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

(32) Hon älskar/slutar/avser/beslutar/diskuterar/ämnar/accepterar att spela schack.
She loves/stops/intends/decides/discusses/aims/accepts to play chess
In SAG 3 (1999:573) an overview of the lexical context of infinitival complements (as
object/XCOMP) is given, arranged and sorted semantically. In category 1-4 the character of auxiliary
verbs is strong, and in the latter almost non-existent. Verbs where a following complementizer is
considered being as good as impossible is marked “–“, and the corresponding verbs (where the
complementizer is considered close to obligatory or obligatory) is marked “+”. A limited number of
examples of verbs in the sorting below are shown. Some of the verbs may occur in several groups:
1. Epistemic verbs: ‘behöva’– (‘need’), ‘lär’– (‘may’).
2. Deontic verbs: ‘borde’– (‘aught’), ‘måste’– (‘must’).
3. Actional verbs: ‘börja’– (‘start’), ‘fortsätta’– (‘continue’).
4. Verbs determining the ingressive art of action at the infinitival complement: ‘få’–
(se) (‘get (to see)’).
5. Intentional verbs: ‘planera’+ (‘plan’), ‘beluta’+ (‘decide’), ‘hota’+ (‘threaten’),
‘avse’+ (‘intend’).
6. Dynamic verbs: ‘förmå’– (‘induce’), ‘förtjäna’+ (deserve).
7. Verbs determining the subject referents fear, expectation etc. of an action to occur:
‘frukta’+ (‘fear’), ‘vänta’+ (expect’).
8. Verbs determining the subject referents valuation of the action: ‘hata’+’ (‘hate’),
‘gilla’+ (‘like’).
9. Verbs determining the subject referents initiative or omission to execute the action:
‘försöka’+ (‘try’), ‘undvika’+ (‘avoid’).
In a corpus study 15 of the use of “bare” infinitival complements (no complementizer) in Swedish,
Lagerwall (1999) confirmed the lack of a complementizer similar to (31). The total frequency of bare
infinitives was over 99 % regarding the auxiliar modals such as ‘böra’ (‘need’), ‘kunna’ (‘need’),
‘måste’ (‘must’), ‘må’ (‘may’), ‘lär’ (‘will’) etc. Regarding “modal-like” verbs (i.e. equi verbs and
perhaps some raising verbs), the use of the complementizer showed a varying occurrence depending
on the verb.
Lagerwall (1999:6) discusses possible diachronic connections and refers to Mjölberg’s work.
Mjölberg (1950:71) argues that especially two verb groups that occur with bare infinitives, appear to
be in different stages of a development – toward the exclusion of a complementizer. According to
15 The corpus study was achieved using the corpus PAROLE containing approx. 25 million tokens.
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