The Person Case Constraint Unconditional Interfaces and Faultless Derivations by Tomohiro Yokoyama A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Linguistics University of Toronto © Copyright 2019 by Tomohiro Yokoyama Abstract The Person Case Constraint Unconditional Interfaces and Faultless Derivations Tomohiro Yokoyama Doctor of Philosophy Department of Linguistics University of Toronto 2019 This thesis advances a theoretical move toward a grammatical model devoid of interface conditions by proposing a novel feature-based structure-building mechanism. In the standardly assumed architecture of grammar, ungrammaticality is often explained in terms of a violation of some condition on an output of the syntactic module. However, some recent research in lin- guistics has attempted to move away from such an approach to ungrammaticality and proposed to reinterpret ungrammaticality as non-generability. In this approach, ill-formed structures are construed not as defective but as impossible to generate with the available syntactic operations. In order to advocate for the latter approach to ungrammaticality, this thesis examines an in- terface condition called the Person Licensing Condition (PLC), which was proposed to account for a linguistic phenomenon known as the Person Case Constraint (PCC). It is shown in the thesis that the PLC fails to capture cross-linguistic variation in the PCC patterns and in the way illicit structures are remedied. It is further argued that previous, Agree-based accounts of the PCC variation, also reliant on an interface condition, cannot fully explain all the patterns and that they obscure the source of the variation. This thesis proposes an alternative account of the PCC, which involves a version of Merge that is constrained by feature valuation, and what is known as articulated person features. The proposed syntactic system allows arguments to engage with each other by valuing the same unvalued feature, and this explains person restriction effects seen in the PCC patterns. ii Illicit argument combinations are underivable in the system, and an interface condition is not needed to account for ungrammaticality induced by the PCC. This novel account of the PCC also captures the variation fairly well, and because the variation is attributed to different ways syntactic elements are featurally specified in different languages, the reason why we obtain such variation is clear. In defending the person features used in the proposed syntactic mechanism, this thesis also speaks to the typology of grammatical persons and shows that the same fea- tures explain not only syntactic restrictions like the PCC but also a variety of morphological neutralization phenomena. iii Acknowledgements This is perhaps one of the few times when Language completely fails to express my in- tension, but here is my attempt at spelling out my overflowing gratitude. This thesis would not be in existence if it was not for my supervisor, Susana B´ejar,and her brilliance. Not only is this thesis built on the ideas in her earlier work, but also her guidance, support, and encouragement throughout the writing of the thesis made it possible. I was often caught up in the details and lost sight of the big picture, but Susana made sure I left every one of our meetings with a clear view of the project and a good sense of direction. I am extremely grateful for the enormous amount of work she put into shaping the thesis into its current form. Two additional brilliant minds were vital to the completion of the thesis: Elizabeth Cow- per and Guillaume Thomas, who, together with Susana, formed my thesis committee. I have always been in awe of Elizabeth, my MA supervisor and second reader for both of my generals papers, and her piercing insight. She would challenge me in a way that kept me on my toes, and that always made my work better. I was also fortunate to have her as graduate coordinator in my early days as a grad student, and her advice gave me a positive outlook on the academic life ahead and certainly contributed to me completing the program within a reasonable time frame. Guillaume, who was also my second reader for one of my generals papers, always had something to suggest and was quick to identify flaws in my argument. I greatly appreciate their generous support throughout the time I worked with them. I would also like to thank my external examiner, Omer Preminger, for agreeing to be on my defense committee and for his challenging questions and con- structive comments. I owe additional thanks to Arsalan Kahnemuyipour and Nicholas LaCara for a lively and stimulating defense. Thanks are further due to those who contributed directly to the content of the the- sis: Julien Carrier, Jean-Fran¸coisJuneau, Peter Jurgec, Isabelle Ladouceur-S´eguin,and Robert Prazeres. They were