Feature-based argument mapping and animacy optimization in impersonal passives

Analysis of the alternation between impersonal reflexives and reflexive passives in Spanish shows that higher animacy makes an argument less marked as an object. This generalization supports Hopper and Thompson's (1981) "transitivity hypothesis", since it is entailed by their claim that objects tend to be highly individuated. The article proposes an optimality-theoretic implementation of the analysis, using a feature-based approach to argument realization modeled on Bresnan and Kanerva's (1989) lexical mapping theory. The proposal highlights a contradiction between the transitivity hypothesis and the approaches to animacy that follow Silverstein's (1976) analysis of split ergative languages, for which alternatives are suggested.