Behind the BY-phrase: The syntax and semantics of passive BY-phrases in West Germanic, with a special focus on Dutch

Abstract

BY-phrases are found in long passives cross-linguistically, where they are standardly taken to reintroduce the demoted external theta-role of the passivized verb (e.g. The book was written by John). This thesis explores the syntax of the BY-phrase in Dutch, English and German, to then focus on the semantics of the passive door-phrase in Dutch. As to syntax, the thesis argues that passive BY is a regular preposition taking the DP in the BY-phrase as its complement. Furthermore, it argues that the BY-phrase as a whole must be analyzed as a syntactic adjunct, rather than as the external argument of the passivized verb (contra Collins 2005, 2021). As to the interpretation of the Dutch door-phrase, the thesis argues that passive door (lit. ‘through’) introduces the ‘crucial contributing factor’ (Neeleman & Van de Koot 2012) in a causation relation between a causing event and a resultant state denoted by the past participle. It is shown how the door-phrase is associated with the external theta-role of the passivized verb by a mechanism of Full Interpretation of Thematic Roles (Marelj 2002, 2004), which expands the strictly causal contribution of the door-phrase to match the otherwise implicit external theta-role.