom & Nom-Dat predicates allow either argument to act as a subject (the Dat-Nom variant being slightly more neutral): (55) a.

Líklega hafa henni ekki hentað probably have.3pl her.D not suited ‘Probably, they were not suitable to her.’ b. Líklega hafa þau ekki hentað probably have.3pl they.N not suited

þau. they.N

(henni = subject)

henni. her.D

(þau = subject)

Chapter 7. Agree in syntax, agreement in signs 225

‘Probably, they didn’t suit her.’ The same applies to Dat-Nom & Nom-Dat passives (of Nom-Dat-Acc verbs): (56) a.

Líklega hafa henni verið gefin probably have.3pl her.D been given ‘Probably, they have been given to her.’ b. Líklega hafa þau verið gefin probably have.3pl they.N been given ‘Probably, they have been given to her.’

þau. they.N

(henni = subject)

henni. her.D

(þau = subject)

Thus, Icelandic has two distinct datives:36 Dative I: Dative II:

A non-quirky, plain dative, selected by verbs like hjálpa ‘help’, and also optionally selected by verbs like henta ‘suit’ and gefa ‘give’. A quirky dative, selected by verbs like líka ‘like’, and also optionally selected by verbs like henta ‘suit’ and gefa ‘give’.

Quirky datives are the only datives that may act like subjects.37 In all cases, the Nom-Dat patterns show no person restrictions whatsoever, whereas agreement-triggering 1st and 2nd person nominatives are excluded in the Dat-Nom patterns. This is illustrated below for henta ‘suit’:38 (57) a.

Líklega probably b. * Líklega probably

hafið have.2pl hafið have.2pl

þið ekki you.N.pl not henni ekki her.D not

hentað suited hentað suited

henni. her.D þið. you.N.pl

(58) a.

höfum have.1pl höfum have.1pl

við we.N henni her.D

hentað suited hentað suited

henni. her.D við we.N

Líklega probably b. * Líklega probably

ekki not ekki not

The generalization that emerges is as follows: (59) Quirky dative blocks 1st and 2nd person agreement (whereas plain dative has no such blocking effect). Let us refer to (59) as the Person Restriction, PR.39 That the presense of a quirky dative is indeed the crucial factor in PR is highlighted by the fact that it is not found in the Reverse Predicate Agreement construction, as already illustrated in (50)=(60): (60) a.

Ert þetta þú? are.sg this/it you.N.sg ‘Is this/it you?’ b. Það erum bara við. it are.pl only we.N ‘It’s only us.’

226 Halldór Ármann Sigurðsson

c.

Þá hafið þetta líklega verið þið. then have.pl this probably been you.N.pl ‘The, this/it has probably been you.’

As I have argued elsewhere (in A&a and 2005a), PR can be successfully accounted for as an intervention effect, caused by the quirky dative (in contrast to e.g. demonstrative þetta and það, as in (60)).40 This follows, as we shall see, if the quirky dative has an extra feature that matches Person. A crucial factor of the analysis is that the nominative argument, θ1, is merged lower than the dative argument, θ2, in both Dat-Nom and Nom-Dat constructions. Let us first consider the derivation of the Nom-Dat pattern, with no person restrictions. The derivation (of both Nom-Dat and Dat-Nom) starts out as (61): (61) V [θ1]

(and θ1 → Nom)

As indicated, θ1 becomes Nom without further ado, being given as the first case (see Sigurðsson 2005a for implementation of this idea). The dative case, in contrast, must be syntactically licensed. I tentatively assume that V is selected by vd, vd in turn being matched by the dative, θ2 (for a similar idea, see Boeckx 2003b). We thus get: (62) vd [θ2 – V – Nom]

(and θ2 → Dat)

Plausibly, v (e.g. vd) matches Asp(ect), Asp matching T(ense), T in turn matching M(ood).41 In addition, both the arguments have uninterpreted Num(ber) and Pers(on) features, NumO, PersO and NumS, PersS. Consider the derivational stage in (63): (63) M [T – Asp – PersO – NumO – vd – Dat – V – Nom] The case feature of Dat has now been valued in relation to vd and its φ-features have been valued in relation to PersO and NumO. If Dat has no further active features to be valued, its syntactic computation is completed, and it gets ‘frozen in place’ (cf. Chomsky 2001a: 6). Nom, in contrast, still has active φ-features. Since Dat has no active features it does not intervene and the φ-features of Nom may be probed across it by NumS: (64) NumS [M – T – Asp – PersO – NumO – vd – Dat – V – Nom] Probing, hence also matching and Move, are blocked by active intervention under standard assumptions about relativized minimality or the Minimal Link Condition. Thus, if Dat had an active number feature, that feature would block NumS from reaching Nom, and the number feature of Nom would remain unvalued.42 In contrast, if the structure did not contain any dative argument (and PersO, NumO elements), NumS would not have any problems in finding and valuing the number feature of Num. What we have here, however, is a third type of situation, with a potential intervener that has been inactivated. That is, Dat has a number feature that has been valued, hence inactivated by NumO, so, if NumS is to find the number feature of Nom it has to probe across the inactive number feature of Dat. This is exactly the situation of Inactive

Chapter 7. Agree in syntax, agreement in signs 227

Intervention, forcing Move, as described in section 2: A probe F checks all elements in X that are potential hosts of its goal feature f, containing an inactive value  x of the searched feature, until it finds a matching one, containing the active value fx, where probing immediately stops. If fx is the only value of f in the Search Domain, movement need not take place (and cannot, except perhaps by pied piping), and a Long Distance Matching correlation arises. … If, on the other hand, the searched structure contains an inactive f value  x, then Move places fx immediately to the left of the highest  x and its inactivating probes, tucking it in there for the purpose of successful matching, F ↔ fx …

It follows that Nom in (64) must move across both Dat itself and its inactivating probes, vd and PersO, NumO. This yields ‘low’ NP-movement, illustrated in (65): (65) NumS [M – T – Asp – Nom – PersO – NumO – vd – Dat – V – Nom] Next, PersS is merged, yielding (66): (66) PersS [NumS – M – T – Asp – Nom – PersO – NumO – vd – Dat – V – Nom] PersS is local with respect to Nom (the two not being separated by any active or inactive person feature), and thus Nom would stay put if nothing further were to happen. However, Nom usually has to move in order to successfully match features of the CPdomain, an issue I shall return to. The structure in (66) is a plain Nom-Dat structure (of predicates like hjálpa ‘help’, and of the Nom-Dat pattern for verbs like henta ‘suit’), with no person restriction. This structure arises as a result of the fact that the dative is non-quirky and hence the Dat argument gets all its features locally valued by vd and PersO/NumO, thereby becoming syntactically inactive, ‘frozen in place’, hence not an intervener. Consider however what happens in a structure like (67) if the dative is quirky, Dat/Q: (67) PersS [NumS – M – T – Asp – Nom – PersO – NumO – vd – Dat/Q – V – Nom] In this case, the dative argument is not fully valued or interpreted by its local probes, as it has the active quirky feature. The feature in question is evidently an extra person feature, or some closely related feature, matching PersS.43 This derivation is blocked, though, if Nom has an active 1st or 2nd person feature. In that case Nom itself must be targeted by PersS (being a closer target than is Dat/Q) hence the Person Restriction described above. However, if Nom is in the 3rd person it has only a relatively inactive person feature (sometimes claimed to be “no person”), and PersS is free to probe across it until it finds a more active person feature, namely the quirky extra person feature of Dat/Q. Subsequently, Dat/Q raises across Nom as well as NumS: (68) PersS [Dat/Q – NumS – M – T – Asp – Nom – PersO – NumO – vd – Dat/Q – V – Nom]

228 Halldór Ármann Sigurðsson

Later in the derivation, both arguments raise to successfully match features of the CPdomain, see below. The derivation of plain Nom-Acc patterns is parallel to that of Nom-Dat patterns, with the difference that V is selected by plain v. The structural cases, Nom and Acc, come for nothing as the first and the second case (Sigurðsson 2005a, 2005b), as illustrated in (69): (69) a. V [θ1] b. θ2 [V – Nom] c. v [Acc – V – Nom]

(and θ1 → Nom) (and θ2 → Acc)

Notice that there is no delay in case decision here. However, if V gets selected by vD instead of plain v, Acc gets overwritten by Dat.44 Consider the derivational stage in (70): (70) NumS [M – T – Asp – PersO – NumO – v – Acc – V – Nom] All the features of Acc are fully interpreted so it is ‘frozen in place’ and hence NumS may freely probe for the number feature of Nom, across Acc. Subsequently, Nom raises across Acc and its inactivating probes (the shortest move possible), and PersS is merged, yielding: (71) PersS [NumS – M – T – Asp – Nom – PersO – NumO – v – Acc – V – Nom] PersS probes for the person feature of Nom, but since the two are entirely local (not being separated by any inactivated person feature), Nom is not forced to raise for the purpose of successful person matching.45 This is just like in (66) above. As already mentioned, however, it usually has to raise to successfully match a feature or features of the CP-domain, such as Top in the approach of Rizzi (1997). Plausibly, this also applies to Acc, at least in the unmarked case (although object raising is usually masked by PF movements of other elements). If so, all the verbal features become adjacent, as illustrated in (72): (72) ... PersS – NumS – M – T – Asp – Nom – PersO – NumO – v – Acc – V – Nom All these features have now been matched and/or valued, so they have become syntactically inactive. That is, nothing further happens to this string of features in syntax, so it may be transferred to the interfaces, PF and SF.46 Subsequent roll-up V-raising in PF yields the order of overt elements in the finite verb in a language like Icelandic: [V-v-Ø-Ø-Ø-T-M-NumS-PersS], where NumO, PersO and Asp remain silent. Thus, the subjunctive past first person plural leituðum ‘looked for’ has roughly the following PF-derivation (see the morphological analysis in Sigurðsson 2001): (73) a. v-leit b. NumO + leit-v

→ →

leit-v leit-v-Ø

Chapter 7. Agree in syntax, agreement in signs 229

c. d. e. f. g. h. j. k.

PersO + leit-v-Ø Asp + leit-v-Ø-Ø past + leit-v subj + leit-v-past pl + leit-v-past-subj 1 + leit-v-past-subj-pl leit-v-past-subj-pl- leit-a-ð-i-u-m

→ → → → → → → →

leit-v-Ø-Ø leit-v-Ø-Ø-Ø (= leit-v) leit-v-past leit-v-past-subj leit-v-past-subj-pl leit-v-past-subj-pl-1 leit-a-ð-i-u-m [li:tYðYm]

Thus, roll-up ‘head-movement’ does exist, but it takes place in PF, not in Narrow Syntax.47 As discussed in section 3.4, Icelandic N-raising is like Icelandic V-raising in this respect, rolling up grammatical features in PF.48 Roll-up movement is an economic way of ‘packing’ complex feature information in PF (see the Compactness Principle in Sigurðsson 2004c), although it is evidently not the only way of doing so. The agreeing values ‘1st person’ and ‘plural’ in Við leituðum ‘we looked for’ are evidently copied from the overt nominative subject, in a similar fashion as nominal agreement features are PF copied from nouns.49 However, finite verb agreement in languages like Icelandic differs from nominal agreement in that it does not ‘spread’ or ‘multiply’: (74) Við mundum hafa leitað hans. we would.1pl have looked him.Gen ‘We would have looked for him.’ Examples like ‘we would.1pl have.1pl looked.1pl him’ are non-existent in the Icelandic type of languages. ‘Person spreading’ of this sort is however found in at least some Bantu languages, as illustrated for Swahili in (75) (adapted from Carstens 2001: 150): (75) a.

Juma alikuwa amepika chakula. Juma 3sg.was 3sg.cooked food ‘Juma had cooked food.’ b. (Mimi) nilikuwa ninagili nikifanya kazi. (I) 1sg.was 1sg.still 1sg.done work ‘I was still working.’

In addition, Swahili spreads its nominal number/class markers, not only DP-internally but also to predicates (see e.g. Carstens 2001). It thus seems that PF agreement feature copying is an even more widespread phenomenon in Swahili than in Icelandic.

5. Concluding remarks In this paper I have presented arguments, both conceptual and empirical, that Agree and agreement must be kept strictly apart: Agree is a precondition on syntactic Merge

230 Halldór Ármann Sigurðsson

and subsequent matching, matching in turn involving feature valuation (and not feature elimination). In contrast, agreement is a pure PF process, involving copying of feature values. Whenever Merge/Agree and subsequent matching applies, the possibility of agreement arises, i.e. languages make parametric (PF) choices whether or not to morphologically signal each instance of Merge/Agree/matching. Thus, agreement is in effect a PF sign of compositionality.50 The approach presented develops minimalistic ideas in several respects: I

Individual features are the only syntactic primitives and hence there can be no complex functional heads like Infl or φ-complete T.

II

The notion of uninterpretable syntactic features (and hence deletion of such features) is dispensed with. Formal features may ideed be invisible to the semantic interface, but the reason for that is that such features are added in PF, by feature copying processes (that is, such features never enter Narrow Syntax). It follows that we can uphold the hypothesis that Narrow Syntax transfers the same string of syntactic information to both the interfaces (the interfaces subsequently ‘translating’ the string differently).

III

Move is not a subcase of Merge but (indirectly) triggered by Merge. When a feature F is merged to the structure X it probes into X, checking all elements that are potential hosts of its goal feature f, containing an inactive value  x of the searched feature (‘frozen in place’), until it finds a matching one, containing the active value fx, where probing immediately stops. Subsequently, Move places fx immediately to the left of the highest  x and its inactivating probes, tucking fx in there for the purpose of successful matching, F ↔ fx (which would otherwise be ‘disturbed’ by intervention of  x). – That is, Move tucks in as a ‘rescuing operation’, whereas Merge adds information to structure, thereby extending it.

Thus, the present approach develops a principled understanding of Move and its correlation to Merge. If this understanding can be maintained roughly as presented here, it solves one of the most central and recalcitrant problems in formal syntax theory. In addition, the approach, it seems, accounts successfully for the intricacies of Icelandic quirky agreement. Finally, the present study of the interrelations between syntactic matching and morphological agreement suggests that roll-up head-movement, such as verb raising of the Icelandic sort, takes place in PF, where it is a morphophonological ‘word formation’ process. This kind of process is evidently non-syntactic, as it serves no syntactic purpose, as far as can be seen. Instead, it is an economic way of ‘packing’ complex feature information in PF. If this is on the right track, PF is a multilayered and a highly complex system, producing (largely arbitrary) strings that can be radically different from underlying syntactic structures. In view of the surface variation observed in the world’s languages, including sign languages, this would in fact seem to be an expected and a rather unspectacular conclusion.

Chapter 7. Agree in syntax, agreement in signs

Notes * A preliminary version of this work was published in Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 74, 2004. Many thanks to Christer Platzack, Jordy Fortuny Andreu, and Valentina Bianchi for valuable comments and suggestions and to Cedric Boeckx for his editorial support. 1. That is, the ‘semantic component’ vs. the ‘phonological component’ in Chomsky 2004 or the ‘semantic form’ vs. the ‘phonetic form’ in Chomsky 2005b. The term perceptible form refers to the ‘sign form’ of sign languages as well as the ‘sound form’ of oral languages, that is, it refers to PF in a broad sense. Alternatively, one might think of PF in a narrow sense, as a process or a system that transforms Narrow Syntax ‘products’ into a linguistic sign system, irrespective of the physical form of the signs (which, in turn, calls for an interface between this narrow, universal PF and the language- or code-specific sign systems). 2. But, for early minimalistic approaches to it, see e.g. Platzack (1993, 1994), and Josefsson (1998). 3. Verbal number of this sort is, however, found in many languages (see Corbett 2000: 145). 4. Logically, it is not impossible that PF and SF add elements that are in fact unrelated through NS but are conceived of by linguists as being interrelated – hence the cautious formulation. 5. Person and Tense are ‘grammaticized’ more often than are Location and Direction, it seems. I do not have any specific hypothesis or idea about why this should be so – if indeed it is so. 6. I am assuming that the nominative is merged as a sister to the verb (see Sigurðsson 2005a and section 4 below), but this is immaterial here. 7. This SF presention is highly simplified, no CP features being taken into account (see Sigurðsson 2004b). 7. Interestingly, however, the most common way of expressing future tense in both Swedish and Icelandic is not to express it, as it were, but rather by using the simple present tense (often this null-strategy is also avialable in English, e.g. He leaves on Saturday). Future tense can evidently be expressed in the Germanic languages without having any overt exponent, much like for instance the middle ‘category’ in English and Dutch. See the discussion of silent functional categories in Sigurðsson 2004c (cf. also Kayne 2003). 9. Or, if we opt for a design with complex syntactic primitives, we will have to develop a theory of some non-syntactic module where these complex entities come into being plus a theory of the interface beetween such a module and Narrow Syntax. On the face of it, this seems to be a much more costly approach than the purely syntactic approach pursued here (and argued for in Sigurðsson 2000 and subsequent works). – Obviously, however, syntactic features are complex in the sense that they have both content and combinatory or structural properties, that is to say, properties that make it possible for them to match and combine with other elements (hence the atom metaphor in A&a). 10. A more complex operation that I shall not consider here is merger of a feature built structure XW with another complex feature built structure YZ, but for a discussion of some of the complications that arise see van Riemsdijk (2005). See also Heinat (2005) on phrases as probes. 11. An interesting alternative (but arguably too strong) is the Local Merge Algorithm developed in Fortuny 2004, saying, roughly, that Merge/Agree holds between F and X iff the ‘head’ of X can restrict the value of F.

231

232 Halldór Ármann Sigurðsson 12. This presupposes that Quantifier Raising effects should not be accounted for in terms of covert movement, a complex issue that I shall not address here (but see Kayne 1998a for discussion). 13. I assume this general approach here. However, there is evidence that positive matching takes precedence over negative matching (Sigurðsson 2004b), suggesting that we might need a more fine-grained approach to intervention. – An inactive feature value is either inactivated in the derivation (see section 4) or inactive already in the numeration (a lexical option). 14. Concord (see e.g. Carstens 2000, 2001) often shows properties that differ from those commonly observed in finite verb agreement and predicate agreement, at least superficially. I assume (and argue), however, that it is a subtype of the more general phenomenon of agreement. 15. The agreeing item is set in bold face, whereas the agreement controller or trigger is underlined. 16. Third person singular is usually homophonous with either first or second person singular. A few verbs have six distinct forms in the present indicative, though (verbs like sjá ‘see’, with a root ending in a vowel). 17. Referred to as ‘D/NcI agreement’ in A&a; the other three terms are the same as there. 18. As seen by the sagt.N/A.sg.n(default) / sagðir.N.pl.m alternation, the nominative restriction also applies to predicative agreement, see further below. The same variation between agreement vs. non-agreement is observed for clauses with predicates that can take either a quirky or a nominative subject (with different θ-roles): (i)

a. Okkur var kalt. us.D was.sg cold.N/A.n.pl ‘We were freezing.’ b. Við vorum kaldir/kaldar/köld. we.N were.1pl cold.N.pl.m/f/n ‘We were cold (to touch). / We were cool/brave.’

19. The present participle is adjectival in these examples, but there are also numerous cases of verbal present participles (see Friðjónsson 1982). 20. In view of the French agreement facts discussed by Kayne (1989), there is obviously more to be said about this, but I leave the issue here. 21. For arguments and evidence against analyzing these forms as agreeing with a pro element, see e.g. A&a. 22. In contrast, there is no indeterminacy with respect to number and gender agreement: it is obligatory in adjectival and past participial predicates, with the sole exception of predicates that are quirky case assigners (such predicates always show up in a default nonagreeing form). 23. For recent syntactic approaches, however, see Hiraiwa (2005) and Nomuro (2005). 24. Recall that there are no gender distinctions in the dative and genitive plural, and that definite or ‘weak’ adjectives have no case/gender distinctions in the plural. 25. Similar facts, albeit more complex, obtain for the ‘each’ part of Icelandic split reciprocal and distributive pronouns (i.e. complex ‘each other’ and ‘each their own’ pronouns, see Sigurðsson 1994). 26. This is the general picture. However, discrepancies between syntactic/semantic number and morphological or formal number do occur (see Thráinsson 1983), suggesting that formal

Chapter 7. Agree in syntax, agreement in signs 233 number is specifically assigned in PF, ‘on top of ’ or in addition to syntactic/semantic number. I’ll return to this below. 27. Making overt disinctions of this sort is not only a cost but also a virtue (Sigurðsson 2003: 243), much as it is a virtue to phonologically distinguish between e.g. cable and table. 28. The formal gender feature is usually only indirectly visible in nouns, through its effects on the selection of overt case/number endings (i.e. through its effects on inflectional classification). Thus, feminine, nominative singular ausa ‘scoop, ladle’ is ausu in the oblique singular cases and ausur in nominative and accusative plural, whereas neuter auga ‘eye’ is the same in the other singular cases and augu in nominative and accusative plural. For a handful of kinship nouns, though, no such effects on case/number endings are observed, that is, bróðir, dóttir, faðir, móðir, systir ‘brother, daughter, father, mother, sister’ all inflect the same (as opposed to e.g. sonur ‘son’). However, they all trigger masculine vs. feminine agreement in accordance with their natural gender, suggesting that morphology interprets them as having formal gender features. 29. In general, there is a tendency for gender to get affected by the phonological shape of the root incorporating it, most Icelandic nouns with a root in -óC or -íC, for instance, being feminine, etc. (see Jónsdóttir 1990). That is, gender selection shows ‘combinatory tendencies’ that resemble tendencies commonly seen in phonotactics. 30. Fólk ‘people’, for instance, is formally singular in spite of its plural semantics, dyr ‘door’ and buxur ‘trouses’ are formally plural in spite of their singular semantics, etc. Similarly, the same underlying ‘case semantics’ can be expressed by more than one morphological case, and one and the same case may express several types of ‘case semantics’. See Thráinsson (1983) on number and Sigurðsson (2003) on case. 31. Interestingly, n itself seems to be silent in Icelandic as well as in English. 32. Recall that the reason why predicative NPs take part in case agreement only is that they have their own gender and number. 33. Presumably, this also applies to number, but we need not take a stand on that. The point I’m making is valid, even if this should hold for only gender. 34. That individual languages can link semantics with agreement is unquestionable, as evidenced by examples like (29) above. Language in general ‘utilizes’ morphological markers to the extent they are available (subject to conventionalization), but the ‘expressive power’ of language is nonetheless independent of such markers (Sigurðsson 2004c). Much the same applies to other ‘lexical material’ – it is in general useful rather than indispensible. 35. See e.g. Sigurðsson (1990-1991, 1996, 2002, 2004a, 2005a), Taraldsen (1995), Boeckx (2000, 2003a, 2003b), Chomsky (2000), Anagnostopoulou (2003), Schütze (2003), López (2003), Rivero (2004). 36. In addition, at least the plain dative is or comprises many ‘sub-datives’, in a sense, that is, it expresses or, rather, ‘translates’ many different sorts of structural and semantic relations (see Sigurðsson 2003). Distinguishing between different datives is not a particularly abstract or radical move, as for instance underscored by the fact that the Germanic dative is historically an amalgam of the Proto-Indo-European dative, ablative, instrumental and locative. 37. As is well known, Icelandic also has quirky accusatives and genitives, i.e. accusatives and genitives that function as subjects (Zaenen, Maling and Thráinsson 1985, Sigurðsson 1989, Jónsson 1996 and many others). For unknown reasons, however, only quirky datives may ever combine

234 Halldór Ármann Sigurðsson with nominative objects, that is, the questions under discussion do not arise for the other quirky cases. Hence, I leave them out of the discussion. 38. The b-examples are also ungrammatical with a default sg verb form, hefur. 39. The formulation in (59) is sightly simplifying, though. As illustrated in Sigurðsson (1996), clauses with 1st and 2nd person nominative objects are more sharply ungrammatical with unambiguous agreement than with relaxed agreement (being least ungrammatical with default 3sg verb forms when these happen to be homophonous with what would be an agreeing 1st or 2nd person singular form (in certain paradigms); see also the discussion in Schütze 2003). 40. In contrast, I do not get any intervention effect in the constructions with third person nominatives discussed by Holmberg and Hróarsdóttir (2003), that is, my intuitions differ from those of Hróarsdóttir reported in that paper. 41. In a sense, there is a built in look-ahead in the derivation, such that any clause must contain clausal features of this sort. 42. Non-matching of this sort leads to a crash in the absence of an active intervener. However, there is no general ban on non-matching, that is, features that cannot be reached by any appropriate probe may remain unvalued, hence get a default value (singular in the case of number). This seems to be what is going on in the minority variety of Icelandic where the finite verb shows up in a default sg form in clauses like ‘her likes.3sg the horses’, discussed by Thráinsson (1979) and many since. For these speakers, the quirky dative may be analyzed as being ‘extra quirky’ in not only having an extra feature matching PersS but also an extra feature matching NumS. Thus, the dative matches all the Pers and Num probes of the clause, hence the person and number features of the nominative remain unvalued = default, and the fintie verb shows up in the default sg. 43. There are implicational hierarchies between many features and feature values, so the feature in question might be distinct from person but nonetheless a matcher of PersS. A point of view feature (cf. Sigurðsson 2004b) is a potential candidate, but I shall not pursue the issue here. 44. This is quite natural if the transformation of θ1 and θ2 into Nom, Acc, etc. does not take place until in PF (as argued Sigurðsson 2003, 2005a, 2005b). For ease of exposition, however, I simplify the description here, formulating it as if the case transformation took place already in syntax. 45. This is the reason why agreement controlling predicative DPs in examples like (50)/(60) above do not raise. 46. I am simplifying here by not taking any CP features into account. 47. Again, it must be pointed out that I’m not taking any CP features into account here. V2 effects in e.g. the Germanic languages may be analyzed as involving at least one more instance of roll-up movement, where a phonolocally silent feature of the CP domain is the attracting ‘head’ (cf. the analysis of the CP domain in Sigurðsson 2004b). 48. But for a syntactic analysis of a different kind of ‘N-movement’, see e.g. Julien (2005). 49. In both agreement types, however, the copying applies to grammatical features, not phonetic ones. – For a different view, where finite verb agreement morphology (steps g and h in (73)) is claimed to be a clitic-like element, raised in syntax, see Platzack (2004). 50. Plausibly, all assimilation phenomena are signs of compositionality. So-called ‘binding’ sounds or morphemes in compounds may be thought of as such signs or ‘agreement markers’ below the word-level (for instance -u- in Swedish gat-u-kök ‘street-u-kitchen’).

Chapter 7. Agree in syntax, agreement in signs 235

References A&a = Sigurðsson 2004a. Anagnostopoulou, E. 2003. The Syntax of Ditransitives. Evidence from clitics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Andrews, A. 1990. Case structure and control in Modern Icelandic. In Modern Icelandic Syntax, J. Maling and A. Zaenen (ed.), 187-234. San Diego CA: Academic Press. Barðdal, J. 1999. The dual nature of Icelandic psych-verbs. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 64: 79-101. Barðdal, J. 2001a. Case in Icelandic: A synchronic, diachronic and comparative approach. PhD dissertation, University of Lund. Barðdal, J. 2001b. The preplexity of nom-dat verbs in Icelandic. Nordic Journal of Linguisitcs 24: 47-70. Bernódusson, H. 1982. Ópersónulegar setningar [Impersonal Sentences]. MA thesis, University of Iceland. Boeckx, C. 2000. Quirky agreement. Studia Linguistica 54: 354-380. Boeckx, C. 2003a. Islands and Chains: Resumption as stranding. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Boeckx, C. 2003b. Intricacies of Icelandic agreement. University of Maryland. Carstens, V. 2000. Concord in minimalist theory. Linguistic Inquiry 31: 315-355. Carstens, V. 2001. Multiple agreement and case deletion: Against φ-(in)completeness. Syntax 4: 147-163. Chomsky, N. 1991. Some notes on economy of derivation and representation. In Principles and Parameters in Comparative Grammar, R. Freidin (ed.), 417-454. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 1993. A minimalist program for linguistic theory. In The View from Building 20, K. Hale and S. J. Keyser (eds), 1-52. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 2000. Minimalist inquiries: The framework. In Step by Step: Essays on minimalist syntax in honor of Howard Lasnik, R. Martin, D. Michaels and J. Uriagareka (eds), 89-155. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 2001. Derivation by phase. In Ken Hale: A life in language, M. Kenstowicz (ed.), 1-52. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 2004. Beyond explanatory adequacy. In Structures and Beyond: The cartography of syntactic structure, Vol. 3, A. Belletti (ed.), 104-131. New York NY: OUP. Chomsky, N. 2005a. Three factors in language design. Linguistic Inquiry 36: 1-22. Chomsky, N. 2005b. On phases. To appear in Foundational Issues in Linguistic Theory, C.P. Otero et al. (eds). Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Corbett, G. 2000. Number. Cambridge: CUP. Fortuny, J. 2004. Do cartographies reflect the knowledge of grammar? Universitat de Barcelona. Friðjónsson, J. 1977. Um sagnfyllingu með nafnhætti [On predicates with infinitive]. Gripla 2: 132-150. Friðjónsson, J. 1982. Um lýsingarhátt nútíðar [On the present participle]. Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði 4: 191-219. Heinat, F. 2005. Why phrases probe. The Department of English in Lund: Working Papers in Linguistics 5: 33-63 (http://www.englund.lu.se/content/view/173/209).

236 Halldór Ármann Sigurðsson Hiraiwa, K. 2005. Dimensions of Symmetry in Syntax: Agreement and clausal architecture. PhD dissertation, MIT. Holmberg, A and Th. Hróarsdóttir. 2003. Agreement and movement in Icelandic raising constructions. Lingua 113: 997-1019. Josefsson, G. 1998. Minimal Words in a Minimal Syntax: Word formation in Swedish. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Jónsdóttir, M. 1990. Um ir- og ar-fleirtölu einkvæðra kvenkynsorða í íslensku [On ir- and arplural of monosyllabic feminine nouns in Icelandic]. Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði 1011: 57-83. Jónsson, J.G. 1996. Clausal Architecture and Case in Icelandic. PhD dissertation, UMass. Julien, M. 2005. Nominal Phrases from a Scandinavian Perspective. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Kayne, R.S. 1989. Facets of Romance past participle agreement. In Dialect Variation and the Theory of Grammar, P. Benincà (ed.), 85-103. Dordrecht: Foris. Kayne, R.S. 1998a. Overt vs. covert movement. Syntax 1: 128-191. Kayne, R.S. 1998b. A Note on prepositions and complementizers. Paper contributed to the Chomsky Virtual Celebration (http://mitpress.mit.edu/celebration). Kayne, R.S. 2003. Silent years, silent hours. In Grammatik i fokus / Grammar in Focus, Festschrift for Christer Platzack 18 November 2003, L.-O. Delsing, C. Falk, G. Josefsson and H.Á. Sigurðsson (eds), Vol. II, 209-233. Lund: Department of Scandinavian Languages. López, L. 2003. Complex dependencies: The person-number restriction in Icelandic. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 72: 55-90. Maling, J. 2002. Það rignir þágufalli á Íslandi Verbs with dative objects in Icelandic. Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði 24: 31-105. Nomura, M. 2005. Nominative Case and AGREE(ment). PhD dissertation, UConn. Platzack, C. 1993. A triune lexicon: An approach to a lexical description within the minimalist program. Lambda 18: 305-318. Platzack, C. 1994. The relation between lexicon and syntax: Swedish abstract transition phrases. In Paths towards Universal Grammar: Studies in Honor of Richard S. Kayne, G. Cinque, J. Koster, J.-Y. Pollock, L. Rizzi and R. Zanutini (eds), 277-292. Washington DC: Georgetown University Press. Platzack, C. 1999. The subject of Icelandic psych-verbs: a minimalist account. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 64: 103-115. Platzack, C. 2004. Agreement and the person phrase hypothesis. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 73: 83-112. van Riemsdijk, H. 2005. Grafts are internal/external merges. Paper presented at CGSW 20, Tilburg. Rivero, M.-L. 2004. Spanish quirky subjects, person restrictions, and the person-case constraint. Linguistic Inquiry 35: 494-502. Rizzi, L. 1997. The fine structure of the left periphery. In Elements of Grammar: Handbook in generative syntax, L. Haegeman (ed.), 281-337. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Rögnvaldsson, E. 1981. U-hljóðvarp og önnur a-ö víxl í nútímaíslensku [U-mutation and other a-ö shifts in Modern Icelandic]. Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði 3: 25-58. Schütze, C.T. 2003. Syncretism and double agreement with Icelandic nominative objects. In Grammatik i fokus / Grammar in Focus. Festschrift for Christer Platzack 18 November 2003, L.-O. Delsing, C. Falk, G. Josefsson and H.Á. Sigurðsson (eds), Vol II, 295-303. Lund: Department of Scandinavian Languages.

Chapter 7. Agree in syntax, agreement in signs 237 Sigurðsson, H.Á. 1989. Verbal Syntax and Case in Icelandic. Lund: Department of Scandinavian Languages [Republished 1992 in Reykjavík: Institute of Linguistics]. Sigurðsson, H.Á. 1990-1991. Beygingarsamræmi [Agreement]. Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði 12-13: 31-77. Sigurðsson, H.Á.. 1994. Ókurteist fornafn [An impolite pronoun]. Jónína hans Jóns Friðjónssonar, Festschrift for Jón Friðjónsson, 38-49. Reykjavík. Sigurðsson, H.Á. 1996. Icelandic finite verb agreement. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 57: 1-46. Sigurðsson, H.Á. 2000. The locus of case and agreement. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 65: 65-108. Sigurðsson, H.Á. 2001. Inflectional features and clausal structure. In Nordic and Baltic Morphology [Studies in Languages 36], J. Niemi and J. Heikkinen (eds), 99-111. University of Joenssu. Sigurðsson, H.Á. 2002. To be an oblique subject: Russian vs. Icelandic. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 20: 691-724. Sigurðsson, H.Á. 2003. Case: Abstract vs. morphological. In New Perspectives on Case Theory, E. Brandner and H. Zinzmeister (eds), 223-268. Stanford CCA: CSLI. Sigurðsson, H.Á. 2004a. Agree and agreement: Evidence from Germanic. In Focus on Germanic Typology, W. Abraham (ed.), 61-103. Berlin: Akademieverlag. Sigurðsson, H.Á. 2004b. The syntax of person, tense, and speech features. Italian Journal of Linguistics / Rivista di Linguistica 16: 219-251. Sigurðsson, H.Á. 2004c. Meaningful silence, meaningless sounds. In Linguistic Variation Yearbook, Volume 4, P. Pica (ed.), 235-259. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Sigurðsson, H.Á. 2005a. The nominative puzzle and the low nominative hypothesis. To appear in Linguistic Inquiry 37: 2. Sigurðsson, H.Á. 2005b. Accusative and the Nom/Acc alternation in Germanic. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 76: 93-133 [also to appear in Issues in Comparative Germanic Syntax, J. Hartmann and L. Molnarfi. Amsterdam: John Benjamins]. Sportiche, D. 1988. A theory of floating quantifiers and its corollaries for constituent structure. Linguistic Inquiry 19: 425-449. Taraldsen, K.T. 1995. On agreement and nominative objects in Icelandic. In Studies in Comparative Germanic Syntax, H. Haider, S. Olsen and S. Vikner (eds), 307-327. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Thráinsson, H. 1979. On Complementation in Icelandic. New York NY: Garland. Thráinsson, H. 1983. Ekki til í fleirtölu [‘Has no plural form’]. Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði 5: 175-177. Thráinsson, H. 1996. On the (non-)universality of functional categories. In Minimal Ideas, W. Abraham, S.D. Epstein, H.Thráinsson and C. J.-W. Zwart (eds), 253-281. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Zaenen, A., J. Maling and H. Thráinsson. 1985. Case and grammatical functions: The Icelandic passive. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 3: 441-483.

chapter 

Standard Arabic subject-verb agreement asymmetry revisited in an Agree-based minimalist syntax* Usama Soltan University of Maryland

This paper provides a syntactic analysis of the classical subject-verb agreement asymmetry (SVAA) in Standard Arabic (SA) in terms of a minimalist approach to syntactic derivations in which the role of the operation Agree is central (Chomsky 2000, 2001a,b). It is argued here that the SV-VS word order alternation in SA is not due to the presence versus absence of subject movement to SpecTP, but is instead a consequence of two different base-generated structural representations. As a consequence of this analysis, the full-versus-partial agreement asymmetry is shown to follow not from a Spec-head analysis as previously proposed (Mohammad 1990, 2000; Aoun et al 1994), but rather from the standard assumption that pro in null subject languages has to be identified by rich agreement at the interface. The proposed analysis not only accounts for the basic facts of the SVAA, but also for a set of semantic, syntactic, and Case facts in the language, as well as facts of default agreement with seem-type verbs and verbs of modality.

