Basic English Grammar with Exercises

Suggested Answers and Hints - Chapter 6

h) The sentence in The bird was caught is passive. The main verb takes a theme
argument. The v head is occupied by the passive morpheme -en, which does not assign
accusative Case to the DP in the specifier of the VP and it does not assign an agent
thematic role to its own specifier position either. That is why there is no agent
argument in this sentence. Since the passive morpheme is a bound morpheme, the
main verb has to move to v. The theme DP in the specifier of the VP needs to be
assigned Case, so it moves to the specifier of IP in order to receive Case from the finite
I. A higher tense vP is also projected where the dummy auxiliary be is inserted to
support the bound tense morpheme. At the S-structure the auxiliary moves on to the I
head.

(8) CP

C'

C IP

DP 1 I'

the bird I vP

was 3 v'

v vP

t 3 v'

v VP

catch 2 v t 1 V'

-en V

t 2