Agreement and the Icelandic Passive1

We propose an analysis of the morphology of dative-nominative passives in Icelandic. This account is based on a previous proposal of active predicates which alternate between a dative-nominative and nominative-dative case frame (Wood and Sigurðsson 2014). We show that obligatory agreement with the nominative in the passive is the consequence of the absence of the dative intervention effect which leads to optional agreement in dative-nominative actives. Drawing a parallel to long-distance agreement in Hindi-Urdu, we propose that the morphology in passives is the consequence of a head “covaluing” (Bhatt 2005) features on both the passive participle and the nominative object. We also provide an alternative account based on a smuggling analysis of passives in English (Collins 2005). We show that while the smuggling approach might potentially be extended to account for a particular instance of the new passive/new impersonal construction in which there is ostensibly A-movement, there is sufficient evidence to argue against this analysis.