ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to develop and motivate a theory of passive constructions. In this chapter, the authors have outlined the general form of a passive derivation in our theory and commented on a number of matters that arise. We now turn to a more detailed discussion of various aspects of our account. The authors suggest that this argument has properties similar to arbitrary pronoun. This idea on the one hand supports the hypothesis that the argument is a kind of clitic, since clitics generally have pronominal interpretation, and on the other hand allows an account of why the passive argument appears to remain “syntactically inert,” in certain cases. Finally, the authors show the Case-theoretic properties of passive morphemes are the same as those of incorporated noun roots. This final part explores this aspect of the passive construction and its implications for our proposal.