Norwegian impersonal passive and presentational constructions analyzed in terms of forking and converging Extended Projections The lexicalist position holds that syntactic structure is projected from lexical struc- ture; it is then natural that much of variation and change should involve variable properties of lexical verbs and nouns (e.g., Levin and Rappaport Hovav 2005). The opposing con- structionist position of Borer (2005b) is that lexical roots play little or no role in the projection of syntactic structure, and that variation and change primarily involve the feat- ural specifications of functional heads. Norwegian provides rich ground for probing these alternative positions. Providing succour to lexicalism is a robustly lexical agency requirement on impersonal passives. Verbs which have conventional lexical associations of agentivity can appear in impersonal passives, while unaccusatives, which are never lexically agentive, cannot (danse ‘dance’ in (1), vs. dette ‘fall’ in (3)). Construing an event as deliberate is insufficient to make a passive of an unaccusative sound natural, as if lexical specifications overrode constructional properties. Norwegian also has an active presentational impersonal construction, which is structurally nonagentive, in that it rejects agent-oriented adverbials and purpose clauses (illustrated in (4)–(5)). In line with constructivist expectations, the lexical entailments of the verb are overridden by the constructional meaning, so that while agentive verbs like danse ‘dance’ in (5) are perfectly acceptable in the presentational construction, they simply cannot support agentive adverbials or purpose clauses. This is part of a larger problem; if agentive verbs project structure reflecting their agen- tivity, such as a Voice shell (Kratzer 1996 inter alios), then how is it that that shell can be absent in nominalizations, adjectival passives, middles, and other constructions lacking the external argument? If the projection of Voice is optional, then why can’t all transitive verbs be used unaccusatively, the way the causative-inchoative alternating verbs are? The solution we propose involves a development of the notion of Extended Projections (EPs, Grimshaw 2005). The mainstream notion of EPs is strictly linear. We propose that EPs may include choice points, or forking paths—and that this is a major source of cross- linguistic variation and change. Choice points provide lexical flexibility. In Norwegian, agentive verbs can follow a projection path through Active Voice to Aspect and Tense, for the usual uses. Unaccusative verbs feed into the same Aspect and Tense without passing through Active Voice (hence in addition to forking paths there are converging paths). However, following Legate (2003), even unaccusatives project a kind of v; call it unac- cusative Voice. In Norwegian, we propose, there is an impersonal variant of Voice; it requires an expletive subject associated with a single unpromoted lexical argument, which may come from a PP secondary predicate, (6), or from an unaccusative verb, (7) (building on Hoek- stra’s 1988 analysis of Dutch argument structure). In terms of the forking and converging model of extended projections, agentive verb roots in Norwegian can project to agentive, passive, or impersonal Voice, while unaccusative verb roots can project to unaccusative or impersonal Voice. Apart from conceptual-encyclopedic information, there need be no further lexical distinc- tions among classes of roots; that is, there need not be any agentive or unaccusative features. The definition of a verb as lexically agentive, in Norwegian is precisely that it is specified to be able to project to agentive Voice. In other words, lexical classes are represented as paths from roots to parts of an Extended Projection. (1) Det ble danset p˚a festen. it became danced at the.party ‘People danced at the party’ (2) Det ble drukket kaffe. it became drunk coffee ‘People drank coffee’ (3) *Det ble dotte p˚a isen. it became fallen on the.ice (Intended meaning: ‘People fell on the ice’) (4) Det datt noen p˚a trappa (*med vilje). it fell someone on the.stairs with purpose ‘Someone fell on the stairs (*on purpose)’ (5) Det danset noen p˚a bordet (*for ˚a f˚a oppmerksomhet). it danced someone on the.table for to get attention ‘Somebody danced on the table (*to get attention)’ (6) a. Det strikket gamle damer i stua. it knitted old ladies in the.living.room ‘Old ladies knitted in the living room’ b. *Det strikket gamle damer. it knitted old ladies (7) a. Det ankom et tog p˚a stasjonen. it arrived a train at the.station ‘A train arrived at the station’ b. Det ankom et tog. it arrived a train ‘A train arrived’

References

Borer, Hagit. 2005a. The Normal Course of Events (Structuring Sense, vol. II). Oxford University Press, Oxford. Borer, Hagit. 2005b. Structuring Sense: An Exo-Skeletal Trilogy. Oxford University Press, New York. Grimshaw, Jane. 2005. Extended projection. In Words and Structure, edited by Jane Grimshaw. CSLI, Stanford, Ca. Final version of 1991 ms. Hoekstra, Teun. 1988. Small clause results. Lingua 74 2-3: 101–139. Kratzer, Angelika. 1996. Severing the external argument from the verb. In Phrase Structure and the Lexicon, edited by Johann Rooryck and Laurie Zaring, pp. 109–137. Kluwer, Dordrecht. Legate, Julie Anne. 2003. Some interface properties of the phase. Linguistic Inquiry 34 3: 506–516. Levin, Beth and Malka Rappaport Hovav. 2005. Argument Realization. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.