1.

Introduction

The study of formal features in natural language grammar has gained considerable significance in the past twenty-five years or so within generative syntax. Within the so-called Minimalist Program (MP) for linguistic theory (first proposed by Chomsky 1993, 1995), formal features such as φ-features on verbs and Case markings on nominals have come to play a more prominent role in the analysis of syntactic phenomena. Following this line of research, I revisit in this paper a classical agreement phenomenon in Arabic syntax from a minimalist perspective, showing how a rather unexpected asymmetry follows naturally from the conditions imposed on syntactic representations at the interface, thereby lending support to the strong minimalist thesis that views language as an optimal solution to legibility conditions.

240 Usama Soltan

The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the facts of the subject-verb agreement asymmetry in Standard Arabic (SA, henceforward). Earlier analyses of the phenomenon in terms of Spec-head agreement are discussed in Section 3, where conceptual as well empirical arguments are presented against such an approach to the account of agreement in natural language grammar. In Section 4 I bring to light further data with regard to agreement with pronominals and the status of preverbal DPs in SA, concluding that full agreement is always indicative of the presence of a null subject pro in the structure, and that the preverbal DP is actually base-generated in its surface position, rather than arriving there via movement. Section 5 offers a syntactic implementation of the results arrived at in Section 4 within a framework that dispenses with the Spec-head relationship as the mechanism for agreement in favor of a primitive Agree relation that values the features of functional heads. Section 6 explores the empirical consequences of the analysis presented in Section 5 and introduces further data of default agreement in SA that further supports the proposed analysis. Section 7 sums up the conclusions arrived at in the paper.

2. The subject-verb agreement asymmetry in Standard Arabic SA exhibits the familiar subject verb-agreement asymmetry (SVAA, henceforth) associated with word order alternation: SV orders show full agreement between subject and verb in all φ-features (1a), while VS orders show only partial agreement, typically in gender features (1b).1 No other mix-and-match of agreement pattern and word order is permissible (1c,d):2 ʔal-ʔawlaad-u the-boys-NOM b. qaraʔa read 3sgmas c. * ʔal-ʔawlaad-u the-boys-NOM d. * qaraʔ-uu read 3plmas

(1) a.

qaraʔ-uu read 3plmas l-ʔawlaad-u the-boys-NOM qaraʔa read 3sgmas l-ʔawlaad-u the-boys-NOM

d-dars-a the-lesson-ACC d-dars-a the-lesson-ACC d-dars-a the-lesson-ACC d-dars-a the-lesson-ACC

¥SV+full agreement ¥VS+partial agreement *SV+partial agreement *VS+full agreement

Agreement is “partial” in VS orders because even though the number feature surfacing on the verb is always singular in this context, the verb still shows gender agreement with the postverbal DP. In (1b) such gender agreement is not morphologically manifest, since the masculine agreement morpheme is null in this language. If the postverbal DP is feminine, a gender suffix (the traditionally called femininity marker –t) obligatorily appears on the verb, as the paradigm of data in (2) below illustrates: (2) a.

ʔal-fatayaat-u qaraʔ-na the-girls-NOM read-3plfem

d-dars-a the-lesson-ACC

Chapter 8. Standard Arabic subject-verb agreement asymmetry revisited 241

b. qaraʔa-t read-3sgfem c. * qaraʔa read-3sg

әl-fatayaat-u the-girls-NOM l-fatayaat-u the-girls-NOM

d-dars-a the-lesson-ACC d-dars-a the-lesson-ACC

As it turns out, the SVAA does not obtain in some of today’s dialects. Aoun et al (1994) report that this is the case for both Moroccan and Lebanese Arabic (MA and LA, respectively, from now on). I illustrate here with data from MA (Aoun et al 1994: 196): (3) a.

lә-wlaad the-children b. * nʕas slept.3sg c. nʕas-u slept.3pl d. * lә-wlaad the-children

nʕas-u slept.3pl lә-wlaad the-children lә-wlaad the-children nʕas slept.3sg

¥SV+full agreement

(MA)

*VS+partial agreement ¥VS+full agreement *SV+partial agreement

The major challenge in this respect has always been how to account for the presence of the SVAA in SA given standard assumptions about agreement in generative syntax. In the following section I discuss one previous solution to the problem: the Spec-head approach to the SVAA phenomenon.

3. A Spec-head agreement approach to the SVAA Within the Government-Binding (GB) framework subject-verb agreement (as well as nominative case assignment) was assumed to be a reflex of a configurational relationship between a head and its specifier, specifically between I and the DP in its Spec, where I is a feature complex of both tense and agreement features. Given this main assumption on how agreement obtains in syntactic configurations, two main analyses of the SVAA in SA have been proposed: the null expletive analysis (Mohammad 1990, 2000) and the agreement loss analysis (Aoun et al 1994). Under the null expletive analysis, full agreement in SV orders is taken to be the result of a Spec-head relation between I and the lexical subject in its Spec (4a), whereas partial agreement in VS orders is the result of a Spec-head relation between I and a null expletive in its Spec (4b): Spec-Head Agreement

242 Usama Soltan

(4) a.

SV: [IP Subjj Vi+I [VP tj ti …]] Spec-Head Agreement

b. VS: [IP proEXPL Vi+I [VP Subj ti …]] A variation on the same Spec-head theme is proposed in Aoun et al (1994), where agreement is assumed to actually obtain in both orders under Spec-head agreement between I and SpecIP, with agreement in VS structures then getting “lost” under further verb raising to a head designated as F in their analysis: Agreement gained (5) a.

SV: [IP Subjj Vi+I [VP tj ti …]] Agreement gained

b. VS: [FP F+[Vi+I]k [IP Subjj tk [VP tj ti …]]] Agreement lost From a minimalist perspective, each of these two analyses seems to rely on the presence of a stipulated construct that does not seem to be independently motivated. For one thing, it is not clear how to motivate the presence of a null expletive in the grammar. A null expletive is LF-inert and PF-empty; hence it has no interface value; it simply lives and dies in the syntax. In a word, it is exactly the kind of element that a minimalist grammar should not allow (cf. Uriagereka 2001, Holmberg 2003). Similarly, the mechanism of agreement loss is minimalistically suspect for the simple reason that it does not appear to be attested in other constructions in this same language or in other languages. Realizing the ad hoc nature of agreement loss, Aoun et al discuss some evidence from an English dialect cited by Kayne (1989), where they argue that some agreement loss mechanism must be involved. Consider the following examples from this English dialect: (6) a. the people who Clark think are in the garden b. the people whose cars John think are beautiful According to Kayne, absence of third person singular agreement within the relative clauses in (6) is due to movement of the Agr head to C, where it agrees with the wh-operator in SpecCP, which is plural. Even if this analysis is correct, it is not clear how it bears on the issue of agreement loss. Under Kayne’s analysis, (6) seems to be a

Chapter 8. Standard Arabic subject-verb agreement asymmetry revisited 243

case of agreement overriding, rather than mere agreement loss: An element agrees first with a singular XP in its Spec, but then, due to movement, ends up in another position, where it agrees again with another element in another Spec, which happens to be plural this time. Even though this involves agreement loss of previously acquired agreement features, it mainly takes place due to the presence of another agreement relationship established at a later point during the derivation. In the VS structures in SA, verb raising does not take the verb to a projection where another agreement relationship is established.3 Under Aoun et al’s analysis, the agreement is just lost, by sheer stipulation. The facts in (6), therefore, do not seem to bear on the issue of the legitimacy of an operation of agreement loss in natural language grammar due to mere verb raising. On the other hand, a serious empirical problem with the Spec-head approach arises with VS constructions where agreement obtains not with the whole postverbal subject, but with an element embedded within that subject. This is the case of the socalled first conjunct agreement (FCA, henceforward) constructions, illustrated below by data from SA: aaʔa came-3sgmas b. aaʔa-t came-3sgfem c. * aaʔaa came-3dumas

(7) a.

Zayd-un Zayd-NOM Hind-u Hind-NOM Zayd-un Zayd-NOM

wa and wa and wa and

Hind-u Hind-NOM Zayd-un Zayd-NOM Hind-u Hind-NOM

(SA)

As the data in (7) show, if the postverbal subject is a conjoined phrase, partial (i.e., gender) agreement always obtains with the first conjunct: if the first conjunct is masculine, no gender morphology appears on the verb; if the first conjunct is feminine, the –t marker of femininity surfaces on the verb. Even if one assumes that the postverbal conjoined subject is in a Spec-head relation with I at one point in the course of the derivation (say, following Aoun et al), there is no way for that analysis to explain to us how the verb surfaces with the gender feature of the first conjunct, rather than with the gender feature of the whole conjoined phrase. In essence, the Spec-head approach to agreement completely falls apart in light of FCA facts. Realizing the seriousness of the problem raised by the FCA facts, Aoun et al propose to save the Spec-head approach by simply denying the existence of FCA. According to them, FCA is only “superficial,” not real: cases of FCA, they argue, are actually derived through applying coordination reduction (CR) to an underlying clausal coordination structure, such that (8) is derived as in (9): (8) nʕas Kariim w Marwan fә-l-biit slept.3sg Kareem and Marwan in-the-room (9) Derivation: Across-the-board verb raising + Right Node Raising [nʕasj [IP Kariim … ti …]] w [ej [IP Marwan … ti …]] [fә-l-biit]i

(MA)

244 Usama Soltan

If conjunction is in fact clausal in FCA contexts, then we should expect the “surface” conjoined string to fail semantic plurality tests, which, Aoun et al argue, is true in LA and MA. I illustrate here by citing their LA examples: (10) a.

Kariim Kareem b. * raaħ left.3sg c. raaħo left.pl

w and Kariim Kareem Kariim Kareem

Marwan Marwan w and w and

raaħo left.pl Marwan Marwan Marwan Marwan

sawa together sawa together sawa together

(11) a.

Kariim Kareem b. * biħibb love.sg c. biħibbo love.pl

w and Kariim Kareem Kariim Kareem

Marwan Marwan w and w and

biħibbo love.pl Marwan Marwan Marwan Marwan

ħaalun/baʕdun themselves/each other ħaalun/baʕdun themselves/each other ħaalun/baʕdun themselves/each other

(12) a. * ltaʔa met.3sg b. ltaʔo met.3pl

Kariim Kareem Kariim Kareem

w and w and

Marwan Marwan Marwan Marwan

(LA)

As the data in (10-12) show, occurrence of FCA is incompatible with the presence of an element that inherently denotes semantic plurality: the adverbial sawa (=together) in (10), plural reflexives and reciprocals in (11), as well as functioning as subject of intransitive “meet” as shown by (12). Under Aoun et al’s analysis, the explanation is simple: semantic plurality items cannot be licensed in FCA contexts for the simple reason that the surface string “DP and DP” is never a phrasal constituent at any point during the derivation; rather, it is the result of applying CR to a clausal coordination structure. Munn (1999) raises some doubts on the adequacy of the tests that Aoun et al use in support of their analysis, which I will not discuss here (see Aoun et al (1999) for a reply, though). But even if Aoun et al’s tests of semantic plurality were reliable diagnostics for the plurality of a string of the form “DP and DP,” their analysis still cannot be maintained for FCA in other languages where conjoined subjects in VS structures pass all these tests of semantic plurality. One such language is the closely related language of SA, where the adverbial maʕan (=together), the reciprocal baʕD-a-hum әl-baʕD (=each other), as well as the occurrence as subject of intransitive ʔiltaqa (=meet), are all possible in FCA contexts: (13) a.

aaʔa-t Hind-u came-3sgfem Hind-NOM “Hind and Amr came.”

wa ʕamr-u and Amr-NOM

maʕan together

Chapter 8. Standard Arabic subject-verb agreement asymmetry revisited 245

b.

c.

tuħibbu Hind-u wa ʔixwat-u-haa baʕD-a-hum love.3sgfem Hind-NOM and brothers-NOM-her some-ACC-them the-some әl-baʕD “Hind and her brothers love each other.” ʔiltaqa-t Hind-u wa ʔaxaw-aa-haa f-әl-ħafl-i met.3sgfem Hind-NOM and brothers-dual.NOM-her at-the-party-DAT “Hind and her two brothers met at the party.”

Harbert and Bahloul (2002: 60) point out that the same is also true of Welsh, where occurrence of reciprocals (14a), functioning as subject of intransitive “meet” (14b), as well as the use of the inherently dual preposition “between” (15a,b), are all compatible with FCA: (14) a.

Es went.1sg b. Cwrddais met.1sg

(15) a.

cynnen strife b. cwlwm bond

i I i I

a’m brawd and-my-brother a’m brawd and-my-brother

gyda with ym in

ein gilydd each other Mharis Paris

rhyngof fi a thi between.1sg me and you o gariad sydd rhyngoch chwi a hi of love which-is between.2pl you and her

Similarly, Johannessen (1996) provides examples from Czech where FCA does occur in the presence of semantic plurality items such as the so-called “strong and” i (=both) and distributive “each”, as illustrated by the examples in (16a,b), respectively: (16) a.

b.

Püjdu tam já i ty will-go.1sg there I.NOM and you.NOM.2SG “Both of you and I will go there.” Po jednom jablku sndl Jan a Petr at-the-rate-of one.loc apple-loc ate.3sg John.nom and Peter.nom “John and Peter ate an apple each.”

To conclude, even if a CR analysis of FCA constructions in MA and LA was feasible, there is strong empirical evidence that FCA constructions in SA, Welsh, and Czech cannot be derived from an underlying clausal conjunction structure, perhaps casting further doubts on the adequacy of the Spec-head approach to agreement in general.4 The empirical problems posed to the Spec-head approach to agreement by VSO languages, where agreement is typically licensed between the verb and a postverbal subject, have always been pointed out in the relevant literature (see Sproat (1985) for Welsh and Mohammad (1990, 2000) for SA, among others). For these languages the fundamental GB notion of government frequently came to play a major role in accounting for subject-verb agreement and nominative case assignment. Precisely, the I

246 Usama Soltan

node came to acquire its features either through Spec-head agreement with a preverbal DP or through government of a postverbal DP, the latter mechanism mirroring the one needed to account for object-verb agreement and accusative case assignment. Of course, the (already complex) definition of government had to be complicated further to accommodate these cases, allowing a head to agree and assign Case to the Specifier of its complement. Empirical necessity led us then to posit two mechanisms for subject-verb agreement in syntactic derivations: a Spec-head approach for SVO languages like English, and a government mechanism for VSO languages like SA.5 With the advent of the MP, the problem was immediately realized and an attempt was made to eliminate such duality in the mechanisms needed in the account of agreement and Case assignment in natural languages. Chomsky (1993) thus argued for the elimination of the notion of government entirely from the theory of grammar, proposing instead to account for agreement and Case assignment in terms of a Spec-head configuration between an Agr head and a nominal category in its Spec. While Agr is assumed to be a single category, like other categories, it can appear in several syntactic positions (much like an NP appears in different positions). So, subject agreement is assumed to be mediated by an AgrS head, object agreement by AgrO, adjectival agreement by AgrA, etc. While this approach got rid of the duality of agreement and Case assignment mechanism in the GB model, it faced nontrivial challenges. On a conceptual level, it is not clear if there is anything natural about agreement being a reflex of a phrase structure relationship between a head and an XP in its specifier. After all, syntactic relationships seem to be head-head relations (e.g., selection/ theta-marking of arguments is sensitive to the inherent properties of the head noun within the selected DP projection rather than to the DP projection itself).6 Second, even if agreement were indeed the result of a configurational relationship, it is not clear why it would not arise in the same manner in the equally primitive head-complement relationship. In fact, to accommodate the empirical fact that agreed-with elements do not necessarily appear in a Spec position at surface structure (e.g., while subjects could be argued to have raised to SpecAgrS in a language like English, there was no need to assume that objects raise in this language), two major assumptions needed to be made: First, that lexical items are inserted into syntactic structures fully inflected with morphological features that then get to be “checked” during the derivation. Second, that checking could take place either in overt syntax (that is before the operation Spell-out applies) or in covert syntax (i.e., after Spell-out applies).7 Checking theory was an obvious complication in the lexicon; the overt-covert distinction was a complication in the way the computational system works.8 It seems then that the MP, while trying to eliminate the need for both the Spechead and government relations in the account for agreement and Case, ended up inducing more complexity in the theory than what it set out to eliminate. In fact, to make things more complex, the MP introduced a new element that soon enough became minimalistically suspect: Agr. Agr was defined as a mere set of uninterpret-

Chapter 8. Standard Arabic subject-verb agreement asymmetry revisited 247

able φ-features that needed checking during the derivation to enable the derivation to converge at LF. But checking in this theory was defined as “deletion” of the uninterpretable features on a head, so these features become invisible at the semantic interface. But if this is the case, then the structural representation at LF will contain an ill-formed syntactic object, that is, the projection of Agr: After checking, AgrP is now a projection of “nothing,” given that Agr heads have no semantic content whatsoever (cf. Chomsky 1995, 2000). That should be enough to cause the derivation to crash at LF. The Agr-based approach to agreement phenomena, which was a more elaborate development of the Spec-head approach of GB, thus came to conflict with other minimalist assumptions regarding syntactic derivations. Given these conceptual, empirical and technical problems, it seems that, from a minimalist perspective, a Spec-head approach to agreement is becoming suspect as the mechanism for the account for agreement and Case phenomena in natural language grammar.9 But the presence of agreement in natural language is obviously a matter of fact, and any theory of grammar needs to account for that. So, perhaps rather than trying to reduce agreement to a phrase structure relationship, it could be that agreement is simply a reflex of an operation that is specifically designed to do so. In other words, suppose, unequivocally, that agreement obtains because there is a primitive built-in operation in the grammar that says Agree(α, β), subject to certain locality conditions, where α and β are two elements in the structure. While the postulation of such an operation does not directly explain to us why agreement should exist in natural language grammar, remember that we never had any such explanation under the former approaches either. Naming Spec-head relations as “agreement” relations was sheer labeling; it had no explanatory value whatsoever. It was a mere artifact of the theory. It seems, however, that if the strong minimalist thesis regarding the “optimality” of language design is indeed correct, Agree could be seen as a built-in design feature to ensure satisfaction of legibility conditions. While the issues here are subtle and proposals are speculative at best, I will assume that this is actually the case: agreement is induced by Agree, not through Spec-head agreement. I will get back to discuss the properties of the operation Agree and how it works in Section 5. To sum up the discussion in this section, there are various conceptual and empirical problems in any analysis of the SVAA in SA in terms of Spec-head agreement. Consequently, an alternative analysis is still needed. Before I offer such an analysis, however, I spend the next section discussing further data relevant to the SVAA which will eventually force us to posit a fundamental distinction in the derivation of VS versus SV orders.

4. Agreement with pronominal subjects and the status of preverbal DPs One relevant fact about subject-verb agreement in SA which has been occasionally mentioned in the relevant literature is the lack of asymmetry in agreement with pro-

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nominal subjects in SA, whether these pronominals are null (which is the unmarked case) or overt, and whether these pronominals precede or follow the verb:10 (17) a.

(hum) qaraʔ-uu d-dars-a they read 3plmas the-lesson-ACC b. qaraʔ-uu (hum-u) d-dars-a read 3plmas they-EV the-lesson-ACC c. * qaraʔa hum-u d-dars-a read 3sgmas they-EV the-lesson-ACC

¥SV+full agreement ¥VS+full agreement *VS+partial agreement

Notice here that since SA is a null subject language, overtness of the pronominal subject is a marked option and is always associated with emphasis/contrastive focus effects. Similarly, if the first conjunct in a conjoined subject is pronominal, full agreement shows up on the verb in the VS order: iʔ-tu ʔanaa wa came-1sg I and b. iʔ-nna hunna came-3plfem theyFEM

(18) a.

Hind-u Hind-NOM wa ʔabaaʔ-u-hunna and fathers-NOM-theirFEM

Unlike the case with non-conjoined pronominal subjects, overtness of the pronominal here is obligatory and does not correlate with any emphasis/contrastive focus effects: (19) a. * iʔ-tu pro wa Hind-u came-1sg and Hind-NOM b. * iʔ-nna pro wa ʔabaaʔ-u-hunna came-3plfem and fathers-NOM-theirFEM These facts of agreement with pronominal subjects thus seem to point to the descriptive generalization in (20): (20) Full agreement is always required when the subject is (or includes as a first conjunct) a pronominal, whether that pronominal is overt or null, and whether it occurs in pre- or postverbal position. On the other hand, there is good empirical evidence that SV orders seem to differ in several ways from their corresponding VS orders in their semantic, syntactic as well as Case properties. First, semantically, SV orders have always been traditionally taken to represent topic-comment structures, involving what is sometimes called a “categorical” interpretation, whereby the preverbal DP is interpreted as topic of the discourse against which the event is presented, whereas their corresponding VS orders are assumed to denote the (default/unmarked) “thetic” interpretation, whereby an event is neutrally reported with the participants involved.11 As it turns out, this is supported by the fact that indefinite nonspecific NPs cannot occur preverbally in SA, as the ungrammaticality of (21a) below indicates (cf. Fassi Fehri 1993, Demirdache (to appear)):12

Chapter 8. Standard Arabic subject-verb agreement asymmetry revisited 249

(21) a. * walad-un kasara boy-NOM broke 3sgmas b. kasara walad-un broke 3sgmas boy-NOM

l-baab-a the-door-ACC l-baab-a the-door-ACC

Recall that this is also a property of clitic-left-dislocated (CLLDed, henceforward) elements in this language: ʔal-kitaab-u the-book-NOM b. * kitaab-un book-NOM

(22) a.

qaraʔa-hu read 3sgmas-it qaraʔa-hu read 3sgmas-it

Zayd-un Zayd-NOM Zayd-un Zayd-NOM

This topic-like property of preverbal DPs in SV structures suggests that such DPs are actually base-generated in a left-peripheral position in the sentence in the same way CLLDed elements are generated. In addition to semantic differences, VS and SV orders differ with regard to their interaction with wh-movement: while extraction across a postverbal DP is nonproblematic, extraction across preverbal DPs is typically disallowed (cf. Fassi Fehri 1993): (23) a.

man who b. * man who

Daraba hit 3sgmas Zayd-un Zayd-NOM

Zayd-un Zayd-NOM Daraba hit 3sgmas

The contrast in (23) could be explained if the preverbal DP in this language is actually sitting in an A’-position, unlike its counterpart in English-like languages for example, thus blocking wh-movement under standard minimality assumptions.13 Interestingly, if a resumptive pronoun occurs in object position, hence signaling absence of a movement operation in the structure, the order “Wh DP V” becomes possible, assuming that minimality is a condition on movement operations: (24) man Zayd-un Daraba-hu who Zayd-NOM hit 3sgmas-him Wh-extraction facts thus provide evidence that the preverbal DP in SV orders is basegenerated in its surface position in the sentence, rather than arriving there via movement from within the thematic domain. In addition to the semantic and extraction evidence above for the A’-status of the position of the preverbal DP in SV structures in SA, the Case properties of post- and preverbal DPs seem to point in the same direction. Postverbal DPs uniformly appear with nominative case, whereas preverbal DPs appear with nominative case only in absence of an available Case assigner (e.g., an overt C of the ʔinna-type or an Exceptional

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Case Marking (ECM) verb of the want-type). Consider the following data: (25) a.

qaraʔa l-ʔawlaad-u d-dars-a read 3sgmas the-boys-NOM the-lesson-ACC b. ʔal-ʔawlaad-u qaraʔ-uu d-dars-a the-boys-NOM read 3plmas the-lesson-ACC c. ʔinna l-ʔawlaad-a qaraʔ-uu d-dars-a C the-boys-ACC read 3plmas the-lesson-ACC “(I affirm that) The boys read the lesson.”

ʔaraad-a Zayd-un ʔan yarħal-a l-ʔawlaad-u wanted-3sgmas Zayd-NOM C leave-3sgmas the-boys-NOM b. ʔaraad-a Zayd-un әl-ʔawlaad-a ʔan yarħal-uu wanted-3sgmas Zayd-NOM the-boys-ACC C leave-3plmas “Zayd wanted the boys to leave.”

(26) a.

The two sentences in (25a,b) show that both postverbal and preverbal DPs appear with nominative Case. What (25c) shows, however, is that this is not always the case with preverbal DPs, since that DP obligatorily surfaces with (what is morphologically identical to) accusative case when preceded by a C of the ʔinna-type. Similarly, in ECM constructions of the want-type, the embedded subject will appear with nominative case if it stays in situ (26a). If the ECM subject appears preverbally, however, it will surface with accusative case assigned by the ECM verb (26b). These Case facts suggest that the nominative appearing on both preverbal and postverbal DPs is not the same: nominative case assigned to postverbal DPs is structural, whereas nominative case appearing on preverbal DPs is actually the default case typically assigned to topics in this language in absence of any available lexical or structural Case assigner. That nominative is a default case in SA gains support from the Case properties of copular topiccomment constructions, where no overt verb occurs. In such structures, the so-called topic (and also the predicate if nominal or adjectival) appears with nominative case: (27) a.

Zayd-un Zayd-NOM b. Zayd-un Zayd-NOM c. Zayd-un Zayd-NOM

fi-d-dar-i in-the-house-DAT muallim-un teacher-NOM saiid-un happy-NOM

Summarizing the discussion on the status of preverbal DPs in SV orders in SA, there seems to be good empirical evidence in favor of the following descriptive generalization: (28) While postverbal DPs are noncontroversially subjects, preverbal DPs exhibit the semantic, syntactic and Case properties typically associated with topics/ clitic-left dislocated elements.

Chapter 8. Standard Arabic subject-verb agreement asymmetry revisited

To conclude this section, lack of asymmetry of subject-verb agreement with (typically null) pronominal subjects as well as the A’-properties associated with preverbal lexical DPs in SV structures point in the direction of an analysis of the SVAA not in terms of movement and Spec-head agreement as some of the earlier analyses have proposed, but rather in terms of base-generation of preverbal DPs in their surface position. In the next section I develop such an analysis in detail.

4.1 SVAA revisited: A base-generation analysis The discussion in the previous section boils down to the following: (a) full agreement is always required if the subject is a pronominal, and (b) the preverbal DP in SV structures does not get there via movement. Any analysis of the SVAA has to account for both of these generalizations. In this section I would like to argue for an analysis that captures the two descriptive generalizations in (20) and (28) by positing two different underlying structures for SV and VS orders in SA. As a point of departure, I will assume that the descriptive generalization in (20) can actually be used as a diagnostic for the presence of a pronominal subject. In other words, from the fact that full agreement is always required with pronominal subjects, I will assume that presence of full agreement is actually indicative of the presence of a pronominal subject. In more precise terms, I would like to assign the following structural representations for VS and SV orders: (29)

VS: [TP T+[v*+V] [v*P DP tv* [VP tV YP]]]

(30)

SV: [TP DP T+[v*+V] [v*P pro tv* [VP tV YP]]]

In (29), the lexical DP, base-generated in Specv*P, remains in situ, with the VS order resulting from verb movement to v* to T. In SV structures, by contrast, the VP-internal subject position is actually occupied by a null subject pro, with the preverbal DP basegenerated in its surface position in SpecTP. This preverbal DP will be interpreted as coreferntial with the pro in postverbal subject position in the same way a CLLD-ed DP is interpreted as coreferntial with a resumptive pronoun within the thematic domain. The representations in (29) and (30) do derive the word order, but of course the main question here is: Can they account for the agreement asymmetry? In fact, given the structural distinction between (29) and (30), a natural answer arises for this question: full agreement obtains in the SV orders because of the presence of a pronominal subject, which is in essence the generalization in (20). Partial agreement in the VS order could be viewed then as the result of a default agreement morpheme on T in this language. We will get back to the gender agreement issue later on. Still, we have not explained why full agreement is obligatory when the subject is pronominal, but not so when the subject a lexical DP. An answer to this question is readily available from one of the standard assumptions of pro theory: the so-called pro identification requirement (cf. Rizzi 1982, McCloskey 1986), now reformulated as an

251

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interface condition (perhaps holding at PF): (31) A null element pro has to be identified at the interface, where identification is established by a complete φ-complex associated with pro.14 Given (31), the presence of full agreement in SV orders comes down to an interface requirement on the structure in (29): agreement has to be full or pro will not be identified. Since lexical DPs are not subject to an identification requirement, full agreement is not required, though by no means prohibited (cf. the data from MA in (3)), for interface convergence; default agreement is therefore allowed. Notice, however, that pronominal subjects may also appear overtly, in which case it is not clear if presence of full agreement on the verb is again required for interface convergence. Recall, though, that pronominals in subject position surface overtly in two contexts: for emphasis/contrastive focus effects or as the first conjunct in a conjoined subject. Suppose, then, that overtness of the pronominal in subject position is actually the result of an interface operation of lexicalization of a null subject pro rather than early insertion of a pronominal with phonological content. The assumption makes sense in light of the fact that null subject languages do not normally allow subjects to be overt. In fact, in some languages overtness of a pronominal is strictly prohibited, as McCloskey (1986: 251) argues is the case in Irish, illustrated here by the following examples: (32) a.

cuirim pro put (pres S1) “I put”

b. * cuirim put (PRES S1)

mé I

(33) a.

liom with (S1) “with me”

pro

b. * liom with (S1)

mé I/me

(34) a.

mo theach S1 house “my house”

pro

b. * mo S1

mé I/me

theach house

Interestingly, however, Irish allows overt pronominals to surface with the so-called analytic verb forms, i.e., those verb forms that inflect for tense, but not for person and number features:15 (35) cuireann sibh put (PRES) you (PL) McCloskey proposes that the contrast between the obligatory nullness of the pronominal subject in (32a) and the obligatory overtness of the pronominal subject in (35) may be explained in terms of “a requirement that the most highly-specified form available be inserted under zero-level categories at lexical insertion” (252). McCloskey’s insight can be readily captured under the present analysis: Given the condition on pro identi-

Chapter 8. Standard Arabic subject-verb agreement asymmetry revisited 253

fication, analytic forms cannot license pro, hence the need to fix the representation, or the derivation crashes. At it turns out, Irish forces lexicalization of the null subject in such cases. With synthetic verb forms, no such lexicalization is needed, since pro can be easily identified from the morphology on the verb or any other agreeing head (e.g., P or N). In essence, this supports the idea that pronominals in null subject languages start the derivation as pro, with lexicalization forced at the interface to save the derivation from crashing. But obviously Arabic overt pronominals cannot be treated in the same way as those in Irish. Arabic simply has no synthetic-analytic morphological distinction for verb forms. Remember, however, that overt pronominals in such cases are associated with an empathic interpretation. Suppose, then, that the overtness of the subject pronominal is actually related to this emphasis feature. In other words, suppose that the pronominal subject still starts as pro, and then gets lexicalized at the interface to save the derivation from crashing. After all, it is reasonable to assume that an emphasis feature on a null element in uninterpretable at PF. To be more precise, suppose that when pro carries a feature that cannot be realized on a null element, e.g., emphasis/focus, a rule of late insertion (such as the one in (36) below for the sentences in (17a,b)) spells-out the pronominal φ-complex overtly, otherwise pro will always remain “silent”: (36) For pro[3plmas, +EMPHASIS], insert “hum”. In short, then, full agreement with overt pronominal subjects in SA is still compatible with the idea that rich agreement is tied to the presence of a pro in the structure, since at the relevant point when pro identification applies, the subject is not yet lexicalized. One final point is still in order. Recall that overt pronominals obligatorily surface in conjoined subjects as well, though in this case no semantic effects of emphasis/focus occur. How do we explain the obligatoriness of the pronominal in such cases then if we want to maintain the assumption that all pronominals in null subject languages start as the null element pro? As it turns out, there is a ready answer for that. Coordinate structures have always been assumed to be subject to a (little understood and unarticulated) condition of parallelism. It seems reasonable to assume that one case of parallelism is phonological: both conjuncts must have phonetic content. If this is the case, then lexicalization of a pro conjunct follows from the interface condition on the phonological parallelism of coordinate structures. In fact, it could be that the classical coordinate structure constraint (CSC) is nothing but a violation of phonological parallelism, since after extraction; one of the two conjuncts is phonologically empty. That this is reasonable to assume is supported by two basic facts: First, across-theboard (ATB) extraction out of coordinate structures is legitimate; second, the CSC, unlike other island constraints, hardly seemed reducible to locality conditions such as Subjacency or in terms of a theory of barriers. Under the parallelism analysis, these two facts follow: ATB extraction preserves phonological parallelism (which would be lack of phonetic content in both conjuncts), whereas the nonreducibility of the CSC

254 Usama Soltan

to locality principles is simply because the CSC is not a syntactic constraint; it is an interface condition. In his discussion of first conjunct agreement in Irish, McCloskey states that “the leftmost element in a coordinate series … may be pro,” which seems to contradict what we have just mentioned about the parallelism requirement on coordinate structures. As it turns out, in all the examples that McCloskey gives of conjoined phrases with pro as the first conjunct, a phonologically overt féin element (glossed as EMPH) always appears in that first conjunct, thereby suggesting that Irish has a language-particular element for fixing violations of the parallelism condition on coordinate structures (examples from McCloskey 1986: 254): agus Bhíos [NP pro-féin Be (Past S1) (S1) EMPH and “Owen and I were present.” b. liom [NP pro-féin agus with (S1) (S1) EMPH and “with me and Owen” c. mo ghabháltas [NP pro-féin S1 holding (S1) EMPH “my own and my mother’s holding”

(37) a.

Eoghan] i láthair Owen present Eoghan] Owen agus mo mháthar] and my mother (GEN)

Let us summarize the discussion in this section so far. SV orders in SA differ from VS orders in that the former contain a pro subject in the VP-internal subject position, associated with a preverbal DP, in the same way a CLLDed DP is related to a resumptive pronoun. Since pro is subject to an identification requirement, full agreement is always manifest to allow the derivation to converge at the interface. Lexical DPs, by contrast, need not be identified, hence the occurrence of either default agreement (SA) or full agreement (MA/LA) is possible in VS orders. Pronominals in null subject languages start the derivation as pro, which may get lexicalized if required by interface conditions, such as the requirement that emphasis/focus features be represented on a phonologically overt element, and the requirement that coordinate structures be parallel in their phonological content. If this analysis is correct, then the surface SVAA in SA can be explained in terms of the conditions imposed by the interface systems on structural representations, a result that seems in conformity with the strong minimalist thesis that language design is such that it satisfies bare output condition. It remains, however, to see if these results can be captured within a minimalist framework. I turn to this next.

