Abstract
In the generative literature, it has always been assumed thatsyntactic agreement takes place by means of syntactic operations thattarget the so-called phi-features. Lexical items are not atomic, but rathermade up of phonetic material plus syntactic features, which encodegrammatical information regarding, for example, number, gender, person,and case. According to Chomsky's Derivation by Phase, syntacticagreement happens between two lexical items when two operations takeplace: Merge and Agree. If both these operations occur, syntacticagreement is established. In this paper, I shall move some objectionsagainst the traditional idea of phi-features and agreement. Theseobjections derive directly from data observation. I shall show that someagreement and interpretational patterns of Italian impersonal si anEuropean Portuguese a gente constructions are unexplainable within thecurrent generative theory. I shall therefore argue for the existence of anadditional set of features encoding pragmatic/deicticfeature set, which I call the sigma-set (see D'Alessandro, 2004), isresponsible for the so-called semantic agreement phenomena that haveoften been considered as solely acting in the pragmatic component of thegrammar (Wechsler and Zlatió, 2001). I propose instead that pragmaticinformation is encoded syntactically, in the sigma-set, which appears aleast in personal pronouns. DOI: 10.28998/0103-6858.2004v1n33p185-202
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