Adjectival and Analytic Passives

Abstract

Abstract Analytic adjectival passives are common in Indo‐European. The participle around which they are constructed has a stative or property interpretation, unlike verbal (“eventive”) passives (whether analytic or synthetic). Like verbal passives, their defining characteristic is that their surface subject does not have the same thematic role θ (often agent) as subjects of corresponding actives (section 1). Other notable properties are that, unlike verbal passives, a noun phrase with this role θ is usually not structurally present, even covertly, and certain other complement choices allowed with verbs are also excluded, possibly due to the Case Filter (sections 2 and 5). Adjectival passives can be further divided into those which have the exact distribution and modification of lexical adjectives, and a more syntactic type with some verbal properties, lacking some interpretive and modificational characteristics of adjectives. The difference is illustrated clearly in, for example, Modern Greek. These two types may well result from different levels of derivational insertion of the participial morpheme (section 3). The similarities of adjectival and (analytic) verbal passives are pervasive, especially evident in Indo‐European morphology. In some non‐Indo‐European synthetic passives, such as Hebrew and Hungarian, the differences between adjectival and verbal passives seem more salient. What is apparent in Indo‐European is the distinction in which verbs select passive participles. Many verbs select adjectival passives, but only a few, so‐called auxiliaries, select verbal passives (section 4). For Indo‐European, earlier literature seems to have overstated the structural distinction, and it is plausible to argue that both types involve movement of object noun phrases to subject position. The differences between analytic adjectival and verbal passives are then possibly due to whether participial inflection is respectively interpreted as a property in Logical Form, or not interpreted at all, that is, inserted only in Phonological Form (sections 6 and 7).