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Impersonal Passives Patricia Cabredo Hofherr (CNRS – UMR 7023 Structures formelles du langage) pcabredo@univ-paris8.fr Word count (9000-11000 words for main text + cross-ref + references) Keywords: Passives, valency-reduction, subject-backgrounding, impersonal verb forms, expletive subjects, expletive constructions Abstract Impersonal passives are passives of intransitive verbs. Applying passivisation to an intransitive verb results in a derived verb-form with no referential argument; the surface subject of the construction is then either absent or realised by an expletive subject. Consequently, the analysis of impersonal passives inherits the complexities of at least three related domains: (i) the cross-linguistic definition of passives in general, (ii) the analysis of subjectless sentences and (iii) the syntax of sentences with expletive subjects. The first section reviews the most influential characterisations of passives in the literature in terms of subject demotion and object promotion. The analyses of impersonal passives in the literature will be presented against this general backdrop. The second section presents the evidence from the literature on Romance, Celtic, Slavic and Germanic languages that subject demotion does not yield a uniform class of passives. In particular, constructions that suppress the logical subject differ in whether they yield a syntactically transitive or intransitive output when applied to a transitive verb. Based on this observation, it has been proposed that constructions that suppress the subject but do not de-transitivise the underlying verb should not be analysed as passives; instead these constructions should be treated as impersonal verb forms, more similar to transitive sentences with an overt impersonal subject such as Engl. one, French on, Germanic man/men than to passives. Arguably, this distinction between valency-reducing passives and valency-preserving impersonals is preserved when the relevant constructions is applied to intransitive verbs. The final section examines the question what role overt expletives play in the syntax of impersonal passives. The literature on expletives constructions in Germanic and particularly in Scandinavian provides a wealth of data that will be used to place the overt expletive subject found with impersonal passives in the context of expletive constructions more generally. Main text Impersonal passives are defined in two ways in the literature: either narrowly as passives of intransitive verbs or more widely as subjectless passives. Applying passivisation to an intransitive verb results in a derived verb-form with no overt referential argument; the surface subject of the impersonal is either absent (as in 1bii) or realised by an expletive subject (1c). (1) a. Active transitive → Personal passive i. Hans hat Maria dort gesehen. ii. Maria wurde dort gesehen. (German) H. has M. there seen M. pass.aux.3sg there seen Hans saw Mary there. Mary was seen there. b. Active intransitive → Impersonal passive i. Gestern hat Maria dort gespielt. ii. Gestern wurde dort gespielt. (German)

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yesterday has M. there played yesterday pass.aux3sg there played Yesterday Mary played there. Yesterday there was playing going on there (lit. there was played there). a. ...at der er blevet danset (Danish) …that EXPL is been danced

... that there was dancing going on. (impersonal passive) (Vikner 1995:209,93d) However, passives like the German werden-passive target a particular argument of the predicate (the accusative in the German examples above). Consequently, in German impersonal passives also arise for bi-valent verbs that have no accusative arguments:1 (2) a. Active Nom-Dat verb Gestern hat der Postbote dem Mädchen geholfen. (German) yesterday has the postman the.dat girl.dat helped Yesterday the postman helped the girl. b. Impersonal passive with Dative DP Gestern wurde dem Mädchen geholfen. yesterday was the.DAT girl helped Yesterday the girl got help/ was assisted. (lit. the girl was helped.) The analysis of impersonal passives therefore inherits the complexities of at least three related domains: (i) the cross-linguistic definition of passives in general, (ii) the analysis of subjectless sentences and (iii) the syntax of sentences with expletive subjects. Section 1 reviews the most influential characterisations of passives in the literature in terms of subject demotion and object promotion. Several analyses of impersonal passives in the literature will be presented against this general backdrop. Section 2 presents the evidence from the literature on Romance, Celtic, Slavic, and Germanic languages that subjectless sentences with backgrounded agents do not form a syntactically uniform class of passives. In particular, constructions that suppress the logical subject may differ in whether they yield a syntactically transitive or intransitive output when applied to a transitive verb. Based on this observation, it has been proposed that constructions that suppress the subject but preserve transitive structure of the underlying verb should not be analysed as passives. Under one proposal the constructions that preserve object-syntax for the logical object are treated as impersonal verb forms, i.e. as structures more akin to transitive sentences with an overt impersonal subject such as Engl. one, French on, Germanic man/men than to passives. Arguably, this distinction between valency-reducing passives and valency-preserving impersonals is preserved when the relevant constructions are applied to intransitive verbs. This analysis has been applied to the impersonal forms of the Celtic languages, and in particular in Irish, that have been argued to be impersonal verb forms rather than passives. Comparative data from Ukrainian and Polish show, however, that the presence of an accusative DP is not an indisputable diagnostic of a syntactically transitive structure. In particular, the presence of an accusative DP does not uniformly exclude syntactic demotion of the logical subject. The Icelandic New Construction provides another example of a construction that has been variously argued to be a passive or an impersonal. Section 3 looks at the role played by overt expletives in the syntax of impersonal passives.

1 As German has no oblique subjects, the dative NP cannot be analysed as the subject of the example in (2b). This is unlike the situation in Icelandic, where in the passive oblique dative and genitive objects become syntactic subjects as shown convincingly by Zaenen, Maling & Thráinsson (1985).

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The literature on expletives constructions in Germanic and particularly in Scandinavian provides a wealth of data that will be used to place the overt expletive subject found with impersonal passives in the context of expletive constructions more generally. 1. The analysis of passives The present section reviews different proposals for the characterisation of passive constructions. Fundamental differences arise in particular for definitions of the passive that are meant to be cross-linguistically valid. In what follows the subject and object of the active verb are referred to as the logical subject and logical object respectively. The NP having the syntactic properties of a subject will be called the grammatical subject. 1.1. The cross-linguistic definition of passives There is a general consensus that the function of a prototypical passive is to foreground the logical object and at the same time background the logical subject (Siewierska 1984, Keenan 1985). Siewierska (1984:2) gives the following broad definition of the passive: (3) a. the subject of the passive clause is a direct object in the corresponding active b. the subject of the active clause is expressed in the passive in the form of an agentive adjunct or left unexpressed c. the verb is marked passive2 Notice that this definition links two distinct linguistic domains: information structure notions (fore-grounding/back-grounding) on the one hand, and grammatical relations and their syntactic reflexes on the other hand (object/ subject). Keenan (1985) points out that passive constructions differ from other syntactic means of expressing information structure, such as topicalisation and dislocation. While topicalisation and dislocation operate at the sentence-level (CP-level), passives modify information structure at the level of the predicate (VP-level). The definition of passives given by Siewierska includes two central properties: object promotion (4a) and subject demotion (4b). (4) a. Object promotion: the logical object is promoted to grammatical subject (=3a) b. Subject demotion: the logical subject is demoted or eliminated (=3b) These properties appear jointly in well-studied passives such as the be-passive in English or the Latin synthetic passive. There are, however, structures for which the two properties are dissociated. It is for this reason that Keenan (1985:273) more neutrally characterizes passive as a subject-backgrounding operation that derives n-place predicates from n+1 place predicates. This definition of passives is broader than (3) on two counts. First, it allows for non-promotional passives that do not modify the syntactic object properties of the logical object. Secondly, this definition includes passives in which a DP is promoted that is not the logical (direct) object. This is a maximally wide definition of passive constructions. Among the general family of passives defined as argument-reduction, Keenan (1985:247) singles out a basic passive which is the most widespread type of passive cross-linguistically:

2 As Keenan & Dryer (2007:327) point out, passive marking of the verb has to be understood broadly enough to cover auxiliary verbs.

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(5) The basic passive a. contains no agent phrase, b. the non-passive form of the main verb is transitive, c. the main verb expresses an activity, taking agent subjects and patient objects (adapted from Keenan 1985:247) Here I follow Keenan's definition in as far as object promotion to subject is not a necessary property of passives. I adopt a narrower definition than both Keenan and Siewierska, however, in that I will distinguish passives from middles and adjectival passives. Passives differ from middles in that passives can be eventive while middles and adjectival passives are stative; furthermore, passives have a semantically active implicit agent, while this is not the case for middles and adjectival passives.3 Given this distinction, the German valency-reducing reflexive construction in (6a) is considered a reflexive middle, while (a subclass of) the reflexive construction in the Romance languages allows eventive readings as in (6b) and therefore is considered a reflexive passive. (6) a. Das Buch liest sich gut. (German) DET book reads REFL well. “The book is easy to read.” (reflexive middle) b. Esta iglesia se construyó en el siglo XVI. (Spanish) this church REFL built in the century 16 “This church was built in the 16th century.” (reflexive passive) Notice that it is more accurate to speak of a characterisation of passive constructions. As pointed out by Keenan (1985), it is common for languages to have more than one passive construction. Spanish, for example, has a ser “be” + past participle passive as in (7), as well as the reflexive passive illustrated in (6b) above. Latin also has two passive constructions, a synthetic passive and an analytic passive, with both constructions allowing impersonal passives (8a/b): (7) La catedral fue construida por el arquitecto Gaudí. (Spanish) The cathedral was build.pastpart.fsg by the architect Gaudí. “The cathedral was built by the architect Gaudí.” (ser “be”+ past participle passive ) (8) a. Legibus (a bonis civibus) paretur. (Latin) Laws.dat.pl of good.gen citizens.gen obey.pass3sg The laws are obeyed (by good citizens). (Comrie 1977:53, ex 32) b. Acriter (a militibus) pugnatum est. fiercely by soldiers.GEN fought is There was fierce fighting (by the soldiers). (Comrie 1977:54, ex 34) As the examples above show, passive morphology can be of different types, with several constructions co-existing in the same language. Cross-linguistically, passives can be morphologically marked by modification of the stem (affixes, vowel change), external affixes (outside derivational and inflectional morphology, e.g. reflexives), particles, auxiliaries, and dedicated inflectional paradigms (see Haspelmath 1990:28-32).4 3 See Ackema & Schoorlemmer, Chapter XX this volume, for a detailed discussion of the difference between middles

and passives, and Emonds, Ch, this volume for a discussion of the contrast between adjectival and verbal passives in English.

