Guest Post: The [Spec,TP]-agreement fallacy

Omer Preminger sent me this interesting post commenting on Chomsky's lecture 3 proposal that Spec-TP agreement might circumvent problems for the MLA. The gist is that Chomsky's proposal faces some well-known empirical challenges, especially evident in languages like Icelandic (what Gert Webelhuth once called the super conducting super collider of linguistics).  I hope that this generates some useful discussion, especially among those partial to Chomsky's take on the labeling issues he raises. Given that Sp-X agreement lies at the chart of Chomsky's analysis of successive cyclic movement, EPP and Fixed Subject Constraint effects, Omer's challenge needs addressing if this proposal is to fly. So, let the games begin!

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DISCLAIMER: None of what I am about to write draws on my own research. These are results that, in one form or another, have been around for decades.

In Part 3 of Norbert’s comments on Chomsky’s third lecture, he discussed Chomsky’s suggestion for why it is that movement can stop at (what we ruffians call) the [Spec,TP] position. Why is this a question? Because Chomsky is assuming the Minimal Labeling Algorithm (henceforth, MLA), which normally cannot assign a label to a structure {X, Y} if both X and Y are internally complex; and under the MLA, an unlabelable structure needs to be broken up via movement of one of its terms. One loophole for this (see Norbert’s discussion for some others) is if X and Y enter into some agreement relation; then, the feature (or perhaps set of features) F that has undergone agreement can serve as the label of {X, Y}. What is the F, then, that allows – and often times, forces – subjects to remain in [Spec,TP]? Chomsky’s answer: phi (i.e., the familiar set of person, number, gender/noun-class).

The point of this post is to show that this is not, and cannot be, the answer (for reasons that have been known for quite a while now). It starts with Icelandic, but as I will note at the very end, we could have perhaps made the point even based on English alone (though perhaps in a somewhat more tenuous fashion).

Icelandic, as is well known, has non-nominative subjects. These are not merely noun phrases bearing non-nominative case that have come to c-command the other noun phrases in their clause (cf. German); everything that Chomsky wants to say about subjects in English holds of these non-nominative subjects as well, save for two properties: their case (obviously), and the fact that they don’t control agreement (crucially).

So you get, e.g., sentences of the form in (1), where the finite verb agrees with the nominative object (which also passes a series of direct-object diagnostics), not with the dative subject:

(1)  SUBJ(dative)  FINITE-VERB(agr-with-obj)  OBJ(nominative)

[There are other complications, as there are bound to be – in this case, concerning what happens when OBJ is 1st/2nd person. But if everything is 3rd person, things work as shown in (1). And, importantly, even if the OBJ is 1st/2nd person, agreement is not with the person features of SUBJ (i.e., choosing a 1st/2nd person SUBJ does not make possible 1st/2nd person agreement on the verb).]

So, the short version of the story: there are subjects, that show all the subjecthood properties (e.g. landing and staying in subject position), and yet they are not what enters into agreement in phi-features with T. Not only that, but T in fact enters into overt phi agreement with something else (in this case, the nominative direct object). Tying subjecthood properties (e.g. the ability to move to and stay in [Spec,TP]) to agreement in phi-features is wrong. Fin.

But there is a slightly longer version of this story. Norbert, for one, is partial to the idea that what someone like me would call “probe-goal agreement” (as in, for example, the relation between T and the direct object in (1)) is really a movement relation, one where both LF and PF privilege the lower copy for interpretation/pronunciation, and the consequences of this movement can only be seen via the effects it has on the formal features of the landing site (TP). I have suggested we refer to this kind of movement as “interface-vacuous” movement, since the interfaces ignore its having occurred.

Suppose, then, that the OBJ in (1) has a second merge position in [Spec,TP], but is pronounced and interpreted in its lower position within the verb phrase. This second position of OBJ enters into agreement in phi-features with T, allowing all of (what we would call) TP to be labeled by these phi-features, as discussed above. Does this salvage Chomsky’s story?

The answer is “no.” That is because Icelandic is not a null-subject language; Icelandic clauses need subjects, in a way that this “interface-vacuous” movement (if it actually exists) does not seem to satisfy. To put it another way, even if OBJ has a second unpronounced and uninterpreted merge position in [Spec,TP], the facts are that this does not absolve the clause of its need to have a(nother) subject. To see why that’s a problem for Chomsky, let’s consider how the need to have a subject arises in his system. In the proposed system, the difference between a null-subject language (say, Italian) and a non-null-subject language (say, English), is in the capacity of T to serve as the label of a {T, XP} structure (say, for XP=vP). In a non-null-subject language, it cannot (“T is weak”) – and so in fact the only way to assign TP a label is to move something to [Spec,TP] (as a sister of the {T, XP} node), have it agree with {T, XP} in phi-features, and have those phi-features label the resulting complex object (what we would call “TP”). In a null-subject language, T can serve as the label of {T, XP}, and thus movement to [Spec,TP] is not required (if such movement were to nevertheless occur, the English-style story just described could still kick-in).

Continuing to adopt (for the time being) the “interface-vacuous” movement wrinkle, the OBJ in (1) has moved to [Spec,TP], agreed with {T, vP} in phi features, and thus labeled the resulting object; why does this clause still need an overt subject? Or more to the point, why is the equivalent of “arrived.PL some people.NOM” (a VS-order unaccusative with no expletive) not grammatical in Icelandic? After all, the nominative will have “interface-vacuously” moved to [Spec,TP], satisfying all apparent labeling needs.

So what has gone wrong here? My answer would be: the [Spec,TP]-agreement connection is a red herring, and this is what happens when you build your edifice on a red herring (fish are slippery!). Yes, in many languages many of things that end up in [Spec,TP] were also the things that T agreed with (or as Norbert would have it: many of the things that end up in [Spec,TP] overtly, turn out to obviate the need for another, separate thing to undergo “interface-vacuous” movement to [Spec,TP]). But taking that to be a fundamental fact about the computational system is just wrong, for there are languages where that’s just not how it works. Icelandic is one such language – but depending on your analysis of expletive-associate constructions and of Locative Inversion, English may very well be such a language, as well.