This chapter develops an analysis of long-distance passives in German according to which these constructions basically emerge from the co-occurrence of passivization and restructuring in the language. In Chapters 3 and 4, I have argued that passivization and restructuring both involve an operation of structure removal in the course of the derivation – of an external argument DP in the first case, and of CP and TP layers of an infinitive in the second case. The null hypothesis that is pursued in this chapter against this background is that a combination of the two structure removal operations essentially gives rise to the intricate properties of long-distance passives in German. A core feature of the analysis is that it does not involve any long-distance relation at any point; argument demotion, case assignment, and morphological realization as passive all take place extremely locally. Another basic property of the new approach, which sets it apart from other analyses, is that all DP arguments selected by the verbs involved (including in particular external arguments in the embedded and matrix domains) can be assumed to be structurally represented at some point of the derivation; among other things, this accounts for the absence of control shift.

In this chapter, I pursue two main goals. First, I argue for a new empirical generalization: An external argument in German passive constructions is accessible from positions below it but inaccessible from positions above it. The evidence for downward accessibility comes from control into adjunct clauses, secondary predicates, and complement clauses, binding of reflexives and reciprocals, and disjoint reference effects. In contrast, the evidence for upward inaccessibility comes from long-distance binding in impersonal passives and standard passives, accessible subjects for control infinitives, criterial movement constraints, minimality of movement effects, and intervention for anaphoric binding. Second, I present a new theory of passivization from which this generalization can be derived: The elementary operation Remove accounts for both accessibility and inaccessibility of external arguments in the passive in German, by correctly predicting a short life cycle. After this, the chapter addresses the question of how variation in the area of passivization can be accounted for in the new model. Next, there is a brief extension of the analysis to adjectival passives, invoking external Remove. The chapter concludes with a discussion of alternative approaches that either maintain strict accessibility or postulate strict inaccessibility, as well of hybrid approaches.

This chapter addresses the major syntactic (and partly semantic) topic of argument structure. Argument structure alternations have been central in the development of syntactic theory since Chomsky’s original transformational approach to passivization, and particularly since Fillmore’s work on ‘Case’ relations. In Pāṇinian grammar, the kāraka system provides a highly sophisticated model of argument structure, which has influenced developments in the modern Western tradition, and which also differs from modern argument structure approaches in interesting ways. The kāraka system is explained and illustrated, and compared and contrasted with modern approaches to argument alternations.

This chapter discusses argument structure alternations capitalizing on the Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) notions of logical structure, macrorole and privileged syntactic argument assignment, and linking. A distinction is drawn between lexical and syntactic processes. The lexical alternations (for example, causativization and anticausativization) are often limited in productivity and serve to enrich the lexicon. The syntactic alternations (for example, passivization and antipassivization) are characterized by mappings between the lexical and the syntactic levels, and may play an important role in referent tracking or topic continuity.

Chapter 7 lays out new data from both Faroese and Icelandic regarding triadic verbs, in particular the passive of ‘give’ and other three-place predicates. The theoretical apparatus presented in Chapter 6 is brought to bear on ditransitives and shown to predict the correct case frames and word orders in Icelandic and Faroese. First, an outline is given of double-object verbs in Faroese, noting that the evidence in some of the preceding literature is equivocal as to the acceptability of passive with ‘give’ and other triadic verbs. Data from a Faroese survey are discussed, the result being that no sentence with passive of ‘give’ was broadly accepted. Faroese evidence is discussed regarding the position of the theme and goal arguments in the active. Further data on the ‘give’ passive in Icelandic are presented; consistently with previous work, these Icelandic speakers have the option of either Goal-V-Theme or Theme-V-Goal orders in the passive. A Faroese survey on passives of ditransitives other than ‘give’ shows that the lexical semantics of a given verb interact with word order, such that if passive is judged acceptable, its mean acceptability is higher for the Theme-V-Goal order than for Goal-V-Theme.

Chapter 6 presents new data on Faroese personal and impersonal passives, in addition to a discussion of case preservation and availability of passive with the dative-subject verbs. First, data from further Faroese surveys are investigated. The analysis demonstrates that the proposed constraints regulating the passive, here simply the addition of PARSE, covers all relevant sentence types in both Faroese and Icelandic personal passives, and with DEP and ARGSP also the impersonal passives. The argumentation builds on Kiparsky (2013), providing additional empirical support for the Linking Theory approach. An important finding is that the facts of case substitution in the active and case non-preservation in the passive are related: it is argued that there are preserving versus non-preserving grammars, represented by the two competing rankings. Speakers have access to both rankings, and choice of verb strongly predicts which grammar is activated. This approach predicts patterns that emerge from the constraint rankings themselves. The non-preserving grammar (activated, for example, with uses of the verb ‘like’) implies availability of passive and nominative substitution, both of which hold true; likewise, the preserving grammar predicts unavailability of passive and case substitution, which again turn out to be true for the verb ‘need’.

