On Passive and Perfect Participles

Abstract

In this chapter, I claim that the English participial suffix -EN (as in written, closed, etc.) is the default inflection for English verbs when no other suffix is selected by the verb’s immediate syntactic environment, explaining the occurrence of -EN in a puzzlingly heterogeneous variety of contexts. Contrary to previous literature, I argue against any role for -EN in passivization. I claim instead that the auxiliary be is critically involved in marking the lack of agentivity in English passives. Even this aspect of the passive construction is a relatively superficial feature of English though, since it does not hold in languages that express passive synthetically as a verbal inflection, rather than analytically.