2.1 Agreement on adjectives in German

In contemporary Standard German (as in most contemporary German dialects), only attributive adjectives agree in gender, number and case with the noun they modify (see (8)), whereas in predicative position, adjectives occur in uninflected form (see (9)).

In earlier stages of German (Old High German), however, predicative adjectives did agree with the subject in gender, number and case:

Some contemporary Highest Alemannic dialects in Switzerland have maintained predicative agreement, see Fleischer (2007: 198–201) for references; in (11a), the adjective is the primary predicate, in (11b), it functions as a depictive; the inflection in predicative position corresponds to the so-called strong adjectival inflection (which generally obtains in contexts without determiners or with uninflected determiners):⁷

In both of these contexts, other German dialects (including the Standard language) would use the uninflected form, see Bucheli Berger & Glaser (2004) and Bucheli Berger (2005a) for details.

2.2 A note on terminology

Before addressing agreement on past participles, we will need to introduce some terminology. The current section will deal in some detail with different kinds of perfect-type constructions. We borrow the notion of perfect-type constructions from Larsson (2009) in order to refer to any construction of a form involving ‘have’ or ‘be’ combined with a past participle which is surface-identical to a perfect tense (modulo inflection on the participle) – without however meaning to imply that such a form has to be analyzed syntactically or semantically as a perfect in a narrow sense. Perfect-type constructions we will deal with in our paper include the so-called haben-passive, the stative/sein-passive, double compound perfects and perfects in a narrow sense (present, past or future perfects).

Within perfects in a narrow sense, different readings are commonly distinguished, viz., existential (also known as experiential), universal (or continuous) and resultative readings (see, e.g., McCoard 1978; Portner 2011, or any other reference on perfects). We will classify the first two readings as eventive (that is, their main content concerns the core event of the lexical verb), while the last one will be referred to as stative (that is, its at-issue content is a state resulting from the core event).

Since our concern will be perfect-type constructions more generally, we will use the dichotomy stative (haben-passive, stative/sein-passive, and resultative readings of perfects) vs. eventive (existential and universal perfects) in the larger context, while we reserve the terminology of universal vs. existential vs. resultative to perfects in the narrow sense. Notice that there is a wide-spread assumption that all perfects, even eventive ones, come with a state (the so-called perfect state), but which is not necessarily the at-issue content of a sentence.⁸

Concerning the forms of perfect-type constructions, we will distinguish simple versions, containing a single instance of a (finite) auxiliary and a participle (e.g., has eaten) from double or double compound versions, where we have a first, finite form of the perfect auxiliary, combined with a past participle of the perfect auxiliary, and a past particle of the lexical verb (e.g., has had eaten). In principle, both simple and double compound versions may be perfects in a narrow sense or not, and the participle of the lexical verb may or may not be inflected.

Finally, since we will be dealing with at least two different forms of stative (and adjectival) passives, we will need to distinguish them. We will refer to the German Zustandspassiv (which is based on the copula sein ‘be’ and is generally called “adjectival’ or ‘’stative” passive) as the sein-passive, to set it apart from the haben-passive, which is based on haben ‘have’.

2.3 Agreement patterns on past participles

Given that participles are traditionally thought to form a mixed category with both verbal and adjectival properties, it is little surprising that in these Alemannic dialects, past participles can inflect as well in non-attributive position.

With predicative adjectives (including depictives), agreement is straightforward, as illustrated in (11) above: The predicate agrees with its (semantic) subject. In the case of perfect-type constructions, however, participles agree with the underlying theme (that is: in case of a transitive verb, with the object, and in case of an unaccusative verb, with the subject):⁹

Importantly, participle agreement in Highest Alemannic only occurs in certain perfect-type constructions:

