Advances in the Syntax of DPs - Structure, agreement, and case

The structure of null subject DPs and agreement in Polish impersonal constructions 143

Sigurðsson (2004) and following Harley & Ritter (2002), that features will only appear
if they have been bound, and that some features are mutually exclusive, e.g. [masculine]
and [feminine], while others are not. Both Dalrymple & Kaplan (2000) and Harley &
Ritter (2002) make conjoined use of a [speaker] and a [hearer] feature to capture inclu-
sive forms. This is also the approach that I will adopt here. I will also propose that in
order to capture the possible interpretations of null impersonal pronouns, the feature
geometry in (24) will have to be modified slightly. First of all, it is necessary to introduce
an additional dependent feature dubbed [non-specific] to the feature [group]. It will be
used to refer to some unspecified group of people. The addition, however, of a depen-
dent feature [non-specific] to the inventory necessitates, in turn, the introduction of a
separate feature [plural].^16 It is due to the fact that in Harley and Ritter’s (2002) account,
the feature [plural] is synonymous with the feature [group], and as such it did not have
to be introduced separately. The revised feature geometry of pronouns is demonstrated
in (25). Please note that this is just a first approximation of what a feature geometry that
would allow for the inclusion of impersonal pronouns might look like.

(25)
PRONOUNS

Participant Individuation

Speaker Addressee Group Minimal Class

Non-specific Plural Animate Inanimate/Neuter

[Generic] [Arbitrary] Feminine Masculine

Augmented

The next step would be to add two dependent, mutually exclusive, features [generic],
[arbitrary] to the feature [non-specific] or to allow for two possible interpretations,
either generic or arbitrary, that the feature [non-specific] can receive. It appears that
there is not much difference between the two, apart from possibly the fact that on
the one hand, it appears that the introduction of these two new features may seem
to be to some extent redundant as the generic/arbitrary values are the only two pos-
sible values that the feature [non-specific] can receive anyway. On the other hand,
the introduction of these two features into the geometry allows us to maintain the
claim that all features in the geometry are privative and therefore subject to binding.

16. In this revised geometry the feature [plural] is used exactly the same way the feature
    [group] was used in Harley & Ritter’s (2002) account.