Expletives and agreement in passives

Abstract

Passives with expletive subjects seem to be possible in all Nordic dialects, but there is variation with respect to the choice of expletive subject, order between participle and object DP and agreement, as well as with respect to which type of passive is preferred. Some varieties use the pronominal expletive det 'it' in passives, while other varieties have a locative form (der/där 'there' or her/här 'here'), or vary between the two (see Larsson 2014 for an overview of expletives in Norwegian and Swedish). Moreover, in some varieties, the object DP can either precede or follow the participle in passives, as in the Swedish examples in (1). These examples also differ with respect to agreement: when the participle follows the DP, it agrees with it in number and gender, when it precedes the DP, it is invariantly neuter singular. [...]