Impersonal Passives Research Articles

Latin Impersonal Passive and the Category of Pluractionality

This article aims to put Latin impersonal passive into the context of covert categories, specificallypluractionality. I try to reanalyse six passages from the Roman grammatical texts, mostly compiled in Heinrich Keil’s Grammatici Latini, in which the meaning of Latin impersonal passives is considered. There are two groups of evidence. The first one (passages from Diomedes, Priscian, and frg. Bobiense de verbo) presents the impersonal passive as a linguistic strategy that shifts focus from an agent to a situation, while the second one (Diomedes and two excerpts of Servius’ commentaries on Virgil) concentrates upon the number of agents. In the last case, a verbal action is considered to be a collective one involving many people, and therefore, in my opinion, falls into the category of pluractionality. Being a diverse phenomenon, the term pluractionality includes participant plurality, which is realised either in a subject or in an object depending on whether the verb is intransitive or transitive. Intransitivity of the Latin impersonal passive forms, as it seems, may imply agent plurality rather than subject plurality, since impersonal passive constructions are subjectless. Furthermore, in my opinion, the evidence provided by Latin grammarians demonstrates a contraposition of the 1st personsingular, 1st person plural and 3rd person singular passive forms.

A corpus-based contrastive study of impersonal passives in Swedish and Dutch

Abstract This paper deals with impersonal passives in two Germanic languages, Swedish and Dutch. Impersonal passives constitute one type of impersonal construction (denoting constructions with non-canonical subjects) as described in Siewierska (2008a: 116). Formally, they consist of an overt expletive subject, such as det ‘it’ in Swedish and er ‘there’ in Dutch, combined with a passive predicate. Semantically, such passive constructions encode actions with a general reference, i.e. where no agent is specified (cf. Siewierska 1984, Engdahl 2006, Viberg 2010). The study is corpus-based and uses a bidirectional translation corpus of Swedish and Dutch to map out the specific morphosyntactic and semantic profile of the impersonal passive in both Swedish and in Dutch. The similarities and differences make these languages suitable to study from a contrastive perspective in that interesting aspects on impersonal passives are highlighted in the translation data.

Um af-liði í ópersónulegri þolmynd

This paper discusses the use of ‘by’-phrases in Impersonal Passives in Icelandic. It has been claimed in the literature on Icelandic syntax that ‘by’-phrases that express the agent are not very good or even ungrammatical in Impersonal Passives. The pa-per shows that this point of view oversimplifies the facts because various examples of this pattern can be found in natural data and these examples do not seem to reflect mistakes in linguistic performance. We discuss examples from the Icelandic treebank and from the web and we suggest that ‘by’-phrases are more likely to be used in Impersonal Passives if they involve new information and/or if they are heavy. One of the conclusions of the article is that large and well annotated corpora are important for linguistic research that focuses on rare constructions.

PASSIVE CONSTRUCTIONS IN ILAMI KURDISH. A ROLE AND REFERENCE GRAMMAR ACCOUNT

As far as obfuscation of the truth is taken into account, passivization seems to be one of the most prominent processes by which the agent of an action may become evasive (by being omitted or demoted to non-obligatory prepositional constituent) in certain contexts. Cross- linguistically, these constructions may not necessarily be formed in an identical fashion, as in some languages such items may be constructed syntactically, morphologically and/or lexically. In this paper, through employing Role and Reference Grammar framework, we attempt to represent the nature of passive constructions in Ilami, a southern variety of Kurdish language. In pursuit of this goal, we enjoy Ilami data to represent how passivization could be explained in the RRG [Role and Reference Grammar] framework. Analyzing our Kurdish data, we concluded that Ilami gains advantage of the main types of passivization strategies. The use of strict morphological , periphrastic and impersonal passives was well - attested, and additionally, it can be said that the two stages of passivization suggested in RRG are done in Ilami passives.

