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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Ian MacKenzie
This is the authors' accepted manuscript of an article that has been published in its final definitive form by Cambridge University Press, 2018.
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Feature Inheritance (Richards 2007) entails that uninterpretable features originate on the phase head C or v* and are then transferred to the associated Agree head, T or V. In the present paper, it is argued that the French ‘que’–‘qui’ alternation is the locus of a Case contrast, implying that nominative Case originates on the complementizer and only becomes associated with T as a consequence of feature transfer. ‘Que’–‘qui’ thus provides new, Case-based empirical support for the theory of Feature Inheritance. The article also suggests that the ‘que’–‘qui’ alternation has an important implication for Chomsky’s recent application of dynamic antisymmetry, reinterpreted in terms of labelling, to the issue of subject extraction failure. Specifically, the alternation appears to indicate that Case-matching is required, in addition to phi-feature agreement, in order for extraction to be blocked by labelling.
Author(s): Mackenzie I
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Journal of French Language Studies
Year: 2018
Volume: 28
Issue: 1
Pages: 21-41
Print publication date: 01/03/2018
Online publication date: 13/03/2017
Acceptance date: 03/01/2017
Date deposited: 17/01/2017
ISSN (print): 0959-2695
ISSN (electronic): 1474-0079
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
URL: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959269517000035
DOI: 10.1017/S0959269517000035
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