Pasivum v češtině
The passive voice in Czech

Summary/Abstract: Analysis of Czech data within the theoretical framework of Modified Valency Theory (Karlík, 2000) shows that the syntactic derivation of passive voice proceeds in two phases. The first phase, which I call (A), can be referred to as <i>deagentization</i>. Given the passive morphology of a verb, A-1 (i.e. the subject or external argument of the verb) is blocked. When the verb is transitive, A-2 (i.e. the object or the internal argument of the verb) enters the caseless subject position “e” of a verb with passive morphology, i.e. the <i>-n-/-t-</i> participle in Czech. The resulting structures are sometimes called syntactically ergative, as shown by ‘PROA-1 <i>chválit</i> NPaccA-2 --> e(i)A-2 <i>chválen-Ø/-a/-o</i> t(i)’, as opposed to lexically ergative, as illustrated in the example ‘PROA-2 <i>blednout</i>’. The second phase, which I call (B), can be referred to as <i>raising</i>. For transitive verbs, this is the movement of A-2 from the subject position “e” of a verb with passive morphology, where it fails to receive a case, into the subject position of the verb <i>být</i>, ‘to be’. The verb ‘to be’ does not assign a Θ-role, however, in this position, A-2 can obtain case and thus be lexically realized: <i>Petr</i>(i)A-2 <i>je</i> e(i) <i>chválen</i> t(i). In the description of the passive voice, it is necessary to distinguish expressions with deverbal adjectives because these are produced through a single phase. Deverbal adjectives are generated earlier in the lexicon.

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