ON PASSIVES OF PASSIVES

Perlmutter and Postal (1977 and subsequent) argued that passives cannot passivize. Three prima facie counterexamples have come to light, found in Turkish, Lithuanian, and Sanskrit. We reex-amine these three cases and demonstrate that rather than counterexemplifying Perlmutter and Postal's generalization, these confirm it. The Turkish construction is an impersonal of a passive, the Lithuanian is an evidential of a passive, and the Sanskrit is an unaccusative with an instrumental case-marked theme. We provide a syntactic analysis of both the Turkish impersonal and the Lithuanian evidential. Finally, we develop an analysis of the passive that captures the generalization that passives cannot passivize.*