(13a) illustrates a haben-passive,¹⁰ which we will discuss in detail in Section 3.2, whereas (13b) illustrates a perfect in a narrow sense, namely a present perfect tense. (14a) illustrates a sein-passive based on an unaccusative verb, while (14b) is a present perfect. In these present perfect-type constructions, inflection is limited to what we will refer to as stative interpretations (as is also indicated by the translations in (12)–(14)), whereas standard, eventive perfects do not show agreement.¹¹ Remember that eventive means that the main assertion is about the event expressed by the lexical verb itself (i.e., existential or universal perfects), whereas we will speak of stative readings whenever the main assertion is about a state resulting from (or caused by, or posterior to) the event expressed by the lexical verb (i.e., resultative perfects or sein- and haben-passives). This can be diagnosed by the behavior with respect to certain types of adverbials, like adverbials of the type since timepoint/timespan (e.g., since yesterday/last year/2012): with eventive forms, the core event is located within the interval denoted by the adverbial, whereas with stative forms, the subsequent state is located within this interval. We will use such adverbials to distinguish the eventive readings of the double perfect from the stative readings of the haben- and sein-passive in Sections 3.2.1 and 4.2.2.

Additionally, the difference between the haben-passive and any kind of perfect also manifests itself in the status of the subject in (13): in (13b), the subject is necessarily the agent of the event, whereas this need not be the case in (13a).

2.4 Stativity in agreeing past participles

The importance of the presence of a state perfect type constructions with agreeing participles is an old observation that can be found both in traditional descriptions (in the form of dialect grammars) and in more recent accounts like Bucheli Berger (2005a: 150–151). The sources are also quite explicit that inflection indicates a true resultant state and not merely something weaker like telicity, perfectivity or the termination of the event. In what follows, we will provide some statements from the descriptive literature together with illustrative examples.

According to Stucki (1917), agreement in the dialect of Jaun (canton of Fribourg) expresses a present or past state. He provides the following contrast:¹²

In the eventive perfect in (15a), the event is modified by a temporal adverbial. In the resultative perfect in (15b), however, the result of getting married is foregrounded.

For the dialect of Uri, Clauss (1929: 186) notes that the participle is apparently only inflected if the state resulting from the action is meant to be denoted. It is uninflected when the mere termination of an action is expressed. This becomes clear in (16), where as a result of eating the bread there is nothing left:

The same characterization in terms of resultativity can be found in Hodler (1969: 345–347) for the dialects spoken in the Bernese Oberland,¹³ in Hotzenköcherle (1934: 407) for the dialect of Mutten (Canton of Grisons), and in Szadrowsky (1936: 457) for the Walser dialects (spoken in the Canton of Grisons).

As another indication of stativity, in several of the examples very high current relevance seems to be involved and the state is often localized at the moment of utterance by an adverbial:

The fact that agreement does not simply mark perfectivity can be seen in the fact that in narrative sequences, which are generally assumed to require perfective aspect (see Smith 1991), the inflected versions are inappropriate:

Now, does the presence of inflection generally indicate that we are not dealing with perfects in a narrow sense, but rather with haben-passives? Should this be the case, one would expect the following to hold: i) the subject in sentences with an inflected participle should never be required to be the agent; and ii) agent-oriented adverbials (like e.g., selber ‘self’) should always be ungrammatical with agreeing participles. At first sight, these predictions seem to be borne out, since in examples like (13a), the subject is not necessarily the agent, and one can explicitly deny that the subject was the agent of the verb. Similarly, as shown in (19), selber is indeed ungrammatical when inflection is present.

However, the presence of agreement on a participle does not always imply that we are dealing with a haben-passive. If we extend an example like (16) and try to deny that the subject is the agent here, this leads to infelicity.

