Kasusbeschränkungen bei reflexiven Sätzen (Pseudopassiven) in Varietäten des Bosnischen/Kroatischen/Serbischen und im Burgenland-Kroatischen

Abstract

The present paper deals with semantic restrictions with respect to the case marking of objects of reflexive decausativised sentences in varieties of Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS) including Burgenland-Croatian (BC). Reflexive elements across languages may affect the external argument of the verb (passivization, decausativization). Many languages including some Slavic and Romance languages allow for accusative marking of the internal argument in sentences with reflexive elements (reflexive A[ccusative]I[mpersonal]S[entences]), although no overt external argument is selected. I will, however, provide evidence (binding data) that reflexive AIS do not involve mere absorption of the external argument specified by the lexical verb. Polish and Slovenian do not seem to impose any semantic restrictions on the internal argument, i.e. transitive verbs quite productively occur with the AIS pattern. Varieties of BCS and BC, on the other hand, only allow for animate accusative NPs with reflexive decausatives. Rivero (2001) observed that the null subject selected by reflexive IS always has an indefinite animate interpretation. These elements are in need of referential support by other nominal expressions. Thus, the null external argument forms a syntactic dependency with the internal argument (cf. Lopez 2004) with shared interpretive features (Φ-features). In BC and partly in BCS (in contrast to Polish) the features shared by both constituents include the feature [+animate].