4 For a discussion of the grammaticalisation paths observed with passives see Wiemer (2011).

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1.2. Analyses of the passive Analyses of the passive have to take a position on three issues.5 First, at what level does the passive operate (sentence, predicate)? Secondly, what is the relation between an active and a passive predicate? And thirdly, what is the relationship between object promotion and subject demotion? Are they independent operations or does one of them condition the other? 1.2.1 Sentence-level vs. predicate-level operation The first question concerns the place of the passive in the grammatical model: should the passive be analysed as a syntactic or as a lexical process? In early treatments of generative grammar, the passive is treated as a sentence-level transformation relating structurally different active and passive sentences (Chomsky 1957). This type of process operates at the level of syntax. Keenan (1975) argues against such a sentence-level treatment of the passive, since the passive is clearly syntactically different from sentence level operations such as dislocation and topicalisation. While dislocations and topicalisation change word-order and are not marked on the verb, passive sentences are not in general different from active sentences with respect to word-order and case-marking of the NPs. Keenan concludes that the passive should be interpreted as an operation taking place at the level of the predicate, i.e. at the level of the VP. It is this view that has prevailed in the literature on passives ever since. 1.2.2 Lexical vs. syntactic analyses Analyses of the passive further differ with respect to the role attributed to syntax and the lexicon respectively. This choice concerns two issues in particular: (i) the relationship between the active and passive versions of a predicate and (ii) the syntactic status of object promotion. In a fully lexicalist account, formation of the passive predicate and the promotion to subject of the underlying logical object is operated in the lexicon. Once argument reduction has operated in the lexicon the subject of the passive has the syntactic properties of a transitive subject. The GB-analysis in Chomsky (1981) combines word formation of the passive participle in the lexicon with object promotion in the syntactic component. The passive participle is analysed as a form that lexically lacks a subject, amounting to subject demotion in the lexicon. The object promotion in the passive, in contrast, is analysed as the result of syntactic NP-movement. Finally, analyses that allow word-formation in the syntax, e.g. following Baker (1988), place both formation of the passive predicate and object promotion in the syntax. 1.2.3 Subject demotion vs. object promotion As discussed in Comrie (1977:47), the passive involves two separate processes: object promotion and subject demotion. The question then arises whether both processes exist independently or whether one of these two processes is more fundamental to the characterisation of the passive. In the literature, two types of analyses of passivisation have been proposed, that may be termed subject demotion analyses and object promotion analyses respectively, depending on the property of passivisation that is taken to be fundamental.

(9) a. Subject demotion analyses: the defining property of the passive is the demotion of the subject

5 See Kiparsky (2013) for a recent review of different analyses of the passive.

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b. Object promotion analyses: the defining property of the passive is the promotion of the object.

The choice between subject demotion and object promotion analyses is independent of the theoretical framework adopted. In Relational Grammar, the first analyses considered object promotion the primary property of passives (Perlmutter & Postal 1977/1983:18). Subject demotion is analysed as an indirect consequence of object promotion, triggered by a combination of two principles in Relational Grammar, the Chômeur Condition and the Motivated Chômeur Law.

(10) The Chômeur condition If some nominal N_a bears a given term relation in a stratum, S_i, and some other nominal, N_b, bears the same relation in the following stratum, S_i +1, then N_a bears the chômeur relation in S_i +1 (Perlmutter & Postal 1977/1983:20).

(11) The Motivated Chômeur Law Only the Chômeur Condition can sanction the chômeur relation. (Perlmutter & Postal 1977/1983:23). Within the Government-and-Binding-framework (GB), Chomsky (1981:124) analyses the passive morpheme as absorbing accusative case, triggering A-movement of the object to the structural subject position (spec IP) for case-reasons. The absorption of the external theta-role is derived from the absorption of accusative case by the passive morphology,6 so this analysis amounts to an object promotion analysis. Later analyses of the passive in the GB framework take subject demotion as the central property of passives. In the analyses of passivisation proposed within GB by Jaeggli (1986), Baker (1988), Baker, Johnson and Roberts (1989), the common property of personal and impersonal passives is taken to be the absorption of the external theta-role by the passive morphology. A particularly clear example of this implementation of the subject demotion analysis is proposed in Baker (1988): (12) [...] the passive affix must receive a theta-role because it is a full-fledged nominal element and

therefore subject to the Theta Criterion. It must receive an EXTERNAL theta-role because it is generated under the Infl node and therefore outside the maximal projection of the V. " (Baker 1988:306).

This analysis is explicitly meant to implement the intuition that the passive morpheme is an "[...] element semantically similar to 'someone' " (Baker 1988:306). Notice that since the passive morpheme is assigned the subject theta-role, the analyses by Jaeggli, Baker, and Baker et al. treat the passive morpheme largely on a par with a (pro)nominal expression realising the subject argument in the syntax.7

In contrast to this view, Dobrovie-Sorin (1986, 1998), working in the GB-framework takes the promotion of the underlying object as the unifying feature of personal and impersonal passivisation, with impersonal passives relying on the promotion of a dummy object. Her analysis shares Perlmutter & Postal's assumption that the logical subject of the passivised verb is not realised in the syntax (contra Jaeggli 1986, Baker 1988, Baker et al. 1989). Notice that the analyses of personal passives reviewed here share the assumption that in passives of transitives object promotion and subject demotion are linked: be it through the

6 The lack of an external theta-role is taken to follow from Burzio's generalisation, which claims that only accusative

assigning predicates can assign an external theta-role (Burzio 1986:178). This correlation has been disputed (see Babby 1989/ 2002, Goodall 1999, also the discussion of Polish and Ukrainian below).

7 For a recent analysis in terms of missing phi-feature content of the passive morphology see Bowers (2010, ch 2).

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Motivated Chômeur Law in Relational Grammar or through Burzio's generalisation in GB-type approaches. This correlation has been challenged on the basis of the existence of impersonal passives (see section 1.3). 1.3 Impersonal passives and the analysis of the passive The term impersonal passive does not cover the same range of constructions in different studies. The clearest examples of impersonal passives are cases like the following where passive morphology independently found with transitive verbs is applied to intransitive verbs: (13) a. Al ritmo de temas de los `70, se bailó hasta el alba. (Spanish) to-the rhythm of songs of the 70s REFL danced until the dawn To the rhythm of songs of the 70s there was dancing until dawn. b. Bei der Party wurde bis spät in die Nacht getanzt. (German) at the party was until late in the night danced At the party, there was dancing until late at night (lit. it was danced). There is general agreement that constructions like (13a/b) are impersonal passives. Most authors would also agree that an impersonal passive may preserve a DP that is not marked accusative in the corresponding active, as many passive constructions target the direct, accusative marked object: (14) a. Cuando tuvo dificultades se le ayudó. (Spanish) when [e] had difficulties REFL PRON.DAT helped. When s/he had difficulties, s/he got help. (lit. to him/her was helped) b. Zum Glück wurde dem Mädchen schnell geholfen. (German) to luck was the.DAT girl quickly helped Luckily, the girl was given help quickly. (dative DP) However, in some studies the term impersonal passive is also employed to describe subjectless constructions with a logical object that manifests non-subject properties as in (15/16) (see e.g. Comrie 1977:48-49, Siewierska 1984:93). This terminology corresponds to a common use of the term “impersonal” to mean “subjectless” (see Siewierska 2008). (15) Subjectless constructions, NP in object position a. Se llamó a los padres de los implicados. (Spanish) REFL rang.3sg A the.mpl parents.pl of the implicated.mpl The parents of the people involved were rung. (NP = prepositional accusative, passive morphology) b. … at der blev spist et aeble (Danish)

…that EXPL was eaten an apple ... that there was eaten an apple. (Vikner 1995:202,209)

(16) a. Cuirtear i mbosca iad (Irish Gaelic) put.[PRES-AUT] in boxes them ‘They are put in boxes.’ (McCloskey 2007 ex 1c) b. Syöttiin sen (Finnish) 8 eat:PASS.PART it:ACC/GEN (Siewierska 1984:99, ex 12b) 8 For discussion of the Finnish data compared with the cognate Estonian data see Kaiser & Vihman (2006). As the

Baltic languages present the added complexity of nominative objects, we will not address these data here in detail.

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The verbal morphology in the examples (15a/b) is passive: applied to transitive verbs it can derive passives in which the logical object is promoted to grammatical subject (see examples (6b) and (66a)). The verbal morphology in the examples (16a/b), however, does not have counterparts with a grammatical subject; in these constructions the grammatical subject is always missing and for transitive verbs the logical object retains its object properties. Section 2 will present the arguments that have been advanced for and against a passive analysis of structures like (16). Here, the following terminology will be used: (17) a. Impersonal passives are passives of verbs that do not have an object that may be promoted to subject. (= (13/14)) b. Subjectless agent-reducing constructions are agent-backgrounding constructions that do not force the promotion of the logical object to subject (= (15/16)). All the impersonal passives from Germanic, Romance and Slavic considered here have a corresponding personal passive relying on the same morphology. If both constructions rely on the same morphology I will assume that the personal passive and the impersonal passive are variants of a single passive construction. Under this assumption, personal and impersonal passives should be amenable to a unified analysis.9

Keenan (1975) and Comrie (1977) argue that object promotion should not be considered the primary characteristic of passives since in impersonal passives subject demotion is not caused by the promotion of any visible object. The demotion of the logical subject then as to be considered spontanous demotion (in Comrie's terms). Under this view, impersonal passives are a challenge to the Motivated Chômeur Law (Perlmutter & Postal 1977/1983:28) since demotion of the subject to chômeur (adjunct) is not triggered by the Chômeur condition (see (9)/(10) above).

This is not a necessary conclusion, however, as Perlmutter & Postal (1984) show. They propose to maintain a universal definition of passives in terms of object promotion. Under their analysis impersonal passivisation is analysed as a more abstract instance of object promotion applying to a dummy object. They analyse the Dutch example in (18a) as an instance of advancement of a dummy object, as in (18b) (18) a. Er wordt door de kinderen op het ijs geschaatst. (Dutch) EXPL_LOC become.PRES.3SG by the children on the ice skate.PASTPART It is skated by the children on the ice. (P&P 1984: 126, ex 2a) b.

