202 research outputs found
Verbal particles inside and outside vP
This paper investigates the basic syntax of verbal particles in Hungarian, proposing a two-stage syntactic derivation involving phrasal movement. The verbal particle first comes to occupy a verb phrase medial position, a stage that is followed by phrasal movement to a verb phrase external landing site. Here—in neutral clauses—the verbal particle immediately precedes the verb, which is also shown to leave the vP at surface structure. The verb phrase medial position of the verbal particle is identified as the specifier of a PredP flanked between vP and VP, while the verb phrase external landing site is analyzed as the specifier of TP. The adjacency of the particle and the verb is argued to be reducible to the specifier-head configuration they appear in, rather than to syntactic incorporation or to a PF-merger operation
Scrambling in Hungarian
This article revisits
the (non)configurationality debate of the 80s and early 90s concerning
Hungarian, a `free word order' language, which was shown during that period to
be characterized by an articulate and, crucially, hierarchical preverbal
domain, with A-bar positions dedicated to discourse functions such as topic and
focus. What this debate did not conclusively settle, however, is the question
whether or not the structure of A-positions in Hungarian is also
configurational. The most prevalent, and indeed empirically most well-argued
and elaborated analysis that has emerged is that of É. Kiss's (1987a, b; 1991,
1994a, 2002, 2003), according to which the answer is negative: arguments are
base-generated in the verb phrase in a free order in a flat structure. The
present paper challenges this view by demonstrating systematically that the
arguments put forward to back it up are inconclusive, and in fact it fails
descriptively as well. The alternative proposed here is based on a hierarchical
verb phrase (vacated by the raised verb) and a Japanese-type local scrambling
movement that operates in the post-verbal domain of the clause. The scrambling
movement analysis, besides being theoretically more desirable than the
nonconfigurational verb phrase approach, makes available a superior descriptive
coverage by accounting for a varied set of structural symmetries and
asymmetries holding between subject and object. Modulo scrambling, Hungarian is
configurational all the way down
Mondattani opcionalitás a magyar nyelvben = Syntactic optionality in Hungarian
A projekt a magyar nyelvben találhatĂł mondattani szabadság fĹ‘bb megnyilvánulásait vetette behatĂł, komparatĂv jellegű vizsgálat alá. A projekt eredmĂ©nye szerint e jelensĂ©gek - egy kivĂ©tellel - megfelelnek a Minimalista Program (MP) nyelvelmĂ©lete gazdaságossági elvĂ©nek, amennyiben a kutatás megmutatta, hogy az általuk kĂ©pviselt szintaktikai opcionalitás vagy (A) a nyelvtan szempontjábĂłl pusztán látszĂłlagos, vagy (B) az egyes alternánsok egymással nem rendezett gazdaságossági mĂ©rtĂ©kĂ©bĹ‘l adĂłdik. (A): Az egyes szĂłrendi alternatĂvák lexikai elemei alakilag azonosak, azonban legalább egy elem eltĂ©rĹ‘ lexikai tulajdonságokkal (jelentĂ©ssel, ill. morfoszintaktikai jegyekkel) rendelkezik az egyes alternánsokban, s Ăgy a szĂłrendi opciĂłk valĂłjában nem egymás alternatĂvái. ElĹ‘fordulhat, hogy az egyes