An experimental-syntactic take on long passive in Dutch: Unraveling the patterns underlying its (un)acceptability

Abstract

This article provides experimental evidence for the existence of long passive in Dutch and proposes a syntactic analysis of the findings. Long passive, a control-like complementation configuration with matrix passive and promotion of the embedded object to matrix subject, has long been considered ungrammatical in Dutch, but naturally occurring examples call for reconsideration. We report on a judgment experiment, which yielded two main findings: (a) long passive in Dutch is subject to considerable speaker variation and fully acceptable to a number of participants, and (b) its acceptability depends on the class of the matrix verb. We propose that long passive (qua implicit control and long object promotion) is in itself unproblematic and that the observed interspeaker variation is due to the incompatibility of passive participles with the so-called infinitivus pro participio effect (the occurrence of an infinitive-like form in place of a participle in the perfect) and the (un)availability of a strategy to obviate this clash. This provides a new perspective on the syntax underlying the infinitivus pro participio effect. We link the differences between matrix verb classes to structural properties of the infinitival clauses that the verbs belonging to these classes embed, offering novel insights into the syntax of the infinitival dependents of Dutch aspectual verbs, which, we argue, include a (covert) PP layer, similarly to obligatory control adjuncts.