%0 Journal Article
%T The Impersonal Subject -N/T Construction in Polish and the Typology of Voice Heads
%A Ruda, Marta
%J Studies in Polish Linguistics
%V Volume 9 (2014)
%N Vol. 9, Issue 4
%P 203-243
%K impersonals, Polish -no/to construction, Voice, minimal pronoun, extended verbal projection, tense-aspect interaction
%@ 1732-8160
%D 2015
%U https://ejournals.eu/en/journal/studies-in-polish-linguistics/article/the-impersonal-subject-n-t-construction-in-polish-and-the-typology-of-voice-heads
%X The paper offers a novel analysis of the impersonal construction marked with -no/to in Polish. Contra previous accounts, the -no/to verbal morphology is decomposed into two morphemes, -n/t, realizing an impersonal active Voice head and –o, the default spell-out of unvalued agreement features of finite T. The analysis is embedded within a wider set of assumptions about the composition of the extended verbal projection in Polish, including a second active Voice head in addition to Voice found in personal structures. This suggests that the inventory of Voice heads in natural languages includes not only two non-active heads (i.e. passive and middle), but also two active Voice heads (i.e. personal and impersonal). The distributional and interpretational properties of the construction, including Case-related behaviour in secondary-predication contexts, suggest that the impersonal subject is best analysed as a minimal pronoun, whose Case feature is unvalued/absent in the narrow syntax.