Modularity, Phi-Features, and Repairs

Chapter 1 introduces the work. It presents the modular architecture of cognition, and the organization of the language faculty into the modules of syntax and its interfacing systems of realization (PF) and interpretation (LF). Phi-features are a common alphabet shared by these systems, permitting investigation of their distinctive characteristics and of their interactions. Among the phi-features of syntax, some are illegible to its interfacing systems: the uninterpretable phi-features of agreement dependencies. The chapter examines the nature of (un)intepretability, agreement, and syntactic versus morphological phi-phenomena. Syntactic features uninterpretable to PF/LF must be eliminated through the formation of syntactic dependencies. This requirement is extended to the new type of dependency studied in this work: last-resort phi-Agree to repair illegible syntactic structures.

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