Cover not available
Part of
Non-canonical Control in a Cross-linguistic Perspective
Edited by Anne Mucha, Jutta M. Hartmann and Beata Trawiński
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 270] 2021
► pp. 83–106

Agent control in passives in Romanian

| Romanian Academy
| University of Bucharest
We examine control by the external argument of passives in Romanian. As copular passives generally disallow clausal subjects, this issue only concerns reflexive-based passives (so-called ‘se-passives’). Although it is difficult to find unequivocal control instances in Romanian due to the gradual replacement of infinitives by subjunctives and the nominative-licensing potential of infinitives, there are some verbs for which control can be assumed (aspectuals and ability modals). These verbs allow se-passives, but in this case se must be repeated on the infinitive or subjunctive complement. We argue that this does not represent voice agreement under restructuring, but rather an instance of control, involving matching between the external arguments of the matrix and the embedded se-verbs, for which we propose generation in an argument position, SpecVoiceP. Romanian ‘se-passives’ are analyzed as a construction halfway between actives and passives, having a nominative theme (with which T agrees) but also a projected external argument.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Control with agents of passives across languages
  • 2.Control with implicit agents of passives in Romanian
  • 3.Towards an account: Why some analyses don’t work
  • 4.Our analysis
    • 4.1On the structure of ‘se-passives’: Halfway between actives and passives
    • 4.2Control in se-passives
    • 4.3Comparing our account with an alternative analysis of control in Romanian
    • 4.4Summary
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 17 September 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.270.03giu
References (35)
References
Alboiu, Gabriela. 2007. Moving forward with Romanian backward Control and Raising. In New Horizons in the Analysis of Control and Raising, William Davies & Stanley Dubinsky (eds), 187–211. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Alexiadou, Artemis, Anagnastopoulou, Elena, Iordăchioaia, Gianina & Marchiş, Mihaela. 2010. No objections to backward Control. In Control as Movement, Norbert Hornstein & Maria Polinsky (eds), 89–117. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Alexiadou, Artemis, Anagnostopoulou, Elena & Schäfer, Florian. 2015. External Arguments in Transitivity Alternations. Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bosque, Ignacio & Gallego, Ángel. 2011. Spanish double passives and related structures. Linguística. Revista de Estudos Linguísticos da Universidade do Porto 6(1): 9–50.Google Scholar
Bruening, Benjamin. 2013. By phrases in passives and nominals. Syntax 16(1): 1–41. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, Noam & Lasnik, Howard. 1993. The theory of principles and parameters. In Syntax: An International Handbook of Contemporary Research, Joachim Jacobs, Arnim von Stechow, Wolfgang Sternefeld, & Theo Vennemann (eds), 506–569. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cornilescu, Alexandra. 1997. The double subject construction in Romanian. Notes on the syntax of the subject. Revue Roumaine de Linguistique 42(3–4): 101–147.Google Scholar
. 1998. Remarks on the syntax and the interpretation of Romanian middle passive se sentences. Revue Roumaine de Linguistique 43: 317–342.Google Scholar
. 2019. On the passivization of clausal argument. Talk given at the International Workshop The Syntax and Semantics of Internal Arguments, University of Bucharest, 24–25 October.
Cotfas, Maria Aurelia. 2012. On the Syntax of the Romanian Subjunctive. Control and Obviation. PhD dissertation, University of Bucharest.Google Scholar
. 2017. On the left periphery of independent subjunctives in Romanian: Topics, foci and complementizer deletion. Revue Roumaine de Linguistique 62(3): 253–278.Google Scholar
Dobrovie-Sorin, Carmen. 1994. The Syntax of Romanian. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1998. Impersonal se constructions in Romance and the passivization of unergatives. Linguistic Inquiry 29(3): 399–438. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dobrovie-Sorin, Carmen & Giurgea, Ion. 2018. Voice: §2. Se-verbs. Ms, draft for a chapter of A Rerefence Grammar of Romanian, II: The VP and the Sentence , Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin & Ion Giurgea (eds). <[URL]> (24 January 2021).
Dragomirescu, Adina. 2011. The subject of supine clauses in Romanian and A-chains. Revue Roumaine de Linguistique 56(4): 371–392.Google Scholar
Folli, Raffaella. 2002. Resultatives: Small clauses or complex VPs. In Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2000 [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 232], Claire Beyssade, Reineke Bok-Bennema, Frank Drijkoningen & Paola Monachesi (eds), 153–170. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Giurgea, Ion. 2017. Romanian se-verbs: how much we can unify and how much is to be assigned to the lexicon. Talk given at the Cambridge Workshop on Voice, University of Cambridge, May 22–24.Google Scholar
. 2019. On the person constraint on Romanian se-passives. In Agreement, Case and Locality in the Nominal and Verbal Domains, Ludovico Franco, Mihaela Marchis Moreno & Matthew Reeve (eds), 95–129. Berlin: Language Science Press.Google Scholar
Herbeck, Peter. 2014. (Backward) Control and clitic climbing. On the deficiency of non-finite domains in Spanish and Catalan. In ConSOLE XXI: Proceedings of the 21st Conference of the Student Organization of Linguistics in Europe, Martin Kohlberger, Kate Bellamy & Eleanor Dutton (eds), 123–145. Leiden: Leiden University Centre for Linguistics.Google Scholar
Hill, Virginia. 2003. Reduced CP fields and phases. University of Bucharest Working Papers in Linguistics 5(1): 44–53.Google Scholar
Jordan, Maria. 2009. Loss of Infinitival Complementation in Romanian. Diachronic Syntax. PhD dissertation, University of Florida.Google Scholar
Labelle, Marie. 2008. The French reflexive and reciprocal se. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 26: 833–876. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Landau, Idan. 2015. A Two-tiered Theory of Control. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Legate, Julie Anne. 2014. Voice and v. Lessons from Acehnese. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lødrup, Helge. 2014. Long passives in Norwegian: Evidence for complex predicates. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 37(3): 367–391. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
MacDonald, Jonathan E. & Maddox, Matthew L. 2018. Passive se in Romanian and Spanish. A subject cycle. Journal of Linguistics 54: 389–427. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marantz, Alec. 1991. Case and licensing. In Proceedings of the Eighth Eastern States Conference of Linguistics, Germán F. Westphal, Benjamin Ao & He-Rakh Chae (eds), 234–253. Columbus OH: Ohio State University.Google Scholar
Ordóñez, Francisco. 2009. Backwards or in situ? Infinitival overt subjects in Romance. Paper presented at the 19th Colloquium on Generative Grammar, UPV-EHU.
Pitteroff, Marcel & Schäfer, Florian. 2019. Implicit control crosslinguistically. Language 95(1): 136–184. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rezac, Milan. 2011. Phi-features and the modular architecture of language. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schäfer, Florian. 2008. The Syntax of (Anti-)Causatives. External Argument in Change-of-state Contexts [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 126] Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Urk, Coppe. 2013. Visser’s generalization: The syntax of control and the passive. Linguistic Inquiry 44.168–78. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Visser, Fredericus T. 1973. A historical syntax of the English language, vol. 3. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Wurmbrand, Susi & Shimamura, Koji. 2017. The features of the voice domain: Actives, passives, and restructuring. In The Verbal Domain, Roberta d’Alessandro, Irene Franco & Ángel Gallego (eds), 179–204. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Zanuttini, Raffaella, Portner, Paul & Pak, Miok. 2019. Imperatives and politeness. Talk given at the 45th Incontro di Grammatica Generativa, University of Padua, 21–23 February.