If (20) were an instance of a haben-passive, we would expect the continuation to be felicitous, since it should mean something along the lines of ‘we are in possession of bread that is in an eaten state’. Therefore, examples like (20) (and probably also (i) in footnote 9 and (15b)) have to be classified as instances of resultative readings of perfects in a narrow sense.¹⁴

The facts above thus show that the agreement on participles does not necessarily indicate that we are dealing with a haben-passive. Rather, the generalization is somewhat weaker: Agreement obtains when the construction is stative and is not limited to mere haben-passives (a fact that will become even clearer when we address agreeing participles in the double compound perfect and eventive passives below).¹⁵

Participle agreement in Alemannic is thus different from participle agreement in Romance (see Belletti 2017 for a recent overview) in that agreement is restricted to stative contexts, while in Romance, participle agreement is widespread with eventive perfects. In French, for example, agreement not only obtains in haben-passives (as, e.g., (21)) but also in eventive perfects, as long as the controller moves across the participle, see (22):

Importantly, movement of the controller in eventive perfects in Highest Alemannic does not affect agreement, it is impossible irrespective of the surface position of the controller.

We propose instead that agreement on the participle is linked to syntactic category in Highest Alemannic dialects: Agreement obtains when the participle is adjectival externally, but not when it is verbal. That the participle is adjectival in stative passives is uncontroversial since this is a copula construction. We will propose below that the haben-passive is also a copula construction, with haben ‘have’ being the spell-out of the copula + a preposition. It thus involves a small clause (SC)-structure that relates the semantic subject (the object) to a predicate, viz., the inflected participle. In the eventive perfect, however, the participle functions as the main predicate and there are two VPs. The difference is roughly illustrated in (23), with the haben-passive in (23a) and the eventive perfect in (23b):

(23)	a.
	b.

Agreeing participles thus pattern with predicative adjectives in these varieties, and the agreement asymmetry supports the traditional classification into adjectival and verbal participles. We further assume that the stativity of stative and haben-passives and resultative perfects comes about via the adjectival head, which we thus treat as a stativizer, in line with previous work, see, e.g., Bruening (2014); Alexiadou, Anagnostopoulou & Schäfer (2015).

Independent support for the classification into verbal and adjectival participles comes from verb cluster orders: Perfect forms without inflection can generally occur in both ascending (the governing verb precedes the governed) and descending (the governed verb precedes the governing verb) order in these Highest Alemannic dialects. However, once the participle is inflected, only the descending 21-order is grammatical:

Given that predicative adjectives cannot occur after the right sentence bracket, i.e., after the clause-final verb in German, cf. (25), this is expected if agreeing participles are adjectival:

Uninflected participles like in (24a), on the other hand, are verbal, and therefore can occur in both orders that are generally possible in the verbal complex in these varieties.¹⁶

This simple solution will, however, turn out to be inadequate because there are two constructions in these dialects where agreement on the participle is obligatory even though the participle seems to have verbal properties, viz. double compound perfects and eventive passives, as in (7) above. We will discuss them in Sections 3, 4 and 5, respectively.

3.1 Stativity in double compound perfects in Alemannic

In this section, we will investigate the stative component in DCPs, which has given rise to a popular analysis of DCPs in terms of resultative aspect (see, e.g. Litvinov & Radcenko 1998; Rödel 2007; Brandner, Salzmann & Schaden 2016). Notice that the relevant literature distinguishes several readings of DCPs, but like Brandner, Salzmann & Schaden (2016), we will assume that these are different use-cases of the same underlying structure and semantics.

In a first use, the so-called anterior use, the DCP describes an event in the past as being complete/anterior to some reference point in the past:

The DCP can occur in both subordinate and in (possibly independent) main clauses, but in any case, there is another event with respect to which the event marked by the DCP is interpreted as anterior. Now, to what degree is such a construction stative? Evidence for a stative component comes from the compatibility of DCPs in anterior uses with how long (see Rothstein 2008: 42–43), which is infelicitous with achievements in the preterite, but acceptable with (resultative) perfects:

Since discover is a punctual event, it has no duration in itself; hence the incompatibility of the event itself with adverbials like how long. However, the state resulting from that event – the formula being discovered – has a duration, and can therefore be modified by such adjuncts. Unsurprisingly, as shown by Brandner, Salzmann & Schaden (2016: 26), the DCP also allows for such modifiers:

