How do things get done: on non-canonical passives in Finnish

• In this paper, we argue that, in addition to non-agreeing passives, Finnish has even an agreeing passive. The agreeing passive shows similar behaviour to non-canonical passives in other languages, such as get-passives in English. The agreeing passive differs from ordinary copular constructions in various ways, most importantly in the availability of an event-interpretation. Agreeing and non-agreeing passives have similar structure in the tense and vP domains; the differences between them can be attributed to differences in the selecting heads. Agreeing passives differ from copular constructions in that the latter lack a vP. The selecting heads are, however, the same in the two constructions.

Subject headings

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

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

Keyword

passives

English

Finnish

Publication and Content Type

kap (subject category)

ref (subject category)