(P&P 1984: 126, ex 2c)

Perlmutter & Postal's analysis of impersonal passives assumes the promotion of a dummy object. 9 For another view treating impersonal passives and personal passives with the same morphology as different

constructions, see e.g. Wiemer (2011)

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They make the following general assumptions about dummy nominals (P&P 1984:130). Dummy nominals do not have semantic content; this makes the dummy object assumed in impersonal passives similar to an expletive subject. Furthermore, dummy nominals do not head arcs in the initial stratum, as the initial stratum is constrained by the semantic representation. P&P (1984:136) analyse reflexive passives as parallel to plain passives: under their analysis the reflexive represents a copy pronoun of the advanced 2 (the promoted object). As P&P (1984:138) point out, if this analysis of reflexive passives is correct, the existence of impersonal reflexive passives supports the object promotion analysis of impersonal passives, as the reflexive is a visible reflex of the advanced dummy object. Within GB-approaches, object promotion and subject demotion analyses differ in how they account for cross-linguistic variation with respect to the availability of impersonal passives. In subject demotion analyses this variation is linked to a parametric variation of the unergative verbs in a language ((19a), see Jaeggli 1986), or to a parametric variation of the passive morpheme (19b) see Baker 1988).10

(19) a. Jaeggli (1986): In some languages but not in others unergatives assign accusative.

b. Baker (1988): Some passive morphemes but not others require Case.

As Dobrovie-Sorin (1994) points out, the parametrisation proposed by Jaeggli cannot account for the fact that different passive constructions within a single language can vary with respect to impersonal passivisation. As the parametrisation (19a) targets the verbs of the language, passive constructions in a given language are expected to pattern alike with respect to the possibility of impersonal passives. As Dobrovie-Sorin stresses, this prediction is not borne out: In Spanish the reflexive passive admits intransitive verbs while the ser-passive does not.

The parametrisation of the passive morpheme as in (19b) essentially marks passive morphemes in the lexicon as allowing or rejecting an impersonal variant. The analysis proposed by Dobrovie-Sorin (1986, 1998) seeks to link the possibility of impersonal passives to the independently observable syntax of a language. Dobrovie-Sorin analyses passive constructions uniformly as applying to verbs that project a syntactically transitive structure. This means that impersonal passives rely on a dummy object, as in Perlmutter&Postal’s analysis. Dobrovie-Sorin assumes further that due to the semantically deficient nature of the null object in impersonal passives, the dummy object has to be licensed in situ. Given these assumptions, the possibility of passivising intransitive verbs can be linked to the independently observable syntax of the passive construction and the syntax of NPs in a given language. In particular, under these assumptions, the analysis of impersonal passives in a given language depends on the syntax of VP-internal subjects in the language in question.

Dobrovie-Sorin’s analysis is similar to Perlmutter & Postal’s (1984) proposal in postulating a dummy object and therefore views a transitive input as a defining property of passive constructions. Unlike the analysis by P&P, however, the analysis proposed by Dobrovie-Sorin is not an object promotion analysis, as the dummy object is not promoted to the syntactic subject position of canonical actives. Instead, the subject of impersonal passives is crucially viewed as a VP-internal (low) subject, a position that is widely associated with indefiniteness constraints.

1.2.4 Passives and unaccusatives 10 For other proposals to parametrise the cross-linguistic variation of passives with respect to impersonal passivisation

see Lappin & Shlonsky (1993) and Emonds (2000).

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Under the analyses proposed in the RG and the GB frameworks, passive constructions are expected to be incompatible with unaccusative verbs. In object promotion analyses within the RG framework, unaccusatives are incompatible with passivisation, since the underlying 2 (direct object) is advanced to 1 (subject) twice: once by the unaccusative structure, once by the passive. This combination violates the 1-Advancement Exclusiveness Law which bars any clause that contains more than one advancement to 1 (Perlmutter 1978, Perlmutter & Postal 1984:132,144). Under subject demotion analyses in RG, passives of unaccusatives are expected to be ill-formed under the additional assumption that only underlying subjects (an initial 1in RG terms) can be demoted by spontaneous demotion. As unaccusatives do not have an underlying subject (an initial 1) to demote, they are excluded from spontaneous demotion and therefore from impersonal passivisation (Perlmutter & Postal 1984:132). Under the GB-analyses that assume absorption of the accusative case by the passive morphology, unaccusatives cannot passivise since they do not assign accusative and therefore cannot license the passive morphology. In analyses that take the passive morphology to require an external theta-role (as in Jaeggli 1986), unaccusatives cannot passivise since they do not have an external theta-role. As P&P (1984:132) point out, as passives of transitive verbs are derived unaccusatives, impersonal passives of personal passive clauses are predicted to be ill-formed in any language. Notice that this claim that unaccusatives cannot passive can be difficult to verify in a given language due to the variable behaviour of unaccusative verbs. In particular, it is known that unaccusative predicates can passivise when used in a volitional sense (Perlmutter 1978). (20) a. ?Es wird gestorben. EXPL is died. b. Es wird wieder fürs Vaterland gestorben. EXPL is again for-the Father-country died It is died for the Father-country again. People -actively- die for their country again. In section 2 I will present the arguments given by Blevins (2003) supporting a distinction between impersonal passives and impersonal verb forms. The examples (15a) and (16a/b) will be discussed in this context. Examples of the type in (15b) are discussed in more detail in section 3, where the interaction between impersonal passives and expletive constructions is examined. 2. The analysis of subjectless sentences: impersonal passives vs. impersonals As shown in the previous section, many analyses ultimately adopt a broad definition of passive as essentially a subject-removing operation to accommodate variation with respect to object promotion (see e.g. Siewierska 1984, Keenan 1985). Lack of object promotion in a passive then implies a construction with either an expletive subject or no grammatical subject at all. Consider the Ukrainian examples in (21). Ukrainian has two passive constructions. The first is the agreeing passive that promotes the logical object to canonical nominative subject in (21a). The second construction in (21b) suppresses the expression of the logical subject but preserves accusative case on the logical object DP, it therefore not trivially clear to what extent object promotion has taken place. (21) a. Cerkva bula zbudovana v 1640 roc’i (Lesevym). (Ukrainian) church.F.NOM was.F built.FSG in 1640 year Lesiv.INST The church was built in 1640 by Lesiv. b. Cerkvu (bulo) zbudovano v 1640 roc’i (Lesevym).

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church.F.ACC was.NEUT built.IMP in 1640 year Lesiv.INST There was built a church in 1640 by Lesiv. (Sobin 1985: 653–658) Blevins (2003) argues in detail that a broad definition of passives allowing for objects to be retained blurs the distinction between passives and impersonal verb forms.11 According to Blevins' definition, impersonal verb forms suppress the syntactic expression of the logical subject but do not promote the logical object to grammatical subject. Consequently, for Blevins impersonal verb forms when combined with transitive verbs yield a subjectless transitive structure while passives applied to transitive verbs yield an intransitive structure. As Blevins observes, a theoretical bias against impersonal verb forms probably stems from the fact that a number of frameworks explicitly exclude subjectless structures (e.g. by the Extended Projection Principle in Chomky 1981, Final 1 Law of Perlmutter & Postal 1983b, LFG’s Subject Condition Bresnan 2001:311, the EPP constraint in Optimality Theory, Ackema & Neeleman 1998, HPSG being an exception in allowing subjectless structures). Blevins argues that examples like (21b) that maintain grammatical object marking for the logical object should be analysed as impersonal verb forms rather than as passives. This analysis maintains a narrower definition of passives as subject demoting constructions that promote the logical object to grammatical subject. According to Blevins the generalisation that passives are not compatible with unaccusatives can then be maintained since the passives that have been claimed to combine with unaccusative verbs are better analysed as impersonal verb forms. Blevins proposes the criteria (22a-e) to distinguish passives from impersonal verb forms. In her study of Polish and Ukrainian -no/-to constructions and the Irish autonomous impersonals Maling (1993) uses the criteria in (22a-b) and adds two further tests (22f-g) for a syntactically active subject (Maling 1993, cited apud Maling 2006:203, ex 14): (22) Passives Impersonal verb forms a. Agentive by-phrase yes/no No b. Compatible with unaccusative Vs, (come,

go) No Yes

c. Object retains object properties No Yes d. Human interpretation of the implicit actor Not necessarily Yes e. Changes transitivity Yes

(derived intransitive) No (derived subjectless transitive)

f. Syntactically active logical subject: binding of anaphors (reflexive and reciprocal) by the implicit subject is ok

No/yes Yes

g. Syntactically active logical subject: Control of subject oriented adjuncts is possible

No/yes Yes

11 There are analyses that distinguish two types of passive corresponding to the distinction proposed by Blevins (2003). Givón (1981:169), for example, distinguishes between promotional passives as in English, and non-promotional Agent-deletion passives exemplified by Ute (Givón 1981:169).

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As Blevins points out, the analysis of the personal equivalent of the impersonal passive is crucial to determine the properties of the construction. A passive applied to a transitive verb yields a derived intransitive while an impersonal verb form applied to a transitive yields a subjectless transitive structure. To complete the cross-classification of transitivity and subject demotion constructions, sentences with R(referential)-impersonal pronouns (Engl. one, Fr. on, Ge. man) as subjects also have to be taken into account. While English one is limited to non-episodic sentences, French on and German man can appear in temporally anchored sentences, making them functionally similar to passives. (23) a. Passive (intransitive) Il a été vu. (French) He has been seen. b. Impersonal verb form (transitive subjectless) (= examples in 16) c. R-impersonal subject (transitive + impersonal subject) On l'a vu. (French) ON him-has seen. ON saw him. Notice however, that the criteria in (22) used by Blevins and Maling do not suffice to reliably distinguish between passives and impersonal verb forms. The difficulties surrounding unaccusative verbs have been mentioned in section 1.4. above. Furthermore, as pointed out in Keenan (1985), many passives do not allow by-phrases, and many languages that allow by-phrases in personal passives (i.e. passives of transitive verbs) do not accept by-phrases with impersonal passives. This limits the applicability of criterion (22a). Regarding criterion (22d) of obligatory human interpretation, notice that Siewierska (1984:198) points out that crosslinguistically without an agent phrase the interpretation of the implicit agent of an impersonal passive is human, and that only an explicit agent-phrase can override this requirement:12 (24) a. Čia snausta. (Lithuanian) here drowse-P.PASS.NT.SG.NOM ‘(Someone) has drowsed here’’ b. Girių čia snausta. forest-FEM.SG.GEN here drowse- P.PASS.NT.SG.NOM ‘Forests have drowsed here.’ (Timberlake 1982) (lit. It has been drowsed here by forests).