DCPs behave very similarly to resultative perfects; however, they do not show the full range of eventive readings one would expect from a “standard” pluperfect (see, e.g., Squartini 1999; Brandner, Salzmann & Schaden 2016). Consider the English example in (32a) and its Alemannic translation in (32b):

The most obvious interpretation of (32a) is that Peter resigned on Monday; consequently, the adverbial on Monday can modify the event time of resigning. This is not a possible interpretation of the (Alemannic) DCP: (32b) can only mean that Peter resigned before Monday; thus, on Monday cannot modify the event time but only a post-state, viz., the state of having resigned.¹⁷ This thus crucially shows that the DCP contains a stative component, and that the event is not as foregrounded or accessible as it would be in a full-blown pluperfect.¹⁸

The second interpretive possibility is the so-called superperfect or two-way action reading (see Thieroff 1994), as in (33):

In this use there is no textually given reference point; it generally expresses a reversal of the resultant state/perfect state with respect to the moment of utterance (cf. the presence of ‘now’). Thus, (33) would be typically uttered when what had been forgotten is remembered again by the speaker. In any case, no contextually salient past event is necessary in order to licence the DCP.

As argued in Brandner, Salzmann & Schaden (2016: 27), the superperfect interpretation can be related to the anterior reading as follows: Like the anterior reading, it expresses the fact that a state held prior/up to some reference point in the past. However, since no such reference point is given, the moment of utterance is used as the reference point. But if one wanted to express the fact that a state still holds at the moment of the utterance, one would have used a simple perfect instead. The use of a DCP thus leads to pragmatic reinterpretation: Given that the more complex form has been used, it is deduced that the state that held at some point in the past no longer holds at the moment of speaking. Thus, this second reading of DCPs in Alemannic also depends crucially on the presence of a state.

Importantly, both the anterior and the superperfect use require inflection in Highest Alemannic dialects (cf. Hodler 1969: 346); given the agreement pattern so far, this suggests that the participle is adjectival externally, and given the stative component of the DCP, we consequently assume that the DCP involves the same stativizing adjectival head as the stative-passive/the haben-perfect.¹⁹

3.2 Double compound perfects vs. Haben-passives

While the DCP has a stative component, it very clearly also contains an eventive component. The eventive component of the DCP can be diagnosed most easily by comparing it to the (perfect version of the) haben-passive, cf. Businger (2011; 2013); Gese (2013), which we have already introduced in Section 2.

In the following, we discuss interpretive and structural asymmetries between these two constructions.

3.3 The limits of event-modification in the double compound perfect

So far we have clear evidence that the double perfect involves an event token, unlike the haben-passive. In this subsection, we will discuss in detail which modifiers are licensed in the DCP. As we will see below, even though there is an event token, event modification is more restricted than in a simple (active or passive) perfect. We will adopt the terminology of Frey & Pittner (1998) and show that only event-internal modifiers are possible but not event-related ones. We will relate this restriction to a sortal incompatibility between VoiceP and temporal modifiers.

Contrary to Cinque (1999), Frey & Pittner (1998) do not assume that all adverbial positions are syntactically ordered but conclude that, in German, there are five different classes of modifiers, and that the position of the modifiers within a class is free. These classes are defined in terms of c-command relations of the adverbial with respect to other elements in the sentence. Simplifying somewhat, event-internal modifiers (like instrumentals, locatives, or subject-attitude modifiers like willingly or deliberately) are located below the base-position of the highest argument of the event, whereas event-related modifiers (such as localising temporal expressions, habitual adverbials, etc.) are located above the base-position of all arguments of the event – including the agent.

Example (41b) above has already shown that manner adverbs of various kinds (i.e., crucially not only result-oriented ones) are freely available in the DCP. The following examples show that instrumental, comitative, locative and subject-related adverbials are also licensed in the DCP and crucially can involve referential participants.

