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Passivization strategies under ECM: evidence from Spanish dialects

  • Ángel J. Gallego EMAIL logo
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 3. Juni 2025
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Abstract

This paper discusses local and non-local instances of passivization in Spanish. Special attention is paid to passivization in ECM scenarios, since they are known to display more and more subtle parametric nuances (see Ciutescu 2018, Sheehan 2019, 2020a, and references therein). In order to account for the facts, an Activity Condition / Case Filter (Chomsky 2000 and ff.) analysis is put forward. Discussion covers cases of (dialectal) variation within Spanish, showing that the impossibility for NPs to undergo non-local A movement follows from their degree of inactivity, which in turn is sensitive to the type of Case NPs receive (structural or inherent, with particularities related to DOM and partitive Case in Romance). The size / category of the embedded clause and the number of arguments are shown to be relevant in the calculation of Case assignment too, in accord with the discussion on the different behavior of perception and causative predicates (see Ciutescu 2018, Casalicchio & Sheehan 2021, and references therein).


Corresponding author: Ángel J. Gallego, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra, Spain, E-mail:

I am indebted to Noam Chomsky, Elena Ciutescu, Roberta D’Alessandro, Ricardo Etxepare, Michelle Sheehan, and Juan Uriagereka for comments and on-going discussion about the matters explored in this paper. Thanks also to two anonymous reviewers, whose comments contributed to improve the paper. A previous version of this work was made available on Lingbuzz in 2020 [https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/005608]. This research has been partially supported by a grant from the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (PID2021-123617NB-C41). Usual disclaimers apply.


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