Basque impersonals in comparison

Abstract

The Basque impersonal is a detransitivized construction that resembles middles, passives and impersonals. In this construction, the thematic object is the grammatical subject, which bears absolutive case and triggers absolutive agreement, and the auxiliary selected is izan ‘be’. At the same time, there is an implicit agent that is syntactically active even though it is not realized as an ergative argument with corresponding ergative agreement. In this article, we compare the Basque impersonal with the middle, the passive of languages like English, and subject-suppressing impersonals (as in Polish), and we show that it is more similar to the passive and subject-suppressing impersonals, given that (i) in the Basque impersonal, the event is instantiated, (ii) it can be used with more predicate classes, and (iii) it allows dative-marked second objects, among other properties. Similarly, like in English-type passives and subject-suppressing impersonals, the implicit agent of the Basque impersonal is syntactically active, as it can license agent-oriented modifiers and control adjunct purpose clauses. Nevertheless, there are other properties in which these constructions differ; for instance, the implicit agent must be interpreted as human, unlike in passives, and the grammatical subject cannot be other than 3rd person, something attested neither in passives nor in subject-suppressing impersonals. In light of this distribution, we consider the Basque impersonal to be located somewhere in between middles, passives and subject-suppressing impersonals as far as its syntactic properties are concerned.

Person matters in impersonality

“…All of this makes Basque impersonals different from English‐like middles (such as Books read easily ), which similarly are intransitive and have an implicit agent argument. In turn, these tests situate the Basque impersonal closer to the passive construction (Fernández & Berro 2021).…”

“…Instances such as (1) and (5a) have been described and analyzed as impersonals in Basque linguistics (Ortiz de Urbina 1989, 1991, Albizu 1997a, 2001a, Ortiz de Urbina 2003, 2011–2019, Fernández & Berro 2021). Nevertheless, the impersonal label obscures the similarity of this construction to Old Basque ( medio)passives , a label used by Brettschneider 1979, Ortiz de Urbina 2006, De Rijk 2008, and Rezac 2009b.…”

“…Moreover, although, as exemplified in (3), in Contemporary Basque the external argument cannot be expressed as an adjunct in impersonals (Brettschneider 1979: 381, Ortiz de Urbina 2003: 773–776, Berro & Fernández 2019b, Urrestarazu 2019, Fernández & Berro 2021), this was not the case in Old Basque (medio)passives (Ortiz de Urbina 2006: 773). This can be seen in (6), a sentence from Joanes Leizarraga's translation of the New Testament.…”

“…The term impersonal actually covers a very broad area, given that it has been used in Basque linguistics to refer not only to the detransitivized construction under discussion but also to constructions with nonreferential or impersonal interpretation of personal verb markers (Ortiz de Urbina 2003: 572–576) and to weather expressions (Ortiz de Urbina 2003: 577–579, Arteatx & Artiagoitia 2018), among other things. The term has also been used to refer to subject‐suppressing impersonals , attested in Balto‐Slavic, Balto‐Finnic, and Celtic languages (Blevins 2003) and discussed by Fernández & Berro 2021 in comparison to Basque. As with the Basque construction, there is no consensus on the proper characterization of subject‐suppressing impersonals.…”

“…Basque has a detransitivized construction called impersonal (Ortiz de Urbina 1989, 1991, Albizu 1997a, 2001a, Ortiz de Urbina 2003, 2011–2019, Fernández & Berro 2021) or, alternatively, mediopassive (Brettschneider 1979, Ortiz de Urbina 2006, De Rijk 2008, Rezac 2009b). In this construction, which we will refer to as impersonal, the internal argument is the only overt argument, since the external argument, although semantically present, does not have any morphological reflex.…”