THE JAPANESE PASSIVE

(1) is a personal passive of the familiär sort, with the logical object appearing äs the grammatical subject and the logical subject äs the "&y-phrase" (marked with -/H). Within the principles-and-parameters framework, this type of passive is an automatic consequence of the effects of theta-rolesuppression and Case-absorption: thus, by assuming that the passive morpheme -(r)arein Japanese also induces these effects, the basic properties of direct passive immediately follow from UG. Indirect passive, by contrast, is characterized in part by the properties that (i) its verb has usual passive morpheme, (ii) it has a clear passive sense, (iii) it contains a nominative NP, (iv) the passive verb may be transitive or intransitive, and (v) the direct object, if there is one, surfaces äs such. In addition, it is typically, though not always, associated with "adversity Interpretation", i.e., the clause-initial nominative element is interpreted äs being adversely affected by the state of affairs expressed in the rest of the clause. This is especially conspicuous in the "intransitive indirect passives" like (2b). We will return to this matter in section 2.2.