ABSTRACT
What is an impersonal passive has been a point of contention for some time. Most linguists regard impersonal passives as subjectless constructions. Others hold that impersonal passives do have a subject, but only either a dummy one like the Dutch er (2b) or a covert indefinite human one. In addiction, linguists differ in the importance they assign to verbal morphology. For some, a clause must have passive verbal morphology (whatever that is) in order to be classified as an impersonal passive. Others make no such restriction. As a result, constructions which have been labeled as impersonal passives by some linguists have been called active by others.
