Creating Raising Verbs: An LFG Analysis of the Complex Passive in Danish

Raising configurations are sometimes described as the result of a diachronic process of semantic bleaching whereby an equi verb loses a semantic component of VOLITION. The verb is left with only a propositional argument in its argument structure and has to raise the subject of this embedded argument in order to fulfill a syntactic requirement that every predicator has a SUBJ. In addition the borders between raising and equi are fuzzy in the sense that some verbs may exhibit raising properties in some contexts and equi properties in other contexts. The paper argues that raising configurations may also arise as the result of argument structure operations. This means that verbs that are not otherwise raising verbs may become raising verbs if the right argument structure properties are present. Such a case is passivisation of verbs with propositional complements, where the most prominent argument is suppressed, leaving the verb with a propositional argument and no most prominent argument. In these cases the matrix verb raises the subject of an embedded verbal complement to fulfil the subject condition. The object of investigation is the Complex Passive in Danish. The Complex Passive is a passive construction observed in Danish and Norwegian consisting of a passive matrix verb and a passive past participle. Crucially the Complex Passive does not have an active counterpart where the subject argument of the embedded verb surfaces as the object of the matrix verb. The paper uncovers a host of properties of this construction including crucial differences between this construction in Danish and Norwegian. Furtheremore it shows how these properties follow from an analysis of this construction as a raising constructions and independently motivated assumptions of LFG.