*******
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.
