Stacked Passives in Turkish Andrew Murphy Universität Leipzig Claim: I claim that passives are derived by a syntactic operation Slice, which removes elements from the structure (i.e. Reverse Merge). I claim that there is a link between two occurences of passive morphology and two instances of argument reduction/passivization. I argue that this follows from the fact that each passive morpheme is the head of a VoiceP triggering Merge and Slice of the internal and external argument. Stacked passives: The term ‘stacked passive’ (SP) refers to passives with two occurences of the passive morpheme as in (1). Postal (1984) identifies two important characteristics of stacked passives in Turkish: (i) SP are only possible with transitive verbs, (ii) both arguments must be implicit. I will show that these properties make sense in light of the assumption that stacked passives involve two instances of feature-driven argument reduction and are therefore only compatible with verbs which take two arguments. Approaches to argument reduction: I argue that lexical approaches to passives (Chomsky 1981) as well those assuming empty PROs as arguments (Sternefeld 1996) do not derive the link between two passive exponents and dual argument reduction (i) in any principled way. The analysis by Bruening (2013) captures reduction of the external argument in passives by existential closure of the external argument slot introduced by the passive morpheme. This approach can capture the ‘implied external argument’ (ii) property of passives and could may therefore be extended to SPs assuming that there are two instances of existential binding (one per suffix) in (1). The problem with this approach is that the first instance of passivization must existentially close off the internal argument slot, thereby forming a kind of antipassive construction (2-b) (reduction of internal argument). If we conceive of SP as passivization of a normal passive, then this implies that a single instance of the passive morpheme forms antipassive, which is not the case for Turkish. Baker, Johnson & Roberts’ (1989) analysis does capture this fact more adequately as they propose reduction of the external argument followed by subsequent reduction of the internal argument, but their analysis relies a number of problematic assumptions such as lowering in the syntax and the questionable argument status of passive morphemes, which can be assigned case and θ-roles. Following the Mirror Principle, their analysis also derives the incorrect order of morphemes for SP (1). A derivational approach: I derive double passivization in SP by assuming two VoicePs in the structure, each carrying out a passivization operation. The lower passive head triggers removal of the (closest) external argument in Spec-vP, the second passive head triggers reduction of the remaining internal argument. Thus, I adopt an operation discussed in Müller (2014), which I call Slice. Unlike External Merge, which adds syntactic objects to the tree, Slice is the reverse operation, which removes elements from the structure and places them back in the workspace (cf. Sideward Movement; Nunes 2004). Like Merge this does not violate the Extension Condition as it applies only at the root node removing the highest layer of structure. Two operation-triggering features play a role for the following analysis: (i) [•D•] triggering merge of an element in the specifier, (ii) [–D–] triggering Slice, i.e. removal of the specifier of a head. For regular passives (3), I assume that the Voice head above vP bears both features ordered such that [•D•] applies before [–D–]. Since the numeration is empty, the closest argument is moved to Spec-VoiceP to check [•D•] and this argument is then sideward-moved out of the tree to check [–D–]. The only argument left in the structure is the internal argument and this is moved to Spec-TP. I assume that SPs contain an additional VoiceP hosting the extra passive suffix. Each Voice head bears [•D•] and [–D–]. First, Voice1 attracts the closest argument (DPEXT ) to its specifier and then removes it (4). Next, Voice2 probes downward and triggers movement of the remaining argument to Spec-VoiceP2 and then discharges [–D–] by removing it (5). This approach can derive the two properties of stacked passives observed above: (i) only transitive verbs can appear in SP since two arguments are required to check all necessary features, (ii) the fact that both arguments are implied suggests that they are/were syntactically present. I assume that traces of movement are treated as unbound variables. Since the moved items are not reintroduced in the structure, both variables are existentially bound below T (Diesing 1992). Extensions: I will also discuss how this approach accounts for instances of double passive marking in Lithuanian (Kiparsky 2013) and also provide an analysis of antipassives, where the external argument is deactivated early via ergative assignment and only the internal argument can be moved to Spec-VoiceP and

removed (6). Furthermore, I will show that this approach has additional advantages for the analysis of the passive in general, i.e. in explaining properties such absorption of accusative case and the availability of the agent in by-phrases. The latter follows from external arguments being moved back into the workspace and thus being potentially remerged as oblique arguments or in PPs. (1)

a.

b.

(2)

(3)

a. b. c.

Bu s¸ato-da boˇg-ul-un-ur this chateau-LOC strangle-PASS-PASS-AOR ‘You get strangled in this chateau.’ Harp-te vur-ul-un-ur. war-LOC shoot-PASS-PASS-AOR ‘You get shot in wars.’

(Özkaragöz 1986)

Jvur-K (1-b) = λx.λy. y shoots x Jvur-PASSK = (*)λy.∃x. y shoots x Jvur-PASS-PASSK = ∃y.∃x. y shoots x

The steak was cooked.

(∃-closure of internal argument slot) (∃-closure of external argument slot) (4)

Reduction of the External Argument: VoiceP1

TP

Voice0

DPEXT

T0

DP the steak T

vP

VoiceP1 Voice0

DPEXT

Voice1 v0

tDPext

vP Voice -ed [•D•]>[–D–] tDPext

VP v0

v

-(I)l [•D•]>[–D–] v

DPINT V VP

V tthe steak cook

(5)

(6)

Reduction of the Internal Argument:

Derivation of Antipassives: VoiceP

TP T

VoiceP2 Voice0

DPINT

-ür Voice2

VoiceP1 Voice0

tDPext vP

Voice0

DPINT

vP

Voice [•D•]>[–D–] DPEXT

v0 v [•D•]>[∗CASE : ERG∗]

-(I)n [•D•]>[–D–] Voice1

v0

tDPext VP

-(I)l v

tDPint V

References: Baker M., K. Johnson & I. Roberts. 1989. Passive arguments raised. LI 20. • Bruening. B. 2013. By Phrases in Passives and Nominals. Syntax. • Diesing, M. 1992. Indefinites. • Müller, G. 2014. The Short Life Cycle of External Arguments in Passive Derivations. Ms. Universität Leipzig. • Özkaragöz, I. 1986. Monoclausal double passives in Turkish. In Studies in Turkish Linguistics.• Postal, Paul M. 1984. Studies of passive clauses.

VP tDPint V