12 Notice that Siewierska includes subjectless non-promotional passives under the term impersonal

passive. She stresses in particular that in Russian the agent may be a natural cause (see (i)) and in Welsh the agent may be an animate but not human entity (Siewierska 1984:100), in impersonal passives formed from transitive verbs only (ibid:101)

(i) a. Moln-iej svali-lo vinj-u (Russian) lightning-INST fell-PART.N tree-ACC The cherry tree was felled by lightning. (Siewierska 1984:197, ex 43) b. Vod-oj bylo zali-to (Russian) water-INST was flood-PART:N There was flooding by water. (Siewierska 1984:197, ex 44)

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Limitation to human agents would therefore be expected for impersonal verb forms and for impersonal passives in languages that do not allow by-phrases to combine with impersonal passives. Therefore criterion (22d) only applies properly in languages that allow non-human agents in the absence of a by-phrase (see below the discussion of the Irish autonomous form) and those languages that allow by-phrases with the impersonal passive. Object properties may not behave in a uniform fashion, e.g. for NPs displaying the word-order corresponding to a subject NP at the same time as accusative case-marking, interfering with criterion (22c). Finally, the criteria proposed by Maling for a syntactically active subject-argument in (22f/g) may only require the semantic presence of the agent (see Bhatt & Pancheva, this volume, on Implicit Arguments for discussion). Summarising, we may say that while the distinction between passives and impersonals is clearly necessary and useful in a number of cases, it is not exhaustive. In particular, some constructions cannot be clearly attributed to one or the other analysis. Blevins acknowledges that grammaticalisation can change the properties of a construction from passive to impersonal (-no/-to participles in Polish), and from impersonal to passive (particularly for impersonal 3pl-forms). The grammaticalisation process need not affect all the properties in (22) above simultaneously. The following sections present case studies of constructions that have been analysed variously as impersonal or passive constructions: Romance se/si-passives (section 2.1), Celtic impersonal verb forms (2.2), Slavic -no/-to forms (section 2.3), and the New impersonal construction in Icelandic (section 2.4.). The striking fact about these constructions is that potentially passive morphology is combined with accusative marking on the logical object. The case-studies present the properties of the constructions and examine the available evidence relevant to the criteria in (22), in particular (i) evidence for object promotion vs. object properties of the logical object, (ii) compatibility of the construction with unaccusatives, (iii) availability of by-phrases and (iv) semantic properties of the implicit agent (human/ animate/ cause). 2.1. Reflexive passives SE/SI in Romance The analysis of reflexive passives in Romance represents a particular challenge since different structures require different analyses and a single language may allow different analyses of the reflexive simultaneously (see Dobrovie-Sorin, this volume, for detailed discussion of Romance se/si). Consider (25a): here the plural subject gli spaghetti ‘the spaghetti’ agrees with the verb in number and person, supporting a passive analysis. The example in (25b) on the other hand combines si with the copula essere “to be”+adjective, rendering an impersonal analysis with an R(eferential)-impersonal subject comparable to English one more plausible (analogous to (23c)). (25) a. Qui gli spaghetti si mangiano spesso. (Italian) Here the spaghetti REFL eat.3PL often Here spaghetti are eaten often. (Cinque 1988:554) (plural subject and verb agreement) b. Non si è mai contenti. NEG REFL is never satisfied.MPL. One is never satisfied. (Cinque 1988:522) (be+adjective, singular agreement) In particular for Romance reflexive constructions it is therefore crucial to distinguish impersonal reflexive constructions in which the reflexive has been reanalysed as a (nominative marked) subject clitic from reflexives passives where the reflexive is analysed as an accusative-marked reflexive.

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Dobrovie-Sorin, (2005, this volume) provides a detailed discussion of the diagnostic tests for the reanalysis of the reflexive as a subject (which D-S calls nominative SE/SI). Similar fluctuations between passive and impersonal properties are found with the reflexive constructions in Slavic (see Siewierska 1988, Rivero 2001 for discussion). The main findings on Romance se/si can be summarised as follows. Some varieties of Romance have reflexive constructions in which the lexical DP does not have subject properties (no agreement with the verb, the DP can be expressed as an object clitic Cinque 1988) and the reflexive clitic has acquired subject properties (clitic ordering as a subject clitic as in Borgoromanese, Benincà & Tortora 2009, compatibility of the passive se/si with a reflexive Chierchia 1995, compatibility of se/si with be+adjective and copula-passives Dobrovie-Sorin, this volume:section 2.3). For these varieties of Romance, an analysis of the se-construction as a transitive impersonal construction, rather than a passive seems appropriate. Notice that Romance eventive reflexive constructions are generally described as incompatible with by-phrases independently of the subject- or object- properties of the lexical DP, agentive by-phrases are therefore not available as a diagnostic test. Whether the impersonal si-constructions are to be analysed as impersonal verb forms, with the reflexive as a verbal impersonal marker, or as transitive structures with with se/si as an impersonal subject clitic, depends on the morphological properties of the se/si element in the particular language. 2.2 The Celtic impersonal forms The Celtic impersonal verbs share properties of passives and impersonal verb forms at the same time. The following sections summarise the data of Welsh and Irish, widely studied in the literature. 2.2.1 Welsh impersonal verbs In the literature on passives, the Welsh impersonal passive exemplified in (26) by lladdwyd “killed.IMP.PRET” has been discussed in detail (Comrie 1977, Siewierska 1984, Perlmutter & Postal 1984). (26) Fe'i lladdwyd (gan ddraig) (Welsh) him was:killed (by dragon) (Comrie 1977: 55, ex 39) Notice however, that according to Fife (1985:94) linguistic evidence concerning these forms is difficult to obtain. This author states that the impersonal verbs are “nearly extinct in speech and probably waning in the literary language” and their use is found mostly with “a few well-worn verbs lladdwyd 'killed', cyhoeddwyd 'announced')” (Fife 1985:94). Fife stresses that while impersonal verbs are “fairly common in literary Welsh [...] the grammars of literary and colloquial Welsh differ significantly”. Welsh impersonal verbs have a single form for each tense/mood combination (see 27) unlike active verbs, which agree in person and number for pronouns (see 28) (Fife 1985:96) (27) Impersonal verb endings for the indicative in Welsh Present / Future: -ir Imperfective: -id Preterite: -wyd Pluperfect: -asid (Fife 1985:96, Table 1) (28) a. Heliaf i falwod. Heliwin ni falwod. Helwich chi falwod.

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Hunt.FUT1SG I snails hunt.FUT1PL we snails hunt.FUT2PL you.pl snails I/we/you.pl will hunt snails. (Fife 1985:5a-c) b. Helir fi. Helir ni. Helir chi. Hunt.IMPERS me Hunt.IMPERS we Hunt.IMPERS you.2pl I am hunted. we are hunted you.pl are hunted. Impersonal verbs are used with “independent pronouns” while subject pronouns of transitive verbs are “confirming pronouns”. Whether this distinction should be aligned with a nominative/ accusative distinction is not clear, however, (Fife 1985:97). A further category of pronouns, the infixed pronouns, is limited to the direct object of verbs and these pronouns only appear as enclitics on a pre-verbal particle (Fife 1985:98). The fact that the logical object of impersonal verbs takes the form of these pronouns (29b) supports an analysis of the NP appearing with impersonal verb forms in Welsh as a direct object: (29) a. Rhybuddiwyd fi gan y dyn. (Welsh) warn.PRET.IMPS me by the man b. Fe'm rhybuddiwyd (i) gan y dyn. PRT-me warn.PRET.IMPS (1sg_confirming) by the man c. Fe rhybuddiwyd fi gan y dyn. PRT warn.PRET.IMPS me by the man (Fife 1985:98 ex 8a-c) Fife stresses that the pre-verbal particle allows the infixed pronouns (29b), but does not require them (29c). With an infixed pronoun on the preverbal particle, the confirming pronoun (i in 29b) is optional. The examples in (26)/(29) further show that the Welsh impersonal forms are compatible with a by-phrase introduced by the preposition gan “with”. Example (26) with the by-phrase gan ddraig “by dragon” shows in particular that the implicit agent need not be human. Notice, however, that these examples are impersonal forms of transitive verbs; according to Fife, Welsh impersonal verb forms of intransitive verbs as in (30) do not appear with an agent phrase (Fife 1985:118 citing Awbery 1976:157).13 (30) a. Gellid mynd yno *(gan Ifor) (Welsh) can.IMPF.IMPS going there by Ifor b. Cerddwyd milltiroedd *(gan Ifor) walk.PRET.IMPERS miles by Ifor The impersonal verb endings occur with every major type of verbal category: transitives, intransitives, modals and the copula be. (Fife 1985:99) (31) a. Rhedir yno. (Welsh) Run.PRES.IMPERS (Fife 1985:112, ex 25b) b. Gellir gweld y tŷ. Can-PRES.IMPERS see the house. (Fife 1985:113:28b) c. Buwyd yn cynnal gweithgareddau i godi arian. be.PRES.IMPERS in holding activities to raising money Activities to raise money were held. (Fife 1985:113:29b) 13 According to the informants consulted by Perlmutter & Postal (1984:166) by-phrases with intransitive impersonals

are possible. It is not clear how to evaluate the data given the literary nature of the impersonal construction for contemporary Welsh speakers (see Fife 1985:94).

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Fife (1985:123) points out that unaccusative verbs can appear as impersonal verbs:14 (32) a. Gellir boddi mewn llynnoedd. (Welsh) Can-PRES.IMPERS drowning in lakes One can drown in lakes. b. Gellir cwympo oddi ar yr adeilad hwn. Can-PRES.IMPERS falling from in the building this One can fall from this building. c. Oddid yn y llys. be.IMPF.IMPERS in the court One was in the court. (Fife 1985:123-4, ex49a-b, 51b) Fife notes that the impersonal verbs also differ from the cael-passive in Welsh with respect to idioms. Impersonal verbs are compatible with idioms (32c) while the cael-passive is not (32b). (33) a. Mae Ifor wedi rhoi'r ffidl yn y to. (Welsh) be-PRES3SG Ifor after putting-the fiddle in the roof. Ifor gave up. (lit. Ifor put the fiddle on the roof.) b. *Mae'r ffidl wedi cael ei rhoi yn y to gan Ifor. Be.PRES3SG-THE fiddle getting its put in the roof by Ifor c. Rhoddwyd y ffidl yn y to gan Ifor. Put.PRET.IMPERS the fiddle in the roof by Ifor ?It was given up by Ifor. (Fife 1985:108, ex 15a-c, citing Awbery 1976) The data reviewed above suggest that Welsh impersonal forms represent a subject demoting construction that does not promote the logical object to subject. The lack of object promotion does not correlate with a clear profile of a transitive impersonal construction. With respect to the criteria in (22), the Welsh impersonal verb forms display properties of passives and of impersonals at the same time: (34) a. Passive-like properties of the Welsh impersonal forms: i. Can appear with a by-phrase. (criterion 22a) ii. The implicit agent need not be human (is compatible with a non-human by- phrase). (criterion 22d) b. Impersonal-like properties of the Welsh impersonal forms: i. The DP has object properties (morphology of object pronouns).(criterion 22c) ii. Can combine with any verb type including modals and the copula be. 14 Here again the data reported are contradictory. According to Perlmutter & Postal (1984: 144-145) while unergatives

are acceptable (i), unaccusatives do not combine with the impersonal verb form (ii): (i) a. Dannswyd gan y plant (Welsh) dance.imp by the children It was danced by the children. b. Siaradwyd gan yr ysgrifenydd Cymreag. Speak.imp by the secretary Welsh It was spoken by the Welsh secretary. (P&P 1984: 144 exs 37,39) (ii) a. Gwywodd y blodau. (Welsh) wilted the flowers The flowers wilted. b. *Gwywyd gan y blodau. wilted.impers by the flowers It was wilted by the flowers. (P&P 1984:145 exs 44a/b)

