Implicit Agents and the Person Constraint on SE-Passives

Abstract

My main goal is to explain why SE-passives but not past participle passives are subject to the Person Constraint (PC). The core hypothesis will be that the Agent of passives is not syntactically projected in an A-position, but only represented by a valued +ARB feature, which may attach not only to little v, but also to Tense. These two possibilities respectively characterize past participle passives and SE-passives. Given these assumptions, the PC on SE-passives is explained as being due to the fact that the Person feature on Tense is already valued as +ARB, which prevents the subjects of SE-passives from checking Person features. Those DPs that do not carry Person features do not need to enter an AGREE relation in Person (but only in Number), and as such they are allowed as subjects of SE-passives. Past participle passives are immune to the PC because the +ARB feature is valued on little v, which leaves Tense unvalued for Person, which allows it to act as a Probe for DPs that carry not only Number, but also Person.