On the Implicitness of Arguments in Event Passives∗

In (1), where no by phrase is present, it is argued that we still interpret the sentence in such a way that someone or something is responsible for the destruction, whether it be a person or an explosion. In addition to this semantic intuition, there are a number of phenomena which may be seen as empirical evidence that an argument must be semantically present. These include binding and the combinability with subject-oriented adverbials such as deliberately or with purpose clauses (for a critical discussion of some of the evidence see for instance Kaiser and Vihman 2006, Marelj 2004, Solstad 2007b). However, the most prominent piece of evidence is the simple observation that a by phrase may be inserted in (1) and that the complement of such a by phrase may surface as the subject of an active clause corresponding to the passive, cf. (2):