Swedish –s-passives and Object Shift: Reference in the Syntax

Abstract

In this project I attempt to shed light on an array of interacting syntactic phenomena relating to the so-called morphological passive in Swedish. Its morpheme, -s, has been assumed to be a voice morpheme, but in reality it has many of the interpretational characteristics of a verb argument. I argue that a remnant movement analysis of Swedish verb movement can accommodate for this morpheme’s distribution and interpretations as a verb argument. This analysis offers an interesting perspective on the nature of Object Shift in Scandinavian, which there has been practically no consensus on. I will suggest that the distribution of Object Shift and -s are a part of a syntactic process that apparently can access some reference properties of nominals.I have also presented this paper at the TULCON undergraduate linguistics conference at the University of Toronto, and at UW Linguistics' own Undergraduate Colloquium.