Person Licensing and the Derivation of PCC Effects

1. The Person Case Constraint The Person-Case Constraint (PCC) is a universal condition on the distribution of marked person features in certain configurations. First thoroughly investigated by Bonet (1991), she concluded that in combinations of a direct and indirect object, both of which are phonologically weak, the direct object may not be 1 or 2 person (Bonet 1991:177). The following French example has analogues in all the Romance languages, as well as Greek, Czech, Swiss German, Basque, Georgian etc.: