Demoting the Agent -- Editorial page -- Title page -- LCC data -- Table of contents -- List of contributors -- Preface -- Perspectives on demotion -- 1. Background -- 2. Between active and passive -- 3. S-verbs and reflexives in Swedish -- 4. A note on terminology -- 5. Passive and information structure -- 6. On the semantics of voice -- 7. Semantics and Pragmatics -- References -- Semantic and syntactic patterns in Swedish passives -- 1. S-passive and bli-passive -- 2. Conditions of use -- 2.1. Types of events vs. specific events -- 2.2. Aktionsart -- 3. Frequencies of the two passives -- 4. The nature of the subject -- 5. Alternation between s-passive and bli-passive -- 6. What happens to the demoted agent? -- 6.1. Av-phrases -- 6.2. Impersonal passives -- 6.3. Presentational constructions -- 7. Concluding remarks -- References -- Corpora -- The Eastern Khanty locative-agent constructions -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The basics of the Eastern Khanty clause structure -- 3. Information structure -- 4. Non-canonical constructions -- 4.1. Structural properties of the non-canonical constructions -- 4.2. Eastern Khanty non-canonical constructions in the narrative -- 5. Conclusions on Eastern Khanty non-canonical constructions -- Abbreviations -- References -- Agent back-grounding as a functional domain -- 1. Introduction -- 1.1. Agent demotion and passive -- 1.2. Data -- 2. Be-passive -- 3. Anonymous-agent reflexive -- 3.1. Constraints on the agent -- 3.2. Constraints on the patient -- 4. Resultant state vs. agent anonymity -- 5. Networks of typologically related patterns -- 6. Conclusions -- Sources of data -- References -- Invisible arguments -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Impersonals in Estonian and Finnish -- 3. The `zero person' construction in Finnish and Estonian -- 4. Probing for the implicit argument -- 5. Anaphoric reference: Definite pronouns.

6. Anaphoric reference: Possessives, reflexives, reciprocals -- 6.1. Binding in the impersonal construction -- 6.2. Binding in the zero person construction -- 7. Semantic tests -- 7.1. Adverbials -- 7.2. Control structures -- 7.3. By-phrases -- 8. Bringing the data back home -- 9. Conclusions -- References -- Argument demotion as feature suppression -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Dyadic unaccusatives and two ontological primitives -- 3. Passives and anticausatives in English and Albanian -- 3.1. By-phrases and from-phrases: How different are they? -- 3.2. The issue of purpose clauses and agent-oriented adverbs -- 4. A formal analysis of argument demotion in unaccusative contexts -- 4.1. The structure of causative predications -- 4.2. The structure of activity/process predications -- 4.3. Defining non-active voice -- 4.4. Deriving the unintended causation reading -- 4.5. Deriving the anticausative and the passive -- 5. Conclusion -- References -- A comparative view of the requirement for adverbial modification in middles -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Variation in middles -- 2.1. Some of the syntactic facts -- 2.2. Middles as disposition ascriptions and the role of imperfective aspect -- 2.3. Back to the adverb -- 3. The semantic/pragmatic approach and its problems -- 4. A 'structural' account -- 5. Delimiting the set of appropriate modifiers -- 6. Conclusion and opened questions -- References -- From passive to active -- 1. Introduction -- 1.1. Descriptive background -- 1.2. How to analyze the new construction: Two hypotheses -- 2. Syntactic change in the English auxiliary system -- 3. Grammatical properties of passive vs. active voice -- 3.1. Discourse properties of the passive voice -- 3.2. Syntactic properties of active vs. passive voice clauses -- 4. Cross-linguistic comparison: Passive morphology reanalyzed as active -- 5. The nationwide survey.

5.1. Reliability of judgments -- 5.2. Morphological case -- 5.3. Testing individual predictions -- 6. Conclusions -- 6.1. Why in Icelandic? -- 6.2. Reanalysis as simplification of the grammar -- References -- The relation between information structure, syntactic structure and passive -- 1. Introduction -- 2. German and Norwegian -- 2.1. Structural contrasts -- 2.2. Passive constructions in German and Norwegian -- 2.3. The data -- 2.4. Information structure -- 3. What the translation pairs reveal -- 3.1. Change of voice -- 3.2. Change of topic -- 3.3. Additional support: Introducing an implicit agent -- 4. Concluding remarks -- References -- Syntax and semantics of the deontic WANT-passive in Italo-Romance -- 1. Introduction: The data -- 1.1. Some general properties of WANT-passives -- 1.2. A cross-linguistic view -- 1.3. Ledgeway's WANT-passive in Romance -- 2. General remarks on the passive -- 2.1. Some proposals on passive constructions -- 2.2. The classification of the Romance WANT-passive -- 3. Passive constructions and the external argument in the MP -- 4. The WANT-passive in the MP -- 4.1. General assumptions -- 4.2. The derivation of the deontic passive with WANT -- 5. WANT: Subcategorization frames and modal shift -- 5.1. Syntactic typology of WANT-constructions -- 5.2. WANT and modality's semantic map (cf. Van Auwera & Plungian 1998) -- 6. Conclusion -- References -- Agentivity and the virtual reflexive construction -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Comparing reflexive patient-subject constructions -- 3. Comparing virtual reflexives and middles -- 4. A review of Fellbaum's (1989) lexical semantic analysis -- 5. An alternative lexical semantic analysis -- 6. Conclusion -- Acknowledgements -- References -- Appendix: Some additional attested examples of virtual reflexives -- Arguments in middles -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Genericity in middles.

3. On for-PPs in middles -- 4. On German middles -- 5. Towards an analysis of middle formation -- 5.1. Reflexives and event responsibility -- 5.2. Middles and vPs -- 6. Conclusion -- References -- Language index -- Name index -- Subject index -- The series Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today.