Impersonal construction

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An impersonal construction is a clausal construction in which no subject is realized.

Examples

The following examples are impersonal constructions from German:

Es wird getanzt.
EXPLETIVE AUX dance.PARTICIPLE

Dancing is going on.

Man trägt diesen Sommer weiß.
one wear.3SG this summer white

One wears white this summer.

Japanese does not require an overt/dummy subject, as is demonstrated in this example:

Nichiyobi heiten
sunday close.shop

We are closed on Sundays. (cited after Yamamoto 2006: 4)

Comments

In the recent linguistic literature, a clear distinction has been made between passives and impersonal constructions (cf. Blevins 2003, Yamamoto 2006).

  • "Whereas passivization detransitivizes a verb by deleting its logical subject, impersonalization preserves transitivity, and merely inhibits the syntactic realization of a surface subject." (Blevins 2003).

The non-realized subjects of impersonals are often interpreted as indefinite human agents, thus those constructions are often only possible with verbs which select a human agent. In languages which require an overt subject (i.e. languages not allowing pro-drop) a dummy subject is used.

Synonym

  • subjectless construction

References

  • Blevins, James P. 2003. Passives and Impersonals. Journal of Linguistics 39: 473-520.
  • Yamamoto, Mutsumi. 2006. Agency and Impersonality. Their Linguistic and Cultural Manifestation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins.
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