5. Standard Arabic SVAA in an Agree-based framework In this paper, I will follow Chomsky (2000, 2001a, 2001b) in assuming that agreement in natural language grammar is induced through the application of an operation Agree,

Chapter 8. Standard Arabic subject-verb agreement asymmetry revisited 255

which is a syntactic relation that takes place at a distance (rather than in a Spec-head configuration) within a local search domain, as illustrated in (38): (38)

α

αProbe [−interpretable]F Agree

δ

… βGoal … [+interpretable]F

As diagrammed in (38), Agree is an operation that establishes a relationship between an element α (call it a Probe) with uninterpretable features and an element β (call it a Goal) with matching interpretable features in the domain of α (which is δ, a sister of α, in (38)), whereby the uninterpretable features on the Probe are valued by the matching interpretable features on the Goal. Typical examples of uninterpretable features are φ-features or wh-features on functional heads, or Case on nominals. Long distance agreement is attested in natural language grammar. We have already mentioned in Section 3 agreement with postverbal subjects in VSO languages, as well as cases of first conjunct agreement in several languages. A yet another example of long-distance agreement is agreement with the postverbal associate in English expletive constructions in SVO languages (cf. fn.5): (39) [There T seem [to be two men in the room]] Agree For the purposes of Agree, I will assume that T has the following inventory of uninterpretable features: First, φ-features for the traditional Person and Number features, which may also happen to have default values. Second, T may also appear with a separate CLASS feature, familiar from languages with rich classifier systems (e.g., Bantu), which also appears as a Gender feature in many languages. If Gender is not part of the φ-complex on T, then it should be able to probe separately for the purposes of Agree (see Ouhalla 2003, for instance). Finally, T may appear with an EPP feature, understood here as the requirement to be “an occurrence of something,” where an occurrence of α is a sister of α (Chomsky 2001b). In principle, then, T can appear with φ, CLASS, EPP, or any combinations of these three, subject to lexical parameterization. Given the above theoretical assumptions as well as the discussions in the previous sections, we are now in a position to present explicit derivations of SV and VS word orders in SA and the agreement pattern associated with each. For simplicity of presentation, suppose that our target Arabic SV structure is “The girls read the book” with full agreement surfacing on the verb “read.” The structural representation of the sentence

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is as follows:16 (40) [CP C [TP DP T EPP/φ/CLASS [v*P pro v* [VP read the book]]]] Agree In (40) Agree takes place between T and the v*P-internal subject pro, thereby valuing the φ and the Class features of T. The preverbal DP is base-generated in its surface position to satisfy the EPP feature on T. As noted earlier, agreement with a pro subject is only compatible with a full T, necessarily required so pro can be identified and the derivation converges at the interface. Consider now the VS order. Here our target structure is “Read the girls the book,” with gender agreement appearing on the verb. The structural representation of such a sentence is as in (41): (41) [CP C [TP TDEFAULT/CLASS [v*P DP v* [VP read the book]]]] Agree There are two main structural differences between (41) and (40): First, there is no pro in (41); rather, the v*P-internal subject position is occupied by the lexical DP. Second, T has no φ nor EPP features, as a lexical option for this particular dialect. Class, however, is an obligatory feature on T, hence the manifest gender agreement in VS as well as SV orders. Notice, however, that in principle, we should expect a language where T can appear with both φ as well as Class features in structures such as (41), a prediction that is borne out by the presence of Arabic dialects where full agreement does obtain in VS orders as noted earlier with regard to LA and MA. Such dialects will allow a T with both φ and Class features without an EPP option: (42) [CP C [TP Tφ/CLASS [v*P DP v* [VP read the book]]]] Agree Under this analysis, the difference between SA on the one hand, and LA/MA on the other, has to do with the lexical properties of T in these varieties. SA, as noted before, does not allow a φ-complete T without an EPP feature. LA/MA, by contrast, seem to allow this option as a lexical property on T.17

6. Some empirical consequences of the Agree-based analysis of SVAA The derivations presented in the previous section derives both SV and VS word orders as well as the agreement pattern associated with each. Word order is derived by whether or not there is a pro in the numeration, whereas the agreement pattern is derived by the “operating downward” Agree mechanism and the type of T selected. But at this point

Chapter 8. Standard Arabic subject-verb agreement asymmetry revisited 257

we should also wonder if the analysis has any further empirical merits. In this section I discuss some interesting consequences of the present approach to the SVAA. One advantage of the current analysis is that we can now account for the definiteness/specificity requirement on preverbal DPs (cf. the data in (21)). Remember that in SA sentences of the form “A boy broke the window” are ungrammatical on the nonspecific reading. Given the analysis presented here, this is straightforward. For such a structure to be derived, the NP “a boy” has to be associated with pro. But pro is inherently definite/specific, hence no such association can be established. In other words, a structure with a nonspecific NP in preverbal position is simply uninterpretable at the semantic interface. The only way for an indefinite NP to receive a nonspecific interpretation is by Merging it directly in the v*P-internal subject position, hence its exclusive appearance in postverbal position. Now, consider the wh-extraction facts in (23) again. Recall that extraction is allowed across a postverbal DP, but is prohibited across a preverbal DP. Under the analysis presented here, that again follows naturally. If SV orders are actually CLLD structures with the preverbal DP base-generated in SpecTP, that makes SpecTP in SA an A’-position (cf. fn.13). Extraction of a wh-phrase across that position is, therefore, disallowed by standard minimality considerations. Wh-extraction across a DP in Specv*P, by contrast, is nonproblematic. Next, let’s reconsider the Case facts presented earlier in Section 3 (cf. 25-26): postverbal DPs are always nominative; preverbal DPs are nominative only if there is no other case that could be assigned to them. Under the current analysis, postverbal DPs will always get nominative case by virtue of Agreeing with T, the locus of nominative case assignment under standard assumptions. Preverbal DPs, however, never start within the thematic domain, and never get into any Agree relation with T, and therefore end up with default case (which happens to be nominative in SA), unless a lexical or structural Case-assigner is available in the structure, e.g., an overt C or an ECM verb, in which case the base-generated preverbal DP will surface with nonnominative case: (43) [CP ʔinna [TP DP T [v*P pro v* [VP V … ]]]] Case (44) [VP VECM … [CP DP C [TP T [v*P pro v* [VP V … ]]]]] Case If the position of the preverbal DP in SV structures was actually derived by movement from the VP-internal subject position to SpecTP, a question that would remain unanswered is why such movement is needed, if the DP can still get nominative case in situ, as the grammaticality of VS structures in this language indicates. Even under a more lax theory where DPs can move after they get Case, a question would still remain why this “structural” nominative case ends up giving way to another case assigned by

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a lexical or structural Case-assigner. A mechanism of overriding Case features under multiple Case-assignment, whereby a later assigned Case annuls an earlier assigned Case, seems ad hoc and non-economical. Under the current analysis, none of these questions arise: there is no movement-from-a-Case-position problem, since the preverbal DP has never moved. There is no multiple-Case-assignment problem, since the preverbal DP gets only one case, that assigned by the relevant Case assigner if there is one, or by default if there is none. We move next to the semantic properties of SV structures. Remember that these structures have been traditionally treated as topic-comment structures, CLLD in our terms. The question now is if we can derive this from the syntactic machinery assumed here. In his discussion of Object Shift in Icelandic-type languages, Chomsky (2001a) proposes that “optional” EPP features can be seen as having an interface value at the SEM(antic) level. Precisely, an EPP feature, when optional, should generate an effect on the outcome of the derivation at SEM, a simple economy condition. Suppose, then, that EPP on T may be, parametrically, optional (see McCloskey (1996a, 1996b, 2002) for an argument for absence of EPP effects on Irish T). If this assumption is on the right track, then we have an explanation for the difference in interpretation between SV and VS orders in SA: EPP licensing in SV orders results in an LF reflex of categoricalness, whereas absence of an EPP feature in VS orders results in the default thetic interpretation. One further interesting consequence of the current analysis has to do with the agreement properties of seem-type verbs in SA (and, as far as I know, in all of today’s dialects as well). SA does not have raising; rather, seem-type predicates always select a finite CP:18 yabdu ʔanna l-ʔawlaad-a qad ħaDar-uu seem 3sgmas C the-boys-ACC PCL come/PERF-3plmas “It seems that the boys have come.” b. ʔal-ʔawlaad-u yabdu ʔanna-hum qad ħaDar-uu the-boys-NOM seem 3sgmas C-they PCL come/PERF-3plmas “The boys, it seems that they have come.”

(45) a.

What is crucial to the discussion here is that the verb yabdu (=seem) is invariant in its morphology, as the examples in (45) show: it always surfaces with third person singular masculine default agreement, whether or not there is a DP preceding it. Under the analysis proposed here, that makes perfect sense. In both sentences in (45) matrix T cannot Agree with any Goals within the embedded CP (whether that is a lexical DP or a pro), under locality conditions of cyclic syntax, e.g., Chomsky’s (2000) Phase Impenetrability Condition, which prohibits syntactic operations from targeting any positions lower than the Spec (technically called the edge) of the immediately preceding phase, where phases are CPs and v*Ps. In that case default agreement comes to the rescue as a last resort. Notice that there is not even partial agreement here. Default agreement extends to the CLASS feature on T as well. Now, the question is why yabdu cannot appear with full agreement under the analysis presented here. For this, the answer is pretty

Chapter 8. Standard Arabic subject-verb agreement asymmetry revisited 259

simple: yabdu never licenses an external argument, hence the possibility of Merging a pro in Specv*P does not arise, and full agreement is in turn impossible to obtain. Notice, finally, that there is nothing idiosyncratically lexical or morphological about yabdu-type predicates that prevent them from surfacing with full agreement features. If any of these verbs can occur in a configuration where T can Agree with an accessible Goal, full agreement becomes possible in the SV order again. As it turns out, yabdu itself is one such verb when used as a linking predicate: (46) yabdu l-ʔawlaad-u seem 3sgmas the-boys-NOM “The boys look happy.”

mubtahi-iin happy-plmas-ACC

There have been several proposals as to the right analysis of copular constructions. I will not dwell on this issue here (see Benmamoun 2000 for an extensive discussion). Rather, I will assume that a copular/linking verb selects a small clause (SC) as its complement, such that the structure of the sentence in (46) is roughly as in (47): (47) [TP T [VP VLINK [SC SUBJ AP]]] Given the structure in (47), it is easy to see that this is a configuration where Agree may take place between T and SUBJ within the SC complement of the linking verb VLINK. This predicts that partial gender agreement should be obligatory in such cases, which is true: As (48a) shows, default gender morphology is ungrammatical with a feminine subject: (48) a. * yabdu l-fatayaat-u seem 3sgmas the-girls-NOM b. tabdu l-fatayaat-u seem 3sgmas the-girls-NOM “The girls look happy.”

mubtahi-aatin happy-plmas-ACC mubtahi-aatin happy-plmas-ACC

Similarly, given the analysis presented here, SUBJ within the SC in (47) should in principle be a pro associated with a peripheral DP, thereby predicting full agreement on yabdu as with other verbs, a prediction that is again borne out: (49) ʔal-ʔawlaad-u yabdu-una mubtahi-iin the-boys-NOM seem 3plmas happy-plmas-ACC “The boys, they look happy.” Similar effects of obligatory default agreement also hold with regard to verbs expressing deontic modality in SA such as yajibu, yanbaii, yataħattam (all mean “must”), which all select a PP for their experiencer argument, as illustrated below for the verb yajibu: (50) a.

yajib-u ala Zayd-in әr-raħiil-u must-3sgmas on Zayd-DAT the-leaving-NOM “Zayd has to leave.”

260 Usama Soltan

b. yajib-u ala Hind-i әr-raħiil-u must-3sgmas on Hind-DAT the-leaving-NOM “Hind has to leave.” Two facts to notice here: first, the modality verb yajibu always appears in the same form, irrespective of the gender status of the DP inside the experiencer PP argument. Second, the theme argument appears in nominative case. Equally important is that the occurrence of the experiencer DP in preverbal position does not change the agreement features on the verb: ʔal-ʔawlaad-u yajib-u the-boys-NOM must-3sgmas “The boys have to leave.” b. * ʔal-ʔawlaad-u yajib-uuna the-boys-NOM must-3plmas “The boys have to leave.”

(51) a.

alay-him әr-raħiil-u on-them the-leaving-NOM alay-him әr-raħiil-u on-them the-leaving-NOM

Notice also that such structures provide further evidence that SV orders are akin to CLLD structures, as evidenced by the presence of the resumptive pronoun within the experiencer PP. An Agree-based analysis, by contrast, can attribute the lack of full agreement to the impossibility of base-generating a pro subject in such structures, given that the experiencer argument is a PP, not a DP, thereby disallowing pro association. Notice, however, that the presence of nominative case on the theme argument seems to signal Agreement with T. That this is the case is supported by data in which the modality verb may optionally show gender agreement when the theme argument is feminine: (52) yajib-u/tajib-u ala Zayd-in әS-Salaat-u must-3sgmas/must-3sgfem on Zayd-DAT the-praying-NOM “Zayd has to pray.” One possible analysis for this case of optionality of gender agreement under lack of adjacency between the verb and the agreeing DP may be in terms of a languageparticular principle of the morphological component that forces gender agreement to appear only under adjacency, while allowing it not to surface if the adjacency requirement is not met. Why linear adjacency should affect a structural relationship such as Agree is an interesting topic that I will not pursue here, but see Soltan (in progress) for an elaborate discussion. What should be clear, however, is that this is another case where a Spec-head analysis seems quite inadequate to account for the observed facts of long-distance agreement and nominative case assignment. In sum, the Agree-based account proposed in this paper not only accounts for the SV-VS order alternation and the agreement patterns associated with each order, but also for a range of semantic, syntactic and Case facts that distinguish between the two word orders. In addition, the analysis seems to extend naturally to account for cases of

Chapter 8. Standard Arabic subject-verb agreement asymmetry revisited 261

uniform default agreement with seem-type predicates and verbs of deontic modality, thereby providing further evidence that this approach to the investigation of agreement phenomena is indeed on the right track.

7.

Conclusions

The goal of this paper has been to revisit the classical subject-verb agreement asymmetry from a minimalist perspective. It has been shown that the asymmetry is only apparent: surface full agreement is actually agreement with a VP-internal pro subject, whereas partial agreement is due to a default agreement option in the language for φ-features valuation, though not for Class features. There is strong empirical evidence that the preverbal DP in SV structures is actually base-generated in its surface position rather than arriving there through movement. On a theoretical level, the analysis presented in this paper argues against a Spec-head approach to agreement and in favor of an Agree-based syntax, where agreement is induced through a “downward” relation between a functional head and the closest accessible Goal in its search domain. One consequence of such an analysis is that it allows us to account for cases where agreement is blocked due to opacity effects that render Goals inaccessible for Agree. We have seen evidence for that with seem-type predicates, which in SA always select a CP, an opaque domain for Agree under phase impenetrability. Similar effects also hold with verbs of deontic modality which Agree with the theme argument, given that their experiencer arguments are always PPs, by assumption not targets for φ or Class agreement. If correct, the analysis proposed here provides further evidence for a theory of grammar in which agreement is induced between syntactic elements, not as a reflex of a phrase-structure-theoretic relation, but in terms of a primitive built-in mechanism, Agree, specifically designed to do so.

Notes * For their valuable questions, comments, and suggestions, I would like to extend my thanks to Cedric Boeckx, Tomohiro Fujii, Norbert Hornstein, Howard Lasnik, Milan Rezac, Norvin Richards, Juan Uriagereka, and the audiences at the Second ECO5 Syntax Workshop held at University of Maryland, College Park in the spring of 2004, at the Workshop on Minimalist Theorizing held at Indiana University, Bloomington, in the summer of 2004, and at the 19th Arabic Linguistics Symposium, held at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in the Spring of 2005. I’m particularly indebted to Cedric Boeckx for his encouragement and patience during the writing of this paper. It goes without saying that all mistakes or shortcomings in this piece of work are entirely mine. 1. Throughout the paper I will use the abbreviations “VS” for constructions with a postverbal DP, and “SV” for constructions with a preverbal DP. 2. The following abbreviations are used in the glosses of Arabic data. 1, 2, and 3=first, sec-

262 Usama Soltan ond, and third person, mas=masculine, fem=feminine; sg=singular; du=dual; pl=plural; NOM=nominative; ACC=accusative; GEN=genitive, DAT=dative. 3. Aoun et al strictly reject the presence of a null expletive in VS orders. 4. For an account of FCA, see Soltan (to appear). 5. A similar problem arose even in strictly SVO languages with constructions where agreement seems to obtain between a verb and a DP in postverbal position, as in English expletive constructions for example: (i) (ii)

There is/*are a man in the room. There *is/are two men in the room.

There have been several analyses of how such a case of “long-distance” agreement may be licensed in such constructions. An earlier analysis was to assume that the expletive and the associate form a chain of some sort, thereby allowing the agreement features on the associate to appear on the verb, and at the same time “transmitting” nominative case to the associate. Other later analyses included “covert” movement of the associate to SpecIP, so that the appropriate configuration for agreement and Case assignment obtains. Other analyses were also proposed, but the moral from all such proposals seemed pretty much the same: a Spec-head approach to agreement just could not account for these cases of “long-distance” agreement without extra machinery supporting it, e.g., expletive-associate chain, feature transmission, covert movement, feature movement, etc. 6. But see Hornstein (2005) for a recent account of agreement and Case in terms of the Spechead relation. 7. Spell-out is the operation that strips away the phonological features of the structure and sends them to the phonological component. 8. It should be mentioned that the point made here is simply to show how the generalization of the Spec-head relation to all agreement and Case licensing is not as straightforward as it might first seem, but rather requires additional assumptions in the two main components of the grammar: the lexicon and the computational system. It is an argument regarding the complexity of the “grammar,” and not necessarily that there is anything incoherent about checking theory or a two-cycle syntax per se. 9. As noted in n. 6, Hornstein (2005) proposes to derive the privileged status of the Spec-head relation from the inherent properties of structure-building operations such Concatenate and Merge; see Soltan (in progress) for a discussion of Hornstein’s approach. 10. EV = epenthetic vowel. 11. The thetic-categorical distinction is a traditional grammar idea that has been first revived within generative grammar in Kuroda (1972). Other research in generative syntax that has made use of this distinction includes Raposo and Uriagereka (1995), Basilico (1998), among others. 12. As the reader will eventually notice, the analysis presented here has a lot in common with the so-called incorporation analysis of the SVAA, proposed independently by both Fassi Fehri (1993) and Demirdache (to appear), which is also in essence the classical analysis offered by Arabic traditional grammarians. As the reader will notice, the main difference between the current analysis and the incorporation analysis is that the subject in SV structures is taken to be always a null subject with the morphological ending on the verb treated as a pure agreement marker, and not as an incorporated pronominal subject. As Benmamoun (2000) notes, one problem with the

Chapter 8. Standard Arabic subject-verb agreement asymmetry revisited 263 incorporation analysis is that it forces us to assume the presence of two subjects (and hence two clauses) in compound tense constructions where agreement is manifest on both the auxiliary as well as the main verb: (i)

ʔal-ʔawlaad-u kaan-uu yalʕab-uuna fi l-ħadiiqat-i the-boys-NOM were-3plmas play-3plmas in the-garden-DAT “The boys were playing in the garden.”

In addition, the incorporation analysis, at least in its traditional version, also has to posit a null subject for third person singular verb forms since in such cases there is no apparent incorporated pronominal on the verb. Under the analysis presented here, this latter duality of the type of subject occurring does not arise, since the subject is always pro. Similarly, the multiple agreement phenomenon in compound tense constructions is readily explained in a monoclausal structure under the extra assumption that Asp(ect) in this language, like T, is also φ-active, hence the multiplicity of agreement features on both the auxiliary and the main verb. 13. That SpecIP may parametrically be an A’-position has been independently argued for by Mahajan (1990) for Hindi and Borer for Modern Hebrew (1995). 14. I ignore here pro-drop languages of the Chinese-type, where agreement morphology is null, hence cannot serve as an identifier for pro. In such languages, pro identification has to proceed in a different fashion (see Huang 1984 for an elaborate discussion). 15. Analytic forms contrast with “synthetic” forms, which do inflect for tense as well person and number features. The verb form for “put” in (32a) is an example of synthetic verbal morphology in Irish. 16. Assume verb raising to v* and T throughout, perhaps operations of the phonological component driven by the affixal properties of functional heads. Assume also an Agree relation between v* and the object DP, whereby object-verb agreement and accusative case assignment obtain. 17. It is not clear if we can derive this correlation between φ-completeness and EPP from a deeper property of either T or the very little understood EPP. I’m merely assuming that it is a pure lexical property of T, which will differ, idiosyncratically, from one language to another. 18. PCL=particle. In this particular example, qad seems to act as a modality marker.

264 Usama Soltan

References Aoun, J., E. Benmamoun and D. Sportiche. 1994. Agreement, word order, and conjunction in some varieties of Arabic. Linguistic Inquiry 25: 195-220. Aoun, J., E. Benmamoun and D. Sportiche. 1999. Further remarks on first conjunct agreement. Linguistic Inquiry 30: 669-681. Basilico, D. 1998. Object position and predication forms. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 16: 541-595. Benmamoun, A. 2000 The Feature Structure of Functional Categories: A comparative study of Arabic sialects. Oxford: OUP. Borer, H. 1995. The ups and downs of Hebrew verb movement. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 13: 527-606 Chomsky, N. 1993. A minimalist program for linguistic theory. In The View from Building 20: Essays in honor of Sylvain Bromberger, K. Hale and S. J. Keyser (eds), 1-52. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 2000. Minimalist inquiries: The framework. In Step by Step: Essays on minimalist syntax in honor of Howard Lasnik, R. Martin, Micheals and J. Uriagereka (eds), 89-156. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 2001a. Derivation by phase. In Ken Hale: A life in language, M. Kenstowicz, M. (ed.), 1-52. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 2001b. Beyond explanatory adequacy. MIT Occasional Papers in Linguistics 20: 1-28. Demirdache, H. To appear. Nominative subjects in Arabic. International Journal of Basque Linguistics and Philosophy: Bilbao/Donostia-San Sebastian. Fassi Fehri, A. 1993. Issues in the Structure of Arabic Clauses and Words. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Harbert, W. and M. Bahloul. 2002. Postverbal subjects in Arabic and the theory of agreement. In Themes in Arabic and Hebrew Syntax, J. Ouhalla and U. Shlonsky (eds), 45-70. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Holmberg, A. 2003. Null subjects and uninterpretable features: Evidence from Finnish. Durham Working Papers in Linguistics, Volume 9. Hornstein, N. 2005. What do labels do? Some thoughts on the endocentric roots of recursion and movement. Ms., University of Maryland, College Park. Huang, C.T.J. 1984. On the distribution and reference of empty pronouns. Linguistic Inquiry 15: 531-574. Johannessen, J. B. 1996. Partial agreement and coordination. Linguistic Inquiry 27: 661-676. Kayne, R. 1989. Notes on English agreement. Ms., CUNY, New York. Kuroda, Y. 1972. The categorical and thetic judgment: Evidence from Japanese syntax. Foundations of Language 9: 153-85. Mahajan, A. K. 1990. The A/A’ Distinction and Movement Theory. PhD dissertation. MIT. McCloskey, J. 1986. Inflection and conjunction in modern Irish. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 4: 245-281. McCloskey, J. 1996a. On the scope of verb raising in Irish. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 14: 47-104. McCloskey, J. 1996b. Subjects and subject positions Irish. In The Syntax of the Celtic Languages: A comparative perspective, R. Borsely and I. Roberts (eds), 241-283. Cambridge: CUP.

Chapter 8. Standard Arabic subject-verb agreement asymmetry revisited 265 McCloskey, J. 2002. The distribution of subject properties in Irish. Ms., University of California, Santa Cruz. Mohammad, M.A. 1990. The problem of subject-verb agreement in Arabic: Towards a solution. In Perspectives in Arabic Linguistics I, M. Eid (ed.), 95-125. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Mohammad, M.A. 2000. Word Order, Agreement and Pronominalization in Standard and Palestinian Arabic. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Munn, A. 1999. First conjunct agreement: Against a clausal analysis. Linguistic Inquiry 30: 643686. Ouhalla, J. 2003. VSO, agreement and anti-agreement. Ms., University College Dublin. Raposo, E. and J. Uriagereka. 1995. Two types of small clauses: Toward a syntax of theme/rheme relations. In Syntax and Semantics 28: Small Clauses, A. Cardinalleti and M. T. Guasti (eds), 179-206. New York NY: Academic Press. Rizzi, L. 1982. Issues in Italian Syntax. Dordrecht: Foris. Soltan, U. To appear. On postcyclic merge and agree in syntactic deviations: First conjunct agreement in Standard Arabic revisited. In Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics IX, E. Benmamoun (ed.). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Soltan, U. In progress. On mechanisms of formal features licensing in a minimalist syntax: Investigations in the morphosyntax of Arabic dialects. PhD dissertation University of Maryland, College Park. Sproat, R. 1985. Welsh syntax and VSO structure. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 3: 173-216. Uriagereka, J. 2001. Cutting derivational options. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 19: 891-900.

chapter 

Complete and partial Infl Juan Uriagereka University of Maryland

This paper argues that ‘null’ Case appears in person-less elements, including (some) clauses in addition to PRO, while ‘full’ Case shows up in regular nominals. Several data are adduced in this regard, the pertinent distribution being decided when constructing cyclic lexical arrays through an economy metric: Full Case/person features are required only on elements that are not tokenized by the cyclic dynamics themselves. Null Case is a formal consequence of involving the Infl system, under the assumption that full inflection corresponds to fully-fledged person distinctions. Embedded Extended Projection effects arise in terms of the checking of null Case. This makes a prediction if null Case assignment is subject to variation: the reach of A-movement may vary across languages.

1.

Introduction

In this note I would like to address a perplexing situation. Chomsky and Lasnik (1993) introduce the notion of a ‘null’ Case, to be assigned to PRO. As Hornstein (1999) points out, it is ad-hoc to have a Case whose sole purpose is to be used this way. Thus either null Case should not exist at all, or it must also be assigned to elements other than PRO. Hornstein himself has explored the first possibility, I would like to examine the alternative. The paper starts by posing a puzzle for the Visibility Hypothesis (section 2), and with an interesting piece of data from San Martin and Uriagereka (2002), the analysis of which argues for extending the conditions, under certain assumptions, of null Case relevance beyond its originally intended sense. Section 3 then presents an intriguing degree of variation with regards to successive-cyclic A-movement, which is affected by the generalization of null Case to various inflectional contexts. The next two sections study the precise conditions under which null Case could be assigned, by hypothesis locally (in context-free terms); section 4 is devoted to complements and section 5 to specifiers, where freezing conditions relating to null Case valuation are also discussed. Section 6 analyzes how cyclicity may affect freezing, while section 7 studies situations under which freezing is bypassed, and how those can, in turn, be reinforced again in

268 Juan Uriagereka

specific, morphologically active domains. Section 8 investigates some syntactic consequences of the proposal. The last two sections involve conclusions; in section 9 the main syntactic picture is addressed, while section 10 sketches a semantic consequence.

2. Null Case We standardly assume (a) that arguments require Case (the Visibility hypothesis) and (b) that him in (1) involves the accusative Case associated to the v-believe complex. (1) I believe [him to be smart] Since [him to be smart] is the direct argument of believe, this creates a contradiction. The problem goes away, however, if in addition to accusative Case the complex v-believe somehow also assigns null case, and clauses can take this Case to satisfy visibility demands. If so, null Case goes with person-less elements: PRO, (some?) clauses, and perhaps other instances that pose recalcitrant issues concerning Case (e.g. associates of expletives that do not agree with T, which I return to in passing in section 8). In turn, full Case is a function of regular nominals. Confirmation for this hypothesis comes from the facts discussed in San Martin and Uriagereka (2002), where it is shown that obligatorily controlled PRO in Basque effectively renders a transitive verb selecting the controlled clause into an unaccusative: (2) a.

Ni [PRO pisua galtzen ] saiatu naiz. I.abs weight-ABS lose-nominalizer-LOC try-part I.be ‘I have tried to lose weight.’ b. Nik hori saiatu dut I.ERG that-ABS try-part I.have.III ‘I have tried that.’

The situation in (2b) is the normal one: the transitive saiatu ‘try’ goes together with transitive auxiliary dut, coding agreement with the ergative subject nik ‘I’ and the absolutive object hori ‘that’. But this Case/agreement array is altered when the direct object is the clause: this time around the auxiliary accompanying saiatu ‘try’ is the unaccusative naiz, signaling agreement with the now absolutive subject ni ‘I’. In other words, it seems as if the clause is taken as invisible for the regular Case/agreement system when it involves an obligatorily controlled PRO subject. One way to interpret this fact is that the infinitival clause is, in some sense, ‘defective’, and it only gets null Case. Basque being an ergabsolutive language, this leaves the absolutive Case free to go to the first element that needs it, which is the subject in (2a). In (2b), in contrast, the direct object is hori ‘that’, which need not be defective. That being the case, it involves the absolutive Case, then ergative Case is, the one left, for the subject in (2b). That approach presupposes two notions that are quite important for my logic here:

Chapter 9. Complete and partial Infl 269

(3) The minimal array condition (MAC) Given a collection of substantive items, select into the array only those Case/person specifications that are necessary for convergence. (4) The Person Generalization Full (vs. weak) generalized Infl ←→ Person (vs. only number) features in inflections. The general idea is that lexical arrays are built according to some economy metric, such that unspecified Case/person features are added only if necessary for convergence. Full (as opposed to null) Case/person features are required only on elements, such as definite noun-phrases, that are not tokenized by the cyclic dynamic itself. With Drury (2005), I take the one-category-token-per-cycle (often tacit) assumption to follow from the fact that ‘numerations’ are sets, and sets do not tolerate several instances of the exact same type; differently put, the cycle-as-set requires one category token per category type per derivational cycle. Case/person morphology, in turn, serves to separate DP category tokens, as suggested in Uriagereka (1997). Null Case, then, is to be seen as the formal requirement on a category that need not be tokenized. Still, the category involves the Case system, although according to (4). Full representation in inflections corresponds to fully fledged person feature distinctions. This is not a necessary condition, but in a sense to be made precise, it is an instance of what I refer to as the Transparency Thesis in section 10. I hasten to add that if this view of things is assumed, the distribution of PRO cannot directly follow from the assignment of null Case, since this type of Case will be considerably pervasive.

3. Variation in successive cyclic A-movement Having defective Infl assign null Case affects the Extended Projection Principle (EPP) in embedded contexts (where Lasnik (2001) has argued it holds, problematically as it doesn’t involve any obvious feature checking): it could arise via null Case checking. Of course then the issue arises of whether successive-cyclic displacement across tenseless domains should be possible, assuming that null Case checking, as does Case checking more broadly, in general renders the DP where it occurs inactive for further computation a freezing effect (see Chomsky (2000)). As it turns out, this matter is delicate, exhibiting lots of linguistic variation which I now turn to. Consider, first, the Galician-Portuguese contrasts in (5): (5) a. O Luis veu [ os xogadores sair(en)] the Luis saw the players leave(agr) ‘Luis saw the players leave.’ b. Os xogadores foron vistos [t sair(*en)] the players were seen-agr leave(agr) ‘The players were seen to leave.’

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While agreement is possible in the infinitival complement of a perception verb (5a), a passivized version, as in (5b), eliminates the possibility. It is tempting to analyze this as simply involving the nominative associated to the infinitive inflection, entailing a freezing effect on the nominal thus Case-checked. However observe what happens when the agreement is clearly not associated to nominative Case, as in the participial form highlighted in (6a). In Galician and many Romance languages,1 A-movement over the participial is impossible, vis-à-vis a comparable A-movement across no such participial (6b); standard Case checking is not involved here: (6) a. ?*A Xoana foi feita [t ser capitán do equipo] the Xoana was made-agr be captain of-the team ‘Xoana was made to be the captain of the team.’ b. A Xoana parece [t ser capitán do equipo] A Xoana seems be captain of-the team ‘Xoana seems to be the captain of the team.’ c. A Xoana foi feita [t capitán do equipo] the Xoana was made-agr captain of-the team ‘Xoana was made captain of the team.’ Note that the issue cannot be simply ‘moving over’ an agreeing participial either, since this is precisely what is taking place in (6c), involving an embedded small-clause. Moreover, instances exist across various languages of long-distance, presumably successive-cyclic, A-movement (7) and even hyper-raising, as in Rivero and Geber’s (8): (7) Jack is likely [t to seem [to be the leader of this group]], but he isn’t. (8) Noi pǎrem [ sǎ [t incepem [ sǎ [t lucrǎm bine]] we seem-agr Comp begin-agr comp work-agr well ‘We seem to begin to work well.’ (Lit.: ‘We seem that begin that work well.’) The question then is why sentences like (7) are impossible in some languages, while those like the Rumanian (8) are impossible in many; or in other words, what features of relevant languages make these instances of successive cyclic A-movement viable. At first sight the situation seems hopeless, for in (8) we have agreement allowing movement across, whereas in (5b) or (6a) agreement seems to prevent a comparable movement – in languages within the same family. Then again, these very facts suggest two things. First, that the EPP holds, in some form, even in embedded domains, or else it is unclear what is possible in, say, (7), but not in comparable circumstances elsewhere. Second, this principle must be adequately parameterized. In that second respect, a line of reasoning in terms of null Case seems promising, if nothing else because a priori this sort of formal requirement may or may not be operative in the relevant domains. Importantly, by its nature null Case ought to be a local phenomenon. Transformations involve context-sensitivity, thus a characteristic discontinuity posing grammatical and processing complexity. In standard instances this is solved via the grammar signalling the process dually: by uninterpretable morphological markings

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at the Probe and interpretable matches at the Goal. There are much debated exceptions when characteristic interpretive consequences ensue, for instance in Quantifier Raising. But null Case shows neither morphological marking nor specific interpretive consequences; thus it ought to be resolved in context-free terms.2 If so we can ask what kinds of manifestations the grammar allows for this sort of process, hopefully leading to the observed variations. First, locality in checking limits relevant instances to those involving displacement to a specifier or association to a complement, preventing long-distance Agree manifestations; this is contrary to what obtains for regular Case checking. Second, the appropriate checking may be affected in two circumstances: (a) there could be something special in the checking head or (b) the checked element could be peculiar. This isn’t trivial: we are dealing with something abstract, null in the receiving end. Overt syntax is readily acquirable and parsable, whereas tacit processes depend on underlying grammatical conditions and how they interact with independent elements.

4. Conditions on null Case realization: Complement clauses We must determine which inflectional heads check null Case, and moreover how they relate to overt agreement. A natural possibility would be the thesis in (9), the intuition behind which is simple: morphologically manifested Cases (either in terms of case-morphology or visibility on pronounced nominals) are easy for a learner to detect, hence they can in principle relate to null inflectional elements like v (in familiar languages) and the like; null Case is in contrast undetectable unless signaled by the element that determines it, since it lacks morphology and may appear on silent elements: (9) Null Case Visibility (NCV) (First Version) Null Case is determined by a context-free dependence with an overt head. Given the NCV thesis in (9), we expect elements like the inflectional to or lexical heads to, in principle, be able to determine null Case. Infinitival heads involve their specifier (for instance PRO), whereas lexical heads like verbs involve their complement (for instance complement clauses in need of null Case). Let’s consider the latter first in some detail, starting with the puzzling example in (1), repeated now with more accuracy: Accusative (10) I v believe [ him to be smart] null Here the v element standardly associated to the main verb assigns accusative Case to the subject of the embedded clause, via long-distance Agree, whereas the verb itself

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(arguably) locally assigns null Case to the complement clause. In the present perspective the embedded to also determines null Case, associated to him in this instance. I return below to how this may be possible, and indeed how it affects successive cyclicity. Right away we must then worry about what happens in (11a). Based on the paratactic dependency in (11c), I propose an analysis as in (11b), adapting a proposal in Torrego and Uriagereka (2002) developed in Hinzen (2003): (11) a.

I believe [that the earth is flat] Accusative

b. I v believe [proi ATTITUDE] [that the earth is flat]i null c.

