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

The Double Passive in Swedish
A case of creating raising verbs in the Scandinavian languages.
Abstract
The primary aim of this thesis is to map the syntactic and semantic nature, and the frequency of the
Double Passive in Swedish – this due to the fact that little research regarding Double Passive
constructions in Swedish has been done. In the thesis Lexical functional grammar (LFG) is used as a
model for semantic and syntactic analysis. The analysis showed that when the AGENT in a Double
Passive construction is suppressed, it creates an argument structure that triggers an equi verb to occur
as a raising verb (cf. Ørsnes, 2006). Overt agents within constructions containing the Double Passive
showed an even lower frequency than the low frequencies documented in previous research in passive
voice by Silén (1997) and Laanemets (2010). The lower frequency is a result of the fact that a non-
overt agent in a Double Passive construction is suppressed twice. The results of a corpus study showed
a frequency of 3.57 % of overt agents within constructions containing Double Passives. The
complementizer ‘att’ (‘to’) in the subordinated infinitive clause of a Double Passive is overtly
expressed, partly depending on the degree of modality of the matrix verb (cf. Sundman, 1983;
Teleman, 1999; Lagerwall, 1999), and the degree of semantic bonding between the matrix verb and
the complement (Givón, 2001b). The data (matrix verbs) collected in the corpus study was analysed
according to a categorising-system in SAG (Teleman, 1999) and in Givón (2001a) and Givón (2001b).
The matrix verbs with strong nominal (lexical) properties, e.g. ‘planera’ (‘plan’), showed a high
frequency of occurrence with full infinitives, as compared to matrix verbs with largely grammatical
meaning, e.g. ‘avse’ (intend’).
Keywords
Double Passive, Complex Passive, control, equi, raising, agent, infinitival complement,
complementizer, LFG.
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