영어 간접수동 구문의 기원에 대하여

On the Origin of the Indirect Passive

Despite some controversy, it is generally accepted that the indirect passive construction(IDC) was introduced into English roughly in the 15th century. Then two relevant questions arise here; ‘Why the IDC was impossible in OE?’ and ‘How the IDC could be introduced in the 15th century?’ It is argued that the indirect object of OE need not and so must not be preposed to the subject position to get a case in a passive sentence, since it is inherently case-marked. Thus the impersonal passive construction could be used instead of the IDC in OE and early ME. Contrary to Lightfoot (1979a, 1979b, 1991), however, I argue that even in OE syntactic passives and lexical passives both existed, so two kinds of passive participles are derived, i.e., a neutralized category having the feature [+V] only and a full adjective [+N, +V]. The emergency of the IDC is explained by the loss of the ability of English verbs to assign an inherent case. If the indirect object is not inherently case-marked, it must move to a position where it can get a case, i. e., to the subject position, under the assumption that the passive participle cannot assign a structural case, either. The effacement between dative and accusative or the fixing of word order had only subsidiary effects on the introduction of the IDC. The disappearance of formal distinctions between dative and accusative is just a triggering factor for the loss of inherent case, which is the reason for the introduction of the IDC.