ABSTRACT
This chapter takes a closer look at passives, which provide an important example of sentences containing either a noncanonical complement or a noncanonical subject by taking a look at the relevant data. It considers transformational approaches, first the approach of classical Transformational Grammar (TG), and then, the approach of Principles and Parameters (P&P). The chapter criticizes the former on the grounds that it raises certain questions to which it can provide no answers, and shows how the latter can provide answers. It highlights the crucial role of traces, roles, case, and the condition on anaphora. The chapter elaborates how passives can be analyzed in Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG). The analysis makes crucial use of a complex category for be, and a lexical rule deriving passive participles from the related active verbs. The chapter also looks at passive noun phrase's (NP), unaccusatives and adjectival passives.