Dutch impersonal passives

Abstract Dutch impersonal passives are often considered to be only compatible with atelic volitional verbs, such as werken ‘work’, lachen ‘laugh’, and zwemmen ‘swim’. Two recent corpus studies, however, argue that a wider range of verbs is compatible with the construction, presenting examples of attested impersonal passives with telic and non-volitional verbs. This paper lends further support to this view, by providing an exploratory study of the frequencies of different intransitive verbs appearing in the construction, as well as a discussion of the telicity of attested impersonal passives with vallen ‘fall’ and sterven ‘die’. The paper concludes that also with these telic non-volitional verbs, the impersonal passive merely conveys the occurrence of the type of act described by the verb, without specifying whether this occurrence is constituted by a single or multiple events, or whether it involves one or more participants.

Het onpersoonlijk passief in het Nederlands en het Zweeds

Abstract The impersonal passive in Dutch and Swedish This paper gives an account of the impersonal passive in Dutch and Swedish and has two goals: first, to define the impersonal passive and second, to offer a corpus-based study of impersonal passives in both languages. Impersonal passives are defined as passive constructions encoding actions with a general reference. They are made up of an overt expletive subject, viz. er ‘there’ in Dutch and det ‘it’ in Swedish, combined with a passive predicate. A contrastive study of the impersonal passive gives a wider and in-depth analysis of this structure in both languages by applying knowledge from two grammatical traditions. The empirical part of the study reveals that impersonal passives occur more frequently in Dutch than in Swedish. Moreover, the empirical data show that elements such as telicity, transitivity and control come into play in an interesting way in impersonal passives.

Prepositional passives in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish: A corpus study

There are conflicting reports in the literature concerning whether the Scandinavian languages use prepositional passives as in English. Maling & Zaenen (1985) showed that Icelandic does not have the construction; instead the Icelandic data should be analyzed as topicalization of the complement of a preposition in impersonal passives. They suggested that the same account would be appropriate for Danish and Swedish, whereas Norwegian is reported to have a rather productive prepositional passive (Lødrup 1991). In order to find out to what extent and in what ways prepositional passives are actually used, we carried out a series of investigations in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish contemporary text corpora, analyzing over 3600 potential prepositional passives, with a balance of periphrastic and morphological passive forms. We have found that prepositional passives are indeed used in all three languages, but rather infrequently, ranging from 3.4 per million words (3.4/mw) in Swedish, 5/mw in Danish to 16/mw in Norwegian. The majority of the prepositional passives are periphrasticbli(ve)-passives. The passive subject is typically animate, a person or an animal, who is psychologically affected by the action, or the lack of action, expressed by the participle. The notion of affectedness that is relevant for these languages thus differs from what has been described for English. Prepositionals-passives are found in coordinated structures and in infinitival complements of modal verbs, a context known to favours-passive.

Impersonal passives in Icelandic

This paper argues that /celandic impersonal passives have a constructional property that expresses generic events. After having demonstrated their basic characteristics, it is shown that the notion of 'activity' is inadequate for the explanation of why the construction is licensed. The behaviour of the adverbial ser moovitandi is diagnosed to show indefiniteness tied up with the construction.

Passive in Danish, English, and German

We show how the variation in the passive in Danish, English, and German can be accounted for. The dimensions in which the three languages differ are the existence of a morphological passive in Danish a subject requirement in Danish and English resulting in expletive insertion in impersonal constructions in Danish and absence of impersonal passives in English the possibility to promote the secondary object to subject in Danish The differences are accounted for by differences in the structural/lexical case distinction and by mapping processes that insert expletives in Danish. The passive in general is accounted for by a lexical rule that is uniform across languages and hence captures the generalization regarding passive.

Deletion versus pro-forms: an overly simple dichotomy?

