A challenge to Burzio’s generalization: impersonal transitives in western Bantu

Abstract

This paper examines an unusual syntactic construction peculiar to Lingala and a number of other western Bantu languages. This construction, which we call impersonal transitive, involves a transitive verb with an impersonal third person plural subject along with an overt referential agent in an adjunct prepositional phrase. The verb in this construction does not exhibit passive verbal morphology but still fails to not assign its external θ-role. At the same time, it continues to assign structural case to its direct object, which remains in situ. As such, the impersonal transitive construction raises questions about the universal applicability of Burzio's generalization (1986) which claims that a verb's ability to assign structural case to its direct object is dependent on its assigning an external θ-role.