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(criterion 22b) iii. Can combine with idioms (unlike the cael-passive). Among the Celtic impersonal forms, the Welsh impersonal form is the most passive-like (see Blevins 2003:502). 2. 2. 2 Irish autonomous forms The impersonal forms in Irish are studied in the literature on Irish Gaelic under the name of autonomous forms. Unlike the Welsh impersonal forms in section 2.2.1, the Irish impersonal forms are commonly used forms (Fife 1993:15). Like Welsh, Irish has a range of impersonal forms for different tense/mood combinations, exemplified here with the verb cuir “put, send, bury”: (35) Irish impersonal verb forms (autonomous forms) cuir-tear cuir-eadh cuir-fear chuir-fí chuir-tí Present Tense Past Tense Future Tense Conditional Mood Past Habitual (McCloskey 2007:825) The impersonal form in Irish does not require promotion of an object. The logical object of the predicate appears with accusative marking (36) and impersonal forms can be formed from intransitive verbs (see 37) (McCloskey 2007 and references cited there): (36) Cuirfear é / *sé sa reilg áitiúil. (Irish Gaelic) bury.[FUT-AUT] him.ACC/ he.NOM in-the graveyard local He will be buried in the local graveyard. (McCloskey 2007:827) (37) hItheadh, hóladh, ceoladh agus ansin chuathas eat [PAST-AUT] drink [PAST-AUT] sing [PAST-AUT] and then go [PAST-AUT] a sheanchas. (Irish Gaelic) storytelling.[–FIN] There was eating, drinking, singing, and then the storytelling began. (McCloskey 2007:826, ex 2c) ccc 116 The demoted subject of the impersonal form allows control and combines with subject-oriented adverbials (McCloskey 2007, citing Stenson 1989) (38) a. Socraíodh ar ionsaí a dhéanamh orthu. (Irish Gaelic) settle [PAST-AUT] on attack make [–fin] on-them It was agreed to mount an attack on them. b. Glacadh go fonnmhar leis an ainmniúchán. take [PAST-AUT] eagerly with the nomination The nomination was eagerly accepted. (McCloskey 2007:829, exs 8a/b) Based on these observations, McCloskey proposes to analyse the Irish impersonal forms as containing a silent subject comparable to French on, German man or Italian si (McCloskey 2007:831). Unlike these impersonal pronouns, however, the implicit agent of impersonal verb forms in Irish is not limited to human referents. As (39) illustrates, inanimate causes are possible as implicit subjects: (39) Raiceáladh ar chósta na Síne é tráth. (Irish Gaelic)

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wreck[PAST-AUT] on coast the[GEN] China[GEN] him time He was wrecked on the coast of China once. (McCloskey 2007:837, ex 32b) In some dialects the Irish impersonals do not appear with agentive by-phrases (Stenson 1989:382 based on data from the Connaght dialect). Noonan (1994), however, gives the example (40a) as a by-phrase. Notice, however, that the preposition involved is le that also appears with instruments co-occurring with an animate agent (40b), while the passive takes agentive phrases introduced by ag “at” (40c). 15 (40) a. Bualadh Seán (le Liam) [imp = impersonal] hit-PAST-IMP John (with Bill) John was hit (by Bill). (Noonan 1994, ex 2) b. fear gur bualadh le camán é. man C-[PAST] strike [PAST-AUT] with hurley-stick him a man that was struck with a hurley-stick (McCloskey 2007:827, ex 5a) c. Bhí Seán á bhualadh (ag Liam) be-PAST John to+his hit-nom (at Bill) John was being hit (by Bill). (Noonan 1994, ex 1) According to Noonan (1994) “with the exception of sentences formed with the copular verb is, all Irish sentences have an impersonal counterpart: this includes intransitives, copular sentences formed with the copular verb bí, and even passives, together with the expected transitive sentences”. In the variety of Irish described by Stenson (1989) the impersonal form does not freely combine with intransitives (41c), but examples with the copula bí are possible (41d): (41) a. Táthar cairdiúil anseo. (Irish Gaelic) is-IMP friendly here They are friendly here./ People are friendly here. (Noonan's ex 41b) (Copula impersonal) b. Bhíothas á bhualadh ag Seosamh was-IMP to+his hit-nom at Joseph `There was hitting (of someone) by Joseph', One [generic] got hit by Joseph. (Noonan's ex 42d) (Passive progressive impersonal) c. *Taithnaítear liom. Please-PR-IMP with-me Compare: Taithníonn sé liom. Please-PR he/it with me I like him/it. (Stenson 1989:385, FN5, (ii))16 15 Irish has two copulas is and bí (Noonan 1994). The passive in Irish is a construction combining the auxiliary bí and

a verbal noun preceded by a preposition. This construction is limited to transitive verbs. (i) Bhí Seán á bhualadh (ag Liam) be-PAST John to+his hit-NOM (at Bill) John was being hit (by Bill). (Noonan 1994, ex 1) 16 This example may not be decisive. In French and German, the R(eferential)-impersonal pronouns on and man do not

appear in this context either: (i) #Man gefällt mir. (German) #On me plaît. (French)

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d. Táthar sásta is-IMP satisfied One is satisfied. (Stenson 1989:385, FN5, ex (iii)) Summarising, Irish Gaelic impersonal verb forms have some properties of impersonals and some properties suggesting a passive analysis. The status of by-phrases is uncertain as the preposition introducing the agent-PP with the impersonal verb form is le “with”, a preposition that may introduce instrumentals in clauses with agentive subjects. (42) a. Passive-like properties of the Irish impersonal forms: i. The implicit agent need not be human (is compatible with a natural cause). (criterion 22d) b. Impersonal-like properties of the Irish impersonal forms: i. The DP has object properties (morphology of object pronouns).(criterion 22c) ii. Can combine with any verb type including modals and the copula be. (criterion 22b) iii. Can combine with the passive. c. Uncertain diagnostic: are PPs introduced by le “with” by-phrases or instrumental phrases? 2.3 Slavic 2. 3 Polish and Ukrainian -no /-to- forms Polish and Ukrainian both have verb-forms ending in -no/-to that suppress the subject but still mark the logical object with accusative case, exemplified in (43)/(44). These constructions have been the object of numerous detailed studies (Billings & Maling 1995, Lavine 2005 and references cited therein). (43) a. Znaleziono niemowlę w koszu. (Polish) found-NO baby.ACC in basket They found a baby in a basket. b. Wsadzono cudzoziemca do więzienia. placed-NO foreigner.ACC to prison They put a foreigner in prison. (Lavine 2005, ex 1a-b) (44) a. Nemovlja bulo znajdeno u košyku. (Ukrainian) baby.ACC AUX.PAST found-NO in basket A baby was found in a basket. b. Inozemcja bulo posadšeno do v′jaznyci. Foreigner.ACC AUX.PAST placed-NO to prison One pleases me. This may be related to the observation in Cinque (1988) that quasi-existential uses of on do not admit inaccusatives

(while quasi-universal on does allow them): (ii) Quand on lui plaît, il peut être charmant. (French) When ON to-him pleases, he can be charming. When somebody pleases him, he can be charming.

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A foreigner was put in prison. (Lavine 2005, ex 2a-b) Contrasting Ukrainian and Polish -no/-to constructions, Lavine (2005) argues that while the Polish construction has been reanalysed as an impersonal, the Ukrainian construction is still a passive.17 According to Lavine (2010), the accusative marking on the NP is part of a more general class of unaccusatives marking accusative case in Ukrainian. Lavine (2005) clearly shows that the superficially parallel -no/-to constructions of the two languages clearly differ in their combinatorial properties:18 (45) a. Ukrainian -no/-to allows tense-marking auxiliaries, Polish -no/-to does not b. Ukrainian -no/-to allows by-phrases, Polish -no/-to does not (46) a. (*Zostało) znaleziono niemowlę w koszu (*przez lekarzy). (Polish) (*aux.past) found-NO baby.ACC in basket (*by doctors.ACC) b. Nemovlja bulo znajdeno u košyku likarjami. (Ukrainian) baby.ACC AUX.PAST found-NO in basket doctors.INST ‘A baby was found in a basket by doctors.’ (Lavine 2005 exs 9a, 10a) Polish and Ukrainian further differ in the types of predicates that appear with the -no/-to constructions. Polish allows -no/-to to attach to unaccusative and raising predicates while Ukrainian does not (Lavine 2005). Furthermore, unlike Ukrainian, Polish allows-no/-to with imperfective verbs, albeit only on an iterative interpretation (Lavine 2005). (47) a. Umierano tam tysiącami na tyfus. (Polish) died-NO there thousands:INST on typhus People died there in thousands from typhus. (Śpiewak and Szymańska 1997:150 apud Lavine 2005, ex 12a) b. *umerano *toneno *buvano (Ukrainian) died.NO drowned.NO been.NO (Lavine 2005, ex 14) Polish and Ukrainian also differ with respect to binding of a reflexive possessive by the implicit agent.19 While in the Polish example (48a) the demoted subject is the antecedent of the reflexive swoimi in the instrumental phrase but not of the pronoun ich, the demoted subject is not available as 17 Lavine (2005) proposes to analyse the contrast between Polish and Ukrainian by analysing Polish -no/-to as an

auxiliary element heading a tense projection, while the Ukrainian cognate has preserved its participial status and is morphosyntactically passive. As an auxiliary, the Polish -no/-to does not change argument structure and is therefore compatible with unaccusatives. Lavine's proposal is couched in a Late Insertion framework for morphology which allows a mismatch between morphological attachment site (on the V) and syntax (inserted in a higher auxiliary position in the syntax) of the -no/-to morpheme.

