2.1 Strict control

In the 1980’s several researchers started to investigate the so called complex passive in Norwegian (see e.g. Engh, Reference Engh1984; Hellan, Reference Hellan1984; Christensen, Reference Christensen1986).

In (2) the object bilen ‘the car’ of the embedded V2 passive participle reparert ‘repaired’ has been promoted to subject of the passive V1 ble forsøkt ‘was tried’ and is realized in the subject position (Spec,IP). ^{Footnote 2} There is no agent and the interpretation can be conveyed by a there-construction in English.

It was noted at the time that the Swedish version of (2) is clearly ungrammatical, both with the morphological s-passive and with the periphrastic bli-passive.

It was concluded that Swedish lacks complex passives, despite the fact that Engh (Reference Engh1984), 18 mentions the example in (4) which looks very much like a complex passive; the subject målet ‘the case’ corresponds to the object of the embedded participle avgjort ‘decided’.

There have since been a number of studies on complex passive in Norwegian (see e.g. Christensen Reference Christensen1991; Engh Reference Engh1994; Hellan Reference Hellan, van Oosterdorp and Anagnostopoulo2001), and at least one on Danish (Ørsnes Reference Ørsnes, Butt and Holloway King2006). Since the term complex passive is also used for other constructions, I will refer to this type as control verb with passive participle, abbreviated CoPP. A schematic structure is shown in (5).

CoPP is, if not common, at least not unusual in present-day Danish and Norwegian. ^{Footnote 3} Both the morphological passive and the periphrastic passive can be used as shown in the following examples.

The participle has the form that is used in the periphrastic passive in the language. I refer to this form as the passive participle and distinguish it from the invariant perfect participle or supine that is used in the perfect tense (Larsson Reference Larsson2009). ^{Footnote 4} In Danish and bokmål Norwegian ^{Footnote 5} there is no agreement and the neuter singular form is used with all subjects. In the nynorsk variety, abbreviated NNo., the participle, in principle, agrees in number and gender with the subject (as in Swedish). ^{Footnote 6} See the second participle in (8).

The number of first verbs that are used in CoPP is rather small. The most common ones are listed in (9). ^{Footnote 7}

The verbs are typical subject or object control verbs; in the active they take an infinitival complement and the matrix subject or object and the understood subject of the infinitival clause are coreferential. They do not take finite complements and the predicate in the infinitival clause must be controllable (Zaenen Reference Zaenen and Pustejovsky1993). These properties are illustrated in (10).

In the passive, these verbs may combine with passive participles, see (6) and (7), and the matrix subject is understood as the internal argument of the participle. Supine forms (perfect participles of active verbs) are impossible and infinitival complements are dispreferred.

CoPP is typically found with passive particples of transitive verbs; the participle can be predicated of the internal argument.

CoPP is not found with unaccusative V2 although such verbs can be predicated of the subject. This presumably follows from the fact that they are not controllable, see (10c).

CoPP is also not found with unergative verbs like cykle ‘to bike’. It seems plausible that this follows from the argument structure since participles of unergative verbs cannot be predicated of their argument, see (14). ^{Footnote 8}

Examples of object control verbs used with CoPP are shown in (15) and (16). Note that neither of the contollers is expressed. In the nynorsk variety, the passive participles may show agreement with the matrix subject although this is no longer common, as noted above.

Already Engh (Reference Engh1984) noted that CoPP is blocked by prepositions.

Data like this have been used by e.g. Holmberg (Reference Holmberg2002) as evidence that the passive and the participle are reanalyzed as a complex predicate. ^{Footnote 9} Ørsnes (Reference Ørsnes, Butt and Holloway King2006) argues against this analysis and points out that a complex predicate typically has a single external argument whereas the suppressed agents of the control verb and the participle need not be coreferential. Example (2) can be understood to convey that someone tries to arrange for the car to be repaired by someone else. ^{Footnote 10} Furthermore complex predicate formation is not possible when the second verb has independent tense (Wurmbrand Reference Wurmbrand2001, 79ff.) but the two verbs in CoPP may have different reference times.

Another indication that CoPP does not involve complex predicate formation is the existence of examples like (21) where two participles are conjoined. ^{Footnote 11}

In the English translations I have followed Ørsnes (Reference Ørsnes, Butt and Holloway King2006) and tried to convey the meaning by using a paraphrase which introduces an event of trying, recommending, forbidding etc. Overt agent phrases are possible but are seldom present. In many ways, sentences with CoPP resemble impersonal passives, i.e. passives where no argument is promoted to subject, and it is not surprising that CoPP is also found in impersonal passives.