I believe iti possible [that the earth is flat]i

Embedded propositions, whose veridicality the subject of the main clause has an attitude towards, involve a small clausal structure that is overt in instances like (11c). If so, the small clause complement of the epistemic/declarative verb (and thus the attitudinal predicate) can receive null Case, whereas the dependent clause itself is paratactically associated to a (null) pronominal that receives accusative Case. That paratactic analysis cannot extend to hypotactic selection. The question for volitional/desiderative predicates is whether the v they involve can determine Accusative Case. Recall the Basque examples in (2), keeping in mind that subject and object agreement is typically overt in the language. In hypotactic instances where PRO is involved, the embedded clause doesn’t participate in the standard Case/agreement system (auxiliary selection is for the unaccusative izan ‘be’, instead of the transitive form). The structure in (12) corresponds to (2a), abstracting away from word order and irrelevant details, and using English words for clarity: (12) I-ABSOLUTIVE am tried [PRO to lose weight-ABSOLUTIVE] -NULL A radical way of interpreting this is that in these instances there is no v element. That however, is unlikely if v is responsible for the agent theta-role associated to saiatu ‘try’; at the same time, it is a fact that (12) contrasts with the Basque equivalent of (13), corresponding to (2b): (13) I-ERGATIVE have tried that-ABSOLUTIVE Assuming theta roles haven’t changed, v in (13) must be activating the regular Case system, whereas in (12) it does not, and thus the sentence merely involves the null Case possibility associated to the verb itself via NCV. The MAC in (3) ensures that: only when necessary for convergence do we activate the regular Case features. If that in (13) need not involve Null Case (a matter I return to in section 8), then the regular Case system in v kicks in for (13); by the same logic nothing requires the activation

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in (12), as the clause can make-do with null Case. Consider next the Basque subjunctive complement clause in (14). This example presents no PRO in the embedded clause, just plain hypotaxis. Here too, as in (2a) analyzed along the lines in (12), the matrix verb is surprisingly unaccusative (recall (2b)), indicating that its v does not activate the regular Case system, sticking to the null Case associated to the verb: (14) Jon [ Mirenek pisua gal zezan] saiatu zen Jon-ABS Miren-ERG weight-ABS lose have-subj-LOC try-part III.be ‘Jon tried that Mary lose weight’ This entails that true complement clauses can (perhaps must?) involve null Case, visà-vis paratactic ‘complements’ along the lines of (11) involving indicative dependence, which of course select an expected transitive auxiliary in Basque: (15) Jonek [ Miren polita dela] pentsatzen du Jon-ERG Miren-ABS pretty is-Comp think-part III.have.III ‘Jon thinks that Mary is pretty.’ We can thus generalize the state of affairs just seen to (16): (16) True (hypotactic) complement clauses receive null Case from their selecting verb. If (16) holds, it is only in (paratactic) instances involving attitudinal small clauses that the regular Case/agreement system is activated for clauses. How do we know that in a sentence like (14) there is specifically null Case on the complement clause, as opposed to no Case whatsoever? First, a tentative morphological point: these clauses are overtly marked with a mysterious locative, which could perhaps be interpreted as an actual ‘default’ realization of null Case. Second, we know null Case is involved if we make an auxiliary assumption: that argument taking correlates with Case-marking (the Visibility Hypothesis). If, instead, we took complement clauses to resist Case marking, as per Stowell 1981, then certainly the arguments just provided would be consistent with absence of Case in these contexts, as opposed to presence of null Case. Interestingly, as Plann (1986) argues, the Case Resistance hypothesis is questioned by the fact that clausal dependents of nominals systematically get marked with prepositions in a language like Spanish, yielding instances as in (17): (17) a.

La idea de [ que la tierra es plana] es muy sensata. the idea of that the earth is flat is very sound. ‘The idea that the earth is flat is very sound.’ b. Mi intento de [ que nos llevemos bien] ha fracasado. my attempt of that ourselves get.SUBJ well has failed ‘My attempt for us to get along has failed.’

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Stowell claims that nominal dependents are not complements; they are instead predicates, as suggested by the fact that one can paraphrase the nominal in (17a), in terms of the equative (18a). It is not clear, however, how that would make the clausal dependents less case-marked (presence of preposition de ‘of ’ is a fact, regardless of the interpretation the clause gets), but moreover, that observation is restricted to epistemic/declarative nominal dependents: (18) a.

La idea es que la tierra es plana. the idea is that the earth is flat ‘The idea is that the earth is flat.’ b. ?* Mi intento es que nos llevemos bien my attempt of that ourselves get.SUB well (‘My attempt is for us to get along.’)

The problem is then the true, arguably hypotactic clause in (17b) (note its subjunctive mood), which seems like a nominal argument – an overtly Case-marked one at that. Rejecting the Case Resistance hypothesis on factual bases, we must accept that clauses may be assigned Case. If so the analysis of the Basque examples above provides an arguments for the presence of some abstract form of Case to assign to the clause; otherwise we have an argument against the Visibility Hypothesis as a whole. The latter option creates a perplexing and unsatisfactory scenario, though: clauses can, but need not receive any Case at all. One final thought is in order: if a verb can assign null Case to a complement clause, what happens when it has merely a direct object nominal, which presumably checks its accusative Case via v? The most straightforward answer is that in those circumstances too verbs can directly assign null Case. In many instances, as will become apparent later on, this sort of Case won’t suffice, since the nominal in question will carry person specifications that have to involve the full Case system. However, there may well be instances where null Case is relevant and useful, as in what Belletti (1988) and Lasnik (1999) call ‘partitive’ Case, which is suspiciously like null Case as I am exploring it here in that it is assigned locally (at least in Belletti’s terms) and it corresponds to indefinite (i.e. personless) nominals. I won’t dwell on this matter now, but simply want to emphasize that in particular Lasnik’s results on the associates of pleonastics can be assumed directly if this conjecture about partitive Case being null Case is correct. Moreover, that may also be the way of treating ‘personal markers’ in direct objects in such languages as Spanish or Turkish (see Torrego (1998) on this). Somewhat in the spirit of De Hoop (1992), we could take v to assign ‘personal’ accusative Case (with ensuing definiteness/animacy effects), while letting V assign ‘impersonal’ null Case to indefinite arguments. This has serious consequences. For example, we will have personal nominals which bear both null and accusative Case; I return momentarily to freezing conditions on Case checking (generally we don’t want a nominal to be prevented from checking full Case just because it is in a structural position to check null Case). Another consequence ensues,

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as discussed in section 8, for the accusative associated to v in situations where an impersonal nominal must content itself with checking null case via V.

5. Conditions on null Case realization: Inflectional specifiers Whereas the examples above make a reasonable case for null Case, they also weaken the argument in San Martin and Uriagereka (2002) that specifically PRO is involved in its presence.3 What remains to be seen is whether we can construct a case for null Case in more standard domains, in particular T specifiers, the context that null Case was intended for and where it would have consequences both for the embedded EPP and the variation we find with regards to successive cyclic A-movement. If the NCV thesis holds, we are limited by local conditions on morphological realization of nullCase-determining heads to witness the effects of this abstract process. This should have something to do with overt agreement interfering with A-movement. An agreeing participial head associated to an Inflectional projection (typically v) does not tolerate A-movement across in many languages. Observe the Galician instances in (19). In this minimal pair, (19a) exhibits a small clause complement to the verb ter ‘have’ in an aspectual use; in contrast in (19b) we present ter in a more ‘auxiliary’ use, involving raising of the subject: (19) a. Paco ten [ unha filla fuxida] (* without agreement) Paco has a daughter run-away-PART-AGR ‘Paco has a daughter missing.’ b. A filla de Paco [t ten fuxido] (* with agreement) the daughter of Paco has run-away-part ‘Paco’s daughter has run-away.’ Agreement between the subject and the participial is unsurprisingly obligatory in (19a), but it becomes impossible in (19b), when the subject raises. Though as we saw this is not a universal (recall the Rumanian example in (8) and see also fn. 1), it is a common state of affairs across languages. It would follow naturally if the v element morphologically associated to ter ‘have’ involves null-Case checking, and this process freezes the raising as in (19a). Before we go any further with this idea, note that, given the NCV in (9), we must ensure that wherever we want null Case assigned via v (not V as in (10) and (11)), v counts as an ‘overt head’. The easiest way to do this, in languages where v is not pronounced, is via morphological fusion of the overt V to v. This raises an issue, though. Presumably in (10) and (11) V also fuses to v, but in those instances we want V to assign null Case, and v accusative Case. For reasons I return to in section 8 suppose that: (20) v assigns null Case if (a) and (b) (a) v has no accusative Case to assign. (b) V-fused-to-v has not assigned its null-Case.

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(a) is plausible for a passive/raising structure, but consider now (21) vis-à-vis (20b): (21) [TPWe T [vP t v-seem [TP t to have [vP t v-stolen the money]]]] The lower v associated to stolen assigns accusative Case to the money. In turn we receives null Case from to in the TP specifier and, we hope, from the complex v-seem in the higher vP specifier. But then what assigns Case to the lower TP argument, which is structurally identical to the one we saw in (10)? In the latter instance, the TP received null Case from the matrix verb, but for (20b) to hold in this instance, seem cannot be assigning null Case. At the same time, there is an important difference between (21) and (10): in the latter the subject him intervenes between the matrix verb and the head of its TP argument; in contrast in (21) the subject we is displaced, and thus in principle we could imagine an incorporation taking place, along the lines proposed in Raposo and Uriagereka (1990), following Baker (1988), for instances like this. We made our point for Romance, e.g. Spanish, arguing that clitic climbing (22) suggests mono-clausality: (22) Juanj ya loi parece haber [tj digerido ti]] Juan already it seems have digested ‘Juan already seems to have digested it.’ The tacit assumption is that in conditions of head incorporation of argument X to predicate Y, X ceases to be an argument proper of Y, and it instead becomes a predicate modifier, which thus does not require Case visibility. Of course, head incorporation has its own requirements, as Baker showed, among them what we would take today as morphological adjacency of a characteristic sort (see Bobaljik (1995) on this). This adjacency between the verb and its complement clauses is broken in (10) or (11). Let’s return now to the freezing effects associated to participials. Together with those, and even in languages where they exist systematically, we must allow for nullCase checking per se not to freeze a nominal involved in this process, given Galician data as in (23b), where null Case, but not a corresponding participial is present: (23) a.

El poida que pareza que nosoutros mesmos temos roubado it may that seem.subj that we ourselves have.agr stolen os cartiños. the money ‘It is likely that it may seem that we ourselves have stolen the money.’ b. [Nosoutros mesmos podemos [t parecer [t ter [t roubado os we ourselves may.agr seem have stolen the cartiños]]]] money ‘We are likely to seem to have stolen the money.’ c. [Os cartiños poden [t parecer [t ter [t sido roubados t]]]] the money may.agr seem have been stolen.agr ‘The money is likely to seem to have been stolen.’

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(23a) shows a tri-clausal situation involving an overt pleonastic, thus raising predicates; in (23b) we do the relevant raising of the embedded subject nosoutros mesmos ‘we ourselves’. The first step in the raising is of the form in (19b), while the next two steps are standard embedded EPP instances. In (23c) we passivize the embedded predicate, which now allows the logical direct object os cartiños ‘the money’ to raise all the way up. This example is interesting because it shows obligatory agreement in the lowest, passive, predicate roubados ‘stolen’; in contrast the next element that could in principle agree, the participial sido ‘been’ in fact cannot agree here with the raising subject. So (23c) summarizes our problems: we must distinguish agreeing passive from participial morphemes in terms of freezing a subject displaced to their domain, and in turn we must allow further displacements where agreement is not involved. In my opinion there is null Case checking in all these instances; however, obviously only some of them entail displacement freezing, hopefully those involving overt concord. The NCV thesis in (9) above would successfully distinguish passives from participials if, unlike the latter, the former involve long-distance Agree, instead of the more local Concord required for null Case checking. There are three indications that this conclusion is tenable. Consider first the fact that the word order in (24b) is impossible with passive predicates, and instead (24a) or (24c) are required. The impossibility of (24b) would be curious if the relation between the subject and the participial ferida ‘wounded’ required local concord, as this is the prototypical configuration where this kind of dependency can be established. (24c) is standard movement to subject position, and in (24a) we see the subject in situ, agreeing with both the matrix T and the lower passive form. This should be an instance of long-distance Agreement, with the Probe in T and the goal in the in-situ nominal; of course, we also see agreement in the participial, but this is arguably best treated in terms of ‘multiple checking’ from ultimately a single T probe. If this is correct, it will affect raising to subject as in (24c) via the specifier of the passive ferida. Recall that this is the contentious situation where we see morphological agreement but no freezing effect upon hypothetical null-Case checking: (24) a.

(El) foi [ ferida [ a filla de Paco]] it was.agr wounded.agr the daughter of Paco ‘Paco’s daughter was wounded. b. ?*[(El) foi [ [ a filla de Paco] [ ferida t]]] it was.agr the daughter of Paco wounded.agr c. [[A filla de Paco] foi [t [ ferida t]]] the daughter of Paco was.agr wounded.agr

The simplest account of this fact is to assume that the morphologically visible agreement in question is a mere transitivity effect of the passive head being probed by T; in other words, there is no overt concord in this step. (More on this in the next section.)

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Confirmation of that conclusion comes from the paradigm in (25)/(26): (25) Fomos feridos unha filla de Paco e mais eu. were wounded.agr a daughter of Paco and more I ‘Paco’s daugther and I were wounded.’ (26) a.

[Unha filla de Paco e mais eu] temos [t [ fuxido t]] a daughter of Paco and more I have.agr run.away ‘Paco’s daughter and I have run away.’ b. ?* Paco ten [[unha filla e mais eu] [fuxidos t]] Paco has a daughter and more I run.away.agr (‘Paco has a daughter and I missing.’)

In (26b) we see a kind of definiteness effect on the nominal agreeing with the participial, unlike in the passive (25) or for that matter the version of (26b) in (26a): the subject directly associated to the participial fuxidos ‘run away’, as in (26b), cannot involve a person other than third.4 For reasons that I return to, Concord does not involve the Person system (indirectly, this is the Person Generalization in (4) above). If so, the impossibility of (26b) follows, assuming the latter instance (unlike (25)) involves Concord, not Agree. In sum, the fact that we witness morphological agreement on a given head does not immediately entail either Agree or Concord. The issue is quite complex, depending at least on the sort of agreement at stake (in particular whether Person specifications are involved) and the locality of the process (Concord being totally local, unlike Agree). In addition, I have tacitly assumed that only overt Concord has an immediate freezing effect on the agreeing nominal. This is reasonable. The freezing effect is a consequence of feature valuation on the nominal, after being Probed or, more generally, engaging in a checking process of the Concord sort. The unvalued Case feature in the nominal makes it accessible to further computation (e.g. movement); as the Case feature is valued computational inaccessibility ensues. However, consider a situation where feature valuation does not entail value fixation. Suppose in particular that null Case is such an abstract, purely formal process that, unless it is signaled overtly on the determining head, it has no effect on the receiving nominal. We already saw a related property of null Case when demanding, via the NCV thesis, that heads determining null Case be overt; the present requirement is a counterpart of this idea on the receiving nominal. Generalizing NCV: (27) Null Case Visibility (NCV) (Final Version) Null Case is determined by a context-free dependence between an element X and an overt head Y; it has a freezing effect on X if X’s features overtly mark Y. This final version of the NCV thesis then predicts the viable long-distance A-raising in (23c) vs. the impossible one in (6a). In the latter instance the overtly agreeing participial is involving Concord, and furthermore a freezing instance of this operation. In the

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former instance, although by hypothesis Concord drives the movement as well (in the process dispensing with the need of a separate EPP requirement), since it involves no overt feature marking on the relevant heads determining null Case, no freezing ensues.

6. Cyclicity and freezing matters Given the final version of the NCV thesis in (27) a third argument for the presence of Agree vs. Concord in the relevant agreeing examples can be provided, stemming from the fact that, together with the ungrammatical Galician sentence in (6a) above, repeated now as (28a), we also find the impossible version in (28b): (28) a. ?*A Xoana foi feita [t ser capitán do equipo] the Xoana was made-agr be captain of-the team b. ?* PRO foi [vP a Xoana feita [TP t [vP ser [SC t capitán do equipo]]]] A Xoana must move to the specifier associated to feita in order to engage in a contextfree Concord checking with the participial, thus no other position in (28b), among those signaled by the various movement traces, serves to do the job. Given the logic of my proposal, each intermediate movement trace signals an instance of null Case checking. However, the checking with the overtly agreeing feita is special, inasmuch as it overtly marks this Case-determining element, resulting in a freezing (vis-à-vis what happens at the site of the previous trace). If this freezing is interpreted radically, so that a Xoana becomes inaccessible even to check further agreement up via Agree with T, then we can explain the ungrammaticality of (28b), where in fact a Xoana hasn’t moved beyond the site where it determines Concord. Now, this state of affairs, with radical freezing at the point of Concord, cannot extend to situations involving Agree. Thus consider again (24c). There a filla de Paco ‘Paco’s daughter’ must be able to move to subject position via the specifier of ferida, ‘wounded’, thus the latter site cannot entail freezing. We have argued that in this site there is no Concord, Agree obtains instead; this is consistent with what we find here, so long as Agree entails no immediate freezing. Chomsky (2001) has observed similar effects, one of the reasons he proposes that the consequences of Agree processes be cyclically examined, as in (29): (29) Where α is a derivational phase, the effects of related syntactic processes spanning over α are evaluated at the point of α’s TRANSFER (to PF and LF). The assumption in (29) allows a derivation certain leeway with regards to, in particular, the phonological manifestations of context-sensitive syntactic dependencies. Basically, within the accessible confines of a phase, things need not materialize where they have taken place syntactically; for example, X and Y may enter into an Agree relation in configuration Z, a function of Y; but X may displace further within the phase confines, to some other configuration W which is itself a complex function of Y and Z. This would describe what we find in (24c). Let X be a filla de Paco ‘Paco’s daughter’ and

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Y ferida ‘wounded’, in whose specifier Z X undergoes an appropriate checking; however, for independent reasons X continues to relate further up in the phrase-marker, to a configuration W that relates to both Y and Z within the confines of a live (not transferred) derivational phase, namely TP. (29) in principle allows a context-sensitive relation in those terms. Obviously, if the relevant checking entails some form of freezing, this cannot be radical, but cyclic, or adjustable within a live phase. That signals another important difference between the context-sensitive mechanism of Agree and the context-free process of Concord: the latter allows no derivational memory (see fn. 2), and thus cannot allow cyclic freezing either;5 instead, concord must resort to the much more local (read ‘memory-less’) and radical freezing at the point of concord. It is also worth recalling that in (24a), where a filla de Paco doesn’t pied-pipe, we have witnessed agreement also in the participial, which we showed cannot be sanctioned via Concord. We have suggested that the agreement in question is possible, involving the T probe, but why is it necessary? Suppose that, as per Chomsky’s suggestion, the context-sensitive Agree process is crucially evaluated at the phase. Now observe the situation in (24a), where a filla de Paco is buried inside the vP phase. In turn, assume the Phase Impenetrability Condition (PIC): (30) Phase Impenetrability Condition (PIC) Where ZP is the least phase dominating a phase H, the domain of H is not accessible to operations at ZP; only H and H’s edge are thus accessible. Agreement from the T position in (24a) would be ‘too far away’, unless the computation manages to access the vP specifier, that is the vP phase-edge. That would allow probing from the T position, via the vP specifier, into the VP complement a filla de Paco.6

7.

Case slipping and the Bracing Condition

The main data set left to understand, then, is hyper-raising, where overt Case/agreement marking doesn’t result in a freezing effect, even in situations where regular Case (and thus Agree as opposed to mere Concord) is involved. This can have nothing to do with NCV, or Case visibility in general for that matter. Interestingly, languages where this phenomenon is possible involve a curious and characteristic determiner weakness. East Asian languages of the sort studied by Xu (1993) and Ura (1994) have both hyper-raising and no overt determiner. The same is true of Bantu languages, which Pérez (1986) argues have hyper-raising; as Carsons (forthcoming) observes, these languages involve subject agreement on T and in auxiliaries below it (the inverse of the Romance (19b)); these languages also do not present overt determiners. The oldest instance of hyper-raising in the literature probably goes back to George’s (1980) treatment of Greek, and is similar to the Rumanian (8) (see Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou (1999)). Both these Balkan languages have articles, but they are, in a sense, weak too. This is obvious

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in Rumanian definite articles, enclitic on corresponding nouns: omul lit. ‘man-the’.7 As Corver (1992) shows in his study of Left-branch extraction, such a weakness of the definite article may also correlate with the availability of Left-Branch extraction in this language. Just as Rumanian does, Greek too presents left-branch extractions as in (31) (from Horrocks and Stavrou (1987)), together with hyper-raising: (31) Tinos mu ipes pos dhiavases t to vivlio? whose me-GEN said that read the book Lit.: ‘Whose have you told me read book?’ Following Corver, we may then assume the relevant weakness in the Greek D system as well.8 Suppose then that we make D weakness relevant to hyper-raising, by separating the derivational process of Case valuation from its representational result: (32) A weak D element does not result in inaccessibility upon Case checking. One way to understand (32) is as an, as it were, ‘slipping’ representational situation: the D system has to be robust for Case valuation to representationally affect it, even when the appropriate checking conditions are otherwise derivationally met; when D is not pronounced or is merely a morpheme/clitic on nominal associates, Case valuation ‘slips’ through its target, hence does not have a deactivating effect on the relevant phrase associated to D. Being representationally visible, this phrase continues to be accessible in the derivation. That claim can be falsified with a language where the D system is deemed strong, and yet hyper-raising continues to be possible. It may not be easy to decide on what counts as a weak D, though. Take Russian, for instance, which lacks articles and allows Left-branch extractions along the lines in (31).9 So far as I know, this language tolerates no hyper-raising. Moreover, although – as Brecht and Chvany (1974) show – Russian allows local raisings from small clauses (33), it doesn’t allow raising out of infinitival clauses (34): (33) Ivan kažetsja [t glupym] Ivan seems silly ‘Ivan seems silly.’ (34) a. * Ljudi kažutsja [t priezžat’ po-odnomu] people seem arrive one-by-one b. * Ivan byl uviden [t uxodit’] Ivan was seen leave c. * Ja videla [ Ivana uxodit’] I saw Ivan leave

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A version of (34c) is actually possible, involving a gerundial/adjectival form: (35) Ja videla Ivana uxodjaš’im I saw Ivan leaving.msc.sg.inst ‘I saw Ivan leaving.’ But (35) could be exhibiting an instance of secondary predication on a simple direct object. (34c), in contrast, would have been activating exceptional Case marking via the matrix v on the subject of an embedded infinitival clause; (34b) would have been the passive version of such a construction, involving the raising of the logical subject of the embedded clause to the matrix subject position, a structural situation also obtaining in (34a). All of those raising instances (or the possibility of long-distance Agree in (34c) if relations take place covertly) appear to be out of the question in Russian. If the language had weak D’s for the purposes of the Slipping Condition in (32), why shouldn’t it behave the way Rumanian does, as in (8), allowing rampant raising? One might try to say that Russian too (or other Slavic languages behaving like it, and see Franks (1998)) has, in some relevant sense and despite appearances, strong D’s. One possibility in this respect stems from the fact that this and related languages exhibit systematic concord internal to DP’s, to the point that even adjectives overtly agree in morphological case with the head noun (e.g. (Ja uvidela) xorošego starogo druga ‘(I saw) good-ACC old-ACC friend-ACC’). Unfortunately, we cannot make full DP-internal concord a condition for D strength in terms of the Slipping Condition in (32), as that would be at odds with linguistic evidence for the learner coming from primary linguistic data suggesting D weakness, starting with its absence of pronunciation or of the sort correlating (in some version of Corver’s terms) with Left Branch extraction. That suggests that we must finesse the condition in (32) to its format in (36): (36) Bracing Condition A domain undergoing morphological dependency results in inaccessibility upon Case checking. (36) is a positive, more reasonable version of (32). It does not speak of sheer strength or weakness in D, or even D as such for that matter. It only concentrates on presence, within the domain where Case checking will be relevant, of other morphological processes that may make Case valuation avoid ‘slipping’. Intuitively, concord internal to the nominal has its own representational effect. Even if D, in itself, is in some relevant sense weak, its presence is representationally signaled via internal concord, enough at least for the ensuing visibility to constitute a necessary condition for ‘bracing’ the Case valuation process.10 As such, D could still be perfectly weak in Russian in relevant respects, thus allowing for the Corver-style correlation with extraction and whatever underlies its explanation. Notice that, as stated, the Bracing Condition in (36) is a condition on Case valuation in general. Thus a prediction is made: a language with full DP internal concord may prevent any form of long-distance A-movement across vP phases. Two possibili-

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ties emerge for a nominal α inside a vP β: (a) α has originated within β or (b) α has moved to β. We discussed one version of possibility (a) already, at the end of section 3 – when α’s Case is valuated in terms of a v Probe or directly via V, and thus it never abandons vP. Another version of possibility (a) entails Probing from outside vP, which given the PIC in turn implies either displacement to the vP specifier or else ‘ancillary’ agreement with this position. The former of these two implications could already spell trouble for a language with full DP internal concord: Case valuation at the vP specifier would result in freezing at that stage; if the freezing is merely cyclic, the displaced nominal could still be accessible to further computation within the active cycle, but if the freezing is radical, Concord being involved in the displacement, then no further computation could be possible, and the derivation would be cancelled if it has no way of checking Case at T. This sort of problem only compounds with possibility (b) above, which forces a nominal to reach the relevant vP via successive-cyclic movement, and thus in my terms null Case checking (e.g. at T). With no possibility of value ‘slipping’ in this sort of language with full DP internal concord, a vP ‘gate’ turns into a vP ‘trap’ if the next TP has to be invoked: the displaced element that has managed to reach this category will no longer be accessible to further computation. This describes the bad instances of raising in Russian. Recall the examples in (34), repeated now with more detail: (37) a. * [Ljudi T [vP t [kažutsja [TP t T [vP t [ priezžat’ t] po-odnomu]]]]] people seem arrive one-by-one b. * [Ivan byl [vP t [ uviden [TP t T [vP t [ uxodit’ t]]]]]] Ivan was seen leave c. * [Jaj T [vP tj [ videla [TP Ivanai T [vP ti [ uxodit’ ti]]]]]] I saw Ivan leave Note, first, that the killing step in all these instances cannot be the lower vP, or there would be no passive or unaccusative constructions in Russian. For instance: (38) [Ivan byl [vP t [ uviden t]]] Ivan was seen This step should be analogous to the similarly grammatical movements to vP in the Galician (24), discussed in section 6. Of course, in all these viable instances the relevant vP is being probed from the next T up, the source of full Case. As we already said in the previous section, given the PIC, direct Agreement from T to the direct object of the verb would be too distant, and thus the vP specifier needs to be invoked. We left pending whether activating this position allows the computation to ignore the PIC or rather an ancillary Probe is activated at vP. Given the Bracing Condition in (36), the latter option should be the operative one. Thus, even if accessing vP opened some ‘worm-hole’ into the PIC effects – allowing cross-phasal agreement between T and the V complement – the very fact of involving vP (via Agree, or else all of this would be impossible in long-distance terms) would result in freezing the complement

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in place, and thus no further probing by T would be viable. If in contrast the way of executing the relevant accessibility is creating an ancillary probe in vP, it itself could be probed by T, assuming its ancillary nature is signaled this way. Observe, prior to Pied-piping: P G P G (38) [ byl [vP [Ancillary Probe] [uviden Ivan]]] For concreteness, we can think of the ancillary probe as a pleonastic. Let’s call it Pro. The relevant vP phase is circled in the example. Pro is local enough, as a Probe, to Ivan in (38), and byl in T is local enough to Pro, this time taken as a Goal, for this second token Agree to succeed. Now, even if the Bracing condition is relevant in Russian, in this instance it has no effects, as each probe licenses its own goal, and thus it is immaterial whether any further valuation is possible for the goals in point. Needless to say, this sort of ancillary probe should be extremely limited, or we would trivially eliminate all the sorts of contrasts I am attempting to analyze in this article. So suppose the situation is restricted to those domains where it is needed: phases. It is here that the PIC holds and as a result we need to invoke the phase edge. Chomsky has a way of coding this in terms of what he calls ‘peripheral’ or P features, added to the computation when a phase edge has to be accessed. Regardless of what the ultimate nature of P-features turns out to be, what matters for us now is the assumption that (39) A P-feature constitutes an ancillary probe for the purposes of long-distance Agree. Note that ancillary probes as P-features will then appear on phase edges, where the system justifies them – the vP or the CP specifier. The former of these two will be needed for instances like (38), and the latter may well be relevant to those Bantu instances studied by Carstens (forthcoming) where the C system has to be involved. Perhaps there could be other relevant ancillary probes if more phase domains exist, a matter currently under investigation; but in any case, as per the logic of Assumption (39) we should not find these extra probes in the TP specifier (if this domain is not a phase) or more generally those positions that specify non-phase domains (where P features are irrelevant). As a consequence, the problematic step in the examples in (37) is the intermediate, defective TP, where by assumption there could be no ancillary probe. Grammatical relations with this defective T could, instead, be reached through prior concord steps. But then it does make a difference whether a given language has to invoke the Bracing Condition. In a language obeying this condition, checking Concord at position X is akin to finishing the derivational at X. In the cases in (37), that spells immediate trouble, as there are further categories up that need to be valuated: the matrix v and T. If, in contrast, we had the same sort of scenario in a language not obeying the Bracing Condition, then checking concord features at TP wouldn’t entail any freezing, and thus

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further Agree or displacement up the phrase-marker would be viable. As Usama Soltan notes through personal communication, Arabic variants may well provide us with another language family preventing raising across TP, in fact arguably A-movement altogether. I cannot afford a full analysis at this point, but I do want to point out that in these languages seem-type verbs select a finite CP, and they never involve anything but default agreement. That seems very close to what we saw for (37). Moreover, I think strikingly for our purposes, Arabic DPs show rampant internal concord: in gender, number, case and definiteness, manifested in the head noun and accompanying adjectives (e.g.: haʔulaʔi l-ʔawalad-u l-quiSaar-u ‘these the-boysNOM the-short-pl.msc.-NOM). Hence the Bracing Condition in (36) should kick-in in Arabic as much as it does in Slavic, resulting in impossible A-movement across TP, as seen above. In fact, matters appear to be more radical in this language, as not even the equivalent of the possible Russian sentence in (38) is possible. In Classical Arabic, passive is formed by changing the vocalic melody of the verb, and retaining the word-order whereby the internal argument stays in situ, as Soltan observes. Note that if ancillary probes in the sense above were only parametrically available (in other words, if P features in vP in the sense of (39) were not universal), this radical freezing effect would be accounted for, as it is through this extra mechanism that we licensed the remaining instances of A-movement in Russian.11 In that circumstance the frozen argument in Arabic would have to be receiving null-Case in situ, correlating with characteristic indefiniteness. It should be emphasized that the present reasoning does not pertain to full or null Case checking, but is rather a matter of freezing possibilities internal to the checked item (intuitively, a morphologically active one). Still, we see many relevant effects via defective T simply because this sort of category typically constitutes an intermediate step to further movements. Now there are languages like Russian or Arabic where the freezing effect has drastic consequences, radically preventing movement out of TP – even less in the latter instance. But there are other situations as well, where what seems to be prevented is merely movement out of TP if it doesn’t end in the next TP up (successive cyclic A-movement across TP). Take for instance German: (40) a.

Hans schien [t Führer dieser Gruppe zu sein] Hans seems leader this-gen Group to be ‘Hans seems to be leader of this group.’

b. ?* [Hans wurde dazu gebracht [t [t Führer dieser Gruppe zu werden] zu scheinen]] Hans was PART brought leader this-GEN group to be(come) to seem (‘Hans was made to seem to be leader of this group.’) As Elena Herburger and Josef Bayer point out through personal communication, (40b) deteriorates drastically vis-à-vis (40a), unlike its English counterpart, as the English

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gloss to (40b) shows. In that respect, it is reminiscent of the impossible raising instances in Romance across a participial; but the parallel with (23c), which involves no overt agreement, would be more accurate instead, since the participial gebracht ‘brought’ also involves no overt agreement in German; if so the ungrammaticality of (40b) could not be an NCV effect. The Galician (23c), importantly, is grammatical, implying that the German (40b) must be invoking a further limiting condition. The Bracing Condition is a good candidate, particularly because, like Russian or Arabic, German too exhibits case concord internal to nominal expressions (e.g. meinen guten alten Freund (sehen) ‘my-ACC good-ACC old-ACC friend-ACC (to see)’). That said, we must allow German a degree of freedom that we don’t allow either Russian or Arabic. The difference between those two languages and German may lay on the fact that only the former have weak D, although all have case concord. Simply put, Russian or Arabic exhibit case morphology on the N-related elements (N itself and the adjectives), whereas German also exhibits case morphology in its overtly pronounced D’s. It would be natural to take this dual manifestation of case morphology in German to allow for one further degree of freedom in this language. Thus in (40a), in effect null Case checking at the lower, defective, TP is driven by the N system, much as it would be in Russian, leaving the D system untouched for further Case checking at the matrix, complete TP; although case-concord entails activating the Bracing Condition in all languages, only in Russian does it entail termination at the embedded TP domain (in Arabic not even that, assuming no available P features at vP for ancillary probes). In German too, case concord terminates at the embedded TP, but D could still be accessible to the matrix D, for agreement purposes. Only when the next TP up is also defective, and thus must involve Concord, not Agree mechanisms, does the result end up being ungrammatical as in (40b).

8. Some syntactic consequences of the NCV thesis I wanted to show Bracing Condition effects – whatever their ultimate source and proper analysis – simply to demonstrate the richness of the paradigm we are discussing. This condition is independent on the NCV thesis, but it reinforces it: if the Bracing Condition is operative in grammar, what it is bracing (from ‘slipping’) in many interesting instances we saw in the previous section is null Case at some intermediate T. In any case, regardless of whether it is strengthened by this extra condition, in this last section I would like to discuss some consequences of the main NCV thesis, in particular with regards to the distribution of PRO. Null Case was proposed by Chomsky and Lasnik (1993) to account for the distribution of PRO. In the terms suggested here, there is no need to assume that only one sort of T, associated to controlled infinitival clauses, assigns null Case – therefore, although PRO can reasonably taken to receive null Case, this cannot be the way to account for its distribution. Indeed, as per the NCV proposal all inflectional categories

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assign null Case if they are morphologically visible. However, if as San Martin (2004) argues PRO is a featureless element – which she takes to be the main factor behind its distribution – it will actually never be able to overtly mark anything on the head determing its null Case. As a result, within the confines of the NCV proposal, PRO will be able to indefinitely be controlled across a series of embedding infinitival domains. Thus the prediction that a straightforward implementation of my proposal makes is that we should not witness the diverse variation in successive cyclic A-movement studied here when PRO is involved. I know this to be true for the languages I used to argue my case (where the equivalent of John expected to want to try … to leave is fine) but I do not know whether this is a universal. A further curious situation for my proposal stems from the fact that all instances of T, and thus also complete T, should be able to assign null Case. We saw a similar puzzle at the end of section 4, that time around with regards to v. There we could make the assignment of null Case by v (which otherwise assigns accusative) on its fusing to the, by hypothesis null Case assigning, associated, V; and we have well-known personal effects relating to direct objects, which can thus be blamed on null Case (with the flavor of partitive Case à la Belletti/Lasnik). Recall, however, that we need to say more about this system even VP internally, as noted at the end of section 4. Two issues arose there: personal nominals which bear both null and accusative Case, and what happens to v when an impersonal nominal is happy with merely null Case. Answers to these questions bear on the matter of null Case in regular, complete T. Consider the second issue first. Nothing much has to happen to v if it doesn’t need to assign Case, so long as it doesn’t bring it into the lexical array or numeration. We already saw the need for that when studying Basque hypotactic clauses, as in (14). We observed there that, as the true complement clause did not need (in fact could not take) accusative Case in relevant instances, the next argument up actually was treated as the argument of an unaccusative verb – without the relevant verb becoming thematically unaccusative. The latter condition was crucial in our keeping v intact, as the bearer of relevant (e.g. agent) roles. This was possible given the flexibility provided by the MAC in (3): we need not introduce featural specifications unnecessary to the derivation. A similar situation can emerge in regular transitive verbs if their direct object need not (perhaps cannot) use accusative Case. Ricardo Etxepare provides, through personal communication and useful discussion, the following interesting Basque contrasts: (41) a.