18 As Lavine (2005) points out, Polish otherwise does have by-phrases and tense-auxiliaries, namely with the agreeing passive:

(i) Niemowlę zostało znalezione przez lekarzy w koszu. (Polish) baby.NOM.NEUT.SG AUX.PAST.NEUT.SG found by doctors.ACC in basket ‘A baby was found in a basket by doctors.’ (Lavine 2005, ex 11a) 19 Lavine (2005) also adduces control as a difference between the two -no/-to constructions. It is not clear, however, if

control requires a syntactically represented controller. Notice that German copula passives allow control in constructions that seem comparable to the Ukrainian example (17c).

(i) a. Es wird langsam begonnen darüber nachzudenken, Kindergartenplätze kostenlos bereitzustellen. It aux.pass slowly started there-on think kindergarden.places for-free provide It is being thought about providing free kindergarden places. (attested)

b. *U misti počato [PRO buduvaty novu cerkvu] (Ukrainian) *in city began-TO to build new churchACC They began to build a new church in the city. (Lavine 2005 ex 17c)

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an antecedent in the parallel Ukrainian example (48b) and the accusative DP can only be antecedent for the pronoun jixnimy, but not to the reflexive svojimy. (48) Binding of reflexives and anaphors a. Bitoi strażnikówj swoimii/*j (ich*i/j) łańcuchami. (Polish) beaten-TO guards.ACC REFL their chains.INST Theyi beat the guardsj with theiri/*j chains. (Lavine 2005 ex 16a, citing Kibort 2001) b. Storoživj bulo pobytoi svojimy*i/*j (jixnimy*i/j) lancjuhamy. (Ukrainian) guards.ACC AUX.PAST beaten-TO REFL-their chains.INST Guardsj were beateni with their*i/j chains. (Lavine 2005, ex 17a) The Polish construction shows more subject properties for the demoted logical subject, while in Ukrainian the only available binder in a -no/-to passive is the accusative DP. Using the criteria in (22) distinguishing passive constructions from impersonal constructions, the following table shows that the available data for Ukrainian–no/-to align with a passive profile while the data align with an impersonal profile for the Polish –no/-to construction. Ukrainian –no/-to Polish –no/-to a. Agentive by-phrase no yes b. Compatible with unaccusative Vs no yes c. Object retains object properties Yes: accusative

No: word-order Yes: preferred binder for possessives

Yes: accusative Yes: word-order

d. Human interpretation of the implicit actor -- -- e. Changes transitivity -- -- f. Syntactically active logical subject:

binding of anaphors (reflexive and reciprocal) by the implicit subject is ok

No Yes

g. Syntactically active logical subject: Control of subject oriented adjuncts is possible

-- --

Table 2 2.3.2 The Contemporary Standard Russian vs. North Russian passives Timberlake (1976) compares the passives in Contemporary Standard Russian (CSR) and North Russian. He points out that the two passive constructions differ with respect to four properties. (50) Properties of the Contemporary Standard Russian passive a. only formed from transitive Vs with an affected object, (Timberlake 1976:547) b. the logical object is promoted to nominative subject and triggers agreement (Timberlake 1976:548) c. is limited to perfective verbs (Timberlake 1976:548) d. the by-phrase is expressed by an instrumental noun phrase.

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In contrast with Contemporary Standard Russian (50a), the North Russian passive allows imperfective verbs, expresses by-phrases by an u+dative PP (51a) and is freely formed from transitive as well as intransitive verbs (51a/b) (Timberlake 1976:549). (51) a. u menja uže vstato bylo (North Russian) to me already stood.PART.N.SG aux.N.SG (ex 4, 549) b. mnogo begano v kolxoze much RUN.PART.N.SG in kolxoz there's been a lot of running down on the kolkhoz (ex 5, 549) If the underlying verb is transitive, the logical object of the North Russian passive may appear in three configurations: (i) marked with accusative case, (ii) marked with nominative case without agreement on the participle and (iii) marked with nominative case with agreement on the participle. As Timberlake (1976:554) stresses, even the nominative+agreement variant of the North Russian passive is still clearly different from the Contemporary Standard Russian passive as it allows imperfective verbs and takes agent phrases introduced by u “at, to”(Timberlake 1976:554). Like -no/-to forms in Polish and Ukrainian (above) Contemporary Standard Russian and North Russian differ in the available antecedents for binding of possessives. In Contemporary Standard Russian the promoted logical object can control svoj-reflexivisation of the demoted subject (52a). For the North Russian passive, in contrast, the subject is the natural controller of reflexives, independently of the case on the DP and agreement: (52) a. Otec zabyt svoimi det'mi (CSR) father.NOM.MSG forgotten.PART.MSG POSS children.INSTR The fatheri was forgotten by hisi children. (Timberlake 1976:559, ex 40) b. U Šurki privedeno svoja staraja nevesta (North Russian) to Surka brought.PART.NSG POSS old.NOM.FSG bride.NOM.FSG by Surkai was brought around hisi own old bride (Timberlake 1976:559, ex 46) Notice that the examples in (52) provide evidence for the binding behaviour of the by-phrase in the two languages. This differs from the Polish and Ukrainian examples in (48) that show the binding behaviour of the implicit agent, as there is no lexical expression of the demoted logical subject in those examples. Timberlake (1976:565) argues that object promotion and subject demotion are independent of each other as they may be partial as in North Russian. He further suggests that the syntactic properties of the demoted subject can be dependent on the form the demoted subject takes. In North Russian the by-phrase is expressed by u+Dat, which also has subject properties in the possessive construction: (53) U menja svoja mašina (North Russian) u me.DAT POSS.NOM.FSG car.NOM.FSG Ii have myi own car. (Timberlake 1976:566, ex 67) As Table 3 shows, the Northern Russian passive is less restricted than the Contemporary Standard Russian construction regarding the types of verbs it allows (imperfectives, intransitives). However, on the basis of the available data, there is no clear contrast between the Contemporary Standard Russian and the North Russian Construction with respect to the passive/impersonal dichotomy. The contrast between North Russian and Contemporary Standard Russian shows, however, that the

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grammatical form of the by-phrase may contribute to the binding behaviour of the oblique PP expressing the demoted subject (see Siewierska & Bakker 2013:180-189 for a discussion of semantic differences between different types of agent-phrases cross-linguistically, and Palancar 2002 for a discussion of synchronic polysemies of agent-phrase markers). If this is correct, the binding behaviour of the implicit logical subject in passives without a by-phrase (as e.g. in (48) above) has to be examined separately. Contemporary standard

Russian Northern Russian

a. Agentive by-phrase yes: instrumental NP Yes: u+DAT PP b. Compatible with unaccusative Vs ? ? b.’ Compatible with intransitive verbs no yes b.’’ Compatible with imperfective verbs no yes c. Object retains object properties No:

Nom and V-agreement Variable: Acc + no V-agreement Nom + no V-agreement Nom + V-agreement

d. Human interpretation of the implicit actor -- -- e. Changes transitivity -- -- f. Syntactically active logical subject:

binding of anaphors (reflexive and reciprocal) by the implicit subject is ok

No (lexical by-phrase) Yes (lexical by-phrase)

g. Syntactically active logical subject: Control of subject oriented adjuncts is possible

-- --

Table 3 2.4 The Icelandic new construction (New Passive or New Impersonal) Icelandic provides another example of a construction for which the analysis as a passive or an impersonal construction is controversial. The construction has been termed variously the New Passive and the New Impersonal. The presentation here follows Eythórsson (2008) in using the neutral term New Construction. The New Construction combines passive morphology and post-participial DP (54b) and can also apply to oblique passives (54c) (see Maling & Sigurjónsdottir 2002, abbreviated M&S 2002 in what follows). (54) a. Stúlkan var lamin í klessu. (Icelandic) the.girl-NOM was hit-F.SG.NOM in a.mess The girl was badly beaten. (canonical passive) b. Það var lamið stúlkuna í klessu. it.EXPL was hit-neut.sg. the.girl-F.SG.ACC in a. mess The girl was badly beaten. (new construction) c. Það var hrint henni í skólanum. it.EXPL was pushed her-DAT in the.school She was pushed at school. (new construction, oblique subject)

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(M&S 2002:98, exs 1a, 2a/b) The New Construction is distinguished from the passive in an expletive construction as in (55a) by up to three properties. First, in the New Construction the DP in post-participial position is marked accusative (54b) while post-participial subjects of canonical passives are nominative (55a). Secondly, the participle of the New Construction does not agree with the post-participial DP (54b); this contrasts with the nominative DP with agrees with the participle, be it in post-participial or in pre-participial position (54a/b). Thirdly, the post-participial DP in the New Construction can be definite (54b), while the DP subject of passives in the expletive construction is constrained by the definiteness effect (55b): (55) a. Það voru seldir margir bílar í gær. itEXPL were sold-m.pl. many cars-m.pl.NOM yesterday Many cars were sold yesterday. Passive voice b. * Það voru seldir bílarnir í gær. itEXPL were sold-m.pl. the.cars-m.pl.NOM yesterday Intended: ‘There were the cars sold yesterday.’ (canonical passive in an expletive construction M&S 2002:99, ex 3a/b) With predicates that take objects marked by a case other than the accusative, only the lack of the definiteness-effect distinguishes the New Construction from the passive with a post-participial DP. Passivisation of these predicates yields oblique subjects in Icelandic: oblique subject DPs preserve their case and do not agree with the participle in the passive construction (Zaenen, Maling & Thrainsson 1985). Maling & Sigurjónsdottir (2002:118) show that the acceptability of definite DPs in the New Construction is not due a loss of the definiteness effect, as speakers who accept (54b/c) continue to reject definite post-participial DPs with active verbs. Two types of analyses have been proposed for the New Construction. Under the first analysis, advocated by Maling & Sigurjónsdottir (2002), the New Construction is an active construction with a null impersonal pronoun (56a), and it has to be explained why the morphology on the verb is identical to the passive morphology (vera + participle). Under the second analysis, the New Construction is a passive with a post-participial object (Jónsson 2009); under this analysis the anomaly is accusative marking on the post-participial DP, i.e the lack of object promotion in this passive. (56) a. Það var [IP pro [VP barið mig ] ] there was hit me.ACC (transitive, active) b. Það var [IP [VP barið mig ] ] there was hit me.ACC (passive, post-participial DP) Arguments for an impersonal analysis of the New Construction Based on five independent arguments, Maling & Sigurjónsdottir (2002) argue that the Icelandic New Construction is undergoing a reanalysis from a passive to an active impersonal construction in a way comparable to the reanalysis of -no/-to forms in Polish as active impersonals. Their study is based on a large-scale questionnaire study of native speakers in different parts of Iceland. The percentages after the examples give the acceptability judgements for three different groups: IR= adolescents in Inner Reijkjavik, E= adolescents elsewhere in Iceland, A= adult speakers. First, Maling & Sigurjónsdottir show that the accusative DP cannot appear in subject position, i.e. the position between the finite verb and the participle in direct yes-no questions (57a) and in declaratives (57b) (M&S 2002:117). This restriction can be explained if the New Construction involves a null subject in subject position:

