Another Argument That Passive Is TransformationalAuthor(s): Edwin WilliamsSource: Linguistic Inquiry, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Winter, 1982), pp. 160-163Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4178269 .

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160 SQUlBS AND DISCUSSION

In our data (150 examples containing modal phrases), might is the most frequently and variously modified modal, followed by may, could, and can. If our data are representative, they indicate that might-may take modification more readily than could-can and, secondarily, that past tense forms take it more readily than present tense forms.

References

Bolinger, D. (1972) Degree Words, Mouton, The Hague. Hines, C. P. (1980) "As well and as well as," in W. C. Mc-

Cormack and H. J. Izzo, eds., The Sixth LACUS Forum, Hornbeam Press, Columbia, South Carolina.

Jackendoff, R. (1977) X Syntax: A Study of Phrase Structure, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Palmer, F. R. (1979) Modality and the English Modals, Long- man, London.

ANOTHER ARGUMENT THAT In this squib I will show first, that there is a "head-final" PASSIVE IS constraint on prenominal modifiers in English, and second, that TRANSFORMATIONAL the failure of certain passive participles to appear prenominally

Edwin Williams, can be seen as a consequence of that constraint, but only if the University of Massachusetts syntactic description of those passives involves a postverbal at Amherst trace in surface structure.

1. English (and German) have a constraint barring post-head material in prenominal modifiers (call it the Head-Final Filter (HFF)):

(1) a. the proud man b. *the proud of his children man c. *the to Bill letter d. the crying man e. *the to cry man f. der seine Pfeife rauchende Mann

the his pipe smoking man 'the man smoking his pipe'

(lb) is unacceptable because the prenominal modifier (proud of his children) does not end in its head (proud), thus violating the HFF. (le) is ruled out if we say (as in Williams (1981)) that the auxiliary (to in this case) is the head of verbal constructions, and not the main verb. (1I) illustrates that German, while it has the HFF, nevertheless allows a great deal more prenominal modification than English, by virtue of the fact that most of its constructions are intrinsically head-final anyway. That it has the HFF can be shown by cases where head-finality does not hold in embedded clauses, namely, where a tensed complement

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SQUIBS AND DISCUSSION 161

is extraposed to the right of the verb:

(2) *der sagende daB S Mann the saying that S man

Here, the prenominal modifier (sagende daB S) does not end in its head (sagende). Thus, German does have the HFF, and differs from English in simply having more ways of circum- venting it.

2. As Wasow (1978) first observed, there are two passives in English, one adjectival and the other verbal, and the adjectival passive always has the theme of the related verb as its surface subject, whereas there is no such restriction on the verbal pas- sive. This much seems uncontroversial, and is accepted in all recent writings on the passive (see Wasow (1978); Bresnan (in press); Williams (1980a,b)). It is also not controversial that the adjectival passive is a syntactically intransitive adjective de- rived from a transitive verb, by a lexical rule. The important question concerns the syntactic transitivity of the verbal pas- sive. It can be precisely put: Is there a postverbal trace in the syntactic description of the verbal passive construction?

We may use the HFF to answer this question. If there is a postverbal trace in the verbal passive, then there should be no verbal passives prenominally, as the trace would always prevent head-finality; but if there is no postverbal trace, then, all else being equal, we should expect to find verbal passives prenominally:'

(3) *[[ V t]vp N]NP passive

participle

On the other hand, the adjectival participle should occur freely prenominally, as all accounts judge it to have no postverbal trace.

The facts bear out the syntactic transitivity of the verbal passive:

(4) a. the promised books b. *the promised people

(5) a. the told story b. *the told people

lThe evidence presented here leaves indeterminate the category of the participle phrase, whether VP or S. The entire argument of this squib could be constructed identically for either choice. If the trace argued for here in the verbal passive arises from NP movement of object to subject position, then of course the choice must be S, as only S has a subject position. But the arguments of this squib do not support the strong position that movement is involved, only the somewhat weaker position that there is a postverbal trace in surface structure.

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162 SQUIBS AND DISCUSSION

In the (a) cases, the passive is formed on the themes of the related verbs, and so the passives are (or at least, can be; there is potentially ambiguity here) adjectival. In the (b) cases, on the other hand, the passive is formed on nonthemes (goals, in these two cases), so the passives are unambiguously verbal. Exactly the verbal passives are ungrammatical prenominally. We may conclude from this that they are syntactically transitive (that is, they have the representation (3) in surface structure) and that they therefore violate the HFF when they occur pre- nominally.

3. This conclusion can be evaded by claiming that the failure of the verbal passive to occur prenominally is not due to the HFF and postverbal trace, but rather to a general exclusion of verbal material from the prenominal position. Surely most ver- bally headed modifiers are excluded from prenominal position, but this is largely due to the HFF, which is needed in any case:

(6) a. *the must leave man (der gehen mussende Mann) b. *the seeing Bill man (der Bill sehende Mann) c. *the waking up man (der aufwachende Mann)

We should in fact resist this restriction against prenominal ver- bal modifiers as an infringement of X-bar generality, unneeded except for evading the conclusion of section 2. German is es- pecially instructive on this point. All of the examples of (6) are grammatical in German, since the relevant constructions are all head-final in German: the direct object is preverbal in embedded clauses, and auxiliaries appear after the main verb, just the opposite of English. Thus, we can explain the great differences in the possibilities of prenominal modification in the two lan- guages in terms of the HFF and the independent difference in the bases rules of the two languages. This account would be rendered useless if we added the further restriction to the gram- mar of English that no verbal modifiers, even those few that slipped by the HFF, were to be allowed prenominally.

In fact, some quite concrete evidence can be given that the present participle is always verbal and never adjectival (and hence differs from the passive participle).2 This, together with the grammaticality of (Id), the crying man, means that the re- striction entertained here is simply factually false, in addition to being unwanted on general grounds.

The complement of the verb consider admits adjectives freely, but excludes the present participle:

(7) a. *1 consider John crying. (but: I consider John demanding; see note 2)

b. I consider John lachrymose. 2 There are some clear cases of occasional present participles that

have been lexicalized as adjectives; for example a very demanding child.

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SQUIBS AND DISCUSSION 163

We may conclude from this that the present participle is not adjectival. The use of this environment as a diagnostic for ad- jectives is strongly confirmed by the fact that it discriminates between the adjectival and verbal passives:

(8) a. I consider this story told to enough people. b. *1 consider Bill told enough of these stories.

(9) a. I consider these books promised to John. b. *1 consider John promised these books.

The (b) cases are unambiguously verbal, as they are formed on nonthemes.

In sum, the crying man shows that the prenominal position must admit verbal material. The question remains, then, Why are the verbal passives excluded from prenominal position? The best answer is still the HFF, but this answer requires postulating the postverbal trace in the syntactic description of the verbal passive.

References

Bresnan, J. W. (in press) "The Passive in Lexical Theory," in J. W. Bresnan, ed., The Mental Representation of Gram- matical Relations, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachu- setts.

Wasow, T. (1978) "Remarks on Processing Constraints and the Lexicon," in Proceedings of the Second TINLAP Con- ference.

Williams, E. (1980a) "Passive," ms., University of Massachu- setts at Amherst.

Williams, E. (1980b) "Argument Structure and Morphology," ms., University of Massachusetts at Amherst (to appear in The Linguistic Review, 1.1).

Williams, E. (1981) "On the Notions 'Lexically Related' and 'Head of a Word'," Linguistic Inquiry 12, 245-274.

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