This article examines passive-type constructions in Mauritian Creole, arguing that they are topic, not passive constructions. I claim that their initial argument (the displaced object) occupies the specifier position of a Topic Phrase, not the structural subject position. This proposal is motivated by the fact that nothing at the surface identifies the displaced object as a grammatical subject, except its position relative to an auxiliary or verb. The topic analysis is supported by both semantic restrictions relating to specificity and animacy and syntactic restrictions relating to distribution (word order) and coordination. It is also supported by the fact that these same restrictions do not apply in unaccusatives, a structurally similar type of construction. The important contribution of this article is that passive-type constructions in Mauritian Creole are ‘apparent’ rather ‘real’ passives, with the wider implication being that creoles, like many languages, do not use canonical passives to express passive meaning.

The literature on locative inversion in English currently disputes whether locative inversion differs from PP topicalization in permitting a quantifier in the fronted PP to bind a pronoun in the subject. In order to resolve this dispute, this paper runs two experiments on Amazon Mechanical Turk, one an acceptability judgment task and the other a forced-choice task. Both find that PP topicalization does not differ from locative inversion: both permit variable binding. Locative inversion also does not differ from a minimally different sentence with the overt expletive there. These findings remove an argument against the null expletive analysis of English locative inversion, and they also show that weak crossover is not uniformly triggered by A-bar movement.

This article considers the acquisition of three English syntax–discourse interface constructions: Topicalization, Focus Fronting and Left Dislocation. We use data from Basque–Spanish bilinguals learning English as a third language (L3) as a test case for the Interface Hypothesis (IH, Sorace, 2011). The IH has made specific predictions about second language (L2) acquisition and such predictions can be extrapolated to L3 on the basis of interface delay explanations. Thirty contexts and embedded test sentences with and without pronouns were used; participants had to rate the acceptability of each audio stimulus sentence in the context on a seven-point scale. We tested Basque–Spanish bilinguals dominant in Basque (n = 23), Basque–Spanish bilinguals dominant in Spanish (n = 24), Spanish L2 English learners (n = 39) as well as native English speakers (n = 24). Findings provide evidence against current L3 acquisition models and potential arguments for both cumulative enhancement as well as cumulative inhibition as possible processes in L3 acquisition.

This article investigates the use of non-referential subjects in contemporary Swedish. Given that Swedish has developed a strong subject requirement, expletive subjects are expected to be used in all clauses which lack a referential subject. In spoken Swedish, however, expletive and quasi-argument subjects are optional in utterances where there is an initial det ‘it’ which is linked to an empty position inside a finite or non-finite complement. The paper establishes that there are certain similarities between these examples and tough constructions but that the examples involving finite complements cannot be subsumed under a predication analysis which seems appropriate for the tough cases. Based on a number of authentic recorded examples, I discuss the processing of utterances with fronted anaphoric pronouns and point to certain similarities with parasitic gaps. The paper closes with a comparison with other Germanic languages.