The Danish reportive passive as a non-canonical passive
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Bjarne Ørsnes
Abstract
Danish passive utterance and cognitive verbs allow a construction where the subject of an infinitival complement is raised: Peter siges at være bortrejst (‘Peter is said to be out of town’). Contrary to English, these verbs are not ECM-verbs or subject-to-object raising verbs in the active. The subject of the passive can never be construed as an object. These raising passives are termed Reportive Passives since they attribute a proposition to an (unknown) information source. Some analyses treat these passives as special constructions with an idiosyncratic semantics or even as grammaticalized evidentiality markers. I argue that they are fully compositional passives in Danish, but that they are non-canonical inasmuch as they raise an argument of an embedded predicate. I provide an account within the framework of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar and I suggest that such passives are motivated in (Germanic) SVO-languages by a strong subject condition.
Abstract
Danish passive utterance and cognitive verbs allow a construction where the subject of an infinitival complement is raised: Peter siges at være bortrejst (‘Peter is said to be out of town’). Contrary to English, these verbs are not ECM-verbs or subject-to-object raising verbs in the active. The subject of the passive can never be construed as an object. These raising passives are termed Reportive Passives since they attribute a proposition to an (unknown) information source. Some analyses treat these passives as special constructions with an idiosyncratic semantics or even as grammaticalized evidentiality markers. I argue that they are fully compositional passives in Danish, but that they are non-canonical inasmuch as they raise an argument of an embedded predicate. I provide an account within the framework of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar and I suggest that such passives are motivated in (Germanic) SVO-languages by a strong subject condition.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Non-canonical passives 1
- Adjectival passives and adjectival participles in English 21
- The get -passive at the intersection of get and the passive 43
- Three “competing” auxiliaries of a non-canonical passive 63
- Variations in non-canonical passives 95
- How much bekommen is there in the German bekommen passive? 115
- Haben -statives in German 141
- Another passive that isn’t one 163
- Passives and near-passives in Balto-Slavic 185
- How do things get done 213
- Anticausativizing a causative verb 235
- On the syntax-semantics of passives in Persian 261
- Two indirect passive constructions in Japanese 281
- Få and its passive complement 297
- The Danish reportive passive as a non-canonical passive 315
- (Non-)canonical passives and reflexives 337
- Index 359
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Non-canonical passives 1
- Adjectival passives and adjectival participles in English 21
- The get -passive at the intersection of get and the passive 43
- Three “competing” auxiliaries of a non-canonical passive 63
- Variations in non-canonical passives 95
- How much bekommen is there in the German bekommen passive? 115
- Haben -statives in German 141
- Another passive that isn’t one 163
- Passives and near-passives in Balto-Slavic 185
- How do things get done 213
- Anticausativizing a causative verb 235
- On the syntax-semantics of passives in Persian 261
- Two indirect passive constructions in Japanese 281
- Få and its passive complement 297
- The Danish reportive passive as a non-canonical passive 315
- (Non-)canonical passives and reflexives 337
- Index 359
