Chapter 5 - Verb Phrases(76) VP
DP V'
Harry V DP
hit Bill
But then the -roles are assigned to different structural positions and the UTAH
cannot be maintained.
2.4.1 Evidence from passives
There is some evidence that the correct structure should be something like (74)
however. This comes from the fact that transitive verbs can undergo passivisation.
When a verb is passivised, it loses its agent and the object becomes the subject:
(77) a Mark made the bed – the bed was made
b Harry hit Bill – Bill was hit
c Richard write the letter – the letter was written
Even under a less strict view of the UTAH than we are attempting to keep to here,
one would like to assume that the object is generated in the same place in active
sentences and their passive counterparts. This has been the assumption since the
beginning of generative grammar in the 1950s. Thus, the object is generated in object
position in the passive, but moves to the subject position. Presumably the only reason
it would do this is to get Case. Thus while in the active structure the object gets Case
in object position, this ceases to be a Case position in the passive and hence not only
does a passive verb lose its subject, it also loses the accusative Case assigned to its
object. Again, these are fairly standard assumptions about the analysis of the passive
which have been proposed since the 1980s.
Interestingly, the passive is a construction which conforms to Burzio’s generali-
sation: the verb stops assigning a -role to its subject and loses the ability to assign
accusative to its object. But Burzio’s generalisation is a description of a state of affairs,
it is not an explanation of that state of affairs. What we need is something that links the
two properties. In previous examples we have seen a way to link the -role assignment
to the subject and the accusative Case assignment to the object: through the light verb
which is assumed to do both:
agent
patient