Correction: I'm told

[Cynthia Allen]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Benji Wald writes:
 
>I hasten to correct a mistake I made in my last message.  It's in the passage:
>
>>...Historical English scholars are quick to point out that early English
>>word order allowed "impersonal passives", e.g., "the boy-DAT was given a
>>book-ACC", where it is actually still "book" that is passivised, to be
>>reinterpreted as "the boy-NOM ..."  (German still approximates English
>>indirect passivisation this way.)  So that is usually offered as another
>>factor occasioned by case loss/merger...
>
>I overshot what I wanted to say.  The OE impersonal passive, reflex of a
>more general older IE construction, is as given above, but the "theme"
>("book") is NOT passivised, since it preserves the ACC marking.  The
>passivisation gets rid of the subject and indicates that by a mark on the
>verb but does NOT change other case marking.
 
OE certainly had what is normally called an 'impersonal' passive, but there
are none (so far as I know) of the sort which Wald mentions.  When there
were two objects, as with 'give', the theme always showed up in the
nominative in a passive, e.g. either 'him(DAT) was given a book(NOM)'  or
'A book(Nom) was given him(Dat) (with other permutations of word order
possible).
>
>Maybe anticipation of the German parallel momentarily confused me, since
>the German approximation of the English (and Bantu) indirect passivisation
>(common in German translations of indirect passivisation in Bantu) is
>"boy-DAT was a book-NOM given", where "book" is indeed passivised but
>postposed (according to German subject post-posing rules, i.e., to-the boy
>was a book given).  (P.S. with neuters, e.g., "book", NOM and ACC are not
>distinct, an IE trait, but number agreement of the verb depends on the
>passivised ACC > NOM, e.g., "boy-DAT *were* book*s* given.).
 
The OE was parallel to the German, with the theme causing subject-verb
agreement (whether it was pre-or-post-verbal).  I think perhaps Benji may
have had some confusion with passives of verbs like *deman* to judge, which
took a single object in the dative case.  The verb had passive morphology
but did not agree with anything, remaining in the neutral third singular,
as in 'them was judged'.
 
I'll reply to other parts of Benji's original posting when I get a bit more
time.
 
 
Cynthia Allen
Linguistics, Arts Faculty
Australian National University
Canberra, ACT 0200
Australia