*by it

 I recently noticed this paradigm. It is likely that other people have noticed the same thing, but I did not search very hard for references. The bottom line is that clausal expletive it cannot the complement of a by-phrase in the passive. At the end of the note, I offer some tentative ideas about why this generalization holds.

The data in (1-7) illustrate the relevant paradigm, which holds for a wide range of psych-verbs, including ‘bother’, ‘shock’ and ‘frighten’.

The examples (1) and (2) show that a psych-verb can be passivized:

1.

John’s behavior bothered me.

2.

I was bothered by John’s behavior.

The examples (3) and (4) show that when a psych-verb is passivized, the complement of ‘by’ can be the pronoun ‘it’.

3. 

It bothered me. (e.g., it = John’s behavior)

4.

I was bothered by it. (e.g., it = John’s behavior)

The examples (5) and (6) show that a psych-verb can take a that-clause as an argument.

5.

That John left bothered me.

6.

It bothered me that John left.

The example (7) shows that it is impossible to passivize (6) where ‘it’ appears as the complement of the by-phrase.

7.

*I was bothered by it that John left.

The generalization is the following

8.

Clausal expletive it cannot the complement of a by-phrase in the passive.

What accounts for (8)?

The simple explanation is that the complement of ‘by’ in a passive is a theta-position (on a theory like that of Collins 2005, 2024), and ‘it’ being an expletive, cannot occupy a theta-position. I think this is basically the right analysis. But I would like to articulate it a bit. 

Since in examples like (6), ‘it’ is related to the clause, it makes sense to say that they start out merged together (see Rosenbaum 1967). I do not however make the assumption that all clauses start out merged together with ‘it’.

9.

[it that John left]

The second assumption is that ‘it’ always raises away from the clause into an A-position for licensing. On these assumptions the derivation of (6) is the following, where ‘it’ raises to Spec TP.

10.

a.

bothered me [it that John left]

b.

It bothered me [<it> that John left]

Then the reason why (8) holds is that the complement of 'by' is a theta-position, and so it can only be filled by external Merge, not by raising the expletive into it. In other words, the following representation is ungrammatical:

11.

*I was bothered [by it] [<it> that John left]

References:

Rosenbaum, Peter. 1967. The Grammar of English Predicate Complement Constructions. MIT Press, Cambridge.