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Description:
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This monograph investigates the modular architecture of language through
the nature of "uninterpretable" phi-features: person, number, gender, and
Case. It provides new tools and evidence for the modular architecture of
the human language faculty, a foundational topic of linguistic research. At
the same time it develops a new theory for one of the core issues posed by
the Minimalist Program: the relationship of syntax to its interfaces and
the nature of uninterpretable features. The work sets out to establish a new
cross-linguistic phenomenon to study the foregoing, person-governed
last-resort repairs, which provides new insights into the nature of
ergative/accusative Case and of Case licensing itself. This is the first
monograph that explicitly addresses the syntactic vs. morphological status
of uninterpretable phi-features and their relationship to interface systems
in a similar way, drawing on person-based interactions among arguments as
key data-base.
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