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The Basque impersonal is a detransitivized construction that resembles middles, passives and impersonals. In this construction, the thematic object is the grammatical subject, which bears absolutive case and triggers absolutive agreement, and the auxiliary selected is izan ‘be’. At the same time, there is an implicit agent that is syntactically active even though it is not realized as an ergative argument with corresponding ergative agreement. In this article, we compare the Basque impersonal with the middle, the passive of languages like English, and subject-suppressing impersonals (as in Polish), and we show that it is more similar to the passive and subject-suppressing impersonals, given that (i) in the Basque impersonal, the event is instantiated, (ii) it can be used with more predicate classes, and (iii) it allows dative-marked second objects, among other properties. Similarly, like in English-type passives and subject-suppressing impersonals, the implicit agent of the Basque impersonal is syntactically active, as it can license agent-oriented modifiers and control adjunct purpose clauses. Nevertheless, there are other properties in which these constructions differ; for instance, the implicit agent must be interpreted as human, unlike in passives, and the grammatical subject cannot be other than 3rd person, something attested neither in passives nor in subject-suppressing impersonals. In light of this distribution, we consider the Basque impersonal to be located somewhere in between middles, passives and subject-suppressing impersonals as far as its syntactic properties are concerned.

In this paper we have analyzed subject-suppressing impersonals, namely, structures with an implicit and indefinite subject. In Basque and Catalan, these structures have been considered detransitivized, given that, in transitive structures, a single argument is overtly realized instead of two. In Basque izan 'be' auxiliary is selected over *edun 'have' and in Catalan the ES clitic is introduced. In this paper we demonstrate that in these structures the subject is syntactically present and, therefore, these structures should be considered subject-suppressing impersonals as characterized by Blevins (2003). Nonetheless, morphology leads us to think differently in some cases: both in Catalan and in Spanish the theme argument of ES/SE-structures sometimes behaves like a subject, as it agrees with the auxiliary verb and does not accept a clitic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]