These are all event-internal modifiers whose base-position in German is below the base-position of the external argument and above the base position of the object according to Frey & Pittner (1998).

However, once we look at adverbials that occur higher in the structure, we can observe that they are not acceptable in the DCP (a restriction that, unsurprisingly, also holds for the sein- and the haben-passive, cf. Gese 2013: 170–171, 175–176). This has already been shown for temporal adverbials in (32b) above. The following example shows that with wieder ‘again’, only the result-oriented restitutive, but not the event-related repetitive reading is available:

In a simple- or pluperfect-version of (47), both readings would be available. The lack of the repetitive reading becomes clear in the following example, where a restitutive reading is ruled out for independent reasons because amputation cannot be restitutive (one cannot restore a foot to an amputated state); the fact that the example is ungrammatical shows that the repetitive reading is not available in the DCP (since a person has two legs, the event ‘amputate’ can, in principle, be repetitive):

Again, the repetitive reading is available under a simple present perfect or pluperfect version of (48).

An interesting case are frequency adverbials. They can occur in two different positions, with different consequences for scope, see, e.g., Cinque (1999: 25–28, 91–93); Frey & Pittner (1998): In a high position above the base-position of the subject, they quantify over the entire event. In the lower position, they quantify over the act/process denoted by the verb. Only in the latter case are they thus event-internal. As we would expect by now, only the event-internal reading is available in the double perfect. In (49), the entire event comprises three acts of knocking:

If, however, the frequency adverbial quantifies over the entire event, the result is infelicitous (note that no such restrictions obtain with a regular pluperfect):²⁵

Something similar seems to hold for durative adverbials, which can also occur in higher positions with scope over tense and in lower positions that are arguably event-internal, cf. Ernst (2002: 335, 339–341). As (51) shows, they are acceptable under their event-internal interpretation:

To summarize, only event-internal modifiers are possible in the DCP. They thus cover a contiguous segment of the functional hierarchy. In simplified structural terms, there is not only evidence for a VP, but, given the possibility of Control into purpose clauses and subject-related manner adverbs, also evidence for a VoiceP.

In terms of restrictions, the DCP is thus somewhere in between the Greek adjectival passive, where temporal modifiers are possible, and the German adjectival passive, where only kind-modification is possible. The question thus arises how to account for the restrictions in the DCP and the differences with respect to the other constructions.

The unavailability of localising temporal expressions for direct event modification in DCPs follows from the assumption that the AP in DCPs embeds a VoiceP, but no purely functional structure like an AspectP. Up to and including VoiceP, the denotation of the expression should be a predicate of events, as illustrated in (52):

At the same time, the most natural denotation one can assume for something like yesterday is a predicate of intervals:

Assuming once again the simplest method of combining these elements, namely predicate modification, the combination of (52) and (53) will produce a sort-mismatch between the event-predicate coming from VoiceP (or anything below), and the interval/time predicate yesterday. Higher up in the tree, after Aspect or Tense, the combination will be unproblematic, since AspP/TP will denote predicates of intervals.

4.1 The haben-passive

There seems to be a consensus that the haben-passive involves a small-clause structure with the accusative object as the subject and the adjectival participle as the predicate, as already roughly indicated in (23a) above, repeated in (54):

(54)

Given that a small clause is involved, the predicate position can also be occupied by a genuine adjective or a PP:

Instead of an exocentric SC-structure, we will postulate an endocentric RelatorP (RP, with a silent head), following den Dikken (2006), which we take to be identical to PredP. Furthermore, we follow Businger (2011: Chapter 2.6); Businger (2013: 153–155) in that possessive have is decomposed into ‘be’ + a PP headed by mit ‘with’ (cf. also Levinson 2011). The preposition in turn embeds a small clause, viz., an RP with the object as the specifier and the predicate as the complement; the motivation for the RP-structure under with is the existence of an absolute construction where with relates a subject and a predicate, cf. Mary sat with her head tilted. The complex head resulting from head-movement of the preposition to be (via R) is then realized as have.²⁶ Finally, when the haben-passive occurs in the simple perfect tense as in many examples in this section, there is another verbal projection above beP, viz., the projection of the auxiliary (we use the label Aux for reasons of legibility and remain agnostic as to whether auxiliaries should also be decomposed like the copula have). The structure of the reading in (35a) thus looks as follows:²⁷

