Impersonal passives in Icelandic

This paper argues that Jcelandic impersonal passives have a constructional property that expresses generic events. After having demonstrated their basic characteristics, it is shown that the notion of 'activity' is inadequate for the explanation of why the construction is licensed. The behaviour of the adverbial ser moovitandi is diagnosed to show indefiniteness tied up with the construction. Irnpersonal passives are highly productive grammatical constructions in: modem Icelandic. They typically appear with a past participle form of intransitive as well as transitive verbs, often containing an expletive pao 'it, there' at the initial position of a sentence