Aspect and Argument structure in adjectival passives

Abstract

This paper investigates the patterns regarding the (un)availability of by-phrases and agent-oriented modification in adjectival passives in Spanish. Departing from the observation that adjectival participles derived from change-of-state verbs ban agent-oriented modification but those derived from stative causative verbs allow it, I put forth a novel theoretical account that derives the restrictions solely from the Aktionsart of the underlying verbal predicate, syntactically modelled and independently motivated. I extend my proposal to German and Hebrew, which display a similar behavior, and propose a parametric account for languages like Greek that freely allow by-phrases and agent-oriented modification regardless of the Aktionsart of the underlying verbal predicate.

Keywords

• Adjectival passives
• agent-oriented modifiers
• Aktionsart
• by-phrases
• external argument
• argument structure