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).
References
Alexiadou, Artemis, Elena Anagnostopoulou & Florian Schäfer (eds.). 2015. External arguments in transitivity alternations: A layering approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199571949.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Alexiadou, Artemis, Elena Anagnostopoulou & Cristina Sevdali. 2014. Opaque and transparent datives, and how they behave in passives. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 17(1). 1–34. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10828-014-9064-8.Search in Google Scholar
Alsina, Alex. 1996. The role of argument structure in grammar. Evidence from Romance. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Search in Google Scholar
Alsina, Alex. 2002. L’infinitiu. In Joan Solà, Maria Rosa Lloret, Joan Mascaró & Manuel Pérez-Saldanya (eds.), Gramàtica del català contemporani, vol. 3, 2389–2454. Barcelona: Empúries.Search in Google Scholar
Angelopoulos, Nikos, Chris Collins & Arhonto Terzi. 2020. Greek and English passives, and the role of by-phrases. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 5(1). 1–29. https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.1185.Search in Google Scholar
Baker, Mark C. 1988. Incorporation: A theory of grammatical function changing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar
Baker, Mark, Kyle Johnson & Ian G. Roberts. 1989. Passive arguments raised. Linguistic Inquiry 20. 219–251.Search in Google Scholar
Belletti, Adriana. 1988. The case of unaccusatives. Linguistic Inquiry 19(1). 1–35.Search in Google Scholar
Bošković, Željko. 2007. Agree, phases, and intervention effects. Linguistic Analysis 33(1-2). 54–96.Search in Google Scholar
Bosque, Ignacio & Ángel J. Gallego. 2011. Spanish double passives and related structures. Revista de Estudos Linguísticos da Universidade do Porto 6. 9–50.Search in Google Scholar
Burzio, Luigi. 1986. Italian syntax. Dordrecht: Reidel.10.1007/978-94-009-4522-7Search in Google Scholar
Camus, Bruno. 2013. On Deísmo. Another case of variation in Spanish complementation. Catalan Journal of Linguistics 12. 13–39. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/catjl.16.Search in Google Scholar
Carstens, Vicki & Michael Diercks. 2012. Parameterizing case and activity: Hyperraising in Bantu. HO NELS talk 2010.Search in Google Scholar
Casalicchio, Jan & Michelle Sheehan. 2021. Long passives of causatives and perception verbs in Italian: Implications for phase theory. In Cambridge University Romance Linguistics Seminar, 2nd March 2021.Search in Google Scholar
Cassalicchio, Jan & Peter Herbeck. 2021. Variation in clausal size. A study of the complements of perception verbs in Spanish. Talk at VARINT 21, UAB, 18-19 November 2021.Search in Google Scholar
Casalicchio, Jan & Peter Herbeck. 2024. New perspectives on the syntax of causative and restructuring verbs in Romance. Isogloss 10.4. Special issue.10.5565/rev/isogloss.400Search in Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1986. Knowledge of language: Its nature, origin, and use. New York: Praeger.Search in Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1993. A minimalist program for linguistic theory. In Kenneth Hale & Samuel Jay Keyser (eds.), The view from building 20: Essays in linguistics in honor of Sylvain Bromberger, 1–52. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The minimalist program. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 2000. Minimalist inquiries: The framework. In Roger Martin, David Michaels & Juan Uriagereka (eds.), Step by step. Essays on minimalist syntax in honour of Howard Lasnik, 89–155. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 2001. Derivation by phase. In Michael Kenstowicz (ed.), Ken Hale: A life in language, 1–52. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/4056.003.0004Search in Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 2004. Beyond explanatory adequacy. In Adriana Belletti (ed.), Structures and beyond. The cartography of syntactic structures, vol. 3, 104–131. Oxford (NY): Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780195171976.003.0004Search in Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 2008. On phases. In Robert Freidin, Carlos P. Otero & Ma Luisa Zubizarreta (eds.), Foundational issues in linguistic theory, 134–166. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 2013. Problems of projection. Lingua 130. 33–49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2012.12.003.Search in Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam, Ángel J. Gallego & Dennis Ott. 2019. Generative grammar and the faculty of language: Insights, questions, and challenges. In Ángel J. Gallego & Dennis Ott (eds.), Catalan Journal of Linguistics, special issue, 229–261.10.5565/rev/catjl.288Search in Google Scholar
