In the following subsections we examine various properties of passives in which Danish, English, and German differ. We look at the morphological passive in Danish in Section 1.1, compare the personal and impersonal pas-sives in the three languages in Section 1.2, examine the possibility to promote the objects in passives of ditransi-tive constructions in Section 1.3. 1.1 Morphological and Analy...

In order to identify the basic properties of PoRs and the theoretical questions that follow, consider the German active-passive pair in (3a, b) involving the reflexive use of the verb ‘waschen’ (to wash). As in ordinary passives, the lexical verb in (3b) appears as passive participle and the passive auxiliary werden (to become) is used. The external argument disappears (but it can reappear in a...

This paper deals with modifications, which are defined as creative changes of idioms’ conventionalized forms for communicative purposes. The focus is on verb phrase (VP) idioms and their structural modifications – deliberate alterations the grammatical structure (which may be accompanied by lexical changes). Idiom analyzed within framework Cognitive Grammar. aim to show that systematic a certai...

Verb Phrase (VP) Ellipsis and Pseudogapping have at times been treated as variants of the same process (Kuno 1981, Jayaseelan 1990, 2001, Lasnik 1995, 1999, Johnson 2001). In both cases something verbal is elided. In VP Ellipsis the verb and all of its arguments are elided, while in Pseudogapping, only the verb (and a subset of its arguments) is elided stranding one of its arguments; in both ca...

Many studies show a developmental advantage for transitive sentences with familiar verbs over those with novel verbs. It might be that once familiar verbs become entrenched in particular constructions, they would be more difficult to understand (than would novel verbs) in non-prototypical constructions. We provide support for this hypothesis investigating German children using a forced-choice p...

Researchers often find themselves in a position of “acting for” or “in the name of” individuals and communities whose voices have traditionally been muted or silenced. The passive nature of these muted or silenced voices prevents them from being heard, fully understood or appreciated. As true voices of participants emerge in research, so does a more representative view of individuals’ or commun...

This paper aims to provide type hierarchies for Korean passive constructions on the basis of their forms within the HPSG framework. The type hierarchies proposed in this paper are based on the classification of Korean passives; suffixal passives, auxiliary passives, inherent passives, and passive light verb constructions. Verbs are divided into five subtypes in accordance with the possibility o...

This paper is concerned with the variation found with respect to how languages morphologically mark argument structure (AS) alternations, a variation that I take to be related to the realization of the syntactic Voice head. The paper discusses the behavior of dispositional middles and reflexives in languages such as English as opposed to their Greek counterparts. I will pursue the hypothesis th...