The Double Passive in Swedish - Institutionen för lingvistik ...

The rule in (11) changes the subcategorised grammatical functions of the verb ‘eat’, and “relinks” the
semantic roles in the a-structure, as shown in (12) (cf. Kroeger, 2008:62).
(12) ate b) eaten
SUBJ OBJ OBL SUBJ
As shown in (12), the argument structure in LFG represents the number and type of arguments
associated with a particular predicate.
2.4 Constituents of the Double Passive
Now, a description of constituents of a Double Passive construction will be shown according to the
literature.
2.4.1 Infinitival complements and PRO
An infinitive clause as in (13), consisting of an infinitive verb as the head verb, in occurrence with an
optional complementizer ‘att’ (‘to’) (SAG 4, 1999:376), may partially form the Double Passive. One
of the obligatory features of the Double Passive is passivization of the infinitive verb in the
complement (cf. 2.5). Consider the non-overt subject labelled PRO, and the morphologically
passivized infinitive verb in the passive (13):
(13) att PRO sälja-s (av Jane).
to:COMP sell:INF-PASS (by:PREP 3SG).
PRO
‘(…) to be sold (by Jane).’
An infinitive clause lacks a subject in Swedish (SAG 3, 1999:609). So the subject of the matrix clause,
the controller 7 , is interpreted as functioning as the non-overt (henceforth also implicit) subject of the
infinitive clause. This non-overt subject, the controlee 8 , is often referred to and labelled ‘PRO’ in the
literature. Kroeger (2008:107) describes the controlee as:
(…) a kind of invisible anaphoric element, a phonologically empty pronoun (…), which
antecedent can be determined by the lexical entry of the main verb or by the particular
requirements of the particular construction it appears in.
7 Controller – the subject of the matrix clause which controls the controlee (cf. Kroeger, 2008:109).
8 Controlee –The missing, but understood, argument (PRO) in the infinitival complement – controlled by
the controller, (cf. Kroeger, 2008:109).
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