This paper examines an anaphoric construction, British English do, and locates it within the dichotomy in the ellipsis literature between deleted phrases and null pro-forms, concluding that the choice is a false one, in that pro-forms involve deletion as well; the question, then, is how to account for the differential permeability to dependencies that require external licensing of the various deleted constituents. British English do has some characteristics of a fully deleted phrase, and some of a pro-form. The paper proposes that deletion is involved in this construction, but of a smaller constituent than can host wh-movement or long quantifier-raising. Therefore, deletion must occur within the syntax, in order to bleed syntactic processes. It is further shown that, within a phase-based syntax, Voice must be a phase rather than v, but that both functional heads must exist, and offers a new explanation for the incompatibility of passive and British English do, as well as an account of why some languages, like English, lack impersonal passives, while others, such as Dutch, allow them.

Subject/object asymmetries in the grammar of bilingual and monolingual Spanish speakers

This paper argues against connectionist models of language acquisition. It examines knowledge of the properties of subjects and objects in Spanish, particularly in impersonal passives and inchoatives. In both of these structures, the reflexive clitic se is obligatorily present and the linear order of elements is the same, namely [se V NP], with agreement between the verb and the noun phrase. In other words, the input is identical in both cases (se quemaron los libros ‘the books burned/were burned’ is ambiguous between both structures). However, the NP in the impersonal passive exhibits some of the properties of objects while the NP in the inchoatives behaves exclusively like a subject. An empirical study shows that three groups of speakers of Spanish, a monolingual Spanish group, an early English/Spanish bilingual group and a group of late learners of Spanish, are aware of these differences. As the input is ambiguous, it is argued that a model such as that provided by connectionist theories, which argues that the input is sufficient for acquisition, cannot account for the data.

Animacy and telicity: Semantic constraints on impersonal passives

This paper discusses the semantic constraints on impersonal passives in several languages, including German and Dutch. Corpus data support earlier assumptions that the situation denoted by impersonal passives is a homogeneous (e.g. atelic) event. Telic (or unaccusative) verb lexemes can be used in the impersonal passive if they are forced into event-structural homogeneity. I will attempt to derive this event-structural restriction from the referential demotion of the subject argument. In this view, the telicity restriction is not a strict independent constraint but rather an epiphenomenon of the referential non-individuation of the argument undergoing a change of state. Another widely acknowledged claim is that impersonal passives in some languages including German, Dutch, and Icelandic are restricted to human (or animate) agents. I will show that this condition turns out to be too restrictive for Dutch and German, once real discourse data are considered. In order to capture the cross-linguistic variation, I will draw upon notions related to proto-agentivity instead of animacy. In my analysis, both constraints on impersonal passives are tied to the meaning of the demoted argument. The event-structural telicity restriction is a consequence of its demoted referential properties, animacy is an effect of its proto-agent properties.

Feature-based argument mapping and animacy optimization in impersonal passives

Analysis of the alternation between impersonal reflexives and reflexive passives in Spanish shows that higher animacy makes an argument less marked as an object. This generalization supports Hopper and Thompson's (Transitivity in grammar and discourse, 1981) “transitivity hypothesis”, since it is entailed by their claim that objects tend to be highly individuated. The article proposes an optimality-theoretic implementation of the analysis, using a feature-based approach to argument realization modeled on Bresnan and Kanerva's (Linguistic Inquiry 20: 1–50, 1989) lexical mapping theory . The proposal highlights a contradiction between the transitivity hypothesis and the approaches to animacy that follow Silverstein's (Hierarchy of features and ergativity, Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1976) analysis of split ergative languages, for which alternatives are suggested.

