Towards a null theory of the passive

The Principles and Parameters approach aimed to eliminate syntactic rules and constructions in favor of general movement processes and principles, and to account for language-specific syntax by construction-independent parameters. Disappointingly, much systematic syntactic variation, including the cross-linguistic variation in passives that is the topic of this article, turned out not to be reducible to construction-independent parameter settings. Subsequent work dealt with this residue by annotating individual functional heads with lexically specified uninterpreted features to encode their grammatical behavior. Completing the retreat from the parametric program, features of specific lexical items began to be made responsible for language-specific syntax. Differences between passives across languages were attributed to the different features of their passive morphemes or voice heads, in some cases even involving stipulations that de facto apply only in passives. The passive construction and the language-specific passive rules of pre-P&P days returned, albeit within a more ambitious theoretical framework. A wholesale return to construction-specific syntax may be premature, however. Although the parametric program is mainly identified with GB and its successors, it can be pursued in other frameworks as well, and arguably with better results. Here I make this case for constraint-based theories which eliminate NP-movement and rely instead on argument structure representation, specifically on Lexical Decomposition Grammar (LDG, Stiebels, 2002; Wunderlich, 1997, 2006, in press). A base-generated syntax driven by OT constraints can minimize construction-specificity by capitalizing on the parallel syntactic structure of different diatheses. I will be arguing for the null hypothesis that a language’s passive clauses have no passive-specific syntactic properties. Their syntax is predictable from the language’s active sentences and the argument structure of passive predicates, which is derived from the argument structure of the basic predicate by an invariant operation triggered by the passive morpheme. This operation demotes (existentially binds) the most prominent Theta-role that is not already demoted. The affix is morphologically specified for whether it forms verb stems or adjectival/participial stems which combine with a finite auxiliary to form a periphrastic passive. Thus, the grammar of a language need not specify anything about the passive morpheme except its existence and its phonological and morphological properties (sections 3--6). The distribution of the adjunct phrases that express the logical subject of passives is governed by syntactic and semantic properties of the case or preposition that heads them (section 7), shared with non-passive constructions such as nominalizations. The larger hypothesis, not pursued here, is that derived predicates have no syntactic properties. A learner who knows the grammar of active sentences of a language can predict the syntax of other diatheses.