Word formation is syntactic: adjectival passives in English

Abstract

Since Wasow (1977), the differences between adjectival and verbal passives in English have been taken to motivate a division between lexical and syntactic word-formation processes. This paper shows with data from corpora that many accepted facts about adjectival passives are incorrect: adjectival passives can be formed from ECM/raising verbs, and they can also involve a subset of indirect or applied objects. On the other hand, adjectival passives do differ from verbal passives in special meanings and missing inputs. This means that the phenomena that are supposed to characterize syntactic versus lexical processes do not all pattern together: ECM/raising points to a syntactic derivation of adjectival passives, but special interpretations and missing inputs point to a lexical derivation. This paper instead proposes a purely syntactic account of adjectival passives that explains all of the facts, both the similarities and the differences between adjectival and verbal passives. This syntactic analysis also permits a simple account of the alleged class of non-intersective adjectives, and the predictions it makes provides support for the theory of applied arguments advanced by Bruening (2010).