CoPP is also found in presentational sentences in Danish and Norwegian, provided that the pivot (the subject associate) is indefinite (Ørsnes Reference Ørsnes, Butt and Holloway King2006, 394).

Note that unergative verbs may be used in impersonal passives, see (22), but not in presentational sentences.

The difference possibly has to do with whether the argument of the passive participle is expressed or not. CoPP with participles of unergative verb are unavailable when the argument is expressed, as in (14) and (24), but possible when the argument is suppressed, as in (22). ^{Footnote 12}

As mentioned above, corresponding examples of CoPP in Swedish are blatantly ungrammatical with both passive types, see (3). The same holds for object control verbs as shown in (25). ^{Footnote 13}

3.1 Raising passive with infinitive

Schematically raising passives with infinitive have the following structure.

As shown above, these verbs take a finite subordinate clause in the active, see (38a). The entire subordinate clause can be realized as the subject of the passive verb, as in (43a), although this is uncommon. The extraposed version in (43b) is somewhat more common, but the version where the subject has been raised out of an infinitival clause is most common, as in (39b), repeated here in (43c) (Lyngfelt Reference Lyngfelt, Edlund and Mellenius2011). ^{Footnote 19}

Like other raising verbs, raising passives do not assign a thematic role to the subject. If the embedded verb takes an expletive subject, so does the raising passive, and idiom chunks can appear as subjects.

These two tests can serve as diagnostics for distinguishing raising passives from passives with control verbs which are clearly ungrammatical with expletives and idiom chunks (Lødrup Reference Lødrup2014, 372f.).

Swedish examples of raising passives are typically construed with a bare infinitive without infinitive marker, as shown in the examples above. ^{Footnote 20}

In Danish raising passives, the overt infinitive marker at is used, see (46).

According to Faarlund et al. (Reference Faarlund, Lie and Ivar Vannebo1997), the infinitive marker å is used with Norwegian raising passives, see (47a), but there is actually variation and examples without å are also found, see (47b) and (47c). ^{Footnote 21}

In all three languages, only s-passives are used productively; the bli-passive is seldom used with raising passives.

Most of the raising passives in (41) can only be used as subject-to-subject raising verbs and cannot be construed with overt objects in the active.

In this respect the raising passives behave like say in contemporary English which can be construed with an infinitival clause in the passive but does not admit an overt object, see Los (Reference Los2009), 119f. and Noël & Colleman (Reference Noël and Colleman2009).

However, a few raising passives can be used in the active with an object plus an infinitival complement, i.e. the construction known as accusative with infinitive (ACI) or exceptional case marking (ECM), see e.g. Postal (Reference Postal1974) and Lødrup (Reference Lødrup2008).

The corresponding Danish verb is construed with an object and a prepositional complement.

Given that the verb anse can be used in the active with an overt object, the passive versions can be analyzed as subject to object raising followed by regular passive. However, the majority of raising passives are not ECM-verbs and do not take overt objects in the active. ^{Footnote 22} For this reason I follow Lyngfelt (Reference Lyngfelt, Edlund and Mellenius2011) and Ørsnes (Reference Ørsnes, Alexiadou and Schäfer2013) and analyze most of the raising passives as instances of subject-to-subject raising, not as passivized ECM constructions. Note furthermore that when the exceptional verb anse is used with an overt object, the infinitival V2 is practically always a copula verb. The other raising passive verbs are used with a variety of V2 verbs as shown in the examples.

3.2 Raising passive with participle

What has seldom been made explicit in the literature is that passive raising verbs also can be used with passive participles, abbreviated RaPP, with the following structure.

This structure is identical to the one given for CoPP in (5) and this may have led some researchers to include such examples among CoPP (complex passives), (see e.g. Engh Reference Engh1994; Faarlund et al. Reference Faarlund, Lie and Ivar Vannebo1997; Hellan Reference Hellan, van Oosterdorp and Anagnostopoulo2001). Others distinguish them from CoPP, see e.g. Christensen (Reference Christensen1991, 47) and Ørsnes (Reference Ørsnes, Butt and Holloway King2006, 389).

All the verbs listed in (41) can be used with passive participles, with varying frequency. The Swedish example in (37) is repeated here as (58), followed by Danish and Norwegian examples. ^{Footnote 23}

Recall that in the active, these verbs take a finite complement without imposing any constraints on the type of subject or verb. In the raising passive construction only transitive verbs and unaccusative intransitive verbs are possible, as noted by Engh (Reference Engh1994) who gives the pair of examples in (61).