The structure in (56) thus essentially means that John is (or has been) with colored hair. We represent the stative participle as an AP embedding a VP for expository purposes only; we remain non-committal whether the adjective embeds verbal structure at all and if it does how much (e.g., VP vs. VoiceP); as far as we can tell, this does not affect our analysis; we will briefly come back to this issue at the end of this section. Importantly, under this structural analysis, the object is projected outside the c-command domain of the adjectival participle, in accordance with the word order facts discussed in (44) above: instrumental modifiers that modify the event kind and thus attach to VP (or the AP, if one assumes no verbal structure inside the AP) must therefore obligatorily follow the object. To precede the object, they would have to attach to projections that they cannot obviously modify. As we will see below, the haben-passive patterns with the sein-passive with respect to the base position of the theme: It does not originate VP-/AP-internally but rather externally to AP/VP; the haben- and the sein-passive crucially differ from the eventive passive (and the double compound perfect), where the theme is merged as a complement of the verb, see below.²⁸ The structure also accounts for the agreement facts discussed in the introduction: Recall that the adjective agrees with the object, i.e., the DP in SpecRP. This can be captured if predicative adjectives/participles (or functional heads associated with them) can undergo upward Agree (Baker 2008: 44–48). In the structure in (56), the DP in SpecRP is the closest goal so that its phi-features can be copied onto the adjective.²⁹

4.2 The double compound perfect

We now turn to the double perfect. There are basically two cases to consider: the DCP based on unaccusative verbs (which take the auxiliary BE), and the DCP with transitive and unergative verbs (which feature the auxiliary HAVE). We will start with the latter.

5.1 Differences between stative and eventive passives

As was already briefly discussed in Section 1 above, it is uncontroversial that the eventive passive and the sein-passive differ with respect to event-related modification. Eventive passives are quite unrestricted in this respect in that both event-internal and event-related adverbials are possible. As already discussed in Section 1, the sein-passive, however, only allows “result-oriented” modifiers and additionally restricts modification to kind-modification (cf. Gehrke 2015), which generally entails that any event-participants are non-referential; manner adverbs are only possible if they apply to the resultant state. The following pair illustrates the contrast:³⁹

In the eventive passive, agentive by-phrases, agent-oriented adverbs like deliberately, temporal adverbials that refer to the event time and manner adverbs that modify the event rather than just the result are all felicitous. The eventive passive also crucially involves an event token, which is why event-related participants can be referential and therefore be picked up by anaphoric pronouns (recall also the contrast between the haben-passive and the DCP, cf. example (39)).

This very much suggests that eventive passives not only contain VoiceP – given the possibility of Voice-related modifiers like by-phrases and adverbs like deliberately/carefully –, but also AspP because of their compatibility with temporal adverbials.⁴⁰ In terms of restrictions, the eventive passive is thus closer to the DCP than to the sein-passive, the major difference being the possibility of event-related adverbials. Eventive passives containing agreeing participles display the same behavior: as shown at the beginning of this section, they are compatible with temporal adverbials referring to the event time (see, e.g., (67d)) and referential by-phrase-agents (see, e.g., (67c)).

Eventive and sein-passives also differ with respect to the structural position of the subject. As the following paradigm shows, while subjects of eventive passives can both precede and follow instrumental-PP-modifiers, subjects of sein-passives have to precede the modifiers:⁴¹

As this section has shown, the eventive nature of eventive passives is uncontroversial and it seems obvious to treat the participle as verbal. In the next subsection, we will, however, provide evidence for the presence of an adjectival head on top of the verbal structure.