Ciutescu, Elena. 2018. Defective causative and perception verb constructions in Romance. A minimalist approach to infinitival and subjunctive clauses. PhD Dissertation, UAB.Search in Google Scholar
Collins, Chris. 2005. A smuggling approach to the passive in English. Syntax 8. 81–120. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9612.2005.00076.x.Search in Google Scholar
Cuervo, María Cristina. 2003. Datives at large. PhD. Dissertation. MIT.Search in Google Scholar
D’Alessandro, Roberta, Irene Franco & Ángel J. Gallego. 2017. The verbal domain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780198767886.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Diercks, Michael. 2012. Parameterizing case: Evidence from Bantu. Syntax 15(3). 253–286. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9612.2011.00165.x.Search in Google Scholar
Embick, David. 2004. On the structure of resultative participles in English. Linguistic Inquiry 35(3). 355–392. https://doi.org/10.1162/0024389041402634.Search in Google Scholar
Fernández-Salgueiro, Gerardo. 2005. Agree, the EPP-F and further raising in Spanish. In Randall Gess & Edward J. Rubin (eds.), Theoretical and experimental approaches to Romance linguistics, 97–107. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/cilt.272.07ferSearch in Google Scholar
Fernández-Sánchez, Javier. 2015. An (only apparent) case of hyper raising in Spanish. Iberia 7. 1–32.Search in Google Scholar
Folli, Raffaella & Heidi Harley. 2005. Flavors of v. In Paula Kempchinsky & Roumyana Slabakova (eds.), Aspectual inquiries, 95–120. Dordrecht: Springer.10.1007/1-4020-3033-9_5Search in Google Scholar
Freeze, Ray. 1992. Existentials and other locatives. Language 68. 553–595. https://doi.org/10.2307/415794.Search in Google Scholar
Gallego, Ángel J. 2007. Phase theory and parametric variation. PhD Dissertation, UAB.Search in Google Scholar
Gallego, Ángel J. 2010a. Phase theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Search in Google Scholar
Gallego, Ángel J. 2010b. On the prepositional nature of non-finite verbs. Catalan Journal of Linguistics 9. 72–102. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/catjl.95.Search in Google Scholar
Gallego, Ángel J. 2013. Object shift in Romance. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 31. 409–451. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-013-9188-6.Search in Google Scholar
Gallego, Ángel J. 2014. Deriving feature inheritance from the copy theory of movement. The Linguistic Review 31. 41–71. https://doi.org/10.1515/tlr-2013-0021.Search in Google Scholar
Gallego, Ángel J. 2016. Three types of prepositions in Spanish se-sentences: Consequences for cross-dialectal studies. Dialectologia 17. 51–70.Search in Google Scholar
Gallego, Ángel J. 2020. Morpho-syntactic variation in Romance v. A micro-parametric approach. Probus 32. 1–36. https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2020-0008.Search in Google Scholar
Gallego, Ángel, J., & Juan, Uriagereka. 2020. Off the chain. Ms., UAB/UMD. Available at: https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/005093.Search in Google Scholar
Gallego, Ángel J. & Masaya Yoshida. 2025. Raising to object in romance: Evidence from ellipsis. Ms., UAB.Search in Google Scholar
Hale, Kenneth & Samuel J. Keyser. 1993. On the argument structure and the lexical expression of syntactic relations. In Kenneth Hale & Samuel Jay Keyser (eds.), The view from building 20: Essays in linguistics in honor of sylvain bromberger, 53–109. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
