Studies of Passive Clauses

Paul Martin Postal is a Research Staff Member at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center. He has also taught linguistics at MIT and the City University of New York. Postal has written numerous articles and books, including Constituent Structure, Cross-Over Phenomena, Arc Pair Grammar (with D.E. Johnson).

"It will be the best introduction to arc pair grammar (APG) available, and as such will be a standard work for anyone who wishes to learn something about this framework." — Geoffrey K. Pullum, Cowell College, University of California at Santa Cruz"Postal provides a detailed crosslinguistic account of a construction-type that has long been at the center of syntactic investigation but has resisted real explanation so far. The book will be of great interest to anyone working on grammatical relations, regardless of their particular theoretical leanings." — Mark Aronoff, State University of New York at Stony Brook

• PrefaceAcknowledgementsChapter 1. Introduction1.1 Background1.2 Passive Clauses1.3 Impersonal Passive Clauses1.4 Relevant Aspects of Arc Pair Grammar1.4.1 Remarks1.4.2 Nonconstructive Grammars1.4.3 Some Rule Notations1.4.4 Pair Networks1.5 A Theoretical NoteNotesChapter 2. Virtues of a Universal Account of Passives2.1 Two Virtues of a Universal View of Passives2.2 Some Lawful Properties of Passive Clauses2.2.1 Double Passives2.2.2 Passives of Unaccusatives2.2.3 Passives of Inversion Clauses2.2.4 Passives of Impersonal Clauses2.2.5 Summary2.3 Facilitating the Statement of Language-Particular Restrictions2.3.1 Remarks2.3.2 Apparently Anomalous French Personal Passives2.3.2 Postscript2.3.3 A Restriction in Ancient Greek2.3.4 A Restriction in Modern Greek2.3.5 A Restriction in Korean2.3.5 Postscript2.3.6 Quiché Instrumental Advancement2.3.7 Agreement and Passives in Chichewa2.3.7 Postscript2.3.8 Agreement and Passives in Chi-Mwi:ni2.3.9 Halkomelem Passives and Raising2.3.10 SummaryNotesChapter 3. The Inadequacy of the Relational Grammar Account of Impersonal Passives3.1 The Relational Grammar View3.2 English Personal Passives with Dummies Advanced from 2 to 13.3 French Personal Passives with Dummies Advanced from 2 to 13.4 More English Personal Passives Involving Advanced Dummies3.5 SummaryNotesChapter 4. An Arc Pair Grammar Definition of Impersonal Passives4.1 The Arc Pair Grammar View of Clause Structure and the Problem of Impersonal Passives4.2 Ghost Arcs and Dummy Nominals4.3 Ghost Sponsors and the Characterization of Impersonal Passives4.4 An Argument Distinguishing French Impersonal Passives from Certain 'Impersonal' Personal Passives4.5 Formalizing the Subjunctive Restriction4.6 Reflexive Passives4.7 Reflexive Impersonal Passives and the Subjunctive Restriction4.7 Postscript4.8 The Ghost Arc Law and a Fundamental Property of Impersonal Passives4.9 Rules Involving Passive ClausesNotesChapter 5. Apparent Impersonal Passives of Unaccusative Structures and Possible Violations of the 1AEX5.1 Remarks5.2 Turkish5.2 Postscript5.3 Extensions of Passive Morphology5.4 Sanskrit5.5 Nerbonne's Critique5.5.1 Lithuanian5.5.1 Postscript5.5.2 Irish5.5.3 Estonian5.5.4 Lithuanian and German Medio-passives5.6 Summary5.7 A Note on ItalianNotesChapter 6. English Pseudo-Passives6.1 Background6.2 An Arc Pair Grammar Analysis of Pseudo-Passives6.3 Arguments for 'Reanalysis'6.4 The Pseudo-Passive Control Rule6.5 An Alternative Arc Pair Grammar View of Pseudo-Passives6.5.1 The Issue6.5.2 Blocking Pseudo-Passives with Any 2 Arc6.5.3 Some Earlier Observations6.5.4 Some Demotion Paradigms6.6 Open Questions6.6.1 Other Constraints Limiting the Class of Pseudo-Passives6.6.2 Additional Complex PassivesNotesChapter 7. Generalized Passive Clauses7.1 Remarks7.2 Theoretical Modification7.3 Weaker Constraints on Prepassive Arcs7.4 The Scope of Non-2 Prepassive ArcsNotesReferencesIndex