Twin Passives, inversion and multistratalism in Marathi

Under certain conditions, Marathi personal and impersonal Passive are homophonous. The modal (‘capability’) reading for a Passive, available under appropriate pragmatic conditions, proves to be consistently associated with the impersonal Passive structure. Neutralization of the personal vs. impersonal distinction is traceable to a single, typologically unusual, case marking rule which, depending on an animacy criterion, can mark a nominal bearing the 2 relation ‘dative’ regardless of whether it also advances to 1 via Passive. True ‘dative subjects’ occur in Marathi personal Passives. This in turn bears on the analysis of Inversion clauses, where the datives, by contrast, are not subjects at the final level, contrary to popular counteranalyses.