Alternation ‘Impersonal passive’ (Coded)

Originally, this impersonal passive was only found for intransitive and monotransitive verbs, but has during the last 15–20 years been extended to transitive predicates, resulting in what has been called the "New Passive" in Icelandic (cf. Barðdal & Molnár 2003). The new passive does not promote the object to subject position but keeps it in situ. Example: Það var keypt bókina (it was bought book-the.acc). This is a systematic alternation found for all predicates, not tied to any specific verb classes. The standard story is that only unergatives can occur in the Impersonal passive and not unaccusatives. This, however, seems to be changing and unaccusatives are gradually getting more accepted in this construction. Dative Subject predicates are not found in this construction, or any other passive construction for that matter.

Verb Meaning Verb form Basic coding frame Derived coding frame Occurs Comment # Ex.