Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2016, Page 81

summary
´Weak pronouns in the reflexive passive´
Keywords: weak arguments, pronouns, reflexive passive, definiteness, Icelandic
This paper examines the Icelandic reflexive passive and argues that the reflexive pronoun
sig in this construction is a weak argument in the sense of Landau (2010), lacking a defi-
niteness feature. Several pieces of evidence support this conclusion. First, the pronoun in
the reflexive passive is not compatible with a secondary predicate. This suggests that this
pronoun does not contain a definiteness feature. Second, sig cannot be conjoined with a
full DP. This is evidence that sig is not a full DP because different types of phrases are
often difficult to conjoin. Third, the distribution of the weak pronoun sig is not con-
strained by the Definiteness Effect, another sign that sig lacks a definiteness feature.
Fourth, the reflexive passive seems to violate Binding Principle A. The fact that the con-
struction is nevertheless acceptable for many speakers suggests that weak pronouns like sig
are exempt from Binding Principle A. Finally, when a corresponding pronoun has an
antecedent in the active voice (cf. okkur in (42)), it manifests overt person and number
agreement with the antecedent. This means that whatever is missing from the weak pro-
noun, compared to a strong pronoun, it does not lack φ-features. In our analysis the miss-
ing element in the weak pronoun is the definiteness feature. Our findings are interesting
because they suggest that the weak/strong argument distinction which Landau proposed
for covert pronouns is also found in overt elements.
Anton Karl Ingason
Íslensku- og menningardeild
Háskóla Íslands
Árnagarði við Suðurgötu
101 Reykjavík
antoni@hi.is
Einar Freyr Sigurðsson
Department of Linguistics
University of Pennsylvania
619 Williams Hall
255 S 36th Street, Philadelphia
PA 19104-6305, USA
einarsig@ling.upenn.edu
Veik fornöfn í afturbeygðri þolmynd 81
Þórhallur Eyþórsson
Deild erlendra tungumála, bókmennta
og málvísinda
Háskóla Íslands
Nýja-Garði
101 Reykjavík
tolli@hi.is