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Deponency in Finite and Nonfinite Contexts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2026

Laura Grestenberger
Laura Grestenberger*
Affiliation:
University of Vienna
*
Institut für Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Wien, Sensengasse 3a, A-1090 Wien, Austria, [Laura.Grestenberger@univie.ac.at]
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Abstract

This article investigates the syntactic properties of deponents in finite and nonfinite contexts in several Indo-European languages (Vedic Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, Latin, Hittite, Modern Greek) and proposes a novel definition of deponency: deponents are morphologically nonactive verbs with noncanonical agent arguments that are merged below VoiceP. Since VoiceP is spelled out with nonactive morphology in those languages if it does not introduce an external argument itself, the result is a surface mismatch between morphological form and syntactic function. This proposal predicts that only certain nonfinite forms of deponents will surface with the syntax/morphology mismatch, namely, those that include VoiceP. Nominalizations without VoiceP will appear to suspend the voice mismatch. These predictions are shown to be correct with respect to the behavior of deponent participles in the languages under study.

Keywords

deponentsmorphosyntactic mismatchesVoiceparticiplesGreekVedicSanskritLatinHittite

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Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 94 , Issue 3 , September 2018 , pp. 487 - 526
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 Linguistic Society of America

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