Ludmila Veselovská; Petr Karlík

Analytic Passives in Czech

The paper discusses Czech analytic passive structures and proposes its format in a general Minimalist framework. We argue that the specific properties of the Czech passive structures are the result of several factors. First, it is the nature and position of the Czech auxiliary verb být ('be') which is inserted into the functional projection of v* with the result of blocking the accusative Case and Agent theta role assignment in SPEC(v*). Then we discuss the nature of the passive participle. We argue that the passive participle is a syntactically complex element consisting of the verbal stem and adjectival suffix. In the initial phase of derivation the verbal stem constitutes the head of the verbal projection and merges with the theta object. In the next phase, however, the adjectival suffix and the auxiliary be project into the phrase corresponding to the Czech structure with copula and predicate adjective. The phase by phase derivation in combination with the systematic multilevel insertion of syntactic elements then explain the specific inflectional morphology as well as interpretation with no further stipulations.