Negative evidence in L2 acquisition

This article deals with the L2 acquisition of differences between Norwegian and English passives, and presents data to show that the acquisition of these differences by Norwegian L2 acquirers of English cannot be fully explained by positive evidence, cues, conservativism or economy. Rather, it is argued, it is natural to consider whether indirect negative evidence may facilitate acquisition by inferencing. The structures in focus are impersonal passive constructions with postverbal NPs and passive constructions with intransitive verbs. These sentences are ungrammatical in English. Chomsky (1981) proposes that this is a result of passive morphology absorbing objective case in English. There is no such case to be assigned to the postverbal NP in impersonal passives. In passive constructions with intransitive verbs, the verb does not assign objective case, so that there is no case for the passive morphology to absorb. Thus, impersonal passives have to be changed into personal passives, where the NP receives nominative case, and the objective case is free to go to the passive morphology. Intransitive verbs, however, cannot be used in the passive voice at all. Both the structures discussed in this article, i.e. are grammatical in Norwegian. However, the options available in English, viz. personal passives and active sentences, are equally possible. Åfarli (1992) therefore proposes that Norwegian has optional case absorption (passive morphology optionally absorbs case). On the basis on such observations, we may propose a parameter with the settings [+case absorption] for English, and [-case absorption], signifying optional case absorption, for Norwegian. This means that none of the structures that are grammatical in English can function as positive evidence for the [+case absorption] setting, since they are also grammatical in optional case absorption languages. The question is how this parameter is set.

Gradient auxiliary selection and impersonal passivization in German: an experimental investigation

The main purpose of this paper is to provide experimental evidence that two syntactic reflexes of split intransitivity in German – the selection of perfective auxiliaries and the impersonal passive construction – are sensitive to an aspectual/thematic hierarchy of verb classes. We show that there is a split between ‘core’ verbs that elicit categorical intuitions from native speakers, and ‘intermediate’ verbs that exhibit gradience. Furthermore, crossdialectal differences between northern and southern German with respect to auxiliary selection tend to occur only with intermediate verbs. We argue that these findings lend support to the view that the unaccusative/unergative distinction is considerably more unstable than often assumed, and suggest that projectionist theories of the lexicon-syntax interface such as those directly derived from the Unaccusative Hypothesis may not be able to account for the systematic variation exhibited by the data.

Typology of Verbal Categories: Papers Presented to Vladimir Nedjalkov on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday (review)

Reviewed by: Typology of verbal categories: Papers presented to Vladimir Nedjalkov on the occasion of his 70thbirthday ed. by Leonid Kulikov, Heinz Vater Lindsay J. Whaley Typology of verbal categories: Papers presented to Vladimir Nedjalkov on the occasion of his 70th birthday. Ed. by Leonid Kulikov and Heinz Vater. (Linguistische Arbeiten 382.) Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1998. Pp. 310. In the introduction to this book, the editors highlight two important contributions to the field of linguistics made by Vladimir Nedjalkov. First, he has helped to expand the interaction between linguists working in Russia and those working in the western world. Second, he has added greatly to the understanding of sundry verbal categories, especially causatives, resultatives, and tense/aspect/mood. To these I might add a third, that Nedjalkov has furnished careful research on several understudied languages including Evenki, Nivkh, and Chuckchi. The 22 papers in the volume are cast in the spirit of Nedjalkov’s work and serve as a fitting acknowledgment of his achievements. The articles, written primarily in English but also with three in German and three in French, are arranged into four sections: ‘Ergativity and transitivity’; ‘Voice, causative and valency’; ‘Tense and mood’; and ‘Verbal categories and language universals’. The quadripartite structure serves much more as a matter of convenience than a significant division as many of the papers might properly have appeared in more than one section, e.g. ‘Causalité, causativité, and transitivité’ (7–27) by Jean-Pierre Desclés and Zlatka Guentchéva, and the fourth section contains papers that have little to do with one another, cf. ‘Defining converbs’ (273–82) by Johan van der Auwera and ‘Die Verneinung als funktional-semantische Kategorie (unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von Streckformen des Deutschen und Russischen)’ (287–308) by Ronald L ötzsch. Though differing greatly in style, subject matter, and length, the contributions to this book supply plenty of substantive analyses and data. There is no way to summarize them all adequately here, so I have selected just three articles which to me best capture the character of the book. In ‘Transitivity increasing operations in Tariana’ (47–59), A lexandra Y. Aikhenvald describes four causative constructions [End Page 417] found in this North Arawak language: a morphological causative, a serial causative construction, and two periphrastic causative constructions. The choice of which causative to use is based on a complex of properties. These include the transitivity of the verb being causativized, the degree of control being assigned to the causee, and the nature of the causer’s effort. While none of these parameters is unusual, Aikhenvald points out that they rarely give rise to four distinct causative structures in a single language. Masayoshi Shibatani’s contribution, ‘Voice parameters’ (117–38), proposes that the confluence of several semantic parameters can be used to account for the voice oppositions found in particular languages. Of particular importance is the principle of maximization, which states ‘Maximize the contrast in grammatical meaning as much as possible’. Shibatani intends this principle to capture the fact that certain voice oppositions, e.g. active vs. passive, are common whereas others (e.g. active vs. middle with no passive in the language) are highly unusual. He notes a variety of other parameters as well such as whether a language allows passive forms on intransitive bases and whether volitionality is required of the agent in passive constructions. He then demonstrates how the parameters can be employed to account for the existence of impersonal passives in some languages. In ‘Verb formation in Leko: Causatives, reflexives, and reciprocals’ (195–203), Simon van de Kerke furnishes data about verbal categories in Leko, a largely unresearched language isolate in Bolivia. K describes a system of verb formation that evinces many correspondences to Quechua, which leads him to wonder whether the similarity may be due to extended contact between the languages. This turns out to be a query that must be left unanswered because of the lack of information about other neighboring languages spoken in the area, all of them still awaiting detailed study. Lindsay J. Whaley Dartmouth College Copyright © 2001 Linguistic Society of America

