Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 54(4), 2018, pp. 437–467
© Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland
doi: 10.1515/psicl-2018-0019
STATIVE AND EVENTIVE PASSIVES
OF SUBJECT EXPERIENCER VERBS IN POLISH
ANNA BONDARUK BOŻENA ROZWADOWSKA
John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin University of Wrocław
bondaruk@kul.lublin.pl bozena.rozwadowska@uwr.edu.pl
ABSTRACT
The paper addresses the question whether Subject Experiencer (henceforth, SE) verbs
can form the stative and eventive passive in Polish. The analysis shows that SE verbs in
Polish only sporadically give rise to the stative passive, and whenever this is possible,
the stative passive derived from an SE verb can be classed as the target state passive in
Kratzer’s typology (2000). Polish SE verbs are susceptible to two types of eventive pas-
sive – (i) with the auxiliary zostać ‘to become’, co-occurring with the perfective passive
participle; and (ii) with the auxiliary być ‘to be’, followed by the imperfective passive
participle. The fact that SE verbs can give rise to zostać-passives is unproblematic, as
this type of passive contains the passive participle derived from the perfective form of
the verb, which is always eventive. Stative SE verbs can serve as good inputs to the być
+ imperfective passive on account of the fact that they can be coerced from states into
non-dynamic events, as proposed for Spanish in Fábregas and Marín (2017).
KEYWORDS: stative passive; eventive passive; Subject Experiencer verbs; non-dynamic
events; Polish language.
1. Introduction
1
Psychological predicates are notorious for flouting a number of generalizations
formed on the basis of action predicates, and for this reason they are viewed as
grammatically special (Landau 2010). The notoriety of psych predicates is man-
ifested in a wide range of phenomena, including passive formation. In the litera-
ture, the passivisation patterns found with Object Experiencer (henceforth, OE)
verbs have given rise to a lot of controversy (Pesetsky 1995; Tenny 1998; Lan-
1
The research was funded by grant 2014/15/B/HS2/00588 from National Science Centre, Poland.
Authenticated | bozena.rozwadowska@uwr.edu.pl author's copy
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