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(57) a. Var stúlkuna lamið í klessu? E:7% IR:3% A:5%20 a. was the.girl-ACC beaten in a.mess Was the girl beaten up? (M&S 2002:117, 24a) b. Í gær var Harald sótt seint í skólann. E:6% IR:5% A:2% a. yesterday was Harold sought late at school a. Yesterday Harold was picked up late from school. (M&S 2002:117, 25a) Secondly, they show that by-phrases are significantly more acceptable in the passive (58a) than in the New Construction (58b). (58) a. Honum var sagt upp af forstjóranum. I E: 87% IR: 93% A:90% a. heDAT was fired PRT by the.director b. Það var sagt honum upp af forstjóranum. b. itEXPL was fired him PRT by the.director I E:19% IR:9% A:0% (M&S 2002:120, ex 29a/b) Maling & Sigurjónsdottir further argue that the compatibility of reflexives (59a), subject-oriented adverbs (59b), and unaccusative verbs (59c) with the New Construction confirms the presence of a theta-marked subject and therefore a transitive structure with a null subject and an accusative (or oblique) object. (59) a. Á kvöldin var skoðað tölvupóstinn sinn E: 32% IR:10%A: 2% in the.evenings was checked the.e-mail.ACC SELF’s In the evenings it was checked one's email. (reflexives M&S 2002:123, 33b) b. Það var lesið minningargreinina grátandi. E: 62% iIR: 35% A: 4% c. itEXPL was read the.memorial.article crying It was read the orbituary crying. (subject-oriented adjuncts, M&S 2002:125, 37c) c. Það var dottið í hálkunni fyrir E: 55% iIR: 45% A: 25% a. itEXPL was fallen on the.ice in front framan blokkina. a. of the.apartment building It was fallen in front of the apartment building. (unaccusative, M&S 2002:127, 38a) Maling & Sigurjónsdottir note that acceptability across different examples of each type varies considerably (M&S 2002: 123, 126, 129). They conclude that nevertheless the acceptability for some examples suggests that a reanalysis of the New Construction as an impersonal construction is underway. Maling & Sigurjónsdottir’s proposal is not uncontroversial, however (see Jónsson 2009 and references cited there). Jónsson takes issue with the tests used by M& S to show that the New Construction contains an impersonal subject pro. He points out that the implicit agent of personal passives binds reflexives in examples with a habitual reading (60) and also controls participial adjuncts (61), suggesting that these tests do not confirm the presence a syntactically present subject. (60) Á kvöldin var skoðaður tölvupóstur frá börnunum sínum in the.evening was checked e-mail.nom from the.children SELF’s

20 The percentages after the examples give the acceptability judgements for three different groups: IR= adolescents in Inner Reijkjavik, E= adolescents elsewhere in Iceland, A= adult speakers.

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In the evening the email from one's children was checked. (reflexive possessive) (Jónsson 2009:296, ex 28a) (61) Minningargreinin var lesin grátandi. the.obituary.nom was read crying. (control of participial adjuncts) (Jónsson 2009:297:ex33), The New Construction further differs from active constructions with lexical and PROarb subjects in that it does not allow subject control of secondary predicate agreement (62a vs 62b/c, see also Jónsson 2009:297, ex 35), while both constructions allow object control of the secondary predicate (63a/b) (Jónsson 2009:297, Sigurðsson 2011:157; Sigurðsson marks the fact that only a subset of speakers accept the New Construction by a %). (62) Subject control of secondary predicate agreement (Sigurðsson 2011:157, 15a, 16a, 17b) a. % Var barið hana (*fullur)? was hit her.acc drunk.nom.m.sg Was she hit (by somebody drunk)? (New Construction) b. Hann barði hana (fullur). he hit her drunk.nom.m.sg He hit her (when he was drunk). (active, lexical subject) c. Að berja hana fullur var skammarlegt. to hit her drunk.nom.m.sg was shameful To hit her when (one was) drunk was shameful. (active, PROarb subject) (63) Object control of secondary predicate agreement (Sigurðsson 2011:157, 15b& 16b) a. % Var barið hana (fulla)? was hit her.acc drunk.acc.f.sg Was she hit (when she was) drunk? (New Construction) b. Hann barði hana (fulla). he hit her drunk.acc.f.sg He hit her (when she was drunk). (active, lexical subject) Jónsson (2009:303) stresses that the behaviour of the New Construction with ditransitive verbs is unexpected if the subject position is taken to be filled by an impersonal null subject, as proposed by Maling & Sigurjónsdottir (2002). Jónsson bases his argumentation on his own survey of Icelandic speakers; the percentages given in his examples are for the youngest group of 9th graders with the percentage for the adults given in brackets. In a ditransitive New Construction, the dative object can occupy the subject position between the verb and the participle in Yes-No questions. The examples in (64) show that the Dative DP can move to either of the subject positions that have been identified for Icelandic: (64) a. Var þeim ekki einu sinni sýnt íbúðina fyrst? 59% (19%) was them.DAT not even shown the.apartment.ACC first Were they not even shown the apartment first? (Jónsson 2009:303 ex 41b) b. Það var einhverjum sýnt íbúðina there was somebody.DAT shown the.apartment.acc (Jónsson 2009:304 ex 43) As we have seen above, the DP in the New Construction differs from the post-participial DP in

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canonical passives in that can be definite (54b/55b). Jónsson further shows that the new construction and canonical passives differ in their control behaviour. While the post-participial DP in impersonal passives allows control into an infinitival adjunct (64a), the DP in the New Construction does not (65b). (65) a. ?Þá voru ráðnir tveir menn án þess að hafa næga menntun then were hired.m.nom.pl two.nom men.nom without it to have enough education Then, two men were hired without having enough education. b. *Þá var ráðið tvo menn án þess að hafa næga menntun then was hired.def two.acc men.acc without it to have enough education Then, two men were hired without having enough education. (Jónsson 2009:285, exs 9b/c) Jónsson (2009:284) proposes that the New Construction should be analysed a subjectless construction with a DP object. As the definiteness effect only applies to subjects, an analysis of the DP as an object accounts for the fact that the DP in the New Construction is not subject to definiteness constraints. Table 4 below summarises the arguments put forward by the two studies discussed above. Maling &

Sigurjónsdottir Jónsson

a. Agentive by-phrase b. Compatible with unaccusative Vs yes ? b.’ Compatible with intransitive verbs Cannot be tested Cannot be tested c. Object retains object properties Yes:

No participle-agreement No definiteness effect

Yes: No participle- agreement No definiteness effect DP cannot control infinitival adjunct

d. Human interpretation of the implicit actor -- -- e. Changes transitivity No, transitive

construction Yes, subjectless transitive

f. Syntactically active logical subject: binding of anaphors (reflexive and reciprocal) by the implicit subject is ok

Yes: binds reflexive possessive

No difference with passive

g. Syntactically active logical subject: Control of subject oriented adjuncts is possible

Yes: binds participial adjuncts

No difference with passive

h. Subject control of secondary predicates -- No i. Syntactic subject position occupied by

impersonal subject No: dative NP can

occupy both positions Table 4

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2.5 Passives and impersonals summary The case studies examined above show that some constructions share properties characteristic of passive as well as impersonal constructions. This can be interpreted as showing that object promotion to subject is not a unified phenomenon. As Timberlake (1976) points out, if the notion of subject corresponds to a cluster of properties (Keenan 1976), then promotion to subject can be partial in that the promoted object may only acquire a subset of subject properties.21 We have further seen that in languages with nominative subjects, accusative marking on the logical object of a passive does not necessarily entail lack of promotion to subject, as accusative case marking is compatible with partial promotion to subject (as shown by Ukrainian). The discussion of the Icelandic New Construction further shows that impersonal constructions can be interpreted either as transitive constructions with an impersonal (null) subject as in (23c) (Maling & Sigurjónsdottir 2002) or as subjectless impersonal verbs with a syntactic DP object as in (16) above (Jónsson 2009). 3. Expletive subjects in Germanic passives Impersonal passives can be either subjectless or appear with an expletive subject. It is therefore crucial for analysis of the impersonal passive to examine the expletive subject that appears with some impersonal passives. Here I will discuss the evidence from Germanic impersonal passives, as in these languages expletive subjects have been studied in detail. 3.1 The expletive subject in impersonal passives In a language like Danish, the personal passive has a noun-phrase subject (66a) while the impersonal passive appears with an expletive subject (66b): (66) a. … at et aeble blev spist (Danish)

…that an apple was eaten an apple '... that there was eaten an apple.' (personal passive)

b. ... at der er blevet danset …that EXPL is been danced

'... that there was dancing going on.' (impersonal passive) (Vikner 1995:202,209)

The question now arises if the expletive subject in the impersonal passive is of the same type as the expletive found with lexically impersonal predicates as in It is raining. The data from Germanic show that the expletive subject of impersonal meteorological predicates should is different from the expletive found in impersonal passives. Vikner (1995:ch7) argues in detail (following Bolinger 1973, Bennis 1986) that the subjects of meteorological predicates are quasi-arguments, while the expletive in expletive constructions is an expletive (i.e. bears no theta-role). In the Germanic languages that distinguish two expletives, the expletive

21 Object promotion can also be dependent on the semantic properties of the demoted subject. As Geniušienė

(2006:57) observes, in Lithuanian, “the direct object which is commonly promoted to subject can be retained in the passive construction as a marginal case; it occurs in constructions with deleted agent used in the generic sense”. She stresses that non-promotion of the object is rare and limited to “gnomic sayings with a generalized agent” (Geniušienė 2006:38).