Hale, Kenneth & Samuel J. Keyser. 2002. Prolegomenon to a theory of argument structure. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/5634.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Harley, Heidi. 2012. Lexical decomposition in modern generative grammar. In Wolfram Hinzen, Edouard Machery & Markus Werning (eds.), Handbook of compositionality, 328–350. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 2024. Passive constructions: Universals and language description. Ms., Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig).Search in Google Scholar
Herbeck, Peter. 2020. On finite subject-to-object raising in Spanish. Borealis 9. 87–124. https://doi.org/10.7557/1.9.1.5098.Search in Google Scholar
Hernanz, M. Lluïsa. 1999. El infinitivo. In Ignacio Bosque & Violeta Demonte (eds.), Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española, 2197–2356. Madrid: Espasa.Search in Google Scholar
Hernanz, M. Lluïsa & Ángel J. Gallego. 2012. Tipos de tiempo defectivo. In Emilio Ridruejo Alonso, Josep Maria Solias i Arís, Nieves Mendizábal de la Cruz, Sara Alonso Calvo (coords.), Tradición y progreso en la lingüística general, 192–215. Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid.Search in Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul J. & Sandra A. Thompson. 1980. Transitivity in grammar and discourse. Language 562(2). 251–299. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.1980.0017.Search in Google Scholar
Hornstein, Norbert, Jairo Nunes & Ana Maria Martins. 2010. Perception and causative structures in English and European Portuguese. Syntax 11. 205–229.Search in Google Scholar
Jaeggli, Osvaldo A. 1986. Passive. Linguistic Inquiry 17. 587–622.Search in Google Scholar
Kayne, Richard S. 1993. Toward a modular theory of auxiliary selection. Studia Linguistica 47. 3–31. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9582.1993.tb00837.x.Search in Google Scholar
Kayne, Richard S. 1994. The antisymmetry of syntax. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
Keyser, Samuel J. & Thomas Roeper. 1984. On the middle and passive. Linguistic Inquiry 15(3). 381–416.Search in Google Scholar
Kratzer, Angelika. 1996. Severing the external argument from its verb. In Johan Rooryck & Laurie Zaring (eds.), Phrase structure and the lexicon, 109–137. Dordrecht: Kluwer.10.1007/978-94-015-8617-7_5Search in Google Scholar
Kratzer, Angelika. 2000. Building statives. In Carol Tenny & James Pustejovsky (eds.), Events. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Lasnik, Howard. 2001. Subjects, objects, and the EPP. In William Davies & Stanley Dubinsky (eds.), Objects and other subjects: Grammatical functions, functional categories, and configurationality, 103–121. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.10.1007/978-94-010-0991-1_5Search in Google Scholar
Lasnik, Howard. 2002a. Clause-mate conditions revisited. Glot International 6. 94–96.Search in Google Scholar
Lasnik, Howard. 2002b. Case and passives. Ms., UMD.Search in Google Scholar
Lasnik, Howard. 2019. A reconsideration of exceptional case-marking. Ms., UMD.Search in Google Scholar
Lasnik, Howard & Mamoru Saito. 1999. On the subject of infinitives. In Howard Lasnik (ed.), Minimalist analysis, 7–24. Oxford: Blackwell.Search in Google Scholar
Legate, Julie Anne. 2014. Voice and v: Lessons from Acehnese. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/9780262028141.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Legate, Julie Anne. 2021. Noncanonical passives: A typology of voices in an impoverished universal grammar. Annual Review of Linguistics 7. 157–176. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-031920-114459.Search in Google Scholar
Legate, Julie Anne, Faruk Akkuş, Milena Šereikaitė & Don Ringe. 2020. On passives of passives. Language 96(4). 771–818. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2020.0062.Search in Google Scholar
Leonetti, Manuel. 2008. Specificity in clitic doubling and in differential object marking in Spanish. Probus 20. 33–66. https://doi.org/10.1515/probus.2008.002.Search in Google Scholar
Levin, Beth & Malka Rappaport Hovav. 1995. Unaccusativity: At the syntax–lexical semantics interface. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
