THE UNIFORM HYPOTHESIS OF NI-PASSIVES IN JAPANESE AND MOVEMENT INTO θ-POSITION

Abstract

In Japanese, it is hotly debated whether two variants of the so-called ni-passives—direct and indirect passives—are derived in the same way. This question can be rephrased as whether we need to postulate two types of -rares: one that assigns a θ-role to its external argument in indirect passives and another that lacks external θ, allowing object-to-subject promotion in direct passives. I focus on ni-direct-passives and provide new data supporting the Uniform Hypothesis, which states that there is only one passive -rare in Japanese.