(Non-)Homogeneity in Dutch impersonal passives of unaccusatives
(Non-)Homogeneity in Dutch impersonal passives of unaccusatives

Summary/Abstract: This paper sheds new light on the behaviour of telic predicates, particularly unaccusatives (opstijgen ‘take off’, vallen ‘fall’), in the Dutch impersonal passive (= ImpersP) construction. Using recently collected data, I show that Zaenen’s (1988, 1993) contention that Dutch ImpersPs are barred from a non-homogeneous (telic) interpretation, though generally accepted in the literature, is empirically flawed. In fact, a telic reading obtains whenever the ImpersP of a telic predicate refers to a singular event. In this case, the implicit argument receives either a singular or a collective reading (see Landman’s (1989, 1996) theory of groups). In contrast, homogeneous ImpersPs of telic predicates assume a distributive plural event interpretation and select an argument with a distributive, bare plural-like reading. Based on a comparison with active unaccusative constructions with bare plural subjects (see Rothstein 2008a), I argue that the aspectual properties of an ImpersP predicate determine the referential properties of the argument, pace Primus (2010a and 2010b).

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