López, Luis. 2012. Indefinite objects: Scrambling, choice functions and differential marking. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/9165.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Mendikoetxea, Amaya. 1999. Construcciones inacusativas y pasivas. In Ignacio Bosque & Violeta Demonte (eds.), Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española, 1575–1629. Madrid: Espasa.Search in Google Scholar
Montalbetti, Mario. 1999. Spanish passivized datives: The relevance of misanalysis. In Kyle Johnson & Ian G. Roberts (eds.), Beyond principles and parameters, 133–144. Dordrecht: Springer.10.1007/978-94-011-4822-1_5Search in Google Scholar
Ordóñez, Francisco & Francesc Roca. 2017. Causativas y leísmo generalizado en dialectos del español. In Ángel J. Gallego, Yolanda Rodríguez & Javier Fernández-Sánchez (eds.), Relaciones sintácticas, 531–546. Bellaterra: Servei de Publicacions (UAB).Search in Google Scholar
Ordóñez, Francisco & Francesc Roca. 2019. Differential object marking (DOM) and clitic subspecification in Catalonian Spanish. In Ángel J. Gallego (ed.), The syntactic variation of Spanish dialects, 35–59. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780190634797.003.0002Search in Google Scholar
Ordóñez, Francisco & Esthela Treviño. 2016. Agreement and DOM with se: A comparative study of Mexican and Peninsular Spanish. In Mary Kato & Francisco Ordóñez (eds.), The Morphosyntax of Portuguese and Spanish in Latin America, 236–258. Oxford: OUP.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190465889.003.0010Search in Google Scholar
Ormazabal, Javier & Juan Romero. 2007. The object agreement constraint. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 25. 315–347. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-006-9010-9.Search in Google Scholar
Ormazabal, Javier & Juan Romero. 2013a. Differential object marking, case and agreement. Borealis 2(2). 221–239. https://doi.org/10.7557/1.2.2.2808.Search in Google Scholar
Ormazabal, Javier & Juan Romero. 2013b. Non-accusative objects. Catalan Journal of Linguistics 12. 155–173. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/catjl.65.Search in Google Scholar
Perlmutter, David. 1978. Impersonal passives and the unaccusative hypothesis. In Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society.10.3765/bls.v4i0.2198Search in Google Scholar
Pesetsky, David. 2013. Russian case morphology and the syntactic categories. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/9780262019729.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Pesetsky, David & Esther Torrego. 2004. Tense, Case, and the nature of syntactic categories. In Jacqueline Guéron & Jacqueline Lecarme (eds.), The syntax of time, 495–537. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/6598.003.0021Search in Google Scholar
Picallo, M. Carme. 2002. Abstract agreement and clausal arguments. Syntax 5. 116–147. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9612.00049.Search in Google Scholar
Pineda, Anna. 2014. Les fronteres de la (in)transitivitat. Estudi dels aplicatius en llengües romàniques i basc. PhD Dissertation, UAB.Search in Google Scholar
Plann, Susan. 1986. On case-marking clauses in Spanish: Evidence against the case resistance principle. Linguistic Inquiry 17. 336–345.Search in Google Scholar
Pylkkänen, Liina. 2008. Introducing arguments. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/9780262162548.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
RAE-ASALE. 2009. Nueva Gramática de la Lengua Española. Madrid: Espasa.Search in Google Scholar
Ramchand, Gillian. 2008. Verb meaning and the Lexicon: A first-phase syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511486319Search in Google Scholar
Ramchand, Gillian. 2018. Situations and syntactic structures: Rethinking auxiliaries and order in English. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/10911.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Rappaport Hovav, Malka & Beth Levin. 1998. Building verb meanings. In Miriam Butt & Wilhelm Geude (eds.), The projection of arguments: Lexical and compositional factors. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Search in Google Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi. 1990. Relativized minimality. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi & Ur Shlonsky. 2007. Strategies of subject extraction. In Uli Sauerlandand & Hans-Martin Gärtner (eds.), Interfaces + recursion = language?, 115–160. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110207552.115Search in Google Scholar
