A SYNOPSIS OF ROLE AND REFERENCE GRAMMAR 69If the actor is linked to a peripheral position in a passive, the universal for
mulation of passive in (47) predicts that the undergoer bill- "car" should be
pivot, and this is the case, as (53a) shows. However, the accessibility to
pivot hierarchy given above predicts that henni "her (D)" should be pivot,
since it is the highest ranking non-actor direct core argument in terms of
(25), and this is in fact a grammatical result, as (53b) shows.
(53) a. Billinn var syndur henni.
the.car(N) was shown(N) her(ö)
"The car was shown to her."
b. Henni var syndur billinn.
Her(ö) was shown(N) the.car(N)
"She was shown the car."
As Zaenen, Maling & Thráinsson (1985), Thráinsson (1979), and Andrews
(1982) show, both billinn "the car (N)" in (53a) and henni "her (D)" in (53b)
are true syntactic pivots, e.g. either can occur in a higher clause in a raising
construction, and this is in fact predicted by the universal formulation of
passive in (47), which specifies undergoer (in this case billinn as the default
choice for pivot in a passive, and by the language-specific accessibility hier
archy for syntactic pivot, which selects the highest ranking non-actor direct
core argument as pivot if the actor is not a core argument (in this case
henni) (cf. Van Valin 1990a). The significance of these Icelandic facts for
this discussion is that they illustrate how passive is treated in RRG without
reference to a notion of "direct object", even in languages in which pivot-
hood in a passive is not restricted to undergoers.
The other phenomenon in which "direct object" appears to play a cru
cial role is constructions in which new objects are derived, i.e. dative shift
and applicative constructions. They are traditionally described as involving
the promotion of a non-object to direct object status. In the cross-linguistic
survey of these constructions in Foley & Van Valin (1985) it was shown that
dative shift constructions involve either the marked occurrence of a core
argument as undergoer or the highly marked occurrence of a non-argu
ment, usually a beneficiary, as undergoer. In the simplest case, a non-
undergoer core argument functions as undergoer in what is a marked
assignment in terms of the Α-U hierarchy in (25); this is illustrated in the
English examples in (54).