Aspect and argument structure in Catalan passive constructions

Abstract

This dissertation aims at identifying and analysing different passive constructions in Catalan and providing a unified proposal to analyse passives cross-linguistically. In this respect, following Embick (2004), we identify three different passive constructions in Catalan: eventive, resultative and stative. However, we modify the definition of the so-called stative passive: it is the passive structure created from stative verbs. Specifically, we consider verbs that express Kimian states (Maienborn 2005) to be stative. We conduct our research from the neoconstructionist view that the internal syntax of the VP determines its formal event structure and the thematic interpretation of its arguments, conceived as entailments from event structure. Consequently, we assume that lexical aspect is configurationally derived from event structure. The key contribution of this dissertation is a new outlook on the formation of passive structures as lexicalisation patterns of event structure in a nanosyntactic model such as the one presented in Ramchand (2008, 2018).

Date of Award	22 Sept 2020
Original language	English
Supervisor	Gemma Rigau Oliver (Director)