Resultative passives in Finnish

• In this article, I argue that Finnish passive participle (e.g. avattu 'opened' and suljettu 'closed') can be multiply ambiguous: the "same" morphophonological forms exhibit different patterns of eventivity and agentivity, and are used to form "traditional" non-agreeing passives, agreeing resultative passives and agreeing sentences that describe "pure" states and behave in most contexts like "traditional" copula-adjective constructions. I show that in Finnish, Participle Phrases that look similar on the outside can be formed in different ways, and that these Participle Phrases are selected by different superordinate heads, to form either a non-agreeing passive, an agreing resultative, or a "pure" stative sentence.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature (hsv//eng)

Keyword

passives

Finnish

Publication and Content Type

kap (subject category)

ref (subject category)