(Non-)homogeneity in Dutch impersonal passives of unaccusatives

Abstract

This paper sheds new light on the behaviour of telic predicates, particularly unaccusatives (opstijgen ‘take off’, vallen ‘fall’), in the Dutch impersonal passive (= ImpersP) construction. Using recently collected data, I show that Zaenen’s (1988, 1993) contention that Dutch ImpersPs are barred from a non-homogeneous (telic) interpretation, though generally accepted in the literature, is empirically flawed. In fact, a telic reading obtains whenever the ImpersP of a telic predicate refers to a singular event. In this case, the implicit argument receives either a singular or a collective reading (see Landman’s (1989, 1996) theory of groups). In contrast, homogeneous ImpersPs of telic predicates assume a distributive plural event interpretation and select an argument with a distributive, bare plural-like reading. Based on a comparison with active unaccusative constructions with bare plural subjects (see Rothstein 2008a), I argue that the aspectual properties of an ImpersP predicate determine the referential properties of the argument, pace Primus (2010a and 2010b).

Keywords

• impersonal passive
• unaccusative
• telicity
• event structure
• implicit argument