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SUMMARY:A subject-based approach to impersonal constructions - Anna Kibort
 \, University of Surrey
DTSTART:20090519T150000Z
DTEND:20090519T163000Z
UID:TALK17818@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Susan Rolfe
DESCRIPTION:Polish has a large number of constructions which have been ref
 erred to\nas impersonal\, and which qualify as impersonal under Malchukov 
 &\nSiewierska’s (forthcoming) broad definition characterising them as\n
 ‘constructions lacking a referential subject’:\n\n(a) clauses with ‘
 weather verbs’ (e.g. Pada/Świta ‘rains/dawns’)\n\n(b) ‘adversity 
 impersonals’ (e.g. Odrzuciło go w bok ‘threw-off.3SG.NEUT him.ACC to 
 side’)\n\n(c) clauses expressing physical or psychological states (e.g. 
 Mdli mnie ‘nauseates me.ACC’)\n\n(d) predicative adverbial constructio
 ns (e.g. Miło cię spotkać ‘nicely you.ACC meet.INF’)\n\n(e) nominat
 iveless clauses with predicates requiring a genitive argument (e.g. Przyby
 wa\nwody ‘becomes-more water.GEN’)\n\n(f) the -no/-to impersonal (e.g.
  Bito Piotra ‘beat.IMPERS Peter.ACC’)\n\n(g) the reflexive impersonal 
 (e.g. Biło się Piotra ‘beat.3SG.NEUT REFL Peter.ACC’)\n\n(h) clauses
  with inherently impersonal predicates (e.g. Słychać ją ‘hear.NON-PER
 S her.ACC’)\n\n(i) impersonal passives of intransitives (e.g. Było sprz
 ątane ‘was tidy-up.PART.SG.NEUT’)\n\nOn a communicative-functional vi
 ew\, all these constructions involve\nagent/instigator-defocusing\, while 
 on a structural view\, they all lack a\ncanonical subject (Siewierska 2008
 ). I discuss lexical\, syntactic and\nmorphological properties of these co
 nstructions and argue that they\ncan be classified into four distinct type
 s: (a)-(c) have optionally\nunexpressed pronominal subjects with indefinit
 e reference\; (d)-(e) have\novert non-agreeing subjects\; (f)-(g) are morp
 holexically derived\, with\nobligatorily unexpressed syntactic subjects\; 
 and (h)-(i) are genuinely\nsubjectless\, being formed with defective verbs
  and passivised\nintransitive predicates. Despite being functionally imper
 sonal\,\nconstructions (a)-(g) do have non-canonical subjects which need t
 o\nfind appropriate analyses within syntactic frameworks.
LOCATION:GR-06/07\, English Faculty Building
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