Oshingandjera (Oshiwambo) Passive: Projecting the Implicit Argument

There are two main perspectives on the syntactic status of implicit arguments in verbal passives. One view holds that the implicit argument in a passive is syntactically projected (Collins 2005, 2024; Gotah 2024; Sulemana 2024; Angelopoulos, Collins, Michelioudakis & Terzi 2023), while the opposing view argues that implicit arguments are not syntactically present (Bruening 2013). In this talk, I present evidence from Oshiwambo that supports the first view. Drawing on diagnostics such as helke-expressions, Condition B effects, reciprocal suffixes, obligatory control, and depictive predicates, I show that the implicit agent in the Oshiwambo short passive can participate in syntactic dependencies typically restricted to structurally projected arguments. Based on these patterns, I argue that the external argument in Oshiwambo passives is not syntactically suppressed but rather projected as a null pronoun (pro) in the canonical external argument position.