This chapter addresses the motivations and mechanisms behind the following shifts. The structures and functions of Chinese passives underwent three typologically significant changes: (a) the passive morphemes in Old Chinese could not introduce any agent phrase in preverbal position, but those in Contemporary Chinese must introduce an agent noun to make the passive structure well formed; (b) the agent phrase could be introduced only in postverbal position in Old Chinese but is exclusively constrained to preverbal position in Contemporary Chinese; and (c) the passive morphemes are extremely diverse in Contemporary Chinese, including four markers in Mandarin Chinese and at least sixty-nine markers in the other dialects that have grammaticalized from different lexical sources but have quite uniform structures and functions, where the presence of an agent is generally obligatory.

This chapter reviews and discusses issues involving the case theory in the generative framework of syntax with data from Chinese, a language without overt morphological case marking. Specifically, it addresses the interrelationship of abstract case, morphological case, and the thematic roles of NPs; the association between the distribution of NPs and case positions; and the possibility of overt vs. covert arguments and the finite tense. The data presented here highlight the variety of ways in which language facts can be described. The challenges to case theory arise not only from the morphological realization of cases on NPs, but also from the flexibility of the number of NPs that can be associated with a given verb, the flexibility of thematic roles associated with a verbal event, and the optionality of word order, as well as the possibility of overt subjects in non-finite clauses. Amid the advancement of cross-linguistic observations, Universal Grammar may eventually inform a holistic account of human languages, in which case theory is superseded by a more fine-grained mechanism for argument-thematic mapping, together with more careful consideration of information structure.

In the last chapter, we explored word constructions and the basic phrasal constructions that they appear in. In addition to that, we saw that English has a great number of schematic and substantive idioms that can best be described as constructions. In the present chapter, we continue this approach and investigate how syntactic phenomena, such as argument structure (which tells us what happened) and its interaction with active and passive voice (which represent different vantage points from which to construe events), as well as tense and aspect (when and how something happened), can be analysed within Usage-based Construction Grammar. Moreover, we also look at abstract constructions for the various clause types (e.g., declaratives, interrogatives and imperatives, all of which basically express speakers’ illocutions). Finally, we also look at how Information Structure constructions can be used to structure information in a way that is most beneficial for a specific hearer in a discourse context.

One of the main building blocks in a receiver is a low-pass filter (LPF) used at the baseband. This block is responsible for selecting the desired channel. In zero-IF receivers, this block is placed directly after the RF downconversion mixer. In a high-IF receiver,the LPF is required after a second downconversion from the IF to baseband. In addition to wireless communication applications, integrated LPFs are the key building blocks in various other types of applications, such as hard disk drive readchannels,videosignalprocessing,smoothingfilteringinaDAC,andantialiasingfilteringbeforea sampling system. The noise of these filters is one of the key system-level concerns. This noise can be usually traded off with the total filter capacitance and, consequently, total power and area. Therefore, for a given system-level noise budget, a filter with a lower noise coefficient reduces the area and power consumption. On the other hand, the linearity of the filter should be high enough to maintain the fidelity of the wanted signal.

This chapter on Wuthering Heights (1848) explores the work carried out by the verbs in the novel. Emily Brontë’s style makes evocative use of imperatives, and of active and passive verb forms. A distinction is drawn between the predominant verb forms of the first and second parts of the novel, so that the second half seems more passive and reactive, and therefore to indicate suffering. The imperative often calls an action into being, all the more so when compliance with an imperative is then assumed rather than narrated, as it frequently is in the novel. In this way, the imperative is like fiction itself, bringing into existence an imagined state of affairs; in this analysis, the style of Wuthering Heights starts to seem conversant with the novel’s shifts between its own imagined world and the reality of ours or its first readers to which it appeals.

Information structure concerns the relationship between sentence properties and the surrounding discourse: the acceptability of the sentences involved can depend on what has been established by the immediately preceding sentences in the text or conversation. The non-canonical constructions described are passive clauses, extraposition, the existential construction, the ‘it’-cleft construction, pseudo-clefts, dislocation, pre- and post-posing, and reduction. These information-packaging constructions generally have a counterpart which is syntactically more elementary or basic, and although they typically have the same core (logical) meaning as their basic counterpart, they package and present the information of the sentence differently. Our major concern in this chapter will be to describe the syntactic differences between these constructions and their basic counterparts and to investigate the factors which favour or disfavour the use of one of these constructions rather than the more basic counterpart.

This chapter considers the borderline between morphology and syntax and the ways in which morphology and syntax interact with each other. We begin with a look at the ways in which morphology can affect the valency or argument structure of sentences, considering passives and anti-passives, which decrease valency, and causatives and applicatives, which increase valency. We then go on to look at processes of noun incorporation and cliticization and at phrasal verbs, verbs with separable prefixes, and so-called phrasal compounds. The chapter concludes with alook at morphological versus syntactic (periphrastic) expression in English comparatives and superlatives.