Subjectlessness, external subcategorization, and the projection principle

36 Pages·2.004 MB·English

by  Babby Leonard H.

YU ISSN-0352-5724/UDK 801(05)
ЗБОРНИК
МАТИЦЕ СРПСКЕ
ЗА ФИЛОЛОГИJУ И ЛИНГВИСТИКУ
ХХХП/2
НОВИ САД
[ 9 8 9
МАТИЦА СРПСКА
ОДЕJЪЕIЬЕ ЗА Кl:ЬИЖЕВНОСТ И JЕЗИК
ЗБОРНИК
ЗА ФИЛОЛОГИJУ И ЛИНГВИСТИКУ
MATICA SERBICA
CLASSIS UТТERARUM
ARCНIVUM PHILOLOGICUM ВТ LINGUISТICUM
ХХХП/2
Уредништво:
Др МИЛКА ИВИ'И, Др ПАВЛЕ ИВИ'И, Др JOBAH JЕРКОВИ'И,
Др АЛЕКСАНДАР МЛАДЕНОВИ'Ji, Др ДРАГОJЪУБ ПЕТРОВИЪ
Др МИЛОРАД РАДОВАНОВИ'И
Co!legium redactorum
Dr MILKA IVIC, Dr PAVLE IVIC, Dr JOVAN JERKOVIC,
Dr ALEКSANDAR MLADENOVIC, Dr DRAGOLJUB PETROVIC
Dr MILORAD RADOVANOVIC
Главни и одговорни уредник:
Др ПАВЛЕ ИВИn
SUBJECTLESSNESS, EXTERNAL SUBCATEGORIZATION, AND ТНЕ
. . . PROJECTION PRINCIPLE
LEONARD Н. ВАВВУ
·1.··oJNТRODUCТION~ : ..
One of the most important insights to come from recёrit GB literat~re is th~
hypothesis that the complexities of sentence structure can 'Ье best accorinted for
in terms of maximally simple, general syntactic rules and universal principles of
well-formedness that in effect determine the applicatiori ·and iiiteraction of these
rules. The purpose of this paper is to make а contribuwtioilnl to the discovery and el.:.
aboration of these universal linguistic principles; it deal primarily with the
Projection Principle and its relation to the hypothesis that all sen.tences must have
а subject NP (the Extended Projection Principle). ·
The Projection Principle determines how the arguments of а lexical item pro
ject into the syntactic structure of,a sentence (see Marantz 1984 : 14); Cho'msky
(1981 : 29) formulates it as follows: "Representations at each syntacticleveJ (i. е.;
Logical Form, Deep and Surface Structure) are projected frofu the 1exicon, in that
they observe the subcategoriza:tion properties of lexicaI items." Thёfollowiri.g is а
more recerit vёrsion (Chomsky 19~6 : 116). · · ·
(1) Тhе Projection Principl_e requires .that coniplements of heads musf Ье repre-
sented at each syntactic level. ·
While the Projection Principle requires that а verb's objects Ье reptesented
in the syntax, it says nothing about its subject, i. е., it provides for the syntactic
representation of internal arguments, but not for the syntactic representation of
external ones (see Williams 1981а, 1981Ь, DiSciullo and Williams 1987). То remedy
this, Chomsky (1986: 116) proposed the Extended Projection Principle, which
consists ·о f two clauses.
(2) а. the Projection Principle (=(1)).
. .. . -
Ь. the extension of the Projection Principle: sentences must have subjects.
The extension of the Projection Principle in (2Ь) - hereafter ЕРР - has three
theoretically interesting corollaries which will Ье explored below, namely: (i) The
oЪligatoriness of the subject NP is а syntactic property6f sentences while tlie oЫi­
gatory presence of complements in the syntax is а lexical property of verbs. (ii) Verbs
do not subcategorize for subject: they select only internal categorial arguments,
and both internal and external semantic arguments (theta roles); thus the ЕРР ent
ails ·а selectional'asymmetry in the case of categorial selection (subcategorizatiori).
but not in the case of semantic selection (thetarole assignment) (see.Chomsky 1986).
(iii) Sentences that appear to Ье subjectless in surface sti:ucture must Ьу hypothesis
have а subject NP which is filled with а null category (е. g., pro or а null expletive).
