On the argument structure of raising-to-subject with passive predicates in Swedish

Abstract

This paper concerns the argument structure analysis of raising-to-subject with passive predicates in Swedish and other Germanic languages. Support is given for the analysis in which the raising-to-subject construction constitutes a regular passive, the passive counterpart of active raising-to-object. The fact that there does not seem to be an active counterpart for certain predicates, such as the predicate say, as well as the fact that raising-to-subject does not seem to be possible with the periphrastic passive in Swedish is attributed to certain semantic restrictions on the raising-to-object construction and the periphrastic passive construction, respectively.