Phi-feature resolution under coordination outside of the grammar

A view from Polish

Abstract

It is commonly assumed that the person/number/gender (phi) features of a coordinate structure are computed grammar-internally from the phi-features of its conjuncts. For example, traditional instructions for grammatical gender resolution in Polish state that a conjunction that contains [MASCULINE HUMAN] formal features controls virile agreement on the verb, and non-virile elsewhere. Given the existence of multiple exceptions, the instructions represent a robust empirical tendency, rather than a categorical rule. Based on this behavior, as well as conceptual considerations, the paper argues that resolution is a grammar-external mechanism: it is the architecture of the grammar that conspires to not provide a possible locus of resolution internally. Instead, the external systems need to handle the under-determined output of the grammatical derivation.