Voice phrases and their Specifiers

Abstract

This paper sketches a particular aspect of the active/passive distinction and tries to attribute all syntactic properties of these modes to the behavior of a single functional projection. The paper is organized in two parts. Part I is devoted to a discussion of the voice distinction in Toba Batak. It is argued that a correct syntactic description of the data involves movement of the subject in the Passive Mode and movement of the object in the Active Mode. The landing site of both types of movement is the specifier of a functional projection called the Voice Phrase.  Part II contains a broader discussion of passivization across languages. It is argued that passive phrases in German or English exhibit the same kind of movement as Toba Batak, but whereas the Specifier of the Voice Phrase in Toba Batak contains an overt category, it must contain a silent category (pro) in other languages. Thus, the apparent difference between these types of languages results from a lexical property of the head of the Voice Phrase, i.e. the passive morpheme: Usually, this head requires an empty category as its specifier, whereas in Toba Batak it requires overt realization of the subject in that position. I will also relate further parameters (e.g. the existence of transitive and impersonal passives) to properties of the lexical head of the Voice Phrase.