Impersonal passives in icelandic

This paper argues that /celandic impersonal passives have a constructional property that expresses generic events. After having demonstrated their basic characteristics, it is shown that the notion of 'activity' is inadequate for the explanation of why the construction is licensed. The behaviour of the adverbial ser moovitandi is diagnosed to show indefiniteness tied up with the construction.

AGENTS IN LATIN IMPERSONAL PASSIVES

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to examine the properties of the agents in Latin impersonal constructions. First of all, explicit agents do occur with impersonal passives. Furthermore, when agents are not explicitly expressed, they are predictable from the context in a number of cases. The occurrence of explicit agents as well as their predictability seems crucially dependent upon the degree of Transitivity of the clause. The verbs that occur in impersonal constructions can be graded according to a scalar notion of Transitivity along a continuum from low-intransitives to high-intransitives. My hypothesis is that the lower the degree of Transitivity of the verbs the lower the referential properties shown by the agent. Moreover, according to my analysis, the category of non-referential agents should be split into two: generic (or universal) agents should be distinguished from non-referential indefinite ones on the basis of the inclusion or non-inclusion of all the participants in the event.

Conflict resolution in passive formation

In this paper we will argue that a typology of passive formation can be derived from the optimality-theoretic interaction between three well-known constraints. These are the Extended Projection Principle (VP must have a subject), Stay (do not move) and Parse (elements from the input should occur in the output). The analysis will not only account for different forms of passives (personal passives versus impersonal passives) but also for languages which lack passives (of certain verbs or altogether). To account for this we employ the socalled null parse, a candidate without structure.

Symmetric and asymmetric passives

Double object constructions manifest three different passive patterns. In Kinyarwanda, Norwegian, and Swedish, either object can passivize (symmetric passive) while in English, Fula, and Chicheŵa, only one object can passivize (asymmetric passive). However, there are two types of asymmetric passives. In the English type, the accusative object with the highest thematic role must passivize and transitive impersonal passives are impossible, regardless of whether the language allows intransitive impersonal passives. In the Chicheŵa type, only the object associated with the Case-assigning morpheme adjacent to the passive morpheme can passivize.