Passive head only selects for agentive Voice in Japanese: a reply to Jo and Seo (2023)

Abstract Developing a comprehensive theory of passives has been a central goal in Japanese theoretical linguistics. A recent study by Jo and Seo (J East Asian Linguist 32:91–132, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831-023-09253-x ) represents one such attempt. They propose a uniform syntactic analysis of direct and indirect passives in Japanese. Building on the syntactic head Pass(ive) introduced by Bruening (Syntax 16(1):1–41, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9612.2012.00171.x ), they argue that, unlike in English, where Pass selects exclusively for an agentive Voice, the Japanese Pass head can take as its sister a projection of either an agentive or an expletive Voice. While (Jo and Seo in J East Asian Linguist 32:91–132, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10831-023-09253-x ) make a valuable contribution to the theory of Japanese passives, I argue that their analysis encounters empirical challenges and adopts unmotivated theoretical assumptions. Specifically, I demonstrate that the Pass head in Japanese, like its counterpart in English, selects only for agentive Voice. Furthermore, I contend that no syntactic or semantic differences in the Pass head need to be posited between Japanese and English. If my arguments hold, this paper supports the view that the defining characteristic of passives is the demotion or removal of the external argument, and this is made possible by the Pass head as one of the functional heads provided by Universal Grammar (UG).