Expletives and Agreement in Scandinavian Passives

Abstract The paper deals with variation found among the Scandinavian languages and English concerning word order and agreement in passives. The variation concerns, among other things, whether the language does or does not have (a) participle agreement, (b) the order expletive-aux-NP-participle, (c) an expletive passive double object construction, (d) the order wh-expletive-participle, and (e) so-called complex passives. This is argued to be the result of variation along a set of parameters, including whether the expletive has φ-features, whether the participle head has φ-features, and whether... Mehr ...