(i) Vaik-ą muša-m-a, kai ne-klaus-o (Lithuanian) child-acc-sg beat-pr.pass-nt when not-obey-3pres A child is beaten (= it is customary to beat a child) if he does not obey; or They beat a child if he does not obey. (Geniušienė 2006:38, ex 14)

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subject of impersonal passives does not pattern with the expletive found with meteorological predicates.22 (67) a. … at det / *der regner (Danish) … that EXPLpron/ EXPL loc rains … that it is raining. (adapted from Vikner 195: 225, ex4b) b. ... at *det / der er blevet danset …that EXPLpron /EXPLloc is been danced ... that there was dancing going on. As the following examples show, the expletive subject of impersonal passives in the Mainland Scandinavian languages patterns with the expletive found with subjects that appear in the post-participial object position (68a/b).23 The post-participal subject is possible with unergatives (68b) and with unaccusatives, in particular with personal passives (68c) (Vikner 1995:202) (68) a. ...at der er blevet danset (Danish) …that EXPL is been danced

... that there was dancing going on. (impersonal passive) (Vikner 1995:209,93d) b. … at der har danset nogen i haven (Danish)

that EXPL has danced someone in the-garden that someone danced in the garden. (post-participial subject, Vikner 1995:203, 82e)

c. … at der blev spist et aeble …that EXPL was eaten an apple ... that there was eaten an apple. (personal passive+ post-participial subject)

(Vikner 1995:202,209) The analyses of impersonal passives with an expletive subjects differ with respect to (i) the analysis of passives assumed, (ii) the role attributed to the passive morphology and (iii) the role of the expletive subject in the impersonal passive.

Vikner (1995:201) assumes a subject demotion analysis of passivisation. More specifically, he follows Jaeggli (1986), Baker, Johnson and Roberts (1989) in assuming that the passive morphology is assigned the subject-theta role. In Vikner's analysis the Scandinavian impersonal passives rely on an expletive-associate-chain between the expletive and the passive morpheme (69a), while personal passives in the expletive construction rely on an expletive associate chain between the expletive and the DP subject (69b) (Vikner 1995:209).24

(69) a. Vikner's analysis of impersonal passives [CP [C' [IP EXPLi [I' [VP V+passive morphemei]]]]] b. Vikner's analysis of personal passives with VP-internal subject

22 German provides another example showing that impersonal passives do not pattern with quasi-argumental weather-

subjects. While the subject of weather predicates is es “it” (ia), the impersonal passive is not compatible with a subject es (ib):

(i) a. … dass es /*[ ] geregnet hat. (German) … that it / [ ] rained has. .. that it rained. (weather verb) b. … dass *es /[ ] gearbeitet wurde. … that it / [ ] worked was (impersonal passive) 23 Both Vikner 1995 and Åfarli 1992:62 argue that the post-participial NP is in the object position. In a syntactic

model with richer functional structure it is assumed that the post-participial NP is either a VP-internal subject or a subject in a functional project just above VP.

24 Vikner assumes an expletive proexpl for Icelandic, see also Holmberg & Platzack (1995:103)

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[CP [C' [IP EXPLi [I' [VP V NPi ]]]]]

Notice that under Vikner's analysis personal passives with VP-internal subjects and impersonal passives are analysed differently, despite superficial similarity between the two structures. In impersonal passives like (69a) the expletive forms a chain with the passive morphology and thereby with the logical subject of the underlying verb. The personal passive in (69b), on the other hand, relies on a chain between the expletive and the logical object of the underlying verb.25 Dobrovie-Sorin (1986) defends an object promotion analysis of impersonal passives and assumes that impersonal passives involve a “dummy” object (as in Perlmutter & Postal 1977/1983). More precisely, she proposes that impersonal passives involve licensing of a referentially deficient cognate object (ecog ). Applying her analyis to Scandinavian yields the following structures (see Cabredo Hofherr 1999): (70) a. “Dummy” object analysis of impersonal passives [CP [C' [IP (EXPL) [I' [VP V ecog ]]]]] b. Personal passives with VP-internal subject

[CP [C' [IP (EXPL) [I' [VP V NPi ]]]]] This analysis has the advantage of unifying the structure impersonal passives and personal passives in expletive constructions. The difficulty for this proposal is, however, to propose explicit conditions under which cognate objects can be syntactically projected. There is agreement among all types of analyses, however, that the expletive in impersonal passives is the expletive appearing with low NP-subjects, assimilating impersonal passives to constructions with subjects that stay low in the syntactic structure. 3.2 Expletives and agreement in impersonal passives As Christensen & Taraldsen (1989)26 show, the analysis of the impersonal passive interacts with the type of expletive present in the language. Certain Norwegian dialects display past participle agreement illustrated in (71a). These dialects with past participle agreement can be divided into two subgroups: dialects that have a locative expletive der and dialects with the pronominal expletive det. Dialects with locative expletives display participle agreement in presence of an expletive subject (71b), while dialects that have a pronominal expletive det appear with the invariable neuter singular form of the participle (71c) (71) a. Gjestene er nett komne. (Norwegian dialects, group 1&2) guests-the is just arrived.pl (ex (1) Christensen & Taraldsen 1989, p.58) b. Nokre gjester er der nett komne /*kome. (Norw. dialects, group 1) some guests is EXPLLOC just arrived.pl /*ntr.sg c. Nokre gjester er det nett kome /*komne (Norw. dialects, group 2) some guests is EXPLPRON just arrived.ntr.sg /*pl ‘There just arrived some guests.’ (ex (37)/(38) Christensen & Taraldsen 1989, p.63f )

25 An analysis along similar lines is proposed by Christensen & Taraldsen (1989). These authors propose a structure in

which an expletive chain is formed between the expletive det and a null NP in post-participial position. This analysis implicitly assumes a subject demotion analysis of the passive as they propose that this NP is a phonologically empty agent.

(i) deti blev [sc ti [v'[v' drucket]] NPi]] (C&T 1989:75, ex 84) 26 For an analysis of agreement in double object constructions see Holmberg 1994, 2001.

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The difference between der and det with respect to participle agreement is parallel to the difference between English adverbial there and French pronominal il with respect to subject-agreement (Christensen & Taraldsen 1989:59): (72) a. There were two strangers arrested by the police. (Christensen & Taraldsen 1989: 56, ex15) b. Il est apparu beaucoup d'animaux étranges. (French) it is appeared.ms many of-animals strange Many strange animals appeared. Based on data from Swedish , Christensen and Taraldsen (1989:70f) further argue that the participle with the pronominal expletive is not in a non-agreeing form but in fact agrees with the expletive. They show that Swedish distinguishes between an agreeing and a non-agreeing form. The agreeing participle that is used in the passive (80b-d) and the non-agreeing supine that is used with the auxiliary have (80a). (80) a. Jens har skutit /*skjutet ett lejon. (Swedish) J has shot /shot.ntr a lion. b. Lejonet blev skjutet /*skjutit. lion-the was shot.ntr /shot. The lion was shot. (neuter sg subject) c. Älgen blev skjuten. elk-the was shot-cmn (common gender subject) The elk was shot. d. Djuren blev skjutna. animals-the were shot-pl (plural subject) The animals were shot. (C&T 1989:70, exs 60-63) In expletive constructions with personal passives (80a) and with impersonal passives (81b) the participle shows the neuter agreeing form with the pronominal expletive det. Note that if agreement were with the common gender NP in (81a) we would expect the form skuten, as in (80c). (81) a. det blev skjutet /*skjutit en älg. (Swedish) explpron was shot.NTR /shot.0 an elk There was shot an elk. (C&T 1989:71, ex 68) b. Det blev drucket /*druckit hela natten. explpron was drunk.NTR /drunk.0 all night (C&T 1989:75, ex 83) Summarising, the evidence from Scandinavian shows that the expletive in impersonal passives is the same expletive found with expletive constructions with post-participial subjects. Furthermore, the agreement is with the expletive for pronominal expletives while adverbial expletives do not agree (leaving the possibility of agreement with the post-participial NP). 4. Conclusion The structures studied under the heading impersonal passives in the literature are a heterogeneous class for two main reasons. First, impersonal passives inherit the difficulties already present in the definition of personal passives cross-linguistically; this applies particularly to the distinction between passives and subjectless impersonal verb forms. Secondly, the promotion of the logical

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object to grammatical subject can be partial, yielding structures that cannot be easily classified as either (intransitive) passive or (transitive) impersonal as the logical object may have acquired some properties characteristic of the subject while preserving case marking and word-order characteristic of objects (see the case studies in section 2). The expletive subject found with impersonal passives in Scandinavian suggests that expletive subjects in impersonal passives are comparable to the expletives found in constructions with low (VP-internal) subjects, and different from the quasi-arguments of weather-verbs. Cross-references See also: Adjectival Passives; Implicit Arguments; SE/SI constructions, Subjects References Ackema, Peter and Ad Neeleman 1998. Conflict resolution in passive formation. Lingua 104:13-29 Ackema, Peter & Schoorlemmer, Maaike. 2005. Middles. This volume. Åfarli, T.A. 1992. The Syntax of Norwegian Passive Constructions. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Babby, Leonard. (1989/2002) “Subjectlessness, external subcategorization, and the Projection Principle”. Zbornik Matice srpske za filologiju i lingvistiku 9:1-55. [Reprinted in Journal of Slavic linguistics 10(1-2) (2002), 341– 88.] Baker, Mark. 1988. Incorporation: a theory of grammatical function changing. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. Baker, Mark, Kyle Johnson & Ian Roberts. 1989. Passive arguments raised. Linguistic Inquiry 20:219–251. Benincà, Paola et Cristina Tortora, 2009. Towards a finer-grained theory of Italian participial clausal architecture. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 15. http://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol15/iss1/4. Bennis, Hans. 1986. Gaps and Dummies. Dordrecht: Foris. Bhatt, Rajesh and Pancheva, Roumyana. Implicit Arguments. This volume. Billings, Loren & Maling, Joan. Accusative-assigning participial -no/-to constructions in Ukrainian, Polish, and neighboring languages: An annotated bibliography”. Journal of Slavic linguistics 3(1): 177–217, (2): 396–430. Blevins, James. 2003. Passives and impersonals. Journal of Linguistics 39: 473-520. Bolinger, Dwight. 1973. Ambient it is meaningful too. Journal of Linguistics 9: 261-270. Bowers, John. 2010. Arguments as relations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bresnan, Joan. 2001. Lexical-Functional Syntax. Oxford: Blackwell. Burzio, Luigi. 1986. Italian syntax: A Government-Binding approach. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

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