8 LEONARD Н. ВАВВУ
1 shall argue below that although the E.xtended Projection Principle in 2 capt
ures an important intuition - the oЬligatoriness of subjects and objects should Ье
treated as а unitary phenomenon, it nevertheless cannot Ье accepted as а universal
principle as stated in (2). The reason is that there is а great deal of reliaЬle evidence
from the Slavic (Baltic, Turkic) Ianguages that the ЕРР in (2Ь) is incorrect. The Rus
sian and Ukrainian evidence that will Ье presented below is intended to demonst
rate that there exist sentences in natural Ianguage that do not have а subject NP at
any level of representation (see corollary (iii) above).1 Moreover, the Russian evi
dence to Ье presented in sec. 7-8 suggests that subjectlessness is typicaliy an un
predictaЬle lexical property of the main verb, not а syntactic property of the construc
tion or sentence containing it (see corollary (i)). The Russian data consequently
provide compelling evidence that verbs in optional-subject languages must subcate
gorize for subject NP (see corollary(ii)), i. е., some Russian verbs select an oЫigatory
subject, othets sel~ct an optional subject, while still others subcategorize for the
absence of а subject NP (see the discussion of absolute impersonal verbs in sec. 8).2
The fact that subject is oЬligatory iµ Ianguages Iike English and optional in the
Slavic Ia.nguag~s is, as we shall see below, directly responsiЫe for а great many of
the systematic syntactic differences that have been observed to exist between these
language types.
The paper has the following organization. The first part (sec. 1-5) presents
an analysis of passive sentences in English and Ukrainian. Its purpose is to demon
strate that: (i) the oЬligatoriness of direct object (DO) movement in English passive
sentences is directly dependent on the oЫigatoriness of the subject NP position in
English sentences (not on Case Absorption Ьу passive morphology, as claimed in
the GB Iiterature); (ii) the optionality of DO movement in Ukrainian passive sen
tences is directly related to the optionality of the subject NP in Ukrainian. з Once
it has been estaЫished that Ukrainian impersonal passive sentences are subjectless
and that· DO movement depends on the availabllity of an empty subject NP, we can
proceed to the second part of the paper (sec. 7-9), were it is argued on the basis of
transitive impersonal sentences in Russian that subjectlessness can also Ье an idi
osyncratic lexical property of particular verbs and predicate adjectives, and must
accordingly Ье explicitly encoded in the lexical representations of these predicate
words.
Our primary concern will Ье the relation between а verb's subcategorization
feature and the syntax of the sentence it "heads", i. е. the projection of а verb's
lexical properties into the syntax. It is proposed in the section on passivization that
there are regular, productive morpho lexical operations of affixation in natural lang
uage that systematically alter both the verb's category and its basic argument struc-
1 It is crucial to distinguish in what follows between sentences that have no subject NP
([в VP]) and sentences that have а subject NP that is filled with а lexical expression that hits no pho
netic realization, e.g., [s [pro]NP VPJ.
2 What I am proposing then is that а subject's optionality in Slavic should not Ье represented
solely in terms of а general principle of syntactic well-formedness, as in (2 Ь), or in the form of а
phrase-structure rule Iike S-+(NP) VP, as in Chomsky 1981: 27. It is rather а Iexical property of
individual predicate words or even of certain affixes (see the discussion of Ukrainiaп impersonaJ
passive sentences in sec. 5.5), and the proper place to encode it is in а subcategorization frame.
з Sobln 1985 argues that the optionality of DO movement in Ukrainian passive senten~$
is due to the optionality of Case Absorption in Ukrainian.
StJ1JjECТLESSNESS, EXTERNAL SUВCATEGORiZAT10:N, ..• 9
ture. 4 This means that the syntactic projection of the lexical arguments of а morpho
lo gically derived verbal category will Ье different from the projection of the cor
responding basic, un:detived verb. Тhis paper will therefore deal with one of the
central pro Ыems of linguistics, namely, the prope1 relation between lexical propei;Цes
of heads, productive rnorphological operations that alter the head's selectional pro
perties (valence), and the projection of the lexical properties of derived heads into
the syntax.
2.0 PASSIVIZATION AND DO MOVEMENT.
Discussions of the passive construction in GB theory are concerned priinarily
with explaining the oЫigatoriness of the movement of the ·passivized verb's DO to
subject position in surface structure. It is correctly assumed that DO movement is
accomplished Ьу the general syntactic.role of Move-NP, not Ьу а construction-speci
fic component of а complex passive transforщ~tion (see ВаЬЬу and Brecht 1975 for
details). Since Move-NP is an optional 1ule, the't>Ьljgatori11ess of the DO's move
ment in passive sentences is accounted for in terms of independently motivated
gene1·al principles of grammar, namely, the principles of Case Theory. More spe
cifically, according to the GB analysis (Chomsky 1981), passive mol'phology prevents
the transitive verb it is affixed to from assigning accusative case to its DO NP in
the verb phrase (see Case Absorption in (ЗЬ)). Since the Case Filter requires that а
NP containing lexical material must Ье assigned case, the DO in passive sentences
must move to а theta-free NP position where it can Ье case marked; the оцlу such
position availaЫe is the subject position. Chomsky (1981 : 24) presents this analysis
in the form of two universal properties of passivization: · ·· ·
(3) Universals of Passivization.
