On case and the passive morpheme

• DOI: 10.1007/bf00993020
• Publication Date: 2005-01-14T18:02:16Z
• Authors: Grant Goodall
• Keywords: 0602 languages and literature; 06 humanities and the arts

Some recent analyses of the passive, such as Baker (1988) and Baker, Johnson, and Roberts (1989), claim that the passive morpheme is an argument and that the twin properties of ϑ-role absorption and Case absorption may be attributed to its argument status. Through an examination of passive constructions in several languages, we find that such analyses are unable to account for the ways in which Case absorption sometimes fails to apply. More generally, the facts examined provide important counterexamples to Burzio's generalization and show that there is greater diversity in the Case properties of passive morphemes than was previously thought.