Linguistics

Philosophy

Constraint (computer-aided design)

Economics

Market economy

Computer science

Natural language processing

Physics

Hierarchy

Mathematics

Optics

Feature (linguistics)

Clitic

Verb

Focus (optics)

Artificial intelligence

Geometry

Distinctive feature

Predicative expression

Nominative case

Linguistic Inquiry

This article develops a new approach to a family of hierarchy-effect-inducing configurations, with a focus on Person Case Constraint effects, dative-nominative configurations, and copula constructions. The main line of approach in the recent literature is to attribute these effects to failures of ϕ-Agree or, more specifically, failures of nominal licensing or case checking. We propose that the problem in these configurations is unrelated to nominal licensing, but is instead the result of a probe participating in more than one Agree dependency, a configuration we refer to as feature gluttony. Feature gluttony does not in and of itself lead to ungrammaticality; rather, it can create irresolvably conflicting requirements for subsequent operations. We argue that in the case of clitic configurations, a probe that agrees with more than one DP creates an intervention problem for clitic doubling. In violations involving morphological agreement, gluttony in features may result in a configuration with no available morphological output.

Feature Gluttony