Just as with control verbs, this restriction presumably follows from the argument structure of the participle; participles of unergative verbs cannot be predicated of the single argument, see (14), (Hellan Reference Hellan, van Oosterdorp and Anagnostopoulo2001; Platzack Reference Platzack2010).

Most verbs that can be used in the RaPP construction do not take overt objects plus participle in the active. ^{Footnote 24}

The exceptional verb anse, which can be used with an overt object plus infinitive in all three languages as discussed in Section 3.1, can also be used with object plus participle. In the majority of the cases, the object is a reflexive pronoun, as in (66) (Lyngfelt Reference Lyngfelt, Edlund and Mellenius2011).

A few examples with non-reflexive objects were found in the corpus searches. In (67) det is an anticipating expletive for the extraposed infinitival clause.

3.3 Summary

Raising passives are used in all three languages. They differ from both strict and semi-control verbs in that they can take expletive subjects and raised idiom chunks. The main criterion is whether V1 can be used as a control verb or not. None of the verbs in (41) can take an infinitival complement in the active whereas they often do in the passive.

Semantically raising and control passives differ in perspective; raising passives typically report on a state of affairs, a proposition, whereas control and semi-control verbs express a relation to a future state of affairs. ^{Footnote 25} There are a few verbs which can do both and which take both sentential and infinitival complements. One such verb is frygte, frykte, frukta ‘fear’. In all three languages this verb can in the active be used with both complement types, with sentential complements being more frequent. See the Norwegian examples in (68).

This verb can also be used as a raising passive in all three languages and in Danish and Norwegian it is found with passive participles.

Given that the verb is frequently used in the s-passive as a raising passive, it seems plausible that the example in (69b) should be analyzed as a RaPP construction and not as a CoPP with an unaccusative verb, as has sometimes been assumed (Engh Reference Engh1994). The fact that the bli-passive is not possible, (69c), further supports the RaPP analysis, compare (49). ^{Footnote 26} We can thus maintain our generalization in Section 2 that CoPP is only found with controllable transitive verbs. Raising passives do not impose any selection on the type of verb in the complement.

4.1 Present-day Swedish

Examples like (72a) are occasionally found in Swedish texts. ^{Footnote 27}

Note that neither the version with bli-passive in (72b) nor the bare passive participle in (72c) is grammatical. Many of the hits are from unedited informal blog texts.

But the construction is also found in edited newspaper texts from both Sweden and Finland.

The construction can also be found in legal texts which presumably have been carefully worded. This suggests that it has become part of standard language, although rather infrequently used.

The construction is most common with försöka but occasional examples are found with the verbs söka ‘seek’ and våga ‘dare’. ^{Footnote 28}

CoPI in Swedish seems to be restricted to a few strict control verbs and there are no indications that the construction is spreading to semantically similar verbs. It has not been attested with the verbs orka ‘have enough energy to’ or slippa ‘avoid, not have to’, and the constructed examples in (78) do not seem acceptable.

The construction has not been found with object control verbs, like rekommendera, or with semi-control verbs like begära ‘request’.

As shown by the paraphrases, the interpretations of the examples in (73)–(77) resemble the interpretations given for the CoPP examples in Danish and Norwegian. A further indication that the CoPI construction is functionally equivalent to the Danish and Norwegian CoPP is that it can be used in presentational sentences, see (80), and impersonal passives, see (81) (slightly adapted from a blog example).

4.1.1 Animacy

All the examples of the CoPI construction in Swedish given so far have inanimate subjects or the expletive det. This presumably blocks the ordinary control interpretation as inanimate referents cannot be agents of försöka. ^{Footnote 29} But animate subjects are possible if the context makes it clear that someone else is responsible for making the attempt.

There is an interesting interaction with the choice of passive form. In a regular control construction with a passive infinitival complement, the bli-passive is strongly preferred in Swedish, see Engdahl (Reference Engdahl, Lyngfelt and Solstad2006, 32) from where the examples in (83) are taken (see also (30)).

As mentioned above in Section 2, control verbs presuppose that the subject has some control over the situation. In (83a), the subject is understood to have acted in a way so that s/he would be reelected, whereas this interpretation is not available for (83b). The use of s-passives in the CoPI construction thus contributes to the interpretation that someone else is responsible for bringing about the event.

In Danish and Norwegian as well, most of the attested examples of CoPP have inanimate subjects, but animate subjects are possible. ^{Footnote 30}

One further observation can be made here. In the CoPI examples, the control verbs are often modified by temporal or modal auxiliaries, see e.g. (82). With an unmodified verb, the example is somewhat less acceptable.

