A Unified Account of Passives and Causatives: The Case of Mongolian and Japanese
Chigchi Bai
January 2025 

This paper aims to justify the following proposals. First, Mongolian is a low-passive language, whereas Japanese is a high-passive language. Second, passives and causatives are subject to a unified analysis. Third, introduction of arguments as potential subjects (predicate-internal subjects), notated as sbj, through voice heads is mirrored by affixation of voice morphemes. Fourth, there are at least three different heights of sbj and corresponding voice suffixes. Fifth, a last-merged sbj is promoted to SBJ, with others, if any, demoted or suppressed, instantiating Relativized Minimality. Sixth, there is only one type of argument-introducer, namely, Voice.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/008383 (please use that when you cite this article)
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keywords:	passive, causative, voice, syntax, morphology, mongolian, japanese, typology, morphology, syntax
previous versions:	v2 [November 2024] v1 [August 2024]
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