а. Exteшal Theta Role Absorption: the underlying subject NP in а passive
sentence is not assigned а semantic (theta) role Ьу the passivized verb (ac
cording to Jaeggli 1986, the passive morpheme -EN- absor~s the verb's
external role).
Ь. Internal Case Absorption: the DO NP cannot receive case in the VP of а
passive sentence because the. passive morpheme -EN- ".absorbs" it.
The prope1·ty in За is made necessary Ьу the Theta Criterion, according to
which an NP may Ье assigned only one theta role,5 The surface subject of а canonical
passive sentence is the verb's underlying DO NP, and it therefore carries with it the
theta 1·0Ie assigned to the DO. If the passivized verb assigned an in.depeb.dent exter
nal theta role, its surface subject would have two theta rolesassociated with it, and
the sentence would Ье ill-formed. According to the GB analysis of passivization,
4 We wlll define а verb's argument structure as the lexical representation of its categorial
arguments (NP objects, РР complements), its semantic arguments (theta roles), and the unmarked
relation between them (see C(ategory) Selection, S(emantic) Selection, and Canonical Structural
Realization in. Chomsky 1986).
s For а different view see Culicover and Wilkins 1986; ВаЬЬу 1988.
10 LEONARD Н. :ВАВВУ
За sanctions the movement of the DO Ьу eliminating а potential theta::-conflict;
it is. Case Absorption (ЗЬ), however, that.makes the DO moyement oЫigatory.б
According to this analysis, it is only the affixation of the passive morpheme
-EN• to the verb' stem that is unique to the derivation of passive sentences. Passiviz
ation should accordingly Ье thought of as а шorpholexical operation that has reg
ula.1' syntactic effects' (the case marking, agreement; 'DO movement etc. invol:ved
in the syntactic derivation of passive sentences all follow from general .principles~
and are therefore not construction-specific rules).7 More specifical1y, the affixa
tion of the passive morpheme affects the verb's categorial status and its argument
structure in the fo1iowing-systematic.ways:(seё/noteA)>-·:_ · -
(4) Canonical Passivization (aЩxation of -EN-).
. ,. . . .. . .. '··
а; The verb's external theta role · is removed. (A_ccordingly tp. Ja~ggli, jt is
reassigned to а constituent inside the VP, i. е., it is internalized; see sec.
5.4 for further discussion.)
Ь.. ТЧ,е verb's internal arguments and the theta roles linked to thein. are unaf,..
fected, ·. . . , . :·
с. The aЫlity of the passivized verb to assign case to its DO is Ыocked (absor-
bed) Ьу the -EN- suffix. - · · ·
d. A,ffixation of -EN- changes the verb's categoriµ.l status to. that'of participle
{Vpt)~. 11 nonfinite form Of the verb with _a djectiva1 pr()pe~ties. в ..
· ··· ·· The щ~rpholexical operafion described in 4 a-d_ саn-Ье i:epr~s~nted :ьу the
5;
formalism in which allows for the independent represeritation.: of t~e verb's syn.::
tactic and semantic arguments, as·well as for the unmarked Иnkagё &tween them
(е. g., the agent theta role {Ti) is 11ormally the external semantic argument and is
linked to the verb's external categorial argument (NPi in 5), which, in activё seri
tences,_ is realized as the sy11tactic subject). The symbol V in 5 functions to demarcate
the external argument from the iriternal ones (see sec. 8.2 fo:r discussjoю):
.
' '
(5) Affixation of the Passive Suffix .
.Т 1 Т2 Т1 Т2
-V-·. _, -+ - - [V + E~]vpt_._:.!
1
NP NP NP NP
1 2 1 2
... The morpholexical operation represented in 5 creates а derived lexical item
+
(the passive participle [V ENJvPд' whicli has. а derived argu1llents structure. The
б I argue below that it is in fact За that makes DO movement oЫigatory in passive sentences,
and that ЗЬ has no explanatory value.
