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Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 14: Selected papers from the 46th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Stony Brook, NY
Edited by Lori Repetti and Francisco Ordóñez
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 14] 2018
► pp. 279–292

Chapter 16
Against control by implicit passive agents

| The Pennsylvania State University

Landau (2010, 2013) and van Urk (2011, 2013) argue that the understood agent of a passive verb is syntactically projected as a weak implicit argument. As such, it participates actively in Agree and predication, the mechanisms they assume are responsible for antecedent determination in control structures. This article examines French data involving control and passivization and proposes an alternative explanation for the facts, one that makes the diametrically opposed assumptions that the implicit agent of a passive verb is syntactically unprojected and that the reference of PRO is determined post-syntactically.

Keywords: control, implicit arguments, passive, Visser’s Generalization, logophoricity
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Landau (2000, 2010, 2013), van Urk (2011, 2013) and Reed (2014) : Some points of agreement and contention
  • 3.Further examining the interaction of control with passivization
    • 3.1Reconsidering Visser’s effects
    • 3.2A syntactic constraint on impersonal passivization
    • 3.3On an unexpected parallel between OC PRO and overt bound pronouns
    • 3.4On unexpected WIA control in indirect questions
  • 4.Against control by weak implicit passive agents
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 13 August 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.14.16ree
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AKKUŞ, FARUK
2021. Variable embedded agent in Sason Arabic. Journal of Linguistics 57:2 ► pp. 233 ff. DOI logo
Reed, Lisa A.
2020. On Single and Two-Tiered Approaches to Control. Languages 5:4 ► pp. 71 ff. DOI logo

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