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Impersonal Passives: A Phase-based Analysis

1. The impersonal passive In this paper I apply the phase-based model outlined in Chomsky 1998, 1999 to the pattern of impersonal passives in English and the Scandinavian languages, with supporting evidence drawn from French and Spanish. The basic observation is that the location of an ‘associate’ DP in impersonal passives varies cross-linguistically. The basic order can be taken to be that in (1), where the order is participle-object (essentially VO), and the minimal assumption is that the object is in situ. This is the neutral order for Eastern Norwegian, which, as the sociopolitically dominant dialect, can be referred to as Norwegian. Participle-object is also the usual order for closely related Danish and Icelandic, and in French, as shown. Though I have glossed them quite literally, all of the examples in (1) mean essentially the same as the English sentence ‘There were three journalists arrested.’