On the interpretability of φ-features

The paperreconsidersthe evidencefor the interpretablestatus of φ-feature within DP in Romance languages, focusing on Italian. The conclusions are that, given a reasonably local interpretation of what counts as interpretable, GENDER is not an interpretable feature, and NUMBER (or more correctly PLUR, in the sense of Heycock & Zamparelli 2005) is interpretable, but is not sufficient to drive the process of verbal and predicative agreement. The notions of “default”, particularly with respect to the PERSON feature is also analyzed and various alternatives are explored.