The Aspectual Properties of Italian Venire Passives

Abstract

Italian essere (be) and venire (come) periphrastic passives differ in their aspectual properties, both lexical and grammatical. Squartini’s (1999) analysis of venire passives accounts for their incompatibility with perfect aspect. In the present study, I develop an account of passive venire in which it is analyzed as a light verb, rather than a lexical verb. This difference, together with certain assumptions about the syntax of lexical aspect are leveraged to account for passive venire’s incompatibility with perfect aspect, propredicative lo, and with stative verbs. In this way, the empirical ground covered by the previous analysis is substantially expanded.

Keywords

• Italian
• Passive
• Aspect
• Argument Structure
• Event Structure