On the Alleged Condition on the Base Verb of the Indirect Passive in Japanese

This paper argues against the view that Japanese indirect passives are restricted with respect to the base verb that they take. Specifically, it argues that, despite its initial plausibility, the oft-proposed generalization that unaccusatives cannot appear in indirect passives is too strong and the alleged distribution is a tendency at most, albeit a strong one. After closely examining the restriction along with the counterevidence discussed in the literature, this paper presents novel empirical evidence against the restriction. Moreover, it also argues that no stipulations specific to indirect passives need to be introduced in accounting for the purported evidence for the unaccusative restriction: pragmatic inferences play a crucial role in deriving the observed aversion to unaccusativebased indirect passives.