The auxiliaries ska ‘shall’ and måste ‘must’ are common in CoPI examples. It may be that these auxiliaries add an indirectness that helps block the regular control assignment.

4.2 Has ‘försöka’ become a raising verb in Swedish?

The syntactic frame in (71) resembles that of a lexical raising verb like verka ‘seem’.

One hypothesis that comes to mind is that försöka, söka and våga have developed into auxiliary-like raising verbs in present-day Swedish, similar to aspectual auxiliaries like börja ‘begin’, sluta ‘end’ and fortsätta ‘continue’. In present-day Swedish these verbs allow raised subjects.

Bylin (Reference Bylin2013) has studied what she calls the auxiliation process of these verbs in the history of Swedish. ^{Footnote 31} The oldest examples with börja ‘begin’ have animate subjects, (89a), but quite early the verb starts to be used with inanimate subjects, as in (89b). Expletive subjects, (89c), turn up around 1750 and around the same time Bylin finds the first examples with a passive infinitive, (89d). ^{Footnote 32}

However, försöka does not undergo this development, as Bylin shows. It does not accept an inanimate subject with an active infinitive, nor can it be used with a weather expletive.

Holmberg (Reference Holmberg2002), 122 cites the presentational example in (91) as evidence that försöka has undergone restructuring to a raising verb which can take an expletive subject.

However försöka still requires the pivot (subject associate) to be animate which means it is still a control verb, as noted by Wiklund (Reference Wiklund2005, 45) who contrasts (91) with (92). ^{Footnote 33}

Wiklund also points out that försöka cannot be used with an idiom, unlike true raising verbs.

I conclude that the control verbs we find in the CoPI construction in Swedish are indeed control verbs and have not turned into raising verbs. In Norwegian and Danish, the CoPI construction is rare and most examples are judged to be ungrammatical. As expected the CoPP version is preferred. ^{Footnote 34}

4.3 Historical development

Engh (Reference Engh1994) includes a survey of the emergence of non-local passive constructions in Norwegian. ^{Footnote 35} He traces the first appearances of strict control verbs with passive participles to the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. The first verbs to be used are søke ‘seek’, attested in 1761, and forsøke ‘try’ from 1837 (Engh Reference Engh1994, 302 fn 15). ^{Footnote 36}

During the 19th century the CoPP construction became noticeably more frequent. Engh (Reference Engh1994, 283) attributes this to the growth of newspapers and in particular to the increased use of advertisements.

Corpus searches for corresponding s-passive forms of söka and försöka followed by a passive participle in the Swedish historical corpora in Korp (1,35 G) yielded no examples but there were a few examples with bli-passive, both from the newspaper Aftonbladet. ^{Footnote 37}

There were no examples from later periods, nor from other genres. I take this as an indication that CoPP did not become established in Swedish at the time when it increased rapidly in Norwegian. However, in the historical corpora I found around 30 examples of the CoPI construction with active söka, försöka or våga, followed by a passive infinitive. ^{Footnote 38}

The following example is one of only a few with an overt agent phrase:

We noticed above that most of the modern examples of CoPI have an inanimate subject, i.e. a subject that cannot be interpreted as the agent of the control verb. The same is true for most of the examples from the 19th century with a few exceptions. In (105) the subject is alla ‘everybody’.

However, the meaning is clear: someone else must not try to force everybody to get married in a rush. Similarly in (106), it is someone else who tries to win over the military on their side.

It is maybe not surprising that the CoPI construction started to spread during the 19th century when several other control verbs began to be used as raising verbs, allowing an underlying object of a passive infinitive to raise to become subject. We have seen this development with aspectual verbs like börja ‘begin’ in (89d). Even more common is this pattern with hinna ‘have time to’ (about 12 000 hits in the historical corpus, 1,3 G).

But recall that the CoPI verbs have not developed into raising verbs, see Section 4.2.

4.4 Summary

The CoPI construction in Swedish seems to correspond quite closely to the CoPP construction in Danish and Norwegian. Nevertheless the CoPI construction has not become as established in Swedish as the CoPP pattern in Danish and Norwegian. CoPP is used rather frequently, in many genres and with both subject and object control verbs and can, at least in principle, be iterated.

CoPI in Swedish has only been found with three subject control verbs, försöka, söka and våga, and the low incidence (less than 0.3 per million words in the investigated corpora) indicates that it is not very productive. The small number of possible verbs makes it hard to test whether CoPI can be iterated. The following constructed example sounds marginally acceptable to me.