The verbal passive: No unique phrasal idioms

The paper reports and discusses two studies we conducted to systematically assess the distribution of English phrasal idioms across various diatheses (transitive, unaccusatives, adjectival and verbal passives). Both studies, a quantitative survey of idiom dictionaries and an experiment using invented idioms, show that the distribution of phrasal idioms depends on the diathesis of the idiom's head. While transitives, unaccusatives and adjectival passives can head idioms specific to them, verbal passive idioms uniformly have a transitive (active) version. This pattern, we argue, shows that phrasal idioms are stored in the (pre-syntactic) lexicon as subentries of the entry of their head (not as independent entries). Further, it reinforces proposals that the verbal passive is a post-lexical output, which consequently lacks its own lexical entry, contrasting in this respect with the other diatheses we examined. Our findings also provide evidence that the lexicon comprises derived entries, which we take as indication that it is an active component of grammar.