Roca, Francesc. 1992. On the Licensing of pronominal clitics. MA Thesis: UAB.Search in Google Scholar
Rodríguez-Mondoñedo, Miguel. 2007. The syntax of objects: Agree and differential object marking. PhD Dissertation, University of Connecticut.Search in Google Scholar
Romero, Juan. 2008. Los dativos en español. Madrid: Arco/Libros.Search in Google Scholar
Sheehan, Michelle. 2019. Restrictions on A-movement in English and Spanish and what they tell us about phase theory. ARC Seminar, October 2019.Search in Google Scholar
Sheehan, Michelle. 2020a. Passives of causatives and perception verbs in Romance: Further evidence for phases. CLT Seminar, November 2020.Search in Google Scholar
Sheehan, Michelle. 2020b. The Romance Person Case Constraint is not about clitic clusters. In Anna Pineda & Jaume Mateu (eds.), Dative constructions in Romance and Beyond, 143–171. Belrin: Language Science Press.Search in Google Scholar
Sheehan, Michelle & Sonia Cyrino. 2018. Why do some ECM verbs resist passivisation: A phase-based explanation. In Sherry Hucklebridge & Max Nelson (eds.), Proceedings of NELS 48, vol. 3, 81–90. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.Search in Google Scholar
Stowell, Tim. 1981. The origins of phrase structure. PhD Dissertation, MIT.Search in Google Scholar
Svenonius, Peter. 2002. Case is uninterpretable aspect. In Henk Verkuyl (ed.), Proceedings of Perspectives on Aspect Conference. Utrecht: University of Utrecht.Search in Google Scholar
Torrego, Esther. 1998. The dependencies of objects. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/2337.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Torrego, Esther. 1999. Aspect in the prepositional system of Romance. In Teresa Satterfield, Christina Tortora, Diana Cresti (eds.), Current issues in Romance languages, 337–357. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/cilt.220.23torSearch in Google Scholar
Torrego, Esther. 2010. Variability in the case patterns of causative formation in romance and its implications. Linguistic Inquiry 41. 445–470. https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00004.Search in Google Scholar
Treviño, Esthela. 1993. Las causativas del español con complemento infinitivo. México: El Colegio de México, DF.Search in Google Scholar
Tubino Blanco, Mercedes. 2011. Causatives in minimalism. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/la.179Search in Google Scholar
Ura, Hiroyuki. 1998. Checking, economy, and copy raising in Igbo. Linguistic Analysis 28(1-2). 67–88.Search in Google Scholar
Uriagereka, Juan. 2006. Complete and partial infl. In Cedric Boeckx (ed.), Agreement systems, 267–298. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/la.92.12uriSearch in Google Scholar
Uriagereka, Juan & Ángel J. Gallego. 2020. Off the chain. Ms., UMD/UAB. Available at: https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/005093.Search in Google Scholar
Woolford, Ellen. 2003. Burzio’s generalization, markedness, and locality constraints on nominative objects. In Ellen Brandner & Heike Zinsmeister (eds.), New perspectives on case theory, 301–329. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Search in Google Scholar
Woolford, Ellen. 2006. Lexical case, inherent case, and argument structure. Linguistic Inquiry 37. 111–130. https://doi.org/10.1162/002438906775321175.Search in Google Scholar
Zaenen, Annie, Joan Maling & Hoskuldur Thráinsson. 1985. Case and grammatical functions: The Icelandic passive. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 3. 441–483.10.1007/BF00133285Search in Google Scholar
© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Comparing syntactic and discourse accounts of islands and parasitic gaps: experimental evidence from acceptability judgments
- Clausal doubling produces phantom islands
- On reduced wh-questions in Dagara
- Passivization strategies under ECM: evidence from Spanish dialects
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Comparing syntactic and discourse accounts of islands and parasitic gaps: experimental evidence from acceptability judgments
- Clausal doubling produces phantom islands
- On reduced wh-questions in Dagara
- Passivization strategies under ECM: evidence from Spanish dialects