Nik hori saiatu dut I.ERG that-ABS try-part III.have.I ‘I have tried that.’ b. Ni horretan saiatu naiz I.ABS that-LOC try-part I.be ‘I have applied myself to that.’

(41a) is (2b) repeated. Remarkably, a situation like that observed for a clause like (2a) or (14) can also be reproduced for a nominal complement (and witness again the

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emergent locative, which I suggested in passing may well be a direct realization of null Case); if two things happen: that the aspect of the ensuing predication should have the characteristic atelic extension of an activity, and that the direct object not be personal, but a theme to measure out atelically the corresponding eventuality. This is what we would expect if this element is not receiving full Case from v. In fact in Basque we can tell that it is not in (41a), precisely because it does in (41a). Once again, the fact that Basque has an ergabsolutive Case system allows us to see the effects of assigning null Case lower down in the phrase-marker. In languages with a nominaccusative Case system, even if the sort of process in (41b) is taking place we will not witness its effects so overtly.12 Note that a similar story can be told in more familiar languages for the somewhat embarrassing John drinks heavily, grammatical together with John drinks Remy Martin.13 In the second instance we know that regular accusative case must be involved; however, in the first it can’t be, or it won’t be checked. But there still is a characteristic tinge of meaning that involves some sort of ‘canonically indefinite’ object (in the case of drinking, denoting alcohol). What Case does this element check? We can have it simply check null Case via V. What happens with the accusative Case in that instance? Nothing: the MAC simply allows us not to invoke it. As to what the fate is of a nominal for which both null Case through V and accusative Case through v are available, nothing much has to be assumed if null Case can slip, resulting in no freezing effect. Only in languages that are subject to the Bracing Condition could we detect an effect here, as in those languages null Case assigned by V to its sister may freeze the dependent in place for further computation, thus preventing the checking of accusative Case related to v. One way out of the dilemma for those languages and in conditions involving personal objects would be literal substitution of V into v in the course of the derivation, with the effect of obliterating the null Case effects of V after the substitution. I leave this as a suggestion. We are now ready to discuss the nature of T vis-à-vis null vs. full Case. The very fact that we don’t have two categories at stake in this instance (e.g. V vs. v) simplifies matters considerably, particularly if we assume something which is often taken for granted: (42) Any given category X can only determine one structural Case Y. Given (42), we can take T to assign null Case all other things being equal. It is the MAC that, upon an identified grammatical need within a given numeration, in effect turns on the full Case system, with nominative valuation in this instance. If this is the right way to look at things, in effect null Case is a default form of Case determination, with provisos added by the NCV proposal in terms of accessibility. We will see shortly that this situation is testable beyond T categories, with very interesting consequences. But before we do that, let me point out a further twist on the proposal, raised by a

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version of the Galician (23c) above with no apparent displacement: (43) [Ø Poden [Ø parecer [Ø ter [Ø sido roubados [ os cartiños]]]] may.AGR seem have been stolen.AGR the money ‘The money is likely to seem to have been stolen.’ The question is what happens with (at least) the positions signaled by way of Ø in (43), particularly those (e.g. the embedded TP specifiers) that we have argued involve context-free concord. Only two possibilities come to mind. One is that the MAC also affects null Case, making the system activate it only when necessary for either merged arguments (the ultimate, most genuine context-free situation) or overt displacement. This need not be a teleological mechanism. In a situation like (43), for instance, the grammar may simply not activate null Case in the lowest cycle (this is a passive context), and then since no further displacement can be involved, no further null Case activation will ever be pertinent (with respect to the relevant dependent). Then the Agree mechanism will face its own difficulties (e.g. the need for ancillary probes), but that is a matter we have discussed already (in section 6). Or the grammar may blindly activate the system in a different derivation (not really an alternative competing with (43)), with the result of displacement at least in the lowest cycle, but perhaps not beyond. A different possibility is that MAC has nothing to say about null Case, and this system is activated entirely by default, when NCV conditions are appropriately met. In that scenario, if this sort of Case is checked in terms of the context-free process of Concord, at least the first Ø element in (43) will have to be an actual formative, capable of entering into a null Case checking in much the way as PRO presumably is. In turn, the rest of the elements marked as Ø in (43) are either traces of the first Ø or else further tokens of a pleonastic type Ø. I keep referring to NCV provisos affecting the default conditions on null Case. The most interesting situations is this. The grammar may allow some category X to assign null Case by default, but in a given circumstance this particular form of Case valuation may not be operable, given considerations of the sort that X is not morphologically signaled, or the Case process has no visible effect on either the argument or, via agreement valuation, X itself – those are NCV effects. Nonetheless, in that very circumstance it could be possible to obtain full Case valuation, precisely because this one won’t induce NCV problems. So although in principle the system would default to null Case, there could emerge situations where the more costly form is the only possible one. Consider in that respect the old chestnut in (44). Why can’t an appropriately defective version v as in (44) license PRO, the way a defective T would? (44) * [I [v believe [PRO to be old]]] Now recall the licensing conditions we assumed for v’s assignment of null Case in (20) above: (a) v must have no accusative Case to assign and (b) V-fused-to-v has not assigned its null-Case. In (44), condition (a) is met,14 if PRO cannot check full (e.g. accusative) Case. But whether V has assigned its null Case, and it in fact has ap-

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propriately fused to v, is an interesting theoretical question. Recall in this respect the Spanish (22), repeated now as (45a), an instance of what is often called ‘reanalysis’, and compare it to the so-called ‘restructuring’ in (45b): loi parece haber [tj digerido ti]] Juanj ya Juan already it seems have digested ‘Juan already seems to have digested it.’ b. Juanj loi intentó [PROj digerir ti]] Juan it tried digest ‘Juan tried to digest it.’

(45) a.

If clitic climbing is our sole indication for v-V fusing, then the process should be present in (45b) as much as it is in (45a). Still, as first discovered by Tim Stowell, an important semantic difference exists between these two sorts of examples, which Martin (1996) discusses at length. The two events in (45a) (the matrix seeming and the completed having digested) are coetaneous. This is not true for the two events in (45b): the matrix trying and the embedded digesting are entirely separate; the second is arbitrarily projected into the future. For example, we could add to (45b) that Juan did his trying by way of preparing during a year to ingest small doses of whatever he wasn’t capable of digesting, but he in fact failed after having tried and tried. This is an important semantic fact that prevents us from analyzing the embedded event as a modifier, after fusion, the way we did for (45a). Of course, even if this is a sound empirical argument, we must ask why it is that control verbs behave differently with regards to raising verbs in terms of allowing the v-V fusion that sanctions the necessary null Case for (44) to be grammatical. An answer emerges from treating PRO and NP-trace differently. In section 5 we showed a central difference between (21) (repeated now as (46a), slightly modified to match the other example) and (10) (repeated now as (46b), with more bracketing details and omitting irrelevant ones): whether a subject like him intervenes between the matrix verb and the head of its TP argument determines whether T-to-V incorporation is possible. T-to-V allows for TP to turn into an event modifier, thus bypassing visibility requirements on arguments (hence voiding Case restrictions). A V that hasn’t had to assign null Case can in turn fuse to v, allowing this element to assign this sort of Case in satisfaction of NCV conditions. If the argument TP specifier prevents T-to-V incorporation, the embedded TP will require null Case from V, and thus the matrix v will not be in a position to assume null Case from the v-V fusion: T-to [vP …]]]] (46) a. [TP He T-was [vP t v believed [TP t b. [TP I T [vP v believe [TP him T-to [vP …]]]] The question for us now is whether PRO should be treated like him or rather like t. A prior question actually is why t doesn’t count as an intervener for T incorporation to the matrix verb; the most straightforward answer, related to Lasnik’s (1999) explanation for why NP-traces do not involve reconstruction effects, is that these elements are representationally inactive – in effect A-movement leaves no trace. Then

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the difference between (46b) and (46a) is not in phonetic content, but in syntactic representation, the relevant contexts being literally was v believed to vs. v believe him to; here it is obvious that him intervenes between believe and to, but nothing does when A-movement takes place. From this perspective, believe PRO to should be of the latter sort, assuming contra Hornstein (1999) that PRO does not involve A-movement. As a result of the intervention effect triggered by PRO the v associated to believe will end up not being able to assign null Case. From this perspective, the main difference between raising and control complements is that only in the former is incorporation of T to the selecting verb viable (resulting in the characteristic event reduction that Stowell discovered), precisely because raising predicates are reduced in valences, and thus an intervening embedded subject can get out of the way. This accords with the Basque facts analyzed by San Martin and Uriagereka, since as we saw in section 2, in control infinitival complements the complement clause (TP if San Martin (2004) is correct) is receiving null Case from V, and thus the corresponding v could not be assigning any Case. In contrast in raising infinitival complements the complement clause (also a TP) is receiving no Case whatsoever, which entails its need for incorporation to V. If this is the right analysis, ‘reconstruction’ is actually a less radical process than ‘reanalysis’. It is an interesting question whether sentences of the form in (44), which basically attempt to sanction PRO in ‘Exceptional Case Marking’ (ECM) terms, are impossible universally. Empirically, it might seem as if the Spanish example in (47) is of the right sort: (47) Yo creo PRO ser viejo. I believe-agr be old ‘I believe to be old’. However, it is easy to show that this example is not of the form in (44). Observe: (48) a. * Juan siempre quiso PRO ser creido t haber amado a María Juan always wanted be believed have loved to María (‘Juan always wanted to be believed to have loved Maria.’) b. Juan siempre quiso PRO creer PRO haber amado a María Juan always wanted believe have loved to María ‘Juan always wanted to believe to have loved María.’ If PRO in (47) were in an ECM site, it should be able to passivize as in (48a), as is possible in the corresponding English gloss. But (48a) is very bad in Spanish, vis-à-vis a possible comparable example involving two PRO’s, as in (48b). In addition, observe (49): (49) a.

Xan cré [ sermos vellos] Xan believes be-I.pl old ‘Xan believes us to be old.’ b. ? Juan cree [PRO ser todos viejos] Juan believes be all old ‘Juan believes to be all old.’

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In Western Iberian examples like the Galician (49a), we can have inflected infinitivals in the contexts we are interested in, suggesting that the relevant complement clause here is more complex than implied in (44), involving perhaps the F category discussed in Raposo and Uriagereka (2004). Note also that even in Spanish (which has no inflected infinitives) a sentence like (49b) is acceptable in these contexts; here the subject of the embedded clause is only ‘partially controlled’ by the non-coreferent subject of the matrix clause (see Landau 2001 on these matters), which is consistent with the idea that this is a different phenomenon altogether. I suppose it would be in principle possible to find a language sanctioning (44) if, and only if, this language has a source for null Case in v which is not parasitic on the null Case that, by hypothesis, the accompanying V brings with it. To start with, such a v would have to be morphologically heavy without needing fusion to V, in order to meet NCV requirements. If such a language exists, in addition, we should find it possible for the PRO thus licensed to passivize as in (48a), all other things being equal. I am in no position to test this possibility at this point.

9. Syntactic conclusions The following are my basic conclusions, given the evidence analyzed in this paper: (50) a.

The MAC is reinforced (perhaps to the point that it controls the activation of null Case). b. The NCV thesis is central in understanding part of the variation we witness with regards to successive cyclic A-movement. c. The Bracing Condition attempts to describe the other set of variations in A-movement. d. We must distinguish the context-free Concord from context-sensitive Agree.

With regards to (50a), I argue elsewhere (e.g. Uriagereka (forthcoming)) for the MAC, but the interaction between full and null Case, and in particular the idea that only the latter is default, is entirely contingent on a condition on the lexical array or numeration being built elegantly – so this is an indirect argument for the array itself. If in addition, as suggested in section 8 to address one of the possible implementations of very long-distance agree relations, the MAC activates null Case only in some instances, then it is doubly reinforced as a valid concept. (50b) has constituted the bulk of this note. To the extent that the linguistic variation in A-movement across tenseless domains is explained by positing rampant use of null Case, albeit regularized in its use to conditions pertaining essentially to its detectability, this is an empirical argument for generalizing null Case – naturally then also for null Case itself as a grammatical concept. I agree with Hornstein that the postulation of such a peculiar Case should raise warning flags. My attempt to rationalize

Chapter 9. Complete and partial Infl 293

this form of Case and extend it should address the conceptual difficulty: this is, in my terms, a perfectly reasonable form of Case, which generalizes to various domains so long as it is detectable, with a variety of empirical consequences.15 If those facts I brought to bear on the issue are explained away or analyzed in a different, better fashion, then my argument for null Case will be considerably weakened: everyone should prefer a theory with no Case instead of null Case (or any Case for that matter). I return immediately to what I take to be a rationalization behind such an abstract notion of Case. (50c) is independent of everything I had to say about null Case, although in my proposal the Bracing Condition interacts with null Case conditions simply because it is a general condition on Case realization; it presupposes the idea that in some instances Case checking actually doesn’t entail freezing. I don’t purport to understand either why Case freezing obtains to begin with, or why in some ‘slipping’ instances it doesn’t – and if what I’ve called ‘bracing’ holds, yet in some other conditions a slipping Case could actually be braced. This requires a more serious morphological study of what’s going on than I can afford. Nonetheless, I think the generalizations I discussed are quite robust: (I) Languages that involve ‘hyper-raising’ have weak determiners; and (II) languages that prevent raising (more or less completely) have active concord systems within nominal arguments. Surely generalizations are nothing but that, and the truth is I won’t have much to say about motivating whatever may underlay these two. At any rate, Bracing Condition effects seem quite consistent with my analysis of some instances of A-movement as involving null Case, and thus they constitute another (weak) argument for it. Finally, (50d) is perhaps the most important syntactic result: this theoretical assumption is basic for the analysis to work. That concord exists as a phenomenon is hardly worth emphasizing. For instance, the case-concord facts discussed in section 8 couldn’t be analyzed in terms of Probe-Goal relations; we may create one-to-many such relations or letting ancillary probes proliferate like mushrooms, but the price will be cheapening the perfectly reasonable Agree thesis as we are trying to understand it. The different, I think more sound, alternative is to simply accept that Concord is not Agree. In my view it makes sense to treat is as a context-free phenomenon, thus forcing extreme locality (basically, (extended) forms of sisterhood), leaving context-sensitive dependencies for probing relations that demand a search space. Why should the grammar have null Case? I think the best answer is Mallory’s with respect to why one should climb Mount Everest. Of course, we also need to worry about why null Case ‘is there’, but that presupposes understanding why full Case is part of the system. As mentioned in passing in section 3 above, my own view about this since (1997) is that Case distinctions serve the purpose of tokenizing DPs. The logic of that idea is that specific Case valuations relate to specific configurations (e.g. nominative to TP, accusative to v, and so on). To put it simply, if our system has difficulties distinguishing a token Di from another token Dj (without trivial annotations or allowing the syntax access to interpretive information), their configurational context will do

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the trick. It’s not the same to have a D sister to the v projection, let’s say, than one sister to the T projection – even the dullest syntax can know that (and see Drury (2005) for further discussion of these and many related ideas). Now, if this is the rationale behind full Case, it can’t be that null Case, as I have understood it in this note, has anything to do with (at least successful) tokenization. Quite plainly, I’ve had (at least) V, v and T assign null Case; in fact this was central in my addressing Hornstein’s worry that null Case as in Chomsky and Lasnik’s proposal (where it is restricted to defective T of the raising sort) is ad hoc. My null Case appears all-over (modulo NCV conditions), but precisely for that reason it has to be orthogonal to any form of contextualization, as it is a moving target. Indeed, for all practical purposes null Case for me is used to signal non-personal arguments and movement targets. But I don’t think the system has this form of Case because of those interesting consequences. Matters could be much duller, and still have those neat side-effects. In particular, suppose the grammar has Case for the tokenization reasons alluded to; this implies the grammar can identify a configurational context X, and associate it (arbitrarily far, via valuation, within a derivational cycle) to a given D; this then becomes token Dx. Once this is the case, the grammar can’t help but having null Case as well, for null Case is a trivial instance of full Case where configurational context X is devoid of any substantive content, and thus is matched locally. In other words, null Case can be seen as what the MAC activates without worrying about whether X is T, v, or anything else; it’s simply a category, and as such a configuration at the point of context-free Merger – any configuration. Full Case, in turn, is more costly for the MAC, it involves knowing T from v and so on, hence its tokenization consequence. If the MAC is also involved in activating even null Case (as suggested as a possibility in section 8), a more basic option for the grammar is simply not to worry about configurational context at all. That would give no Case; unspecified context would determine null Case; and specified context would determine full Case, a typical context-sensitive relation. These three situations are tantalizingly in line with the three levels in the Chomsky hierarchy ((i) Markovian, (ii) Context-free and (iii) context sensitive) that we (ought to) consider relevant to the description of language.

10. An argument for the Transparency Thesis in the syntax/semantics mapping But what I take to be the most far-reaching idea in this paper pertains to the syntax/ semantics mapping. More or less tacitly, I have assumed the Person Generalization in (4), that is the idea that morphological fullness in inflectional heads correlates both with their ability to determine full, as opposed to null, Case and crucially also their manifesting person, as opposed to only number distinctions. Without that assumption, I could not have expected PRO, indefinites or CP to go well with null Case, as opposed to personal elements like I or John. But of course, this doesn’t seem like a

Chapter 9. Complete and partial Infl 295

necessary assumption. What would go wrong in a syntax that mapped null Case to personal pronouns and full Case to PRO, for instance? A familiarly defeating dictum takes the relation between syntax and semantics to be completely arbitrary. The alternative is taken to be ‘functionalist’, and based on such non-starters as ‘iconicity’. More seriously, any first-order formal language can be shown to map to the natural numbers, hence to any denumerable concept; if syntax is one such formal object, there is no meaning to the claim that one particular mapping to a denumerable semantics is better than any other. Researchers have attempted to ‘naturalize’ the mapping in terms of learnability considerations. Thus Larson and Segal (1996) suggest that learning is aided by the Strong Compositionality Thesis (semantic relations are only stated in terms of syntactic sisters). To prove this point, one would have to show that language learning is prevented in an alternative mapping (e.g. one based on whichever elements happen to be syntactically closest, for which sisterhood is a mere sub-case). Similar considerations apply to other ways (e.g. parsing) that one could provide to naturalize the relevant mapping, suggesting that the syntax/semantics mapping is accidental. That view is consistent with the position expressed in Jackendoff (2002) that linguistic competences (syntactic, semantic, phonological) are plural and connected in the tinkering way that organs appear to be within organisms. However, if one takes the minimalist perspective that semantics is merely interpretive (not generative) and performative, assuming an accidental mapping is unacceptable. This forces us to seek a new form of ‘motivation’ to the mapping, avoiding the assumption that human language is a first-order formal language. Moreover, one must study the limitations on semantics that the proposed syntax may bring about. I have argued elsewhere (e.g. Uriagereka (forthcoming)) that interpreting syntax in terms of the Chomsky Hierarchy yields a ‘dimensionality’ that is incompatible with it being just a first-order formal language. Moreover, I have proposed a Transparency Thesis, which has semantics exploit whatever formal corner it can in order to yield meaning. Compositionality is one aspect of this thesis, for that portion of language that is context-free: we take the elements that syntactically combine in context-free terms and assume their semantic combination. Underneath, that portion of language that is Markovian also has an interpretation, a non-compositional one (as in the iteratively emphatic never, never, have I said such a thing!, where composition of each never would change the polarity of the expression, contrary to fact). Above, in that portion of language that is context-sensitive, we should also find a formally transparent mapping for relevant objects, called ‘chains’. This note can be seen as an exercise to provide one instantiation of a syntax-semantics mapping that is ‘motivated’ in the sense of the Transparency Thesis. I want to finish by suggesting that the Agree relation, which involves a contextsensitive Probe/Goal dependency, has an interpretive consequence that is rather different from that of a related, albeit context-free syntactic process also involving feature-match: Concord between a head and its specifier. Only Agree exhibits personal semantics, while the syntactically lower-order Concord does not. This is ‘motivated’

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arguably because personal semantics involve a system of paradigmatic dependencies, inexpressible in terms of binary oppositions like the familiar [± plural] (number) or [± masculine] (gender). Personal relations are context-sensitive in the pragmatic sense. The transparency Thesis allows the system to reason thus: because the relation between X and Y is syntactically context-sensitive, semantic context-sensitivity (i.e. pragmatic dependency) will be its natural interpretation. Needless to say, developing this point thoroughly is beyond the scope of the present exercise.

Acknowledgements I would like to first of all thank Cedric Boeckx for his interest in this work, and always stimulating discussion on these and other topics. My appreciation also to those who contributed with both data and expertise in their respective languages, very especially Josef Bayer, Zeljko Boskovic, Vicki Carstens, Pritha Chandra, Ricardo Etxepare, Elena Herburger, Steve Franks, Tomohiro Fujii, Lydia Gebrenyova, Javier Ormazabal, Luigi Rizzi, Ian Roberts, Itziar San Martin, and Usama Soltan. Data errors are my responsibility. Thanks also to Roger Martin and Eduardo Raposo for the original discussion behind these ideas, to Norbert Hornstein for his different ideas and always useful debate, and to the participants of my 2001 seminar at the University of Maryland. Finally thanks to Youngmi Jeong for her helpful editorial assistance.

Notes 1. As is well known, facts are different in French and Italian dialects, where it is in fact possible (even necessary in some instances) to agree successive-cyclically. Iberian dialects in general, however, pattern with Galician. The other major case, also different to the two just mentioned, is Rumanian (cf. (8)). 2. The terms context-free and context-sensitive are meant technically. The first of these involves phrasal relations of the (external) Merge sort. In contrast, relations of the second sort are much more cumbersome and hard to characterize, involving access to an entire derivational history in familiar characterizations. 3. All that matters for the argument above to go through is that the complement clause that contains PRO as a subject should receive null Case – as does a comparable hypotactic dependent involving no PRO at all. 4. Of course, this is not to be confused with the definiteness effect typically studied in post-verbal subjects, which as is well-known does not normally arise in Iberian variants in general. 5. The processes alluded to in the previous paragraph, involving cyclic adjustments, obviously require non-trivial derivational memory. 6. A somewhat technical issue arises as to whether involving the intermediate specifier allows the computation to bypass (30), or rather a kind of ancillary Probe is activated at vP via its own

Chapter 9. Complete and partial Infl 297 posterior agreement with the accessible T; I return to this matter in section 7. 7. In some instances they can even cliticize to pronominal adjectivals, as in sarac-ul baiat lit. ‘poor-the boy’. 8. Note also that the genitive form – here the Wh-element tinos ‘whose’ – overtly coexists with the definite article, unlike what we witness, for instance, in English: ‘whose (*the) book’. 9. The Russian data, together with useful discussion, are due to Lydia Grebenyova. 10. Obviously this cannot be true in any simple-minded sense, since although Russian (like all other languages) can have adjectives – and if so they show massive concord with the N head – this situation is certainly not necessary. I leave this intriguing matter for future research, since it clearly doesn’t affect the main research topic of this paper: null Case conditions. 11. That P-features more generally, including those in CP, need to be parameterized is shown by the fact that some languages (e.g. Madurese) do not allow overt Wh-movement, whereas as others allow displacement across Wh-islands, presupposing ‘extra’ P-features in CP (e.g. Spanish) or even multiple Wh-fronting (e.g. Bulgarian). 12. Although mutatis mutandis they should obtain also in instances of comparable aspectual effects. 13. Occasionally it is suggested, to my mind perplexingly, that we are dealing with two different verbs here. 14. Recall the very first example we studied, the comparable (1), analyzed as in (10). 15. Lasnik, Uriagereka, and Boeckx (2005: chapter 7) in turn argue that there is no deep minimalistic reason to deny the existence of PRO as a grammatical object.

References Alexiadou, A. and E. Anagnostopoulou. 1999. Raising without infinitives and the nature of agreement. In Proceedings of WCCFL 18: 1-13. Somerville MA: Cascadilla. Baker, M. 1988. Incorporation. Chicago IL: Chicago University Press. Belletti, A. 1988. The case of unaccusatives. Linguistic Inquiry 19: 1-34. Bobaljik, J. D. 1995. Morphosyntax: The Syntax of Verbal Inflection. PhD dissertation, MIT. Brecht, R. D. and C. Chvany. 1974. Slavic Transformational Syntax [Michigan Slavic Materials 10]. Ann Arbor MI: Michigan Slavic Publications. Carstens, V. Forthcoming. Agree and EPP in Bantu. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory. Chomsky, N. 2000. Minimalist inquiries: The framework. In Step by step, R. Martin, D. Michaels and J. Uriagereka (eds), 89-155. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 2001. Derivation by phase. In Ken Hale: A life in language, M. Kenstowicz (ed), 1-50. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Chomsky, N. and H Lasnik. 1993. Principles and parameters theory. In Syntax: An international handbook of contemporary research, J. Jacobs, A. von Stechow, W. Sternefeld and T. Vennemann (eds), 506-569. Berlin: de Gruyter. [Reprinted in Chomsky, N. 1995. The Minimalist Program, 13-127. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.] Corver, N. 1992. On deriving certain left branch extraction asymmetries: A case study in parametric syntax. In Proceedings of NELS 22, 67-84. Amherst MA: GLSA.

298 Juan Uriagereka De Hoop, H. 1992. Case Configuration and Noun Phrase Interpretation. PhD dissertation, University of Groningen. Drury, J. 2005. Alternative Directions for Minimalist Inquiry: Expanding and contracting phases of derivation. PhD dissertation, University of Maryland. Franks, S. 1998. Parameters of Slavic morphosyntax revisited: A minimalist retrospective. In Proceedings of Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics 6. Ann Arbor MI: Michigan Slavic Publications George, L. 1980. Analogical Generalizations in Natural Language Syntax. PhD dissertation, MIT. Hinzen, W. 2003. Truth’s Fabric. Mind and language 18-2:194-7. Hornstein, N. 1999. Control and movement. Linguistic Inquiry 30: 69-96. Horrocks, G. and M. Stavrou. 1987. Bounding theory and Greek syntax: Evidence for wh-movement in noun phrases. Journal of Linguistics 23: 79-108. Lasnik, J. and J. Uriagereka. 2005. A Course in Minimalist Syntax. Oxford: Blackwell. Landau, I. 2001. Elements of Control. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Larson, R. and G. Segal. 1995. Knowledge of Meaning. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Lasnik, H. 1999. Minimalist Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell. Lasnik, H. 2001. Subjects, objects, and the EPP. In Objects and Other Subjects, W. Davies and S. Dubinsky (eds), 103-121. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Lasnik, H. 2003. Minimalist Investigations in SyntacticTheory. London: Routledge. Lasnik, H., J. Uriagereka, and C. Boeckx. 2005. A course in minimalist syntax. Oxford: Blackwell. Martin, R. 1996. A Minimalist Theory of PRO and Control. PhD dissertation, University of Connecticut. Pérez, C. H. 1986. Aspects of Complementation in Three Bantu Languages. Bloomington IN: IULC Publications. Plann, S. 1986. On case marking clauses in Spanish: Evidence against the case resistance principle. Linguistic Inquiry 17: 336-345. Raposo, E. and J. Uriagereka. 1990. Long-distance case assignment. Linguistic Inquiry 21: 505-537. Raposo, E. and J. Uriagereka. 2004. Clitic placement in Western Iberian: A minimalist view. In Handbook in Comparative Syntax, G. Cinque and R. Kayne (eds). Oxford: OUP. Rivero, M.L. and D. Geber. 2003. Raising in Romanian: Move and agree. Ms. University of Ottawa. San Martin, I. 2004. On Subordination and the Distribution of PRO. PhD dissertation, University of Maryland. San Martin, I. and J. Uriagereka. 2002. Infinitival complementation in Basque. In ErramuBoneta: A festshrift for Rudolf de Rijk. J. Lakarra and X. Artiagoitia (eds) EHU & ASJU. Stowell, T. 1981. Origins of Phrase Structure. PhD dissertation, MIT. Torrego, E. 1998. Dependencies of Objects. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Torrego, E. and J. Uriagereka. 2002. Parataxis. In Derivations, J. Uriagereka (ed.), 253-265. London: Routledge. Ura, H. 1994. Varieties of raising and the feature-based bare phrase structure theory. MIT Occasional Working Papers in Linguistics 7. Cambridge MA: MITWPL. Uriagereka, J. 1997. Formal and substantive elegance in the minimalist program. In The Role of Economy in Grammar, M. Bierwisch, H.-M. Gaertner, and C. Wilder (eds). Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Uriagereka, J. Forthcoming. Syntactic Anchors (On Semantic Structuring). Cambridge: CUP. Xu, J. 1993. An I-Parameter and its Consequences. PhD dissertation, University of Maryland.

chapter 

Case-agreement mismatches Ellen Woolford University of Massachusetts

The typological literature reports only one of two logically possible types of Case-agreement mismatch: an ergative Case system with nominative-accusative agreement. Why are there no languages with the opposite type of mismatch, nominative-accusative Case and ergative agreement? The explanation lies in the nature of verbal agreement and its close relation to Case. What we call subject agreement must cross-reference a nominative argument if one is present; it is only in clauses without a nominative that some languages allow agreement with a non-nominative argument, producing mismatch: Warlpiri allows agreement with an ergative subject in the absence of a nominative, while Gujarati allows agreement with a dative marked specific object. The opposite type of mismatch cannot occur because, in a technical sense, there is no such thing as ergative agreement. True verbal agreement appears to be limited to functional nodes that potentially license structural Case, but ergative, like dative, is an inherent Case. There are ergative pronominal clitics, but these must always match in Case with the argument (null or overt) they double so no mismatch is possible.

The Case and agreement systems of a language normally match, with nominativeaccusative agreement in languages with a nominative-accusative Case system, and ergative agreement in languages with an ergative Case system. If agreement and Case were alternate expressions of exactly the same thing, or if agreement were entirely parasitic on Case, then we would expect such matching in all languages; yet Caseagreement mismatches do occur: in Warlpiri, the Case system is ergative, yet agreement follows a nominative-accusative pattern (Hale 1973, 1982). Does this mean that Case and agreement are completely independent systems, as in Jelinek’s 1984 account of Warlpiri? The impossibility of the opposite type of Case-agreement mismatch, a nominative-accusative Case system paired with an ergative agreement system (Anderson 1977, 1985; Comrie 1978; Moravcsik 1978; Wierzbicka 1981), indicates that the answer is no. What, then, is the relationship between Case and agreement that allows one type of mismatch, but not the other? This paper will argue that the relationship is quite close, but that mismatch is possible in one predictable context.

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The goal of this paper is to show that the possibility of the type of mismatch that occurs, as well as the impossibility of the opposite type, is expected under a restrictive version of standard Case and agreement theory which allows no independent agreement projections (Chomsky 1995: 335) and which, furthermore, limits verbal agreement licensing to functional heads that potentially license structural Case.1 With respect to what we traditionally refer to as ‘subject’ agreement, this restriction is a return to the view in Chomsky 1981 that agreement and nominative Case are checked by the same head, which will be labeled here as Infl/Tense for convenience. In addition, the features of a head must be treated as an indivisible packet; that is, it is not possible to check some of the features of a head against one DP while checking others against a different DP. This restriction insures that agreement will always target a nominative argument, if one is present in the clause. When there is no nominative in the clause, languages with agreement take one of two strategies: some require default agreement (e.g. Icelandic, Hindi), but others such as Warlpiri allow the agreement features of Infl/ Tense to cross-reference a non-nominative argument when no nominative is present (and the nominative feature of Infl/Tense is deleted). In addition to true agreement, pronominal clitics may also function as an agreement-like device when they double null or overt arguments; however, pronominal clitics do not appear to allow any mismatch, always matching in abstract Case with the argument they double. Under this restrictive theory of agreement, the above typological gap is predicted. There is no language in which nominative subjects are doubled by an ergative pronominal clitic because pronominal clitics must always match in Case with the argument they double. There is no language in which nominative subjects trigger ergative agreement because there is no such thing as true ergative agreement. Ergative is an inherent Case, and agreement can only be licensed by functional heads that potentially license structural Case.2 This is the result we want, both to capture the above typological gap, and because the ergative agreement patterns that occur are formed with either ergative pronominal clitics and/or true agreement with nominatives that forms a surface ergative pattern in the presence of an ergative Case system.3 This paper is organized as follows. The required restrictive theory of Case and agreement is laid out in section one, along with the typological predictions as to the kinds of Case-agreement pairings and mismatches that are and are not possible in this theory. Section two is a detailed look at the Case and agreement system of Warlpiri, the language most often listed in the typological literature as an example of a mismatch between Case and agreement. The degree of mismatch in Warlpiri is not as severe as it initially appears to be, once we realize that there are two distinct morphologically unmarked Cases that have been conflated in standard labeling (Legate 2006). Warlpiri differs from many ergative languages in lacking nominative objects; instead, Warlpiri has a three-way or tripartite Case system, where nominative is restricted to intransitive subjects while transitive clauses have an ergative-accusative pattern (Legate 2006).4 With no nominative in transitive clauses, Warlpiri allows the agreement features of Infl/ Tense to be checked against the ergative subject, producing the kind of Case-agreement

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mismatch reported in the typological literature. In section 3, we see that it is not necessarily the ergative subject that triggers agreement when no nominative is present; in Gujarati, it is a marked object that controls agreement in the absence of a nominative, and never an ergative subject. Section 4 includes a discussion of what kind of parameters or constraints might be responsible for the cross-linguistic differences in the agreement pattern in clauses without a nominative, and section 5 is the conclusion.

1.

Case and agreement: Theory and typological predictions

This section lays out the details of the restrictive theory of Case and agreement that is needed to account for the observed typological generalizations about the kinds of Caseagreement mismatches that do and do not occur. This version of Case and agreement theory is fairly close to that of Chomsky 2000, with a few modifications and extensions.

1.1 Case theory There are two basic types of Case: structural and non-structural. Structural Case (e.g. nominative, accusative) is licensed in syntax by a head that stands in either a Spec-head or a local c-command relationship to the DP in question (Chomsky 2000). Chomsky 2000 rejects the previous view in Chomsky 1986 where Case checking was limited to Spec-head relationships; what motivates that change is languages such as Icelandic where sentences with dative subjects have nominative objects.5 (1) Barninu batnaði veikin. child-dat recovered-from disease-nom ‘The child recovered from the disease.’

[Icelandic] (Yip et al. 1987: 223)

Allowing structural Case licensing in either Spec-head or c-command configurations also allows the theory to accommodate ergative languages such as Hindi, where sentences with either a dative or an ergative subject may have a nominative object: (2) Raam-ne roTii khaayii thii. [Hindi] Ram-erg bread-nom.fem eat(perf, fem) be(past,fem) ‘Ram had eaten bread.’ (Mahajan 1990, 73) (3) Siitaa-ko laRke pasand the. [Hindi] Sita-dat boys-nom.masc like be(past,masc.pl) ‘Sita likes the boys.’ (Mahajan 1991 (7)) Structural Cases are licensed on a purely structural basis, while the other basic type of Case, non-structural Case, is licensed in connection with θ-licensing. Although it is not crucial for us here, the non-structural Cases subdivide into two types: lexical and inherent (Woolford 2006). Lexical Case is idiosyncratic Case, lexically selected by particular verbs and prepositions. Inherent Case is more regular, including the dative

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associated with DP goals and the ergative associated with agents (or more accurately, with external arguments).6 What is crucial for us here is only that the ergative Case is not a structural Case, but rather a non-structural Case.