5.2 Eventive passives as adjectival structures

While there is thus solid evidence for a large amount of verbal structure in eventive passives, the only evidence we have provided in favor of their adjectivehood so far is the agreement on the participle and the fact that the participle occurs in the same slot as adjectival predicates when choo ‘come’ is used as a copula. More evidence for the presence of an adjectival head comes from from word order: To the best of our knowledge, there are no contemporary Alemannic dialects that allow the 12 order in the eventive passive, not even those, including Bernese and the Highest Alemannic ones, that otherwise readily allow the 12 order in the simple perfect (cf. (24a)). Hodler (1969: 472–477) only provides examples with 21 order and, in more complex clusters, with 132, 312 or 321 order, where V2 would be the passive auxiliary and V3 the lexical participle. The same goes for the more recent descriptions by Burri & Imstepf (2002) and Kolmer (2011). The following minimal pair provided by Sandro Bachmann (p.c.) shows that, while the agreement is optional in his variety, it does not affect the word order possibilities:

Remember from (24a) that 12 orders are grammatical and attested with verbal participles. The impossibility of 12 orders (or more complex clusters with V3 as the cluster-final element) strongly suggests that the participle in eventive passives projects an AP on top of the verbal structure; since it thus counts as non-verbal, it must occur before the right sentence bracket like other non-verbal material.⁴² While the presence of an adjectival head is thus well-motivated, it remains to be clarified whether this is the same stativizing head that we have postulated for the other constructions with agreeing participles.

We believe that a stative component can even be found in the eventive passive once we turn to non-verbal predication based on werden/choo ‘(be)come’, which is formally identical to the auxiliary used in the eventive passive: In non-verbal predications with bona fide adjectives, globally eventive readings are possible:

Exchanging sein with werden leads to an eventive interpretation. We would like to propose that the pair in (73) should be analyzed in analogy to that in (72), i.e., werden/choo should be treated as a copula in both non-verbal predication and, crucially, eventive passives (where it is normally treated as an auxiliary).

The sentences in (72b) and (73b) are clearly eventive, but that does not preclude that the constituent headed by the participle can denote a state, which is then turned into an event by the addition of werden/choo. For non-verbal-predication, this is clearly desirable, since we would want to assign the same meaning to ill in both (72a) and (72b). In the same way, the eventive passive can very well be globally eventive, while the complement of werden/choo is stative (or, more precisely, contains an eventive VP with a stativizing AP on top).⁴³

At first sight, there seems to be a problem for this view because coordinating a passive participle of an eventive passive with a genuine predicative adjective fails (cf. also Businger 2013: 145):

This is in opposition to sein-passives, where coordination of a participle with a genuine adjective is unproblematic:

Notice that in (74), it would be perfectly possible to have either two participles of an eventive passive or two genuine adjectives, but the combination of an eventive passive participle with a genuine predicative adjective fails.

The lack of coordinatability follows straightforwardly, however, once we look at the structures of the two constructions: Recall from example (70a) above that in the eventive passive, the subject can remain below instrumental adverbials. This suggests that it remains within VP, while in bona fide non-verbal predication, the subject ouccupies the specifier of RP, i.e. adjectives are unergative predicates (see, e.g., Baker 2008: 29–30). The contrast is illustrated by the following diagrams:⁴⁴

(76)	a.	non-verbal predication (72b):
	b.	eventive passive (73b):

The problem with coordination in (74) above is unsurprising given this structural difference: For the subject to have scope over both conjuncts, this would have to involve R′-coordination, but since the subject in the eventive passive occurs in the object position (as with unaccusative subjects, raising of the subject is optional in German), this does not work (reversing the conjuncts therefore does not help either, the sequence Adj+eventive passive also leads to ungrammaticality).