7 I will assume that all morphological operations take р!асе in the Iexicon, creating fully
formed words with derived argument structures that are the basic units of syntax, syntactic rules
do not therefore operate in the domain of the word, i.e" lexical nodes (Х0) are а barrier to syntactic
rules(see Bowers 1984 and ВаЬЬу 1988 for discussion of the autonoщy of morphology; see Ander
son 1982 for а different view of morphology).
8 This is why forms of the copula occur in passive sentences with passive pнticiples: they
must carry the tense, just as_ in sentences with predicaje adjectives.
SUBJECTLESSNESS, EXTERNAL SUBCATEGORIZATION, • " 11
Projection Principle applies only to the output of а morpholexical operation, е~ g.,
to the right-hand part of 5.9 Note that the internal argument str'uctшe of the pas
sive participleis identica:I to that of the verb it is derived from; it is only their ext
ernal arguments that differ (see ВаЬЬу 1988).
2.2 ТНЕ SYNTAX OF PASSIVIZATION.
Acco1·ding to the GB a11alysis, the passive sentelice in 6 is syntactically derived
from the structure represented in 7. The passive pai·ticiple given (give+EN) is itself
а product of the morpholexical operation described in 5 above ([e]NP is an "empty
NP", i. е" an unfilled NP' positioii which is not asscн::iated-with а: theta role).
(6) The book was given to John.
(7) [e]NP [vp was given [Npthe pook] [рр to John]]
Since the DO the book in 7 cannot Ье assigned case Ьу the passive participle
(see Case Absorption in 4с), it moves to the empty subject position, where it is as
signed nominative case; John is assigned its case Ьу the preposition that governs it.
Thus, according to the standard GB analysis, the optional syntactic rule that moves
noun phrases is made о Ыigatory in passive sentences Ьу the independently moti
vated rules of Case Тheory.10
2.3 AN ALТERNATIVE ANALYSIS OF ТНЕ SYNTAx OF PASSIV~ДTION.
There is an alternative analysis of the · syntax of canonical passive sentences
like 6 that has the advantage of being consideraЫely more general than the GB ana
lysis just outlined: The oЬligatory movement of the DO NP to subject position in
English passive sentences can also Ье explained in te1ms of the independently motiv
ated requirement that all empty NPs must Ье filled with lexical material in the sur
face 'syntax of well-formed sentences. This universal well-formedness condition,
which is assumed in GB theory, can Ье stated as follows (see Emonds 1976, Bowers
1981, Borer 1980).
(8) Empty-NP Filter
А surface structure containing an unfilled NP is ill-formed.
According to this alternative analysis, the DO-NP the book in 6 must moveto
the empty subject NP in 7 to avoid а violation of the Empty-NP·Filter, not the Case
Filter.
The Empty-Subject analysis propose~ iii this section has а number of advant~
ages over the GB analysis: (i) It makes the oЫigatoriness 'of DO movement in English
passive sentences directly dependent on the о Ыigatoriness of the subject NP in En
glish, а fact which is not captured in the Case Absorption analysis. (ii) It makes а
9 I assume tlшt the suffix -EN- is the head of the deгived wo1·d (participle); lюwever,
11othi11g iп What follows hinges on this assumption.
10 While the Case Filter is patently а general priпciple of syntax, it is far from сlеаг that
the same can Ье said of Case Absorption: it appears to Ье needed only for the analysis of passive
sentences and, as we shall see below, it cannot account adequately for the facts in the case of the
Ukrainian impersonal passive sentences to Ье discussed below.
12 LEQNARD Н. ВАВВУ
crucial prediction, namely, DO movement in passive sentences in optional-subject
languages should Ье optional: if а passive sentence has no subject NP, the Empty
-Subject analysis, but not the Case Absorption analysis, correctly predicts that the
DO NP will remain in the VP and Ье appropriately case marked, and the sentence
will Ье well-formed. The Case Absorption analysis incorrectly predicts that DO mov
ement in is oЫigatory in all passive sentences and, therefore, that sentences conta
ining а surface structure configuration like the following are always going to Ье ill
+
formed: [VP··'. [V EN]vpt NP: асс ...] (see 15).11
· 3.0 AR(JUMENТS AGAINST CASE ABSORPTION. .
