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Copyright of Estudis Romànics is the property of Institut d'Estudis Catalans and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Katalanistik is the property of Zeitschrift fur Katalanistik and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)