The word order asymmetry between sein-passives and eventive passives with respect to instrumental PPs discussed in (70) above shows that sein-passives have the same structure as genuine adjectives: The subject originates outside the AP (cf. also Bruening 2014) so that it must precede instrumental-PPs. Their structure is thus roughly as follows (again, we represent the participle as an AP embedding a VP):

(77)	sein-passive (73a):

Note that all these structures also successfully account for the agreement facts in the Highest Alemannic dialects: Since adjectives can probe both upwards and downwards (see Baker 2008: 44–48, 67–74), the phi-probe on the adjective will always target the subject, whether internal to the AP (as in eventive passives) or external to it (as in sein-passives and with genuine adjectives).

To summarize this section, the similarities between eventive and sein-passives, viz., the fact that (i) in both constructions the participle occurs after choo, (ii) displays agreement with the subject and (iii) cannot occur cluster-finally can be directly linked to the fact that both are adjectival externally (see also Lundquist 2013 for the proposal that eventive passive participles are adjectival). We have also shown that stative and eventive passives differ significantly both with respect to the possibility of event-modification and the structural position of the subject. While event-related modification is very restricted in the sein-passive, it is freely available in eventive passives, suggesting that the participle contains an AspP. The difference in internal structure not only accounts for the semantic differences but may also explain why eventive/verbal passives have a more restricted distribution, e.g. cannot occur after ‘seem’ (see Lundquist 2013, who argues that this is due to the fact that ‘seem’ selects for gradable adjectives, which clashes with the eventive properties of eventive passive participles). The participle in eventive passives is clearly the adjectival participle with the largest amount of verbal structure in German we have studied in this paper.⁴⁵

What is somewhat controversial is our assumption that the adjectival head is the same stativizer in all constructions with agreeing past participles. While the stative component is immediately obvious in the sein-passive, the evidence for a semantically stative component in the eventive passive is weaker, although we have argued that such a motivation can be found through comparison with non-verbal predication based on werden/choo ‘become’. The fact that the eventive perfect never shows agreement in the dialects under consideration can be linked to the fact that there simply is no adjectival component since the eventive VP occurs in the complement of a perfect auxiliary, which selects VPs and not APs. The fact that in this context the participle is verbal can be seen in the fact that it allows the 12 cluster order in these dialects, as in example (24) above.

Leaving aside the potentially problematic issue of the eventive passive, the link between category and agreement seems very plausible in German varieties: Participles agree in those positions where adjectives generally agree in the language. In Highest Alemannic varieties, this includes both attributive and predicative positions, in other German varieties agreement is restricted to attributive positions. Cross-linguistically, however, there is not always such an obvious link; although stative and eventive passives usually involve participle agreement, agreement is often also found with eventive present perfects, cf., e.g., Standard Italian or French (or, for that matter, varieties where agreement obtains even without any visible movement of the transitive object/the subject, see Belletti 2017). Since eventive perfect participles are not obviously in an adjectival slot, agreement must have a different source (but see Lundquist 2013 for the claim that even these participles are adjectival).

More generally, the facts described in this paper support the idea that verbs vs. adjectives are not completely discrete categories, but that there rather exists a cline between fully adjectival forms and fully verbal forms, where Alemannic past participles cover much of the intermediate ground. One major area this paper focussed on is the accessibility of an event token with respect to higher modifiers. Fully aoristic simple perfects (that is, perfects that are used as a simple past tense, a feature of most German dialects and Colloquial Standard German) allow any kind of verbal modifiers of event tokens, whereas fully adjectival constructions place very stringent constraints on modification.

A second dimension along which there may be degrees of adjectivehood or verbality concerns the at-issue content and a possibly present presupposed content. A fully adjectival form (like a morphologically clearly distinct adjective) asserts a state, without presupposing an event leading up to that state. Sein-passives make an assertion with respect to a state, while presupposing an event (type), which precedes the asserted state. Most theories of (eventive) perfects assume that they make an assertion with respect to an event (token), while presupposing a state resulting from that event. Finally, a purely verbal form like an aoristic perfect contains no reference whatsoever to a state, but only makes an assertion with respect to an event.