1.2 Case locality Although many languages are like Icelandic and Hindi in allowing nominative objects with dative and ergative subjects, not all languages do. Faroese is closely related to Icelandic, but Faroese lacks the dative-nominative pattern that we saw in the Icelandic example in (1) above; instead, modern Faroese uses an accusative object with dative subjects: (4) Mær líkar henda filmin. me-dat likes this film-acc (*nom) ‘I like this film.’

[Faroese] (Barnes 1986 (12))

Faroese differs from Icelandic in terms of its requirements on Case locality. However, what blocks nominative licensing to the object in such Faroese examples has nothing to do with a return to the idea of limiting Case checking to Spec-head configurations in Chomsky 1986. We know this because Faroese freely allows nominative Case checking under c-command in unaccusative constructions: (5) Tað eru komnir nakrir gestir í gjár. there are-pl come-pl some guests-nom.pl yesterday ‘Some guests came yesterday.’ (Jonas, pers.comm.) The correct generalization appears to be that nominative checking is always allowed under c-command when there is no closer DP present in the clause, but the presence of a closer DP (dative subject) blocks nominative checking to the object in some languages, such as in the Faroese examples such as (4) (Woolford 2003a,b). This is an example of a defective intervention effect (Chomsky 2000, Boeckx 2000), where a closer DP blocks a head from checking a further DP even though the closer DP (the dative DP) does not have the feature (nominative Case) that the head (Infl/Tense) is trying to check. With nominative checking of the object blocked by the presence of the closer dative subject, the best remaining option in Faroese is for the verb to license accusative Case on the object.7 This difference between Faroese and Icelandic illustrates that there are cross-linguistic differences in what counts as a blocking defective intervener for Case checking (Woolford 2003a,b). A closer DP with non-structural Case blocks nominative licensing in some languages but not others. We see this above with respect to dative subjects in Faroese versus Icelandic, and the same cross-linguistic difference occurs in languages with ergative subjects. In Hindi, an ergative subject does not count as a defective intervener and thus ergative subjects can occur with nominative objects, as in (2). However, other ergative languages such as the Australian language Thangu do not allow nominative objects with ergative subjects (Schebeck 1976, Woolford 1997).

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In Thangu, nominative Case occurs on intransitive subjects, but in transitive clauses with an ergative subject, the closer ergative subject blocks nominative licensing on the object, and thus the object takes accusative Case instead: y (6) Taykka+Ø  .rakkun Tin. woman+NOM died ‘Woman died.’

(Schebeck 1976 (11))

(7) Yūlu+Tu pūyan.  taykka+Na  man+ERG woman+acc hit ‘Man hit woman.’

(Schebeck 1976 (15))

This produces what is commonly called a three-way or tripartite Case system, with nominative intransitive subjects, ergative transitive subjects, and accusative objects. Legate 2006 argues convincingly that Warlpiri has such a tripartite Case system, although this is less obvious in Warlpiri than in Thangu because neither nominative nor accusative is morphologically marked in Warlpiri. We will see the details of the Warlpiri system in section two. Let us now turn to Agreement Theory, and how agreement interacts with Case.

1.3 Agreement theory What we generally describe as agreement is known to encompass two distinct crossreferencing devices: pronominal clitics that double null and/or overt arguments, and true agreement (sometimes called inflection) (e.g. Blake 1994: 52, Woolford 2002). Pronominal clitics, which are essentially a kind of pronominal element, must always have Case, and that Case must always match the Case of the DP that is doubled.8 (The relevant notion of Case here is abstract Case, which may or may not be realized morphologically.) True agreement is associated with functional heads that potentially also license structural Case. What we traditionally call subject agreement cross-references all and only nominatives in many languages. The close association between structural Case and agreement provides strong support for the modification to the theory proposed in Chomsky 1995 to eliminate the independent agreement heads, AgrS and AgrO from Chomsky 1991, and to locate the agreement features on independently motivated functional heads such as Tense. Like structural Case checking, true agreement can be checked in either a Spec-head configuration or under local c-command, subject to locality conditions (Chomsky 2000). The Case and agreement features of a head appear to have to be treated uniformly, in the sense that it does not appear to be possible to check the agreement features of Infl/Tense against one DP and its nominative Case feature against a different DP. Nevertheless, it does appear to be possible to treat the features of a head non-uniformly in another sense, which is to delete some of the features of a head, while retaining others. The instance of this that is important for us here is that, when a clause lacks a nominative argument, and the nominative feature of Infl/Tense is left unchecked and

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presumably deleted, it is possible in some languages to retain the agreement features of Infl/Tense and check them against a DP with non-nominative Case. This, I argue, is the basis of the mismatch we see in Warlpiri, where ergative subjects agree in the absence of a nominative object. However, other languages appear to require the deletion of the agreement features as well when the nominative feature cannot be checked, producing a default form of the agreement morphology which checks no features, as in Icelandic and Hindi. If there were such a thing as true ergative agreement, we might expect a similar mismatch to occur, where a nominative subject triggers ergative agreement in the absence of a DP with ergative Case in the clause. The reason this never happens, in this version of agreement theory, is that there is no such thing as ergative agreement, in a technical sense.

1.4 No true ergative agreement We have seen that true agreement correlates with structural Case, in terms of the kinds of nodes that license these and the configurations in which these may be licensed. It is natural to ask whether there is any agreement associated with the non-structural Cases. That is, is there something we would call inherent agreement, paralleling inherent Case? Although this is certainly a logical possibility, the evidence seems to indicate that the answer is no: there is no true agreement associated with the heads that license ergative or dative Case (although there are ergative and dative pronominal clitics that can double arguments and thus function as agreement-like elements, and there may also be adjectival or predicate agreement involving a matching of inherent Case features). If there were such a thing as true ergative agreement, we would expect it to have the same semi-independence from Case that we see with nominative agreement, allowing ergative agreement to be checked against something besides an ergative DP in clauses lacking an ergative DP. Since this never occurs, we need a theory that is sufficiently restrictive to disallow it. It appears, therefore, that a properly restrictive theory of agreement must rule out true ergative agreement, in principle. In addition to patterns involving ergative clitics (which can only double arguments with ergative Case), what we call ergative agreement actually involves ordinary nominative agreement that is pulled into a surface ergative pattern when a language has ergative (and/or dative) subjects and nominative objects, as we will see in the next section.

1.5 Basic types of Case-agreement patterns To explore the types of matches and mismatches that are predicted by this theory, and those that are predicted not to occur, we will begin with nominative-accusative Case systems, exploring the types of compatible and incompatible agreement systems, and then move on to ergative Case systems to do the same.

Chapter 10. Case-agreement mismatches 305

1.5.1 Nominative-accusative Case systems Nominative-accusative Case systems are compatible with nominative-accusative agreement patterns, and these agreement patterns can involve true agreement and/or doubling pronominal clitics. It is not possible for a nominative-accusative Case system to occur with an ergative agreement system, for the reasons outlined above: there is no such thing as true ergative agreement, and an ergative agreeing clitic would have to match Case with the argument it doubles. 1.5.2 Ergative Case systems Ergative Case systems are compatible with ergative pronominal clitics, but they do not appear to involve true ergative agreement. What we call ergative agreement in languages with an ergative Case system such as Hindi is literally nominative agreement (agreement with all and only nominative DPs) which forms a superficial ergative pattern in clauses with an ergative subject and a nominative object.9 We see this in examples such as (8) where the feminine nominative object triggers feminine agreement (and the masculine ergative subject does not agree): (8) Raam-ne roTii khaayii thii. [Hindi] Ram-erg bread-nom.fem eat(perf, fem) be(past, fem) ‘Ram had eaten bread.’ (Mahajan 1990, 73) The same agreement pattern occurs in clauses with dative subjects and nominative objects in Hindi. Here the masculine plural nominative object agrees, but the feminine singular dative subject does not: (9) Siitaa-ko laRke pasand the. [Hindi] Sita-dat boys-nom.masc like be(past, masc.pl) ‘Sita likes the boys.’ (Mahajan 1991 (7)) It is also possible for an ergative language to have both the Hindi type of ergative agreement pattern, plus agreeing clitics that cross-reference the non-nominative arguments (e.g. Kashmiri (Wali and Koul 1994, 1997)). Ergative languages may also manifest the type of Case-agreement mismatch reported in the typological literature, where the agreement pattern is nominativeaccusative despite the ergative Case system, but I maintain that this is possible only if the language actually has a tripartite (three-way) Case system, where nominatives are limited to intransitives while transitive clauses have an ergative-accusative pattern. As described above, such languages may allow the agreement normally associated with nominatives to be checked against the ergative subject in the absence of a nominative. This produces a superficial nominative-accusative agreement pattern (with the accusative objects doubled by accusative clitics). In the next section, we will see that Warlpiri is an example of this type of ergative language.

306 Ellen Woolford

2. Warlpiri Warlpiri is generally described as having an ergative-absolutive Case pattern and a nominative-accusative agreement pattern (e.g. Hale 1982, Nash 1980, Simpson 1991). This makes Warlpiri appear to have a very serious Case-agreement mismatch, so much so that some have analyzed Warlpiri as having two completely independent Case systems, one for DPs and another for the agreement clitics (e.g. Jelinek 1984). However, a detailed investigation of the Warlpiri system reveals that the degree of true mismatch is actually quite limited. Legate 2006 shows that what has been labeled ‘absolutive’ in Warlpiri is actually two different Cases, both of which happen to be morphologically unmarked: nominative on subjects and accusative on objects. Thus there is no mismatch when it comes to objects: accusative objects are cross-referenced with accusative clitics. The only real mismatch in Warlpiri occurs with ergative subjects, which trigger the same agreement form as nominative subjects. If this ‘subject’ agreement form is true agreement, as I will argue, in contrast to the accusative and dative morphemes which are identified as clitics in Simpson 1991, Warlpiri exemplifies the one kind of Case-agreement mismatch that the theory set out in section one allows: a system where ergative subjects trigger true agreement in the absence of a nominative in the clause. (10) Warlpiri Case and Agreement Case

Agreement

Nominative

True agreement

Ergative Accusative

Accusative clitic

Dative

Dative clitic

In the remainder of this section, we will see the details of the Warlpiri Case and agreement system, and how these correspond.

2.1 The Warlpiri Case System The Case patterns that we find in Warlpiri matrix clauses are summarized below, based on work by Hale 1982, Simpson 1991, and Legate 2006:

Chapter 10. Case-agreement mismatches 307

(11) Warlpiri Case Patterns Intransitive clauses: nominative ergative Transitive clauses: nominative ergative ergative

-

dative accusative dative

ergative

-

dative

Ditransitive clauses -

accusative

Warlpiri has two Cases for subjects, nominative and ergative, and two Cases for objects, accusative and dative. Warlpiri belongs to the class of tripartite ergative languages, which do not allow nominative objects. Verbs in Warlpiri form two classes. One class takes nominative subjects, which are morphologically unmarked (and normally labeled ‘absolutive’ in the literature). (12) Ngaju ka-rna parnka-mi. I(nom) pres-1sg run-nonpast ‘I am running.’

(Hale 1982 (1b))

(13) Ngaju ka-rna-rla wangka karnta-ku. I(nom) pres-1sg-3dat speak woman-dative ‘I am speaking to the woman.’ (Simpson 1991: 317) (14) Ngaju -rna ngapa-ku ngampurrpa. I(nom) -1sg water-dat desirous ‘I want water.’

(Hale 1982 (2d))

(15) Jakamarra ka-nyanu yulka-mi nyanungu-ku Jakamarra(nom) pres-refl love-nonpast he-dative ‘Jakamarra loves himself.’ (Simpson 1991: 319) The other verb class of Warlpiri verbs takes an ergative subject. (16) Ngarrka-ngku ka yunpa-rni. man-erg pres sing-nonpast ‘The man is singing.’

(Hale 1982 (30a))

(17) Ngarrka-ngku ka-rla karli-ki warri-rni. man-erg pres-3dat boomerang-dat seek-nonpast ‘A man is looking for a boomerang.’ (Hale 1982 (44a))

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Verbs of both classes may take dative objects, as we see in the examples above. The examples below show that verbs with an ergative subject may take an object with a morphologically unmarked Case, traditionally labeled ‘absolutive’, which is correctly identified as accusative according to Legate 2006. (18) Ngajulu-rlu ka-rna marlu nya-nyi. I-erg pres-1sg kangaroo(acc) see-nonpast ‘I see the kangaroo.’ (Hale 1982 (9c)) (19) Karnta-ngku ka-rla kurdu-ku miyi yi-nyi. woman-erg pres-3dat child-dat food(acc) give-nonpast ‘The woman is giving the child food.’ (Hale 1982 (87d)) There are two kinds of evidence that this unmarked object Case is accusative, and not nominative. One is that it is cross-referenced by an accusative clitic, as we will see below in the section on agreement. In addition, Legate 2006 shows that the two morphologically unmarked Cases are treated differently in nonfinite clauses. Nominatives become dative Case in this context, as in (20), (presumably because there is no nominative licensing head available). In contrast, accusatives do not turn into datives (but remain accusative), as in (21): (20) ... [ ngaju-ku jarda-nguna-nja-rlarni ] ... I-dative sleep-lie-infin-obviative comp ... while I was asleep

(Legate 2006 (19))

(21) ... [karnta-patu-rlu miyi purra-nja-puru] ... woman-paucal-erg food(acc) cook-infin-contemporary action comp .... while the women are cooking the food (Legate 2006 (20)) Now that we have established that Warlpiri thus belongs to the class of ergative languages that does not allow nominative objects, let us now turn to the associated agreement patterns of Warlpiri.

2.2 The Warlpiri agreement system The agreement morphemes of Warlpiri suffix to a tense/aspect morpheme in an auxiliary cluster which normally appears in second position (Hale 1973, Nash 1980).10 I will argue that these consist of a true agreement morpheme, followed by one or more agreeing clitics. (22) tense/aspect+Agr+clitic(s) All of these Warlpiri cross-referencing morphemes are usually described as clitics, but Simpson (1991: 307) points out that they fall into two main types, which she labels Clitic 1 (cross-referencing subjects) and Clitic 2 (cross-referencing non-subjects). I will argue that from a syntactic point of view, the Clitic 1 person forms are really true

Chapter 10. Case-agreement mismatches 309

agreement, while the other cross-referencing morphemes (the Clitic 2 forms as well as the number morphemes pala and lu which may help cross-reference subjects) are pronominal clitics, although both forms phonologically cliticize to tense/aspect.11 The true agreement forms are morphologically distinct from the pronominal clitics that cross-reference accusative and dative DPs. The accusative and dative pronominal clitics look alike (because they are not morphologically marked for Case), except perhaps in the 3rd singular where there is a special form for the dative, rla.12 (23) Warlpiri Singular Agreement Morphemes True agreement

Accusative clitics

Dative clitics

1st

rna

ju

ju

2nd

n(pa)

ngku

ngku

3rd

-

-

rla

(24) Ngaju ka-rna wangka-mi. I(nom) pres-1sgAgr speak-nonpast ‘I am speaking.’

(Hale 1982 (9a))

(25) Nyuntu ka-npa wangka-mi. you(nom) pres-2sgAgr speak-nonpast ‘You are speaking.’

(Hale 1982 (9b))

(26) Ngajulu-rlu ka-rna-ngku I-ergative pres-1sgAgr-2sgCL ‘I see you.’

nyuntu nya-nyi. you(acc) see-nonpast (Hale 1982 (9f))

(27) Kurdu-ngku ka-ju nya-nyi ngaju. child-erg pres-1sgCL see-nonpast me(acc) ‘The child sees me.’

(Simpson 1991: 99)

(28) Ngaju-ku ka-ju karli jarnti-rni. I-dative pres-1sgCL boomerang(acc) trim-nonpast ‘He’s making me a boomerang.’ (Simpson 1991: 150) The pronominal clitics in Warlpiri behave like pronominal clitics in Romance in that they are subject to the same sort of clitic cluster constraints, as Simpson (1991: 149) points out. In both French and Warlpiri, a first or second person accusative clitic cannot co-occur with a first or second person dative clitic: (29) a. * Il me te donne. [French] He 1sgCL 2sgCL give. ‘He is giving you/me to me/you.’ b. * Wati-ngki ka-ju-ngku punta-rni. [Warlpiri] man-erg pres-1sgCL-2sgCL take-away-nonpast ‘The man is taking you/me away from you/me.’ (Simpson 1991: 149)

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The true agreement morphemes in Warlpiri are immune to the effects of these clitic cluster constraints, providing another indication that they are not pronominal clitics. There are no person restrictions when an agreement morpheme co-occurs with an adjacent clitic: (30) Kuyu ka-rna-ngku ka-nyi. meat pres-1sgAgr-2sgCL carry-nonpast ‘I am carrying meat for you.’

(Simpson 1991: 149)

These two facts supports the proposed division of the Warlpiri cross-referencing morphemes into true agreement morphemes and clitics.13 Now that the Case and agreement systems of Warlpiri have been laid out, we can return to the question of the degree of mismatch between these systems that Warlpiri allows.

2.3 Match and mismatch in Warlpiri Given these independently motivated assumptions about the Case and agreement systems of Warlpiri, there is now an almost complete match between them. Nominative subjects trigger agreement in Warlpiri, just as they do in English. (31) Ngaju ka-rna parnka-mi. I(nom) pres-1sgAgr run-nonpast ‘I am running.’

(Simpson 1991: 65)

Accusative and Dative DPs are cross-referenced by accusative and dative pronominal clitics (which look alike morphologically in first and second person), subject to limitations imposed by clitic cluster constraints that prevent the co-occurrence of certain clitics. (32) Kurdu-ngku ka-ju nya-nyi ngaju. child-erg pres-1sgCL(acc) see-nonpast me(accusative) ‘The child sees me.’ (Simpson 1991: 99) (33) Ngaju-ku ka-ju karli jarnti-rni. I-dative pres-1sgCL(dative) boomerang(acc) trim-nonpast ‘He’s making me a boomerang.’ (Simpson 1991: 150) Prior to Legate 2006, it was assumed that these morphologically unmarked accusative objects had nominative Case, and thus it appeared that there was a mismatch between the Case of the object (nominative) and the case of the cross-referencing clitic (accusative). The only mismatch that remains now is that ergative subjects trigger the same agreement form that nominative subjects do: (34) Ngajulu-rlu ka-rna nya-nyi kurdu. I-ergative pres-1sgAgr see-nonpast child(acc) ‘I see the child.’

(Simpson 1991: 100)

Chapter 10. Case-agreement mismatches

(35) Ngaju ka-rna parnka-mi. I(nom) pres-1sgAgr run-nonpast ‘I am running.’

(Simpson 1991: 65)

Ergative subjects can trigger true agreement in Warlpiri because there are no nominative objects (which would have priority with respect to controlling agreement). In the absence of a nominative, Warlpiri allows Infl/Tense to delete its nominative feature and check only its agreement features against those of the ergative subject. What we do not yet know is why Warlpiri selects the ergative subject (rather than the accusative object) to agree when there is no nominative. Several hypotheses might account for this choice: for example, the ergative subject might be selected because it is the closest argument to Infl/Tense, or it might be selected because it has the grammatical relation of subject. Interestingly, neither of these hypotheses holds generally with respect to predicting what can control agreement in the absence of a nominative, as we will now see from an examination of the agreement patterns in Gujarati.

3. Gujarati Gujarati is interesting in the present context because it shows us that not all languages are like Warlpiri in allowing agreement with an ergative subject as the next best option in clauses with no nominative argument. Gujarati never allows agreement with an ergative subject (Comrie 1984: 862, Mistry 1997: 428); in Gujarati, it is only a marked object that can control the agreement in the absence of a nominative (Mistry 1976, 1997). In Gujarati, as in Hindi, objects with certain features such as specificity are marked with what looks like the dative Case, but which is often labeled accusative in work on Indo-Aryan languages because of differences in the behavior of this Case and other instances of the dative Case. We see agreement in Gujarati with a marked object in the following pair of examples with an ergative subject and a marked object (labeled here with dat/acc Case to represent the controversy over the exact identity of this Case), and no nominative argument. In (36) the ergative subject is masculine and the marked object is feminine; it is the feminine marked object that controls the agreement, not the masculine ergative subject. (36) Ramesh-e Sudha-ne dhәmkawy-i [Gujarati] Ramesh(masc)-erg Sudha(fem)-dat/acc scold-fem ‘Ramesh scolded Sudha.’ (Mistry 1976 (14a)) In the similar example in (37) where the gender of the subject and object are reversed, we see that it is still the marked object, now masculine, which controls the agreement. (37) Sudha-e Ramesh-ne dhәmkawy-o [Gujarati] Sudha(fem)-erg Ramesh(masc)-dat/acc scold-masc ‘Sudha scolded Ramesh.’ (Mistry 1976 (14b))

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Otherwise, Gujarati is like Hindi with respect to agreement. Whenever there is a nominative present in the clause, either as a subject or as an object, that nominative controls the agreement. We see agreement with the nominative subject in (38) and agreement with the nominative object in (39). (38) a.

Balәk awy-ũ.  child(nom) came-neuter ‘A child came.’ b. Ramesh awy-o. Ramesh(nom) came-masc ‘Ramesh came.’ c. Sudha awy-i. Sudha(nom) came-fem ‘Sudha came.’

(39) Sudha-e radio khәridy-o. Sudha-erg radio(masc)(nom) bought-masc Sudha bought a radio.

(Mistry 1976 (3c))

(Mistry 1976 (3a))

(Mistry 1976 (3b))

(Mistry 1976 (10a))

Nominative controls the agreement even if a marked object is also present in the clause, showing that nominative takes priority over a ‘last resort’ agreement controller. In the following example, we see that the singular nominative subject, rather than the plural marked object, controls the agreement: (40) Šeelaa pããc maanas-o-ne mokal-š-e  sheela(nom) five man-pl-dat/acc send-fut-singular ‘Sheela will send the five men.’ (Mistry 1997 (8b)) This data supports the view put forth here that agreement must be controlled by a nominative argument if one is present, and that another Case may control agreement only as a ‘last resort’ in the absence of a nominative. However, not just any other Case will do; in clauses with neither a nominative nor a specificity marked object, Gujarati manifests default agreement (Mistry 1976, 1997). Mistry shows that an object with the regular dative Case (which is superficially identical to the Case on marked objects) cannot control agreement in Gujarati. We see this in example (40) where the verb ‘touch’ is one that lexically selects for a dative object, and agreement takes the default neuter form, despite the presence of a masculine dative object (and a masculine ergative subject). (41) Kišor-(n)e kaagal-ne ad-v-ũ hat-ũ   Kishor-erg letter-dat touch-desiderative-neuter be-past-neuter ‘Kishor wished to touch the letter.’ (Mistry 1997 (6c)) This example also shows us that ergative can never serve as a ‘last resort’ agreement controller in Gujarati, in contrast to what we saw in Warlpiri.

Chapter 10. Case-agreement mismatches

4. Discussion We now know that languages differ as to what Case renders an argument eligible to control agreement in the absence of a nominative, but we do not yet know what range of Cases can serve as such ‘last resort’ agreement controllers in the languages of the world. Are ergative and the Case of specificity marked object the only such Cases? At this point, we cannot even be sure that languages can only allow one Case as a last resort agreement controller. It is still a logical possibility that some languages have a second or even a third choice for the Case that controls agreement. Answering this question requires further study of additional languages with Case-agreement mismatches. We also do not yet know how the grammars of languages that do and do not allow mismatch differ. Why does one language require default agreement in the absence of a nominative (e.g. Hindi) when another allows an argument with a different Case to control agreement? At this point, we can only speculate, but one possibility has to do with the principles or constraints that regulate how the feature packet of a single head is treated. Ideally, all the features of a head should be checked, and checked against the same target. One can imagine that there are two distinct principles or constraints that enforce these goals: one requires uniform treatment of the features of one head, while the other requires features to be checked, if possible. When a clause lacks a nominative, a language has to choose which one of these principles or constraints to violate; a language that uses default agreement chooses to treat the agreement and nominative features in a uniform manner, checking none of these features, whereas a language that allows a non-nominative to check agreement in the absence of a nominative chooses to achieve the goal of getting as many features checked as possible. There is a tension between these two goals, and one way of resolving this tension is to allow what is viewed in the typological literature as Case-agreement mismatch.

5. Conclusions The goal of this paper has been to show that a restrictive version of standard agreement theory can account for the asymmetry in the types of Case-agreement mismatches that have been observed. There are languages such as Warlpiri with an ergative Case system and nominative-accusative agreement pattern, but no languages have been reported with a nominative-accusative Case system and an ergative agreement system. The claim put forth here is that the relationship between true agreement and nominative Case is extremely close because these features occupy the same head and must be checked against the same DP. The exception is when the clause lacks a nominative argument to check and the nominative Case feature is deleted. In this situation, some languages allow the agreement features of Infl/Tense to be checked against an argument with some other Case. We have seen that the other Case that can serve as a ‘last resort’ agreement controller differs cross-linguistically: it is ergative in Warlpiri, but in

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Gujarati it is the dative (or accusative) Case that marks specific objects. The observed typological gap is expected if the theory limits true agreement checking to functional heads that potentially also check structural Case. This limitation eliminates the possibility of true agreement that primarily targets non-structural Cases such as ergative or dative (although it still allows doubling pronominal clitics with these non-structural Cases). With no true ergative agreement, there can be no language in which true ergative agreement could target a nominative subject in the absence of an ergative argument. The theory does not require (and thus should not allow) true ergative agreement if it is true (which it appears to be) that the patterns of ergative agreement that we observe cross-linguistically involve either ergative pronominal clitics and/or agreement with nominatives which forms a surface ergative pattern, as it does in the presence of an ergative Case pattern.

Notes 1. This paper is confined to a consideration of verbal agreement with arguments, as opposed to other sorts of agreement, such as adjectival or predicate agreement. See Wechsler and Zlatić 2003 for a discussion of the distinction between verbal agreement and these other types of agreement. 2. For extensive discussion of the evidence for the conclusion that ergative is not a structural Case, but rather an inherent Case, see Woolford 1997, 2006. 3. There is one additional way to form a surface ergative agreement pattern using true agreement with nominatives, discussed in Woolford 2002. In such systems, true agreement is limited to nominative subjects in transitive clauses, while intransitive nominative subjects are crossreferenced with a nominative pronominal clitic. The system looks ergative if nominative and accusative clitics are not morphologically distinguished. 4. Goddard 1982 suggests a similar analysis may be applicable for many Australian languages that appear on the surface to have a different Case system for pronouns than nouns. 5. An associated theoretical consequence of this change is that NP movement is no longer thought to be Case driven, but is instead an EPP effect. 6. Ergative Case is licensed by the little/light v head that theta-licenses the external argument (Massam 2002, Legate 2006, Woolford 2006). The external argument is usually an agent, but in the absence of an agent, it may be an instrument or experiencer in some languages. 7. Nominative takes precedence over accusative if possible (see Woolford 2003a and the references cited therein). It is not yet clear why Faroese allows nominative objects with dative subjects in the passive of a ditransitive (see Woolford 2003b). 8. Pronominal clitic doubling is often constrained in various ways cross-linguistically, but these constraints do not concern us here. For example, Kayne 1995 notes that many languages do not allow a pronominal clitic to c-command an overt doubled argument. 9. There is also a way to produce a surface ergative agreement pattern in a language with a so-called neutral Case system. If the language does not distinguish nominative and accusative Case morphologically, so that nominative and accusative clitics look alike, and if true agreement

Chapter 10. Case-agreement mismatches

(with nominatives) is used only as a last resort in transitive clauses, the pattern can look ergative, as in certain Sulawesi languages (see Woolford 2002). 10. This auxiliary cluster appears in first position if the tense morpheme is heavy enough (Nash 1980). 11. These number clitics, pala dual and lu plural, supplement the agreement morphemes in cross-referencing subjects in some instances, but as clitics, they are ordered among the other clitics by clitic ordering constraints, which order first and second person singular clitics before these number clitics (see Nash 1980: 60). See Grimshaw 2001 for a discussion of constraints ordering clitics in Romance. 12. Hale 1982: 252 does not consider rla to technically be an agreement form, but rather a dative “registration element”, however it is labeled as a dative clitic in Simpson 1991. 13. Warlpiri allows free clitic doubling (Simpson 1991), in contrast to Romance languages which place various constraints on clitic doubling. I take the position that the possibilities for clitic doubling in a language are independent of the properties of the clitics themselves.

References Anderson, S. 1977. On mechanisms by which languages become ergative. In Mechanisms of syntactic change, C. N. Li (ed.), 317-365. Austin: University of Texas Press. Anderson, S. R. 1985 Inflectional morphology. In Language typology and syntactic description Vol III: Grammatical categories and the lexicon, T. Shopen (ed.), 150-201. Cambridge: CUP. Barnes, M. 1986. Subject, nominative and oblique case in Faroese. Scripta Islandica 37: 13-46. Blake, B. 1994. Case. Cambridge: CUP. Boeckx, C. 2000. Quirky agreement. Studia Linguistica 54: 354-380. Chomsky, N. 1981. Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris. Chomsky, N. 1986. Knowledge of Language: Its nature, origin, and use. New York NY: Praeger. Chomsky, N. 1991. Some notes on economy of derivation and representation. In Principles and Parameters in Comparative Grammar, R. Freidin (ed.), 417-454. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 2000. Minimalist inquiries: The framework. In Step by Step, R. Martin et al. (eds), 89-155. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Comrie, B. 1978. Ergativity. In Syntactic Typology, W. Lehmann (ed.), 329–394. Austin TX: The University of Texas Press. Comrie, B. 1984. Reflections on verb agreement in Hindi and related languages. Linguistics 22: 857-864. Goddard, C. 1982. Case systems and case marking in Australian languages: A new interpretation. Australian Journal of Linguistics 2: 167-196. Grimshaw, J. 2001. Optimal clitic positions and the lexicon in Romance clitics. In OptimalityTheoretic Syntax, G. Legendre, J. Grimshaw, and S. Vikner (eds), 205-240. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Hale, K. 1973. Person marking in Warlpiri. In A Festschrift for Morris Halle, S. Anderson and P. Kiparsky (eds.), 308-344. New York NY: Holt Rinehart and Winston.

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316 Ellen Woolford Hale, K. 1982. Some essential features of Warlpiri verbal clauses. In Papers in Warlpiri Grammar: In Memory of Lothar Jagst [Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, ABB Series A, Volume 6], S. Swartz (ed.), 217-315. Darwin: Summer Institute of Linguistics. Jelinek, E. 1984. Empty categories, case, and configurationality. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 2: 39-76. Kayne, R. 1995. The Antisymmetry of Syntax [Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 25]. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Legate, J. 2006. Split absolutive. In Ergativity: Emerging issues, A. Johns, D. Massam, and J. Ndayiragije (eds), 143–171. Dordrecht: Springer. Mahajan, A. 1990. The A/A-bar Distinction and Movement Theory. PhD dissertation, MIT. Mahajan, A. 1991. Clitic doubling, object agreement and specificity. NELS 21: 263-277. Massam, D. 2002 Fully internal cases: Surface ergativity can be profound. In Proceedings of AFLA VIII: The Eighth Meeting of the Austronesian Formal Linguistics Association [MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 44], A. Rackowsky and N. Richards (eds), 185-196. Cambridge MA: MITWPL. Mistry, P. J. 1976. Subject in Gujarati: An examination of verb agreement phenomenon, In The Notion of Subject in South Asian Languages, M. Verma (ed.), 240-268. Madison WI: University of Wisconsin. Mistry, P. J. 1997. Objecthood and specificity in Gujarati. In The Life of Language, J. Hill, P. J. Mistry and L. Campbell (eds), 425-442. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Moravcsik, E. A. 1978. On the distribution of ergative and accusative patterns. Lingua 45: 233-279. Nash, D. 1980. Topics in Warlpiri Grammar. PhD dissertation, MIT. Schebeck, B. 1976. Thangu and Atjnjamathanha. In Grammatical Categories in Australian Languages, R. M. W. Dixon (ed.), 516-550. New Jersey: Humanities Press. Simpson, J. 1991. Warlpiri Morpho-Syntax: A lexicalist approach. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Wali, K. and O.N. Koul. 1994. Kashmiri clitics: The role of case and CASE. Linguistics 32: 969–994. Wali, K. and O. N. Koul. 1997. Kashmiri. London: Routledge. Wechsler, S. and L. Zlatić. 2003. The Many Faces of Agreement. Stanford CA: CSLI. Wierzbicka, A. 1981. Case marking and human nature. Australian Journal of Linguistics 1: 43-80. Woolford, E. 1997. Four-way Case systems: ergative, nominative, objective and accusative. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 15: 181-227. Woolford, E. 2002. Clitics and agreement in competition: ergative cross-referencing patterns. In Papers in Optimality Theory II, A. Carpenter, A. Coetzee and P. De Lacy (eds.), 421-449. University of Massachusetts, Amherst: GLSA. Woolford, E. 2003a. Burzio’s Generalization, markedness, and constraints on nominative objects. In New Perspectives on Case Theory, E. Brandner and H. Zinsmeister (eds.), 301-329. Stanford, CA: CSLI. Woolford, E. 2003b. Nominative objects and Case locality. In Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics: The Amherst Meeting 2002, W. Browne, J-Y Kim, B. Partee, and R. Rothstein (eds.), 539-568. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Michigan Slavic Publications. Woolford, E. 2006. Lexical case, inherent Case, and argument structure. Linguistic Inquiry 37:111–130. Yip, M., J. Maling, and R. Jackendoff, 1987. Case in tiers. Language 63: 217-250.

chapter 

Local agreement Jan-Wouter Zwart Groningen University

The article proposes to describe agreement as a relation between sisters, i.e. as a function of the structure building operation Merge. Subject-verb agreement, then, is not mediated by a functional head in a specifier-head configuration, or triggered by a probe-goal mechanism, but the expression of a direct dependency relation between the subject and its sister. Supporting evidence is found in cases where agreement has multiple controllers, multiple targets, or finds alternative realizations within the predicate.

1.

Introduction

In this article I would like to explore the possibility that linguistic agreement, in particular subject-verb agreement, is always a relation between phrases, never a relation between a head and a phrase. More specifically, I am interested in the possibility of restricting the agreement relation to pairs of sisters: (1) Agreement as a function of sisterhood XP subject

YP

...

verb

...

This would imply that the traditional view, according to which agreement is instantiated (almost by definition) in a relation between a head and a specifier (2), is mistaken, and I believe it to be mistaken because the specifier-head configuration is not sufficiently local. On this view, the subject occupies the specifier position of an agreement phrase AgrP and agrees with Agr representing the person/number features associated with the verb (which may be united with Agr through head movement at some point in the derivation):

318 Jan-Wouter Zwart

(2) Agreement as a function of the specifier-head relation (Kayne 1989, Pollock 1989) AgrP subject

Agr’ Agr

YP

...

verb

...

More recently, Chomsky (1998) has proposed that the configurational relation relevant to agreement is not that between a head and its specifier, but that between a head T (for tense) and a phrase it c-commands (AGREE, see (3)). (3) Agreement as a function of c-command (‘AGREE’; Chomsky 1998) TP spec

T’ T

XP

subject

...

verb

...

