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On the interpretability of φ-features

  • Roberto Zamparelli
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The Bantu–Romance Connection
This chapter is in the book The Bantu–Romance Connection

Abstract

The paper reconsiders the evidence for the interpretable status of φ-features within DP in Romance languages, focusing on Italian. The conclusions are that, given a reasonably local interpretation of what counts as interpretable, gender is not an interpretable feature, and number (or plur, in the sense of Heycock & Zamparelli 2005) is interpretable, but is not sufficient to drive the process of verbal and predicative agreement. The notion of “default”, particularly with respect to the Person feature, is discussed and various alternatives are explored.

Abstract

The paper reconsiders the evidence for the interpretable status of φ-features within DP in Romance languages, focusing on Italian. The conclusions are that, given a reasonably local interpretation of what counts as interpretable, gender is not an interpretable feature, and number (or plur, in the sense of Heycock & Zamparelli 2005) is interpretable, but is not sufficient to drive the process of verbal and predicative agreement. The notion of “default”, particularly with respect to the Person feature, is discussed and various alternatives are explored.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Acknowledgments vii
  4. List of contributors ix
  5. Introduction xi
  6. Part 1. Clitics and agreement
  7. Concepts of structural underspecification in Bantu and Romance 3
  8. On different types of clitic clusters 41
  9. Pronominal object markers in Romance and Bantu 83
  10. The Bantu-Romance connection in verb movement and verbal inflectional morphology 111
  11. Part 2. The structure of DPs
  12. DP in Bantu and Romance 131
  13. On the interpretability of φ-features 167
  14. Agreement and concord in nominal expressions 201
  15. A unified syntactic analysis of Italian and Luganda nouns 239
  16. Part 3. Information structure
  17. The fine structure of the Topic field 261
  18. Focus at the interface: Evidence from Romance and Bantu 293
  19. Agreement in thetic VS sentences in Bantu and Romance 323
  20. Index of languages 351
  21. General index 353
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.131.11zam

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Acknowledgments vii
  4. List of contributors ix
  5. Introduction xi
  6. Part 1. Clitics and agreement
  7. Concepts of structural underspecification in Bantu and Romance 3
  8. On different types of clitic clusters 41
  9. Pronominal object markers in Romance and Bantu 83
  10. The Bantu-Romance connection in verb movement and verbal inflectional morphology 111
  11. Part 2. The structure of DPs
  12. DP in Bantu and Romance 131
  13. On the interpretability of φ-features 167
  14. Agreement and concord in nominal expressions 201
  15. A unified syntactic analysis of Italian and Luganda nouns 239
  16. Part 3. Information structure
  17. The fine structure of the Topic field 261
  18. Focus at the interface: Evidence from Romance and Bantu 293
  19. Agreement in thetic VS sentences in Bantu and Romance 323
  20. Index of languages 351
  21. General index 353
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