all generous enough to provide me with grammatical and/or pragmatic judgements on countless sentences. I would like to thank Alana Johns and Michela Ippolito for supervising my generals pa- pers. Not only did I enjoy the meetings with each of them, but the things I learned from them in the process of writing the papers were essential to the writing of this thesis. I owe thanks to Alexei Kochetov for hiring me as his research assistant. The research languages for his project, Kirundi and Kinyarwanda, inspired me to pursue the fundamental idea in the thesis. My minimalist thinking has its roots in the intermediate syntax course I took with Diane Massam, who introduced me to the Minimalist Program. For the majority of my time as a grad student at UofT, the department was led by Keren Rice, and she watched over us grad students with a tremendous amount of care and created a carefree environment where we can focus on our research. Lastly, nothing could be achieved without the help of the department administrative staff: Jill Given-King, Mary iv Hsu, Jennifer McCallum, and Deem Waham. I am grateful for their work in making things run smoothly in the department. Some people I have had the privilege of calling my friends were essential to my surviving the PhD program. Work sessions with Emily Clare, some of which turned into emotional venting sessions, were crucial to maintaining my sanity. Clarissa Forbes's company in virtually everything I did kept me going even when I was feeling down. Words of encour- agement and wisdom as well as lots of puns I received from Christopher Spahr always lifted my spirit. Alex Motut and Derek Denis took on parental roles because I didn't have any family in Toronto, even though we are all around the same age. The beautiful tree diagrams in the thesis are thanks to Radu Craioveanu's LATEX support. Jessica Denniss offered me and others her apartment as a writing retreat a number of times, and she even cooked for us sometimes. IKEA visits with Becky Tollan took my mind off the stress of grad school. Having Dan Milway in my cohort as an academic adversary was valuable and pushed me to think more deeply about syntactic theory. Ross Godfrey stood by me when my ability as a TA was called into question. The only non-linguist that contributed to the progress of this thesis in a significant way is Alicia Grubb, a member of the six- month dissertation club, which Alex invited me, Emily, and Clarissa to join. On an online platform and in person, Alicia provided me with emotional support even after she herself was done with her PhD program in Computer Science. There are many more to thank, but I will only list a subset of them here: Jotaro Arimori, Emily Blamire, Jeroen Breteler, Cater Chen, Joanna Chociej, Sarah Clarke, Julie Donor, Sukaina and Sayyeda Ebrahim, Tim Gadanidis, Matthew Innes, Yuko Ishihara, Jida Jaffan, Angelika Kiss, Mayumi Kondo, Lex Konnelly, Andrei Munteanu, Kiranpreet Nara, Kenji Oda, Akari Oka, Iryna Osadcha, Will Oxford, Ludger Paschen, Maida Percival, Heather Stephens, Michelle Yuan, and people at Tsaa. I appreciate the positive impact these people had on my graduate-student life. I would also like to thank CUPE3902, the labour union of contract academic workers at UofT, for supporting me and my fellow workers in the face of open hostility shown by the university administration during the labour strike in 2015. The experience of being on the picket line and meeting students from other departments made me realize that there are lots of awesome and compassionate people in the world even though those in power chose to be quite the opposite. I owe many thanks to my family for emotionally and financially supporting me throughout my time as a student. I am also very proud to be an uncle of three beautiful little humans. Finally, I acknowledge that this research was hosted on the lands of the Mississaugas of the Anishinaabe, the Haundenosaunee Confederacy and the Wendat, and I want to recognize the enduring presence of all First Nations, M´etisand the Inuit peoples. v Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iv Table of contents vi List of abbreviations ix 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Interfaces as indiscriminate points of translation . .5 1.2 \Crash-proof" syntax (Frampton & Gutmann 2002) . .6 1.3 Non-generation (Preminger 2015a,b, 2018) . .7 1.3.1 Uninterpretable features: K'ichean Agent-Focus constructions . .8 1.3.2 The Case Filter: Raising-to-accusative in Sakha . 11 1.4 Distributed Morphology: Late Insertion and the Subset Principle . 13 1.5 Organization of the thesis . 15 2 Person Licensing Condition and the PCC 17 2.1 The Person Case Constraint . 18 2.2 Split Agree and the Person Licencing Condition . 21 2.3 The PCC \repair" . 22 2.4 Optimality Theory and the PCC repair (Bonet 1994) .