The proposal presupposes that the subject originates in a position c-commanded by T, with movement to the specifier position of TP triggered by feature checking requirements having nothing to do with agreement. The relation between the subject and the verb is again an indirect one, as T is a projection of features of the verb. The proposal assumes that T hosts unvalued person/number features which receive a value through association with the subject under c-command. This view of agreement by c-command is also incompatible with the approach to agreement I wish to pursue here. First, it continues to assume that agreement between the subject and the verb is mediated by a functional head (Tense or T), so that agreement is not a relation between phrases. Second, it entails a less than straightforward mapping of structure to dependency than the one envisioned here, where the subject – the nondependent – determines properties of its sister, rather than functioning as the target for a functional head looking to valuate its features (see section 6). In earlier work (Zwart 1992) I have proposed to break down the specifier-head relation (2) into two more primitive relations: sisterhood and dominance. The idea was that phrases can only ‘see’ their sisters, and that specifiers can only be connected to the heads they appear to agree with indirectly, via the dominance relation which

Chapter 11. Local agreement 319

inevitably connects the specifier’s sister to a head. This redefinition of specifier-head agreement was intended at the time as a technical refinement building in a stricter notion of locality. Crucially, it did not depart from the then (and now) current view that the element that specifiers need to agree with (albeit via transitivity) is the head, and, conversely, that the head needs to agree with an element in its specifier position. I now believe both assumptions to be incorrect. More recently, the desirability to restrict local relations to sisterhood relations has been emphasized in work inspired by Epstein (1995), which takes dependency relations like c-command to be defined in terms of a bottom-up structure building operation, Merge. Merge takes two elements and joins them, yielding a syntactic constituent which may itself be input to the next operation Merge. Epstein (1995) shows that an element α c-commands all and only those elements that have already been merged at the point in the derivation where α is merged, i.e. α c-commands its sister β, as well as the elements contained in β (the terms of β). These findings take on added importance if Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch (2002) are correct in arguing that the human faculty of language is uniquely defined by the capacity of recursion, and if Merge is the minimal structure building operation to be applied recursively. Since Merge yields the sisterhood configuration, the strongest hypothesis would seem to be that grammatical relations are defined over sisters. My present suspicion is that agreement on a head is merely a consequence of the need (which may be parametrized) to spell out the agreement relation between sisters. In other words, the element agreeing with the subject in (1) is not the verb, but the phrase YP, which spells out the agreement relation on one of its terms (the verb). Moreover, I suspect that agreement between phrases is a mere side-effect of a more contentful relation between the two phrases. For example, the agreement relation between a subject and a verb is a side-effect of the more contentful relation between a subject and its sister (that which it is a subject of). This relation may be marked on the dependent (YP in (1)), which can be formally expressed as a feature sharing operation between the subject and its dependent. This feature sharing operation takes the place of the feature checking operation of earlier approaches to agreement. On the view explored here, there is no requirement that the subject check its features with the features of any other element, and neither the verb, nor any functional head associated with the verb possesses any features that need to be checked with the features of the subject. If I am correct, it follows that there is no need to establish a specifier-head agreement relation (2) or an AGREE-relation (3), and that the presence of agreement features on heads and on the elements in the specifiers of their projections cannot be a trigger for movement of either the head or the specifier. It would also follow that parametric variation not be expressed in terms of the ‘strength’ of these features, or in terms of their being uninterpretable at the interfaces (and, hence, the need to eliminate them before reaching those interfaces). It does not necessarily follow that views on the architecture of the clause currently assumed (though not without being challenged), displaying a regular alternation of

320 Jan-Wouter Zwart

specifiers (phrases) and heads, need to be modified. There may still be sufficent empirical evidence to suggest that these views are correct, or, at least, productive. This article, then, if there is any substance to the approach contemplated in it, raises the question what motivates the appearance of (functional) heads, if agreement or more generally feature checking requirements cannot be held responsible for their existence. The article has the following contents. Section 2 presents the basic properties of subject-verb agreement relevant to the discussion in this article. Section 3 presents the two standard approaches to agreement, involving the specifier-head relation and the AGREE (c-command) relation, with some attention to the question of why these configurations were considered to be meaningful in this domain. Section 4 then describes cases of multiple target and multiple controller agreement, which are straightforwardly analyzed if the relation relevant to agreement is sisterhood, but less so under the standard conceptions of subject-verb agreement. Section 5 sketches a number of phenomena related to the morphological realization of agreement, supporting the idea that the verb is not directly involved in subject agreement. Finally, in section 6, the proposal regarding subject-verb agreement is placed within the context of a general theory of dependency as a function of Merge.

2. Basic properties of subject-verb agreement We speak of subject-verb agreement when the form of the verb varies in accordance with the value of a feature of the subject, as in English (4): (4) a. John loves Mary b. John and Bill love Mary The subject DPs John and John and Bill in (4) have a [person] and [number] feature, with the feature values 3, singular for John and 3, plural for John and Bill, and the verb love has a form loves used when the subject is 3, singular and a form love used elsewhere. It is important to realize that the features [person] and [number] are inherently present on noun phrases (DPs), in the sense that the feature values assist in reference regardless of syntactic context. In contrast, the features [person] and [number] appear on verbs only in the context of subject-verb agreement, and have no referential function (outside the phenomenon of pluractionality, where verbs take on derivational morphology to refer to iterated or frequent events; cf. Corbett 2000, chapter 8). Hence there is a need to distinguish between inherent and relational features, the latter apparently present only to mark a dependency. It follows that subject-verb agreement is inherently asymmetric (Corbett 2003:118, pace Chung 1998:178). There is a clear division between an antecedent (or controller, on which the relevant features are inherent) and a dependent (or target, where the features are relational). This conclusion is remarkably at odds with the dominant view in

Chapter 11. Local agreement

the typological literature, which (following Nichols 1986) describes the subject as the dependent in the subject-verb agreement relation. In this tradition, however, dependency is defined in terms of selection (among other criteria), and no distinction is made between the subject qua external argument of the verb/predicate and the subject qua grammatical function at the clause level. We take the distinction between argument roles and grammatical functions to be well-established (a subject may be an internal argument, as in passive constructions, or an argument of a more deeply embedded predicate, as in raising constructions), and subject-verb agreement appears to be sensitive to grammatical functions rather than argument roles. In other words, a subject may show agreement with a verb that does not select the subject as one of its arguments. Another problem associated with the idea that the subject is a dependent in the subject-verb agreement relation is that consistent ‘dependent-marking’ languages (according to the definition of Nichols 1986) standardly display ‘head-marking’ grammar when it comes to subject-verb agreement. A definition of dependency in terms of inherent vs. relational features does not suffer from these problems: no connection with predicate-argument relations is presupposed, and subject-verb agreement is expected in consistently dependent-marking languages (see Zwart 2005 for more fundamental discussion of this point). Equally important seems to be the generalization that the predicate in the vast majority of the world’s languages follows the subject (the only sizeable group of exceptions being constituted by consistent VSO languages). I take this observation to suggest that dependency in grammar is universally coded in linear order, with the dependent following the antecedent. We return to this generalization in section 6. Subject-verb agreement does not require adjacency between the subject and the verb. In fact, the verb may be directly right adjacent to the subject (5a), following the subject at greater distance (5b), or even precede the subject (5c). (5) a. b. c.

V

SUBJ SUBJ SUBJ

(*XP) (XP)

V V

These cases may cooccur in a single language, as illustrated in (6) for Dutch. (6) a.

Jan kust Marie John kiss-sg Mary ‘John kisses Mary.’ b. ..dat Jan Marie kust that John Mary kiss-sg ‘..that John kisses Mary.’ c. Waarom kust Jan Marie ? why kiss-sg John Mary ‘Why does John kiss Mary?’

321

322 Jan-Wouter Zwart

Since the order of subject and object remains constant in (6), it is reasonable to suppose that the pattern is explained by some amount of mobility of the verb (verb movement). The relevance of these observations to the basics of subject-verb agreement is the following. Suppose a language had only the pattern in (5a/6a), where the verb is rightadjacent to the subject, as pictured in (7), where α = the subject and γ = the verb. (7)

XP α

β (=X’) γ (=X)

In that case it would be impossible to tell whether subject-verb agreement is a relation between α and γ directly, or between α and β, spelled out on γ. Suppose, however, that the language only has the pattern in (5b/6b), pictured in (8), where δ = the verb. (8)

XP α

β (=X’) γ (=X) ...

δ

...

In this situation, it is still possible to maintain that subject-verb agreement involves a relation between α and β, spelled out on δ, but not (as easily) that it involves a relation between α and γ. Similarly, then, with languages like Dutch which feature both (5a) and (5b). Finally, the case of (5c)/(6c) need not detract from the idea that subject-verb agreement involves a relation between α and β, since nothing excludes that δ, the element spelling out the relation between α and β, has a life of its own requiring it to move to a position to the left of the antecedent α. In other words, it would appear that the generalization that covers all instances of subject-verb agreement is the one that defines subject-verb agreement as the expression, on a term of the dependent, of a dependency relation between an antecedent and its sister. Parametric variation may then be formulated in terms of whether the relation between α and β in (8) is spelled out on an element at the edge of the dependent, γ, yielding the impression of a specifier-head relation, or on some other term of the dependent, δ.

Chapter 11. Local agreement 323

3. Standard approaches to agreement 3.1 Specifier-head agreement The idea that agreement involves specifier-head configurations is probably due to Kayne’s (1989) discussion of past participle agreement in Romance, and received a strong boost after the publication of Pollock’s (1989) article on the layered structure of IP (the functional domain associated with tense and agreement). Kayne discussed the contrast in (9), where the past participle agrees with a displaced internal argument (9a), but not with an internal argument in situ (9b), and proposed the structure in (10) for (9a), in which agreement is defined locally between (a trace of) the displaced element and an empty AGR(eement) head. (9) a.

Paul les a repeintes Paul them has repainted-f.pl ‘Paul repainted them.’ b. Paul a repeint(*es) les chaises Paul has repaint(-f.pl) the chairs ‘Paul repainted the chairs.’

(10) Paul lesi a [e]i AGRi repeintes [e]i The leftmost empty element and the element marked AGR were subsequently considered to instantiate a specifier-head agreement relation, providing the model for the description of all types of agreement relations in the functional domain in the years to come. As Kayne notes, the specifier-head agreement relation in (10) is itself modeled on the then current description of finite verb agreement, where the subject and the finite verb (auxiliary in English) are taken to be in a specifier-head configuration in IP (AgrSP): (11) a. John has seen Mary b. Johni [INFL has ]i seen Mary As noted elsewhere by Kayne (Kayne 2000:195), it is not so clear that John and has in (11) are in a local specifier-head configuration, because the two can be separated by adverbs: (12) John probably has not seen Mary Assuming adverbs to be either adjoined to maximal projections, or, with Cinque (1999), to be located in the specifier position of a designated AdverbPhrase (AdvP), it follows that John must be in the specifier position of a different functional head than the one occupied by has: (13) [FP John F [AdvP probably ADV [FP [F has ] [ not seen Mary ]]]]

324 Jan-Wouter Zwart

Thus, the parallel treatment of past participle agreement and finite verb agreement, which is in itself desirable, does not automatically lead to a model in which all agreement involves local specifier-head configurations. This raises the question of whether the situation of English, where the verb need never be adjacent to the subject it agrees with, could not be described in terms of a specifier-head configuration established in covert syntax (at LF). But there are several problems with that idea. First, since relational agreement features are not relevant to interpretation, verb movement for agreement purposes could not be triggered at LF. Secondly, since relational agreement is relevant at PF, verb movement for agreement purposes should in fact have been triggered earlier (cf. Chomsky 1995: 385 fn 50). Thirdly, there is reason to believe that the lexical verb is contained in a VP which has itself moved to a specifier position. Consider this final argument in more detail. As noted by Cinque (1999:178 fn 57) and Koster (2000), the position of manner adverbs in English (cf. (14a)), in conjunction with the obligatory verb-object adjacency, suggests that the entire VP has been displaced to the left (14b). (14) a. John did it fast b. John [VP did it ]i fast ti Given our current understanding of phrase structure, this implies that the VP is sitting in a specifier position (we ignore the possibility that the verb and its complement have each been moved individually, as nothing can intervene between the two). There is reason to believe that this would impede movement of the lexical verb (which we know does not take place in English). Head movement is subject to the strictest conditions of locality, so we would expect it to obey the Condition on Extraction Domains of Huang (1982), prohibiting displacement out of non-complements. This suggests that head movement at LF of the lexical verb out of a shifted VP to a position closer to the subject would not be allowed by locality conditions on movement. This, too, argues against covert movement of the verb in English in order to establish a specifier-head configuration with the subject. In all, then, it seems that English simply has subject-verb agreement at a distance. Subject-verb agreement in English, then, can hardly serve as a model for the general specifier-head agreement relation introduced in connection with past participle agreement in French (cf. (10)). However, continuing on Kayne’s lead, that past participle agreement and finite verb agreement should be treated alike, another approach suggests itself. Consider the possibility that a displaced internal argument (les in (9a)) is in some sense to be regarded as the ‘subject’ of the past participle, and that this subject relation is spelled out morphologically in the form of concord. We then expect the agreement marking to appear on the participle (since no other candidate is available). Crucially, the internal argument of the participle can only be interpreted as the participle’s subject if it is displaced and merged to the projection of the participle (‘externalized’). Thus, if agree-

Chapter 11. Local agreement 325

ment spells out the subject relation, it is expected to occur in (9a) but not in (9b). All of this leads to the conclusion that, even though agreement, like all grammatical relations, must be strictly local (ideally applying between sisters only), the element on which agreement with the subject is spelled out may be quite far removed from the subject (as long as it is contained in the subject’s sister).

3.2 AGREE The mechanism of subject-verb agreement by c-command (‘AGREE’) proposed by Chomsky (1998) is apparently designed to deal with agreement in expletive constructions of the type in (15): (15) a. There is a man in the room b. There are several people in the room Here, the form of the verb is/are varies in accordance with the [person]/[number] features of a man/several people further to the right (the ‘associate’). It is assumed that the expletive there occupies the structural subject position, a specifier position associated with the functional head T (tense), which contains is/are and c-commands the constituent a man/several people in the room: (16)

TP there

T’ T is a man in the room several people in the room

T is related (via c-command) to the associate DP a man/several people, licensing its case and checking its agreement features. The mechanism presupposes that T hosts a set of unvalued [person]/[number] features, which are valued by the relation of T with the associate. From our perspective, the idea that T hosts [person]/[number] features is curious. Agreement features on T could only be relational, but T itself only serves to mediate between the associate and the verb, which only happens to occupy T in (15): in other constructions, like (17), the verb is not taken to occupy the T-position, and T stands alone, determining the morphology of the verb via c-command: (17) a. There t seems to be a man in the room b. There t seem to be several people in the room What is special about the case of expletive constructions is that what appears to be

326 Jan-Wouter Zwart

the dependent (the verb) precedes the antecedent (the associate). But a derivational approach to dependency relations requires us to ask whether the order dependent-associate applies throughout the derivation. If we look at comparable constructions in Dutch, we note that there may indeed be a stage in the derivation of expletive constructions where the associate precedes the verb. Consider the pair of sentences in (18). (18) a.

Er waren veel mensen in de tuin there be:past.pl many people in the garden ‘There were many people in the garden.’ b. ..dat er veel mensen in de tuin waren that there many people in the garden be:past.pl ‘..that there were many people in the garden.’

The independent clause (18a) is comparable to English (15b), with plural agreement on a verb preceding the associate. But embedded clauses in Dutch are taken to involve less verb movements than independent finite clauses. In particular, the verb, which occupies a VP-external position in (18a) is taken to still occupy a VP-internal position in embedded clauses like (18b)(Den Besten 1977, Zwart 1993). It follows that the verb in (18b) is a term of a sister of the associate veel mensen ‘many people’: (19)

XP veel mensen

YP

...

waren ...

The position of the verb in (18a), preceding the associate, may then be described as comparable in relevant respects to the position of the verb in (6c): the term of YP spelling out the agreement relation between veel mensen and YP in (18b)/(19) may be forced to move to the left of veel mensen by factors independent of subject-verb agreement. Crucially, once the agreement relation is forged at some point in the derivation, it cannot be undone by additional operations. The Dutch counterpart to the more complicated construction (17) has essentially the same properties: (20) a.

Er schijn-en veel mensen in de tuin te zijn there seem-pl many people in the garden to be:inf ‘There seem to be many people in the garden.’ b. ..dat er veel mensen in de tuin schijn-en te zijn that there many people in the garden seem-pl to be:inf ‘..that there seem to be many people in the garden.’

In the stage of the derivation represented by the embedded clause (20b), the associ-

Chapter 11. Local agreement 327

ate veel mensen ‘many people’ is merged to the constituent YP = in de tuin schijnen te zijn ‘seem to be in the garden’, which has as one of its terms the verb schijnen ‘seem’ which spells out the agreement relation between the associate and its dependent YP (cf. (19)). These facts from Dutch lead us to suppose that in English expletive constructions, too, the associate is at some point in the derivation merged with a constituent containing the agreeing verb (is/are in (15), seem/seems in (17)), perhaps via the leftward Thematization/Extraction operation proposed by Chomsky (2001:20). At any rate, we may conclude that for Dutch, the AGREE mechanism is not needed to account for subject-verb agreement in expletive constructions. Since any deviation from the simple system of agreement as a function of sisterhood must be well-motivated, it would seem that the facts of English still require more analysis. The mechanism of agreement via c-command has since shown its use in the description of the typologically rare ‘cross-clausal agreement’ phenomenon (Polinsky and Potsdam 2001, Branigan and MacKenzie 2002). In these cases, a verb selecting a complement clause shows agreement with an argument contained within the complement clause (example from Polinsky and Potsdam 2001:584): (21) enir užā magalu bāc’rułi b-ixyo III-know mother boy bread.III:abs ate ‘The mother knows the boy ate the bread.’

(Tsez)

In the example in (21), the matrix verb bixyo ‘knows’ shows noun class agreement with the object of the embedded clause magalu ‘bread’. Polinsky and Potsdam (2001) observe that this cross-clausal agreement takes place only when the embedded clause object is a topic, which they take to imply that the object moves to the edge of the embedded clause covertly, a position from which it would be accessible as a target in the AGREE relation with the matrix verb (assuming the phase-based theory of locality of Chomsky 2001). On these assumptions, then, cross-clausal agreement would be another instance of agreement via c-command (3). It is, however, not clear that standard subject-verb agreement should be modeled after cross-clausal agreement. There are a number of differences: cross-clausal agreement is generally optional, while standard subject-verb agreement is obligatory; cross-clausal agreement appears to be A’-agreement (i.e. agreement with a particular quantificational or discourse-sensitive element, in this case a topic), while subjectverb agreement is not; cross-clausal agreement is restricted in type (gender in Tsez), whereas subject-verb agreement is not so restricted (it is to be noted that noun class agreement in some Dagestanian languages, like Hunzib, exists side by side with ordinary subject-verb agreement: the former follows absolutive alignment, whereas the latter follows accusative alignment, cf. (24)); and finally, standard subject-verb agreement is strictly local. It might be, then, that the proposal advanced here applies to local agreement only, whereas other mechanisms are involved with nonstandard, nonlocal types of agreement. We leave this for further study.

328 Jan-Wouter Zwart

4. Some comparative aspects of subject-verb agreement Both current conceptions of subject-verb agreement (in a specifier-head configuration or via c-command) take the phenomenon to involve a bi-unique relation. We observe, however, that a subject may trigger agreement on more than one category (section 4.1) and that a verb may spell out agreement with more than one antecedent (section 4.2). Both phenomena are easily described within the framework pursued here. Multipletarget agreement is just a variation on standard lexicalization patterns of the agreement relation. Multiple-source agreement occurs where a single element is required to spell out two dependencies at a time, yielding matching effects.

4.1 Multiple target agreement It is well-known that the subject in Bantu languages may trigger agreement on a variety of elements (in the so-called compound tenses). The following is an illustration from Swahili (Carstens 2003:395; Bantu languages show noun class agreement, with the noun classes glossed here in subscript): (22) Juma a-li-kuwa a-ngali a-ki-fanya kazi Juma1 su1-past-be su1-still su1-prog-do work ‘Juma was still working.’

(Swahili)

In a specifier-head analysis of agreement, this would require successive movement of the subject to specifiers of a number of agreement phrases; this would predict special properties of Swahili syntax associated with the movement process, of which I am not aware. In an AGREE analysis, there would have to be a number of functional heads looking for the subject to valuate their features. The problem here would be that feature valuation of T is supposed to go hand in hand with case licensing of the subject, and that T can only target a noun phrase with unlicensed case features. In other words, the subject can only be targeted once, which entails that agreement can only be realized once. On our approach, the Bantu multiple agreement could simply be described as multiple spell-out of the dependency in (23): (23) [ Juma ]  [ alikuwa angali akifanya kazi ] This requires a theory of dependency marking, some of which is discussed in section 5.

4.2 Multiple source agreement An obvious case of multiple-source agreement is provided by Hunzib, where the verb agrees in [person] with the subject (whether ergative or absolutive), and in [noun class] with the absolutive (whether subject or object)(data from Van den Berg 1995:83):

Chapter 11. Local agreement 329

(24) a.

mә b-ok’o.l-čo heλe 2sg iv-gather-pres:/ walnutIV:abs ‘you gather nuts’ b. oλu-l b-ok’o.l-Ø heλe dem:obl-erg iv-gather-pres walnutIV:abs ‘(s)he gathers nuts’

(Hunzib)

These and other cases where a verb expresses agreement with both the subject and the object can be described without too many problems in the current approaches to agreement. In the specifier-head approach, the verb can be assumed to move through (or be otherwise associated with) the functional heads involved in agreement with the subject and the object. In the c-command approach, a single head (T) may be probing for various target noun phrases to get its features valued (assuming locality problems can somehow be solved). In the agreement by sisterhood approach suggested here, multiple-source agreement involves a configuration like (25), with two antecedents α1 and α2 and two corresponding dependents β1 and β2, and an element δ contained within both β1 and β2 spelling out both dependencies. (25) α1

β1 α2

β2

...

δ

...

In the Hunzib examples in (24), α1 is the subject, α2 the absolutive, and δ the verb (which may end up in between α1 and α2 as a result of head movement). In these examples, the two antecedents each contribute different features (α1 [person] and α2 [noun class]), so that no conflict arises. However, when the two antecedents contribute different values of the same features, we expect matching effects to show up if the agreement relations are spelled out by a single element. I believe that this is instantiated in the well-known Kimball-Aissen facts illustrated in (26)(Kimball and Aissen 1971, Kayne 2000): (26) the people who Clark think-(s) are in the garden Speakers who accept (26) with think apparently allow the plural value of who to interfere with the agreement relation between the (singular) subject Clark and the verb thinks. A cyclic (derivational) approach to these facts was already suggested by Kimball and Aissen (1971:242). On our terms, the analysis involves the establishment of two dependencies as in (25), and hence two feature sharing events. The

330 Jan-Wouter Zwart

question is why the feature singular of α2 (Clark) is not taken to conflict with the feature plural of α1. As can be observed, think is a matching +singular, +plural form as long as we are willing to ignore the feature [person]. The absence of a matching effect when the subject is a pronoun, which is inherently marked for [person], illustrated in (27), suggests that the Kimball-Aissen effect is indeed the result of assigning an unmarked [person] feature to the subject (or, alternatively, of sharing an unmarked [person] feature in the dependency relation of the subject and its sister). (27) the people who she think-*(s) are in the garden It follows that when the subject is plural and the wh-phrase singular, the only acceptable verb form is the plural think (thinks is not a matching +singular, +plural form): (28) the man who the girls think-(*s) is in the garden Kayne (2000) pursues an analysis of these facts while adhering to the concept of agreement via a specifier-head configuration of the subject with a functional head AGR. The analysis ascribes the optionality in (26) to the different movements the functional head AGR may undergo: lowering to V would yield the inflected verb thinks, whereas raising of AGR to C would leave in V the bare infinitive think. However, the KimballAissen effect shows up in C as well as in V, as can be seen in wh-questions where the auxiliary moves to C: (29) a. Which girls do/does the boy think should be invited ? b. * Which girl do/*does the boys think should be invited ? Moreover, on the analysis of Continental West-Germanic complementizer agreement of Zwart (1993), where complementizer agreement is taken to be the effect of AGR-toC raising, we are led to believe that movement of AGR to C does not lead to infinitive morphology on the verb (example from East-Netherlandic, Van Haeringen 1958): (30) ..dat-te wy speul-t / *speul-n that-pl we play-pl / play-inf

(East Netherlandic Dutch)

It is not clear how the Kimball-Aissen facts should be handled in the AGREE approach to subject-verb agreement. More specifically, it is not clear how in (26) valuation of the [person]/[number] features of the T associated with think (through its c-command relation to the subject) should be affected by the features of who – which, at the relevant point of the derivation, is the subject of the embedded clause, an element which is not reported to yield similar effects (nor should it, since the embedded subject has its case-features licensed, which should make it invisible to the probe T on Chomsky’s assumptions): (31) Clark think-*(s) the people are in the garden

Chapter 11. Local agreement

Another case of multiple-source agreement is arguably instantiated by Standard Arabic defective verb agreement in Verb-Subject orders (cf. Aoun, Benmamoun and Sportiche 1994): (32) a.

Subject-Verb ʔal-ʔawlaad-u naamuu / *naama the-children-nom slept:.m.pl / *.m.sg b. Verb-Subject naama l-ʔawlaad-u slept:3.m.sg the-children-nom Both: ‘The children slept.’

(Standard Arabic)

As can be seen, when the verb precedes the subject, it gets a default 3sg realization. This effect is absent when the subject is a pronoun (33), suggesting that [number] is somehow more prominent on pronouns than on nonpronominal noun phrases (perhaps because [number] is an intrinsic feature of pronouns; Aoun et al. 1994:209, Bahloul and Harbert 1992:23). (33) a.

hum naamuu / *naama they slept:.m.pl / .m.sg b. naamuu / *naama hum slept:.m.pl / .m.sg they Both: ‘They slept.’

(Standard Arabic)

We may then follow the analysis of Aoun et al (1994), suggesting that the verb in the Verb-Subject constructions is in INFL (T), not in C, and that the subject position in those cases is occupied by an empty expletive (Aoun et al 1994:200f argue against empty subjects with a full set of features, not against empty expletives). Since expletives have a default [number] feature with value singular, the facts follow if default [number] overrides nonintrinsic [number] (i.e. [number] on nonpronominal noun phrases), but not the intrinsic [number] on pronouns. If so, the Verb-Subject orders again show the dependencies in (25), with α1 = the empty expletive and α2 = the subject noun phrase, and δ is the verb contained within the two sister constituents of α1 and α2. The verb, then, is forced to spell out the conflicting [number] features of the expletive and the subject, and settles the conflict depending on whether the [number] features of the subject are intrinsic or not. (With [gender], no conflict arises, assuming expletives to lack a gender feature.) Again, the agreement via c-command (AGREE) approach seems ill-equipped to deal with this kind of phenomenon. Since expletives, on the analysis of Chomsky (2001), are inserted in the specifier position of TP in order to satisfy the requirement that clauses have a subject (the ‘EPP-requirement’), they are not c-commanded by T and should not affect the valuation of the [number] feature of T. (And if no expletive is assumed, it is unclear why the ordering of the subject and the verb should matter, since only T, not the verb, is directly involved in the agreement relation.)

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One suspects that many more such multiple-source agreement phenomena could be found. (Another potential case is that of Icelandic defective agreement in constructions with quirky case subjects discussed in Sigurðsson 2000.)

5. The realization of agreement The phenomena discussed in the previous section (multiple spell-out, matching effects) raise the question of how agreement, viewed as a dependency relation between sisters, may be spelled out. We can treat this question only briefly here. First, if agreement is the expression of a dependency between the subject and its sister, we expect a range of elements to be eligible for spell-out of the features involved. And although the verb (or an auxiliary) is by far the most common carrier of agreement features, other patterns do occur. Not uncommon is the expression of agreement by a personal pronoun, arguably a phrasal clitic, as in the Khasi dialects discussed in Nagaraja (1997: 349, 352, 355; glosses adapted based on Rabel 1961; in (34a), sa is a definiteness marker used with the future tense, and ya a marker preceding objects): (34) a.

Standard Khasi u briew u n sa pīn-yap ya u bseñ sg.masc man he will def cause-die obj sg.masc snake ‘The man will kill a snake.’ b. Bhoi variety u bru laʔ pәn-yәp u u psñ sg.masc man past cause-die he sg.masc snake ‘The man killed a snake.’ c. Nongtung variety u bru pīnyap psәñ u sg.masc man cause-die snake he ‘The man killed a snake.’

The examples show agreement expressed by a third person singular masculine pronoun u appearing in various positions in different varieties of Khasi: between the subject and the auxiliary (34a), after the main verb (34b), or after the object (34c). The variable placement of the agreement marker across Khasi dialects indicates that agreement may be expressed by an element loosely associated with the predicate (i.e., not an inflectional affix to the verb). On our view, u in each variety illustrated in (34) spells out the [person]/[gender] features which the subject ‘the man’ shares with its sister. Agreement phenomena of this type are expected if agreement is a feature sharing relation between sisters. It is not uncommon to think of agreement by inflection as originating with the pronoun agreement type illustrated in (34) (e.g. Givón 1976). More exotic is the phenomenon of Coahuilteco, where agreement with the subject is spelled out on the object (Troike 1981:663):

Chapter 11. Local agreement 333

(35) a.

Dios tupo˙-n naxo-xt’˙wal god dem-agrs pl:su-annoy ‘We annoyed god.’ b. Dios tupo˙-m xa-ka˙wa xo god dem-agrs su-love aux ‘Do you love god?’

wako˙ (Coahuilteco) caus e? q

As Troike shows, the agreement can be spelled out more than once, suggesting that this is not cliticization of the object agreement morpheme of the verb onto a preceding noun phrase (1981:663): san (36) na-pa-xa˙m a-p-sa˙ apa˙-m uxwa˙l’ tukwe˙-m xa˙-pa-ču˙ 1sg-soul dem-agrs sky dem-agrs su-sub-carry fut ‘(that) you will carry my soul to heaven’ Facts like these might be taken to indicate that agreement is a relation between the subject and its sister, with language particular settings determining on which of the subject’s sister’s terms the agreement features are going to be spelled out. Significantly, the agreement relation in Coahuilteco is asymmetric in the sense that the subject never shows agreement with the object (Troike 1981:669). This raises the question why the expression of subject agreement on other noun phrases is so limited. I believe that two considerations might be pertinent here. First, one might think that relational features are preferably spelled out on elements that do not carry the same features inherently. The Cohuilteco objects in (35) are remarkable in that they are inherently third person, and are additionally marked for first or second person. Since verbs have no inherent person or number feature, they are perfectly eligible for spelling out person/number agreement. Second, one might reason that languages do in fact spell out the dependency of the sister’s subject on a noun phrase, but use a different mode of expression for it, namely case. Importantly, the subject case (in nominative/accusative languages) is more properly characterized as a non-case, or, as Jakobson (1935) put it, a marker that betrays no dependency. Conversely, the accusative case is taken to mark dependency. While Jakobson took the accusative case to mark dependency of the object towards the verb, we, from our perspective, might say that the accusative case expresses the dependency relation between the subject and its sister on a noun phrase contained within the subject’s sister. To see this, consider the role of the accusative case in Dutch. Here, the accusative is a pure structural case, marking the grammatical function ‘object’ at the clause level, rather than a local dependency between a verb and its internal argument. This can be seen most clearly in ‘exceptional case-marking’ constructions like (37): (37) ..dat ik hem niet zag lopen that sg:nom sg:masc:acc not see:past:sg walk:inf ‘..that I did not see him walk.’

(Dutch)

334 Jan-Wouter Zwart

In (37), hem ‘him’ is the external argument of lopen ‘walk’, and it is realized to the left of the matrix clause negation niet ‘not’, suggesting it is part of the matrix clause. On our view, there is a dependency between the subject ik ‘I’ and its sister, which is spelled out twice: as number agreement on the verb, and as accusative case on hem: (38) [ ik ]



[ hem niet zag lopen ]

A crucial aspect of this approach to case is that the expression of dependency is sensitive to the organization of the morphological paradigm (in other words, that case realization is a PF-phenomenon): the dependent case can be used to mark dependency if it occurs in opposition to the default case. We also predict, then, that case-marking will not be available as a dependency marking device as soon as the subject has an inherent case (e.g. the quirky case of Icelandic and the ergative case in ergative languages). In these cases, the object shows the unmarked case (nominative in Icelandic, absolutive in ergative languages). (See Yip, Maling and Jackendoff 1987 for discussion of such effects, and Nash 1995 for the idea that ergative is an inherent case.) Another question related to the spell-out of agreement concerns the order of agreement morphemes. As Baker (1985) shows, object agreement morphemes tend to be closer to the verb stem than subject agreement morphemes – actually a matter of principle for Baker, but a mere tendency if we take typological surveys such as Julien (2000:364) to be representative. On our view, this ties in with the generalization that subjects tend to be in a structurally higher position than objects. Adopting a derivational view of the grammar, with an operation Merge building structure from the bottom up, this means that the object is merged to the structure at an earlier stage in the derivation than the subject, and that the dependency relation between the object and its sister is forged before the dependency relation between the subject and its sister is. If the verb then happens to spell-out both dependencies in its morphology, we can describe the unmarked morpheme order as the one that reflects the order in which the dependencies are created. One type of agreement realization is quite unexpected from the perspective adopted here, namely the complementizer agreement phenomenon of many Continental West-Germanic dialects, illustrated in (30). The problem here is that the complementizer is not (at any point in the derivation) a term of the subject’s sister. In previous work, I have argued that complementizer agreement reflects movement of a functional head AGR to C (Zwart 1993), or covert verb movement to C (Zwart 2001). The former approach is no longer available under the assumptions entertained here, and the latter somewhat suspect in its capitalizing on covert operations. My present suspicion is that complementizer agreement is a secondary process, where the complementizer takes on morphology on analogy with the form of the inverted auxiliary when followed by a clitic (a theory proposed by Goeman 2000; see also Kathol 2001 and Zwart 2005):

Chapter 11. Local agreement

(39) East Netherlandic Dutch a. no inversion:

wy we b. inversion with clitic: wil-le want-pl:inv c. complementizer with clitic: dat-te wy that-pl we

wil-t want-pl ‘we want’ wy we ‘we want’ wil-t want-pl ‘..that we want’

Cases of complementizer agreement where the subject is not a clitic would then have to be the result of a generalization of the pattern. As Goeman notes, this hypothesis explains the morphology of those cases of complementizer agreement where the complementizer agreement morpheme is not identical to the subject agreement morpheme, as illustrated in (30). This scenario is furthermore supported by an observation in Van Koppen (2003), where it is shown that complementizers may show first conjunct agreement (agreement with the first member of a coordinated subject), but inverted auxiliaries (or verbs) may not (examples from Tegelen Dutch, slightly adapted from Van Koppen’s handout): (40) a.

Ich dink de-s [ doow en ich] ôs ken-ne treffe I think that-2sg you and I us can-pl meet:inf ‘I think that you and I can meet.’ (Tegelen Dutch) b. Ken-ne/*-s [ doow en Marie] uch treffe ? can-pl/sg you and Mary you:pl meet:inf ‘Can you and Mary meet ?’

If complementizer agreement is the result of analogy, one might expect overgeneralization to occur. The pattern in (40) seems to indicate just that: the complementizer takes on the form required when followed by a second person pronoun, regardless of phrase structural constraints. (Note that this voids one of the arguments against an AGR-to-C analysis of the Kimball-Aissen facts discussed in section 4.)

6. Dependency as a function of Merge I have argued in the preceding that subject-verb agreement is best described as a dependency relation between the subject and its sister, spelled out on one of the subject’s sister’s terminals. In this closing section, I would like to adress some wider implications of this view of subject-verb agreement. A question that arises at this point is why subject-verb agreement takes the form it does, with the subject sharing some or all of its inherent features with its sister, and not the other way around. One could imagine that the subject’s sister has certain features inherently, perhaps having to do with tense or aspect or event type, which are realized by way of agreement on the subject. Yet this is not the common realization of subject

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336 Jan-Wouter Zwart

agreement, if it exists at all (for example, in languages where noun phrases are marked for propositional tense, the subject is not singled out as the element marking tense agreement; Katrin Naude, personal communication). I would like to suggest that subject agreement is realized the way it is because the computational system of human language invariably marks dependency as a function of Merge, in such a way that when an element α is newly merged to an existing derivation β, β is turned into a dependent of α. In other words, Merge is to be defined as an asymmetric operation creating a pair of sisters which encodes dependency uniformly and automatically (Zwart 2004). As noted above, a subject α, merging to a constituent β may be externalized from β. In that case the element that becomes the subject is a term of the element it eventually merges with. It follows that the subject merges with a constituent which was already present in the derivation. In other words, the subject’s sister is ‘old’, in terms of the derivational history, whereas the subject is newly added (whether externalized or not). More generally, the ‘old’ element in the operation Merge is the current stage of the derivation. The ‘new’ element is the element being merged to the derivation. This allows us to characterize dependency provisionally in terms of the history of the derivation, as in (41): (41) Merge turns the current stage of the derivation into a dependent. The strongest hypothesis, then, would appear to be that all dependency relations are created by Merge, i.e. characterized by asymmetric sisterhood relations. In this context it is perhaps interesting to return to the hypothesis advanced in Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch (2002), according to which the faculty of language (in a narrow sense) is uniquely characterized by the capacity to perform recursive operations. Minimally, then, what seems to be needed in the characterization of the faculty of language is the iterative application of a structure generating procedure like Merge. This hypothesis has been criticized by Pinker and Jackendoff (2005) as ignoring many aspects of natural language which cannot be ascribed to the ability to perform recursive operations. In this connection Pinker and Jackendoff mention agreement phenomena as a case in point. However, the question to ask is whether agreement can be described as a function of Merge, and we have argued here that subject-verb agreement certainly can. To be precise, we argued that subject agreement on the verb is just the morphological realization of a dependency relation which does not involve the verb directly, but rather the subject’s sister, which contains the verb (at the relevant point in the derivation). We furthermore argued that this dependency relation between the subject and its sister exists as a consequence of the application of the operation Merge, which determines the division of roles (dependent vs. nondependent) in a principled way (in terms of the history of the derivation, see (41)). In other words, at least agreement, and perhaps other phenomena expressing dependency, may plausibly be regarded as a function of Merge. To appreciate this re-

Chapter 11. Local agreement 337

sult in terms of evolutionary biology, we might ask the following question: supposing other species were to suddenly master, as the result of some evolutionary development, the ability to perform recursive operations (and, more pointedly, to apply them to communication), would we then expect the language of these species to develop agreement phenomena automatically, or would that require another evolutionary leap? If I am correct in this article, all it takes, in addition to Merge, to introduce agreement is the need and ability to mark asymmetries, i.e. to express information.

7.

Conclusion

In this article I have argued that agreement, more particularly subject-verb agreement, is a relation between sisters, hence a function of the basic structure building operation Merge. Crucially, neither the verb nor any functional heads are directly involved in the agreement relation. The verb merely spells out the features involved in the agreement relation, by virtue of the circumstance that the verb is a term of the subject’s sister (at the relevant point of the derivation). Functional heads are not seen to be relevant to the agreement phenomena studied here at all, except inasmuch as they serve a similar spell-out function as the verb (in the case of auxiliaries, for example). It follows that agreement does not involve feature checking or elimination, but feature sharing, in an asymmetric fashion: a nondependent (the subject) shares a feature with the dependent, its sister. It also follows that verb movement cannot be described as related to the need to check or eliminate the features involved in subject-verb agreement (let alone to pick up the relevant affixes). If the verb is to be involved in agreement at all (which is not universally the case), it plays the role it plays by virtue of its being a term of the subject’s sister. This resolves all kinds of problems having to do with verbs not occupying the head position of the projection hosting the subject in its specifier position in overt syntax (e.g. in embedded clauses in languages like Dutch/German and Mainland Scandinavian, or in English clauses more generally). Finally, the probe-goal system of agreement advocated in Chomsky (2001), involving agreement by c-command, is incompatible with the view of agreement advanced here, mainly because it crucially involves the subject as a dependent of a functional head T. One consequence of the analysis of agreement advanced here is that subjectverb agreement is an instance of dependent marking, leading us to conclude that head inflection is not a reliable diagnostics for head marking of dependency relations (contra Nichols 1986; see Zwart 2005 for more extensive discussion). Another consequence is that, if subject-verb agreement may serve as the model dependency relation, a case can be made that dependency is a function of the structure building operation Merge, in the sense that every constituent (more precisely, every current stage of the derivation) is automatically turned into a dependent as soon as some other constituent is merged to it.

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References Aoun, J., E. Benmamoun and D. Sportiche. 1994. Agreement, word order, and conjunction in some varieties of Arabic. Linguistic Inquiry 25: 195-220. Bahloul, M. and W. Harbert.1992. Agreement asymmetries in Arabic. Proceedings of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 11: 15-51. Baker, M.C. 1985. The Mirror Principle and morphosyntactic explanation. Linguistic Inquiry 16: 373-415. Berg, H. van den. 1995. A Grammar of Hunzib. PhD dissertation,University of Leiden. Besten, H. den. 1977. On the interaction of root transformations and lexical deletive rules. Ms., MIT and University of Amsterdam. [Published in Studies in West-Germanic syntax, dissertation, University of Tilburg, 1989.] Branigan, P. and M. MacKenzie. 2002. Altruism, A’-movement, and object agreement in Innuaimûn. Linguistic Inquiry 33: 385-407. Carstens, V. 2003. Rethinking complementizer agreement: Agree with a case-checked goal. Linguistic Inquiry 34: 393-412. Chomsky, N. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Chomsky, N. 1998. Minimalist inquiries: The framework. MIT Occasional Papers in Linguistics 15. Chomsky, N. 2001. Derivation by phase. In Ken Hale: A life in language, M. Kenstowicz (ed.), 1-52. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Chung, S. 1998. The Design of Agreement: Evidence from Chamorro. Chicago IL: The University of Chicago Press. Cinque, G. 1999. Adverbs andFunctional Heads. New York NY: OUP. Corbett, G. 2000. Number. Cambridge: CUP. Corbett, G. 2003. Agreement: Terms and boundaries. In The Role of Agreement in Natural Language: TLS 5 proceedings, W.E. Griffin (ed.), 109-121. Austin TX: University of Texas. (http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~tls/) Epstein, S.D. 1995. Un-principled syntax and the derivation of syntactic relations. Ms., Harvard University. [Published in Working minimalism, S.D. Epstein and N. Hornstein (eds), 1999, 317-345. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.] Givón, T. 1976. Topic, pronoun and grammatical agreement. In Subject and topic, C.N. Li (ed.), 149-188. New York NY: Academic Press. Goeman, T. 2000. Structurele aspecten van de morfologie van voegwoordvervoeging: Mogelijkheden en beperkingen, morfologisch gewicht en MCGG. In Nochtans was Scherp van Zin: Huldealbum Hugo Ryckeboer, V. de Tier, M. Devos, and J. van Keymeulen (eds), 269-294. Gent: Department of Dutch Linguistics. van Haeringen, C.B. 1958. Vervoegde voegwoorden in het Oosten. Driemaandelijksche Bladen 10: 115-124. Hauser, M.D., N. Chomsky and W.T. Fitch. 2002. The faculty of language: What is it, who has it, and how did it evolve? Science 298: 1569-1579. Huang, C.-T.J. 1982. Logical Relations in Chinese and the Theory of Grammar. PhD dissertation, MIT. Jakobson, R. 1935. Beitrag zur allgemeinen Kasuslehre. In Selected writings II: 3-15. The Hague: Mouton. Julien, M. 2000. Syntactic Heads and Word Formation: A study of verbal inflection. PhD dissertation, University of Tromsø.

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Author index

A Abney, S 114 Adger, D 46, 57 Aissen, J 43, 65, 329–335 Alboiu, G 19, 23, 27, 35 Alexiadou, A 28, 35, 37–8, 47, 54, 59 Anagnostopoulou, E 7, 45, 46, 51–2, 55, 57, 59, 233 Anderson, S 184, 196, 299 Andrews, A 182, 216 Aoun, J 241–4, 331 Arad, M 47 Aygen, G 66–94 B Babby, L 101, 113, 115, 117 Bach, E 163 Bahloul, M 331 Bailyn, J 101 Baker, M 8, 28, 59, 276, 334 Barðdal, J 224 Barnes, M 302 Barrie, M 35 Bejar, S 7, 29, 46 Belletti, A 2, 192, 224, 287 Benmamoun, E 79, 241–4, 259, 262, 331 Benveniste, E 9, 53 van den Berg, H 328 Bernódusson, H 224 den Besten, H 326 Bianchi, V 45–6, 52, 231 Billings, L 107 Bittner, M 47 Blake, B 303 Bobaljik, J 7, 47–50, 52, 59, 107 Boeckx, C 6, 7, 35, 111, 117, 160, 176, 196, 226, 231, 233, 297, 302 Bok-Bennema, R 47 Bonet, E 7, 45, 52–3, 59

Borer, H 26 Bošković, Ž 101, 103, 107, 108, 109, 112, 113, 114, 116, 117 Branigan, P 7, 48, 52, 327 Brecht, R 281 Bruening, B 44, 55–6

Deny, J 93 Diesing, M 141 Dixon, R 41, 43 Dobrovie-Sorin, C 18, 19, 23, 24 Drury, J 117, 269, 294

C Campbell, R 163, 171 Cardinaletti, A 177, 182 Carstens, V 29, 31, 155, 184, 221, 229, 232, 328 Castillo, J-C 117.n.22 Chierchia, G 94 Chomsky, N 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 13–5, 24, ,25, 29, 47, 49, 56–7, 59, 63–6, 73, 75, 78, 85, 95, 101, 103, 110, 111, 114–7, 122, 126, 127, 136, 137, 160–2, 175–6, 184, 201ff, 206ff, 221, 226, 231, 233, 246–47, 254–55, 258, 267–9, 279–80, 284, 286, 294, 300–3, 318, 319, 324, 325, 327, 330, 331, 336, 337 Chung, S 3, 71, 320 Chvany, C 281 Cinque, G 8, 165, 168, 194, 323–4 Collins, C 155–6, 183, 185, Comrie, B 34, 311 Corbett, G 101, 231, 320 Cornilescu, A 19, 34, 35 Corver, N 281–2 Cowper, E 17, 34 Cuervo, C M 36 Culicover, P 30, 94

E Embick, D 47 Emonds, J 94 Enc, M 79, 80 Epstein, S D 109, 117, 319

D Darzi, A 29 De Hoop, H 274 DeLancey, S 43 Den Dikken, M 167, 169, 194

F Farkas, D 18, 23, 35 Fitch, W T 319, 336 Fortuny, J 231 Frajzyngier, Z 94 Frampton, J 123, 125, 126, 127, 131 Franks, S 101, 102, 104–10, 112–7 Freidin, R 115, 151 Friðjónsson, J 216, 232 Fukui, N 112 G Geber, D 270 George, L 107, 130, 280 George, N 13 Ghomeshi, J 29, 35 Giorgi, A 92 Givón, T 332 Goddard, C 3143 Goeman, T 334–5 Grimshaw, J 315 Grohmann, K K 117 Grosu, A 20, 35 Gutmann, S 123, 125, 126, 127, 131 H Haeberli, E 16

342 Author index Haegeman, L 14, 17, 24, 34 van Haeringen, C B 330 Hale, K 47, 299, 306–9 Halle, M 101 Hallman, P 194 Harbert, W 331 Harbour, D 46, 57 Hauser, M D 319, 336 Hazout, I 175, 194 Heim, I 72, 81, 94 Heinat, F 231 Hill , V 35 Hinzen, W 272 Hiraiwa, K 75, 232 Hróarsdóttir, Th 51, 150, 176–7, 234 Hockett, C 93 Holmberg, A 3, 51, 141, 150, 176–7, 190, 234, 242 Hornstein, N 23, 30, 34, 262, 267, 291–2 Horrocks, G 281 Horvath, J 20 Huang, C-T J 324 Hwang, K 78, 94 I Iatridou, S 66, 86, 88–9 Isac, D 19, 34 J Jackendoff, R 30, 295, 301, 334, 336 Jaeggli, O 8 Jakab, E 17–8, 28 Jakobson, R 333 Jelinek, E 8, 40, 46, 48–9, 54, 59, 306 Jeong, Y 7 John, A 53 Jonas, D 144 Jónsdóttir, M 233 Jónsson, J G 233 Josefsson, G 231 Julien, M 8, 218, 234 K Kamp, H 72, 9472, 94 Kapetangianni, K 35 Kathol, A 334 Kayne, R 2, 3, 7, 24, 45, 53, 160–1, 163, 172, 179, 194, 209, 231, 232, 242, 314, 318,

323, 324, 329–30 Kempchinsky, P 23 Kimball, J 329–330, 335 Kinyallolo, K 155 Kiss, K E 82–3 Koopman, H 3, 105, 160–73, 186, 193, 196 van Koppen, M 335 Kornfilt, J 13, 163–7, 69, 93, 107, 130 Koster, J 324 Koul, O 305 Krapova, Y 18, 35 Kratzer, A 47, 79, 81, 94 Kuno, S 43 Kural, M 66, 75 L Laka, I 47 Landau, I 292 Larson, R 295 Lasnik, H 5, 8, 29, 78, 267–9, 274, 294 Lebeaux, D 116 Ledgeway, A 14, 17, 34 Lees, R 93 Legate, J 127, 137, 156, 300, 303, 306, 308, 310, 314 Leko, N 112 Lieber, R 132 López, L 135, 155, 233 Lyons, J 72, 92 M MacKenzie, M 327 Mahajan, A 47, 161, 263, 301, 305 Maling, J 177, 179–81, 184, 195–6, 224, 233, 301, 334 Manzini, M R 24–5 Martin, R 21, 116–7, 290 Massam, D 29 McCloskey, J 251–54, Mensching, G 87 Miller, G 87 Mistry P J 311–2 Miyagawa, S 66 Mohammad, M 241–42, 245 Moore, J 64 Moravcsik, E 299 Moro, A 167, 175, 194 Motapanyane, V 17, 19, 21, 23, 31, 34, 35

Mulder, J 64 Muysken, P 94 N Nagaraja, K S 332 Nash, D 306, 308, 315 Nash, L 47, 334 Naude, K 336 Neidle, C 101, 105, 111 Nichols, J 321, 337 Nomura, M 232 O Ormazabal, J 45–6 P Pereltsvaig, A 101, 110, 114, 117 Pérez, C 288 Perlmutter, D 7, 45 Pesetsky, D 7, 13, 16, 17, 21, 66, 75, 79–81, 90–2, 101, 105, 115 Pianesi, F 92 Pinker, S 336 Pîrvulescu, M 19, 35 Pittman, C 35 Plann, S 273 Platzack, C 224, 231, 234 Polinsky, M 21, 160, 171–4, 327 Pollock, J-Y 1, 2, 34, 92, 318, 323 Postal, P 5, 53 Portner, P 93 Potsdam, E 21, 160, 171–4, 327 Pullum, G 65 R Rabel, L 332 Rakhlin, N 101, 113 Raposo, E 14–5, 17, 67, 83–6, 91, 95, 276, 292 Rappaport, G 101 Reuland, E 87 Richards, N 51, 55 van Riemsdijk, H 24, 94, 231 Ritter, E 53 Rivero, M L 19, 233, 270 Rizzi, L 8, 21, 24, 93, 160, 194, 228 Rögnvaldsson, E 221 Romero, J 45–6

Index 343 Rosenbaum, P 30 Roussou, A 24–5, 35 Rouveret, A 65, 95 S San Martin, I 267–8, 275, 287, 290–1 Schebeck, B 302–303 Schütze, C 150, 223, 233f. Seely, T D 109, 117 Segal, G 295 Sezer, E 93 Sigurðsson, H Á 9, 147, 151, 176–8, 182–3, 188, 191, 203ff, 208f, 211, 214, 216, 218, 223f, 226, 228f, 231–234, 332 Silverstein, M 42–3, 46, 53 Simpson, J 306–11, 315 Sportiche, D 3, 105, 161, 218, 241–4, 331 Sprouse, R 151 Stavrou M 281 Stepanov, A 106, 107, 116 Stjepanović, S 116.n.20, 117 Stowell, T 15, 66, 102, 175, 273–4, 290

Svenonius, P 16 Szabolcsi, A 162, 173, 186, 193 T Takahashi, D 106, 107 Taraldsen, K T 9, 53, 188, 233 Terzi, A 21, 24 Thráinsson, H 178, 185, 202f., 216, 224, 232ff Torrego, E 7, 66, 272, 274 Tóth, I 17 Troike, R 332–3 U Ura, H 55, 280 Uriagereka, J 267–9, 272, 275–6, 291, 292, 295, 297 V Varlokosta, S 35 Vergnaud, J-R 66, 95 Vinet, M T 87 Vukić, S 111 W Walik, K 305 Webelhuth, G 162, 173

Wechsler, S 112, 314 Wierzbicka, A 46, 299 Wiltschko, M 59 Woolford, E 47, 299, 301–303, 314–5 Wurmbrand, S 18, 24, 36, 107 X Xu, J 280 Y Yadroff, M 107 Yang, C 127 Yip, M 183, 195, 334 Z Zaenen, A 175–81, 184, 195–6, 224, 233 Zidani-Eroğlu, L 66 Zlatić, L 112, 314 Zwart, C J-W 318, 321, 326, 330, 334, 336, 337

Subject index

NB: As terms pertaining directly to agreement occur with very high frequency in the foregoing pages, they have not been included in this index, since their inclusion would provide results of little assistance to readers. A Absolutive 306–308 Abstract case 101, 104, 105, 113 Activation condition 110 Approximate inversion (AXP) 99, 106, 107, 109, 116 B Ban on adjunction to moved elements 106, 107, 116 Burzio’s generalization 103,139–140, 153 C Case 13–17, 21–39, 63–81, 83–95, 131, 146, 147, 163, 178, 179, 180, 181, 183, 184ff., 220, 250, 267, 275, 302–3, 333 C-Complement Opacity 137–138, 152, 153–154 Chain condition 134–136, 139, 140, 152, 153 Clitic 299, 300, 303–305, 309, 310, 314 Clitic cluster constraints 309–310 Clitic doubling 314, 315 Complementizer agreement 330, 334–335 Concord 216ff., 277 Control 13,14, 18, 21–28, 30, 32–39, 268 Crash-proof syntax 125 D Dative 299–315 Dative experiencer 147–150 Defective intervention 110,

111, 113, 302 Doomed states 121, 124, 125 Double case marking 112 E ECM 249–250, 257 Economy of derivation 103, 104, 114 Efficient computation 121–2, 123, 124, 126, 127, 154 Extended Projection Principle 108, 109, 117, 255–56, 258, 269 Ergativity 46–48, 59, 299–315, 334 Exceptional feature sharing 142–145, 153 Exceptional phi-valuation 147–150 Expletive 123, 131, 132, 141–145, 325–326 F Feature sharing 123, 128–131, 148, 152, 319 Feature sharing 319 Finiteness 63–67, 69, 73, 74, 77–81, 83, 88, 91–95 First conjunct agreement 234–45, 335

Holmberg’s generalization 141 I Infinitive 14–18, 21, 23, 28, 29, 33–35, 37–39 Inverse systems 41, 54ff. K Kimball-Aissen facts 329 L Last Resort 312, 313, 315 Late adjunction 106, 107, 116 M Markedness 41, 42, 44, 46 Matching effect 206ff., 329 Merge 206, 319, 336 Minimal Link Condition 51 Mirror Principle 2, 334 Modality 63, 66–68, 72, 73, 75–84, 85, 88–93, 95 Mood 63, 67–72–3, 75–80, 82–84, 87–94 Multiple feature checking 52, 54

GGender 219ff., 240–41, 255 Goal 6, 13, 14, 22, 30, 31, 33, 37, 277

N Nominative object 8, 223f., 300–302, 304, 305, 307, 308, 311, 312, 314 Null subjects 251–53, 251–53 Numeral 99, 100, 102, 103, 106, 107, 109, 111, 112, 114, 116, 177

H Head-marking vs. dependent-marking 321, 337 Hierarchies 41, 46

P Person Case Constraint (PCC) 7, 45–6, 52, 57, 59 Person splits 41, 42, 43, 44,

346 Subject index

Q Quirky case 123, 131, 132, 145–150, 191–2, 225

S Selection 123, 132, 139, 140, 147, 152–154 Sisterhood 318–319 Spec-Head agreement (SHA) 3–5, 102, 103, 112, 241–42, 245–47, 317 Subject 13–17, 19, 21, 23–39, 99, 100, 105–112, 118, 182, 183, 319 Subjunctive 15, 17, 18–25, 27, 36, 38, 39

R Raising 13, 15, 18–23, 26–30, 33–39

T TE-head 134–135, 136, 139, 140, 142, 145, 151, 153

46, 48, 57, 59 PF-component 201–230 Phase 13, 27, 29, 32, 33, 63, 64, 73–75, 78, 84, 91, 92, 279 Phi-complete 13–16, 24, 28–30, 32, 33, 269 Probe 6, 13–16, 22, 26, 28, 29, 31–33, 277

Tense 63–67, 72–83, 88–89, 91–94 Tripartite Case system 300, 303 Types of v 47, 48, 50, 53, 55 U Untensed 16–18, 21, 22, 29, 30, 34–36

Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today A complete list of titles in this series can be found on the publishers’ website, www.benjamins.com 95 VOGELEER, Svetlana and Liliane TASMOWSKI (eds.): Non-definiteness and Plurality. Expected Novermber 2006 94 ARCHE, María J.: Individuals in Time. Tense, aspect and the individual/stage distinction. xiv, 281 pp. Expected August 2006 93 PROGOVAC, Ljiljana, Kate PAESANI, Eugenia CASIELLES and Ellen L. BARTON (eds.): The Syntax of Nonsententials. Multidisciplinary perspectives. x, 353 pp. + index. Expected October 2006 92 BOECKX, Cedric (ed.): Agreement Systems. 2006. ix, 343 pp. 91 BOECKX, Cedric (ed.): Minimalist Essays. 2006. xvi, 399 pp. 90 DALMI, Gréte: The Role of Agreement in Non-Finite Predication. 2005. xvi, 222 pp. 89 VELDE, John R. te: Deriving Coordinate Symmetries. A phase-based approach integrating Select, Merge, Copy and Match. 2006. x, 385 pp. 88 MOHR, Sabine: Clausal Architecture and Subject Positions. Impersonal constructions in the Germanic languages. 2005. viii, 207 pp. 87 JULIEN, Marit: Nominal Phrases from a Scandinavian Perspective. 2005. xvi, 348 pp. 86 COSTA, João and Maria Cristina FIGUEIREDO SILVA (eds.): Studies on Agreement. 2006. vi, 285 pp. 85 MIKKELSEN, Line: Copular Clauses. Specification, predication and equation. 2005. viii, 210 pp. 84 PAFEL, Jürgen: Quantifier Scope in German. 2006. xvi, 312 pp. 83 SCHWEIKERT, Walter: The Order of Prepositional Phrases in the Structure of the Clause. 2005. xii, 338 pp. 82 QUINN, Heidi: The Distribution of Pronoun Case Forms in English. 2005. xii, 409 pp. 81 FUSS, Eric: The Rise of Agreement. A formal approach to the syntax and grammaticalization of verbal inflection. 2005. xii, 336 pp. 80 BURKHARDT, Petra: The Syntax–Discourse Interface. Representing and interpreting dependency. 2005. xii, 259 pp. 79 SCHMID, Tanja: Infinitival Syntax. Infinitivus Pro Participio as a repair strategy. 2005. xiv, 251 pp. 78 DIKKEN, Marcel den and Christina M. TORTORA (eds.): The Function of Function Words and Functional Categories. 2005. vii, 292 pp. 77 ÖZTÜRK, Balkız: Case, Referentiality and Phrase Structure. 2005. x, 268 pp. 76 STAVROU, Melita and Arhonto TERZI (eds.): Advances in Greek Generative Syntax. In honor of Dimitra Theophanopoulou-Kontou. 2005. viii, 366 pp. 75 DI SCIULLO, Anna Maria (ed.): UG and External Systems. Language, brain and computation. 2005. xviii, 398 pp. 74 HEGGIE, Lorie and Francisco ORDÓÑEZ (eds.): Clitic and Affix Combinations. Theoretical perspectives. 2005. viii, 390 pp. 73 CARNIE, Andrew, Heidi HARLEY and Sheila Ann DOOLEY (eds.): Verb First. On the syntax of verb-initial languages. 2005. xiv, 434 pp. 72 FUSS, Eric and Carola TRIPS (eds.): Diachronic Clues to Synchronic Grammar. 2004. viii, 228 pp. 71 GELDEREN, Elly van: Grammaticalization as Economy. 2004. xvi, 320 pp. 70 AUSTIN, Jennifer R., Stefan ENGELBERG and Gisa RAUH (eds.): Adverbials. The interplay between meaning, context, and syntactic structure. 2004. x, 346 pp. 69 KISS, Katalin É. and Henk van RIEMSDIJK (eds.): Verb Clusters. A study of Hungarian, German and Dutch. 2004. vi, 514 pp. 68 BREUL, Carsten: Focus Structure in Generative Grammar. An integrated syntactic, semantic and intonational approach. 2004. x, 432 pp. 67 MIŠESKA TOMIĆ, Olga (ed.): Balkan Syntax and Semantics. 2004. xvi, 499 pp. 66 GROHMANN, Kleanthes K.: Prolific Domains. On the Anti-Locality of movement dependencies. 2003. xvi, 372 pp. 65 MANNINEN, Satu Helena: Small Phrase Layers. A study of Finnish Manner Adverbials. 2003. xii, 275 pp. 64 BOECKX, Cedric and Kleanthes K. GROHMANN (eds.): Multiple Wh-Fronting. 2003. x, 292 pp. 63 BOECKX, Cedric: Islands and Chains. Resumption as stranding. 2003. xii, 224 pp. 62 CARNIE, Andrew, Heidi HARLEY and MaryAnn WILLIE (eds.): Formal Approaches to Function in Grammar. In honor of Eloise Jelinek. 2003. xii, 378 pp.

61 SCHWABE, Kerstin and Susanne WINKLER (eds.): The Interfaces. Deriving and interpreting omitted structures. 2003. vi, 403 pp. 60 TRIPS, Carola: From OV to VO in Early Middle English. 2002. xiv, 359 pp. 59 DEHÉ, Nicole: Particle Verbs in English. Syntax, information structure and intonation. 2002. xii, 305 pp. 58 DI SCIULLO, Anna Maria (ed.): Asymmetry in Grammar. Volume 2: Morphology, phonology, acquisition. 2003. vi, 309 pp. 57 DI SCIULLO, Anna Maria (ed.): Asymmetry in Grammar. Volume 1: Syntax and semantics. 2003. vi, 405 pp. 56 COENE, Martine and Yves D’HULST (eds.): From NP to DP. Volume 2: The expression of possession in noun phrases. 2003. x, 295 pp. 55 COENE, Martine and Yves D’HULST (eds.): From NP to DP. Volume 1: The syntax and semantics of noun phrases. 2003. vi, 362 pp. 54 BAPTISTA, Marlyse: The Syntax of Cape Verdean Creole. The Sotavento varieties. 2003. xxii, 294 pp. (incl. CDrom). 53 ZWART, C. Jan-Wouter and Werner ABRAHAM (eds.): Studies in Comparative Germanic Syntax. Proceedings from the 15th Workshop on Comparative Germanic Syntax (Groningen, May 26–27, 2000). 2002. xiv, 407 pp. 52 SIMON, Horst J. and Heike WIESE (eds.): Pronouns – Grammar and Representation. 2002. xii, 294 pp. 51 GERLACH, Birgit: Clitics between Syntax and Lexicon. 2002. xii, 282 pp. 50 STEINBACH, Markus: Middle Voice. A comparative study in the syntax-semantics interface of German. 2002. xii, 340 pp. 49 ALEXIADOU, Artemis (ed.): Theoretical Approaches to Universals. 2002. viii, 319 pp. 48 ALEXIADOU, Artemis, Elena ANAGNOSTOPOULOU, Sjef BARBIERS and Hans-Martin GÄRTNER (eds.): Dimensions of Movement. From features to remnants. 2002. vi, 345 pp. 47 BARBIERS, Sjef, Frits BEUKEMA and Wim van der WURFF (eds.): Modality and its Interaction with the Verbal System. 2002. x, 290 pp. 46 PANAGIOTIDIS, Phoevos: Pronouns, Clitics and Empty Nouns. ‘Pronominality’ and licensing in syntax. 2002. x, 214 pp. 45 ABRAHAM, Werner and C. Jan-Wouter ZWART (eds.): Issues in Formal German(ic) Typology. 2002. xviii, 336 pp. 44 TAYLAN, Eser Erguvanlı (ed.): The Verb in Turkish. 2002. xviii, 267 pp. 43 FEATHERSTON, Sam: Empty Categories in Sentence Processing. 2001. xvi, 279 pp. 42 ALEXIADOU, Artemis: Functional Structure in Nominals. Nominalization and ergativity. 2001. x, 233 pp. 41 ZELLER, Jochen: Particle Verbs and Local Domains. 2001. xii, 325 pp. 40 HOEKSEMA, Jack, Hotze RULLMANN, Víctor SÁNCHEZ-VALENCIA and Ton van der WOUDEN (eds.): Perspectives on Negation and Polarity Items. 2001. xii, 368 pp. 39 GELDEREN, Elly van: A History of English Reflexive Pronouns. Person, Self, and Interpretability. 2000. xiv, 279 pp. 38 MEINUNGER, André: Syntactic Aspects of Topic and Comment. 2000. xii, 247 pp. 37 LUTZ, Uli, Gereon MÜLLER and Arnim von STECHOW (eds.): Wh-Scope Marking. 2000. vi, 483 pp. 36 GERLACH, Birgit and Janet GRIJZENHOUT (eds.): Clitics in Phonology, Morphology and Syntax. 2001. xii, 441 pp. 35 HRÓARSDÓTTIR, Thorbjörg: Word Order Change in Icelandic. From OV to VO. 2001. xiv, 385 pp. 34 REULAND, Eric (ed.): Arguments and Case. Explaining Burzio’s Generalization. 2000. xii, 255 pp. 33 PUSKÁS, Genoveva: Word Order in Hungarian. The syntax of Ā-positions. 2000. xvi, 398 pp. 32 ALEXIADOU, Artemis, Paul LAW, André MEINUNGER and Chris WILDER (eds.): The Syntax of Relative Clauses. 2000. vi, 397 pp. 31 SVENONIUS, Peter (ed.): The Derivation of VO and OV. 2000. vi, 372 pp. 30 BEUKEMA, Frits and Marcel den DIKKEN (eds.): Clitic Phenomena in European Languages. 2000. x, 324 pp. 29 MIYAMOTO, Tadao: The Light Verb Construction in Japanese. The role of the verbal noun. 2000. xiv, 232 pp. 28 HERMANS, Ben and Marc van OOSTENDORP (eds.): The Derivational Residue in Phonological Optimality Theory. 2000. viii, 322 pp. 27 RŮŽIČKA, Rudolf: Control in Grammar and Pragmatics. A cross-linguistic study. 1999. x, 206 pp. 26 ACKEMA, Peter: Issues in Morphosyntax. 1999. viii, 310 pp. 25 FELSER, Claudia: Verbal Complement Clauses. A minimalist study of direct perception constructions. 1999. xiv, 278 pp.

24 REBUSCHI, Georges and Laurice TULLER (eds.): The Grammar of Focus. 1999. vi, 366 pp. 23 GIANNAKIDOU, Anastasia: Polarity Sensitivity as (Non)Veridical Dependency. 1998. xvi, 282 pp. 22 ALEXIADOU, Artemis and Chris WILDER (eds.): Possessors, Predicates and Movement in the Determiner Phrase. 1998. vi, 388 pp. 21 KLEIN, Henny: Adverbs of Degree in Dutch and Related Languages. 1998. x, 232 pp. 20 LAENZLINGER, Christopher: Comparative Studies in Word Order Variation. Adverbs, pronouns, and clause structure in Romance and Germanic. 1998. x, 371 pp. 19 JOSEFSSON, Gunlög: Minimal Words in a Minimal Syntax. Word formation in Swedish. 1998. ix, 199 pp. 18 ALEXIADOU, Artemis: Adverb Placement. A case study in antisymmetric syntax. 1997. x, 256 pp. 17 BEERMANN, Dorothee A., David LEBLANC and Henk van RIEMSDIJK (eds.): Rightward Movement. 1997. vi, 410 pp. 16 LIU, Feng-Hsi: Scope and Specificity. 1997. viii, 187 pp. 15 ROHRBACHER, Bernhard Wolfgang: Morphology-Driven Syntax. A theory of V to I raising and pro-drop. 1999. viii, 296 pp. 14 ANAGNOSTOPOULOU, Elena, Henk van RIEMSDIJK and Frans ZWARTS (eds.): Materials on Left Dislocation. 1997. viii, 349 pp. 13 ALEXIADOU, Artemis and T. Alan HALL (eds.): Studies on Universal Grammar and Typological Variation. 1997. viii, 252 pp. 12 ABRAHAM, Werner, Samuel David EPSTEIN, Höskuldur THRÁINSSON and C. Jan-Wouter ZWART (eds.): Minimal Ideas. Syntactic studies in the minimalist framework. 1996. xii, 364 pp. 11 LUTZ, Uli and Jürgen PAFEL (eds.): On Extraction and Extraposition in German. 1996. xii, 315 pp. 10 CINQUE, Guglielmo and Giuliana GIUSTI (eds.): Advances in Roumanian Linguistics. 1995. xi, 172 pp. 9 GELDEREN, Elly van: The Rise of Functional Categories. 1993. x, 224 pp. 8 FANSELOW, Gisbert (ed.): The Parametrization of Universal Grammar. 1993. xvii, 232 pp. 7 ÅFARLÍ, Tor A.: The Syntax of Norwegian Passive Constructions. 1992. xii, 177 pp. 6 BHATT, Christa, Elisabeth LÖBEL and Claudia Maria SCHMIDT (eds.): Syntactic Phrase Structure Phenomena in Noun Phrases and Sentences. 1989. ix, 187 pp. 5 GREWENDORF, Günther and Wolfgang STERNEFELD (eds.): Scrambling and Barriers. 1990. vi, 442 pp. 4 ABRAHAM, Werner and Sjaak De MEIJ (eds.): Topic, Focus and Configurationality. Papers from the 6th Groningen Grammar Talks, Groningen, 1984. 1986. v, 349 pp. 3 ABRAHAM, Werner (ed.): On the Formal Syntax of the Westgermania. Papers from the 3rd Groningen Grammar Talks (3e Groninger Grammatikgespräche), Groningen, January 1981. 1983. vi, 242 pp. 2 EHLICH, Konrad and Jürgen REHBEIN: Augenkommunikation. Methodenreflexion und Beispielanalyse. 1982. viii, 150 pp. With many photographic ills. 1 KLAPPENBACH, Ruth (1911–1977): Studien zur Modernen Deutschen Lexikographie. Auswahl aus den Lexikographischen Arbeiten von Ruth Klappenbach, erweitert um drei Beiträge von Helene MaligeKlappenbach. (Written in German). 1980. xxiii, 313 pp.