The representation of third person and its consequences for person-case effects

Author: Nevins, Andrew

Source: Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, Volume 25, Number 2, May 2007 , pp. 273-313(41)

Publisher: Springer

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Abstract:

In modeling the effects of the Person-Case Constraint (PCC), a common claim is that 3rd person “is not a person”. However, while this claim does work in the syntax, it creates problems in the morphology. For example, characterizing the well-known “spurious se effect” in Spanish simply cannot be done without reference to 3rd person. Inspired by alternatives to underspecification that have emerged in phonology (e.g., Calabrese, 1995), a revised featural system is proposed, whereby syntactic agreement may be relativized to certain values of a feature, in particular, the contrastive and marked values. The range of variation in PCC effects is shown to emerge as a consequence of the parametric options allowed on a Probing head, whereas the representation of person remains constant across modules of the grammar and across languages.

Keywords: Third person; Spurious se; Person case constraint; Me lui; Clitic clusters; Multiple agree; Person features; Contrastive specification

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11049-006-9017-2

Affiliations: 1: Email: nevins@fas.harvard.edu

Publication date: 2007-05-01