It was estaЫished above in sec. 2 that the oЫigatory movement of the DO in
English passive sentences can Ье accounted for Ьу either the Empty~.Subject ana
lysis or the Case Absorption analysis, and that the former has а number of theory
-internal advantages over the latter. In the following sections we shall lookat mid
dle sentences in English, which provide empirical .evidence supporting the Empty-
-Subject analysis. , . ·
Two types of evidence can be·presented against Case .Absorption:
(9) а.· There ·a re non-passive sentences in English and other languages in which
· DO·movement to а theta-free subject position is oЫigatory, yet there {s no
verbal morphology of any kind in these sentences which ·can Ье said to
"absorb" or otherwise Ыосk case assignment to the DO. Thus the oЬliga­
torlness of DO movement in these non-passive sentences 'Cannot Ье readily
· accounted for in terms of the interaction of Case Absorption and the Case
.. :Filter (see middle sentences in sec. 3.1). ·
'·
ь: ;English a11d other lat1guages have well-formed passive se11tences in which
the.verb is affixed with passive morphology; yet the DO NP remains in the
VP where it is assigned accusative (objective) case. Now, if there are wёH­
·formed structures containing the [[V + EN] NP : acc]vp configuration,
then (i) passive morphology evidently does not always absorb case; and
(ii) DO movement in passive sentences is not oЫigatory, and sЬ:ould uot
Ье included as а component in а universal characterization of passiviza
tion.12
The data refei·1ed to in 9а and 9Ь will demonstrate that the Case Absorption
analysis of DO movement in passive .sentences fails in two distinct ways: There
aie well-formed sentences in which passive morphology is present, yet case assign
ment to the DO is not Ыocked; there are senteilces in which the verb has no case
-absorЬing verbal morphology, but DO movement is nevertheless oЬligatorily.
First we shall look at the data from middle sentences in English (cf. 9а) and then
impersonal passives in Ukrainian (cf. 9Ъ).
11 If 6ise Absorption Ьу the passive affix (3 Ь) is eliminated, the only remaining universal
of passivization is internalization of the verb's external theta role (see 3 а); see sec. 5.4 for discttssion.
It emerges from this discussion that Case Absorption and the ЕРР are intimately related:
the Case Absorption analysis depends on the availabllity in all sentences of an empty subject NP
to which the caseless DO NP сап move. 1 argue below that both are incorrect.
12 As we shall see below, the DO in а passive sentence does not move when (i) there is по
subject positioп for it to move to, and (ii) the subject NP has been filled in some alternative way.
In both cases, then, there is no "availaЬle subject" position for the DO NP to move to.
SUBJECТLESSNESS, BXTERNAL SUВCATEGORIZATION, •.• 13'
3.1. MIDDLE VOICE IN: ENGLISH. ·
The sentence in lOc is an example of middle voice; its underlying structure
can Ье represented in lOd.13
(10) а.. A.ctive: John broke the bottle.
·. •1' .
Ь. Passive: The bottle was broken (Ьу John).
с. Middle: The bottle broke (*Ьу John).
d. Je]NP. [Ьroke [the bottle]NP]vP
The syntactic derivation of middle sentences is entirely parallel to that of pas
sive sentences: the movement оу the underlying DO NP to а theta-free subject pos
ition is oЫigatory. But note that the oЬligatoriness of the DO NP's movement in
sentences like lOc/lOd cannot Ье explained, as it can in passive sentences, in terms
of Case Absorption and the Case Filter: there is no verbal morphology in lOd which
can Ье credited with Ыocking or absorЫng case assignment to the D0.14 English
middle construction therefore appear to pose а serious proЬlem for the Case Abs
orption analysis of о Ыigatory DO movement in English sentences with theta-free
subject positions.
The following are three possiЫe solutions to this proЫem. (i) We can assume
that the oЬligatoriness of DO movement in passive sentences is due tQ Case Absorpt
ion and that in middle constructions it has to Ье explained in some other way.Тhis
approach fails to capture the о bvious parallelism between the syntax of middle and
passive sentence, and is therefore the least attractive solution. (ii) We can attempt to
extend the Case Absorption.analysis proposed for passive sentences to middle sen
tences, which is the direction taken in Keyser and Roeper 1984. (iii) Finally, we can
take the data fr9m English middle constructions at face value, i. е" accept it as co
unterevidence ahd seek an alternative to the Case Absorption atialysis of passive and
middle sentences. 1 will argue below that (iii) is the correct approach; but first we
must consider the ramifications of Keyser and Roeper's interesting proposal (see
Zaenen and Maling 1983, 1984 for Icelandic evidence against Case Absorption).
3.2 DO MOVEMENT IN MIDDLE CONSTRUCТIONS: ТНЕ CASE AВSORPTION
ANALYSIS.
In order to account for the oЬligatoriness of DO movementin middle as well
as passive sentences in terms of Case Absorption and the Case Filter, Keyser and
Roeper (1984) suggest the following analysis: Since the middle construction in many
languages has special verbal morphology, often identical to passive morphology
(e;·g. Turkish), it seems perfectly plausiЫe to assume that the vщЬ in English middle
sentences also has special morphology, and that it absorbs the accusative case
13 Keyser and Roeper (1984: 381) distinguish between middle sentences (e.g;, Bureaucrats
bribe easily) and ergative sentences ( e.g" The ice melted); this distinction plays no role in what follows.
I will assume that the difference betweeц middle and ergative sentences is seniaritiC, not syntactic
(see Fagan 1988), and use the term "middle voic_e" to refer to all non-passive intransitive sentences
in which the underlyirig DO is made the surface subject, . ·· ' . ·
14 Note too that the supression of the basic verb's external theta role in middle voice can
(see
also not Ье explaiiied in terms of theta role absorption Ьу verbal morphology 3 а). We shall
return to this below.
14 LEONARD Н. ВАВВУ
assigned Ьу the verb, making DO. moveinent oЫigatory. The only signi:ficant diff
erence is that in English, the middle case-absorЬing morphology has no phono-
lcigica1 realization, i. е., it is а covert or "null" morpheme)s ·
This covert-morpheme analysis of the middle construction appears at first
glance to capture а real generalization. There are, however, а number of proЫems
with it. The most obvious one is that it requires the presence оТ а covert mor
pheme for which there is no efnpirical ·evidence· and no independent motivation,16
The second proЫem is that we must assume that tqe cove,rt morpheme must also
"absorb" the verb's external theta role. The most important argument against po
siting а null case-absorЬing morpheme in EngЦsh middle constructions is presen
ted below in sec. 3.3, where arguments are presented against Case Absorption per
se: if it can Ье proven that there is no s-uch phenomenon as Case Absorption in
passive sentetices, which have overt voice morphology, then there is no point in
positirtg covert eiements to simulate its effects in middle constructions. ·
Note that the Empty-Subject analysis proposed 'in sec. 2.3 achieves the. de
sired unitary explanation of the ob1igatoriness of DO movement in English middle
and passive sentences without resorting to null morphological categories: If it is
indeed the p.resence of an empty (th~ta-free) subject NP position that makes DO,
iпovement о Ыigatory in both constructions; rather than case-absorЬing morphology,
then the presence of verbal morphology in passive sentences and its absence in
middle sentences turns ·aut to Ье irrelevant. · Since middle and passive sentences
have empty subjects that can trigger DO movement in both the analyses under
consideration here, the Empty-Subject analysis emerges as the sinipler, more straig
htforward of the two.17
3.3 DOUBLE ОВJЕСТ CONSTRUCTTONS.
In this section we consider the second kind of evidence against the Case
Absorption analysis (see 9Ь), namely, sentences in which tl1e main verb has an
oyert passive suffix, yet its DO NP is nevertheless assigned accusative case and
remains in its base-generated VP position. The Case Absorption analysis incorrectly
predicts that а verb affixed with passive morphology cannot сооссш· in the same
VP with а DO NP that has been assigned accusative case. But the Empty-Subject
analysis correctly predicts that if the empty subject NP of а passive sentence is
either missing of filled in some other way, the DO NP will not Ье аЫе to move,
but the resulting sentence will nevertheless Ье well-formed. First we wШ Iook at
passivized douЫe-object sentences in English in which it is the indirect ob
ject that moves to the empty subject position, then we consider impersonal passi
ves in Ukrainian, which, .we shall argue, have no subject NP at all. In both cases
we have а well-formed passive sentence in which DO movement does not occur.
Sentence 11 Ь is the passive of lla; according to the Empty-Subject hypo
thesis, its surface structпre is represented in 11 с (Vpt stands for passive participle):
1s Keyser and Roeper (1984: 406) associate this null morpheme in English with theitalian
clitic si, which, they claim, explains why it is not phonologically realized: English has no overt
clitics. This "abstract si analysis" is attributed to L. ·Rizzi.
16 Keyser and Roeper's "abstract si analysis" requires, in fact, that we posit а covert
clitic in а language that has no overt ones. · ·
17 lt will become clear below that tlle crucial difference between the derivation of passive
and middle sentences and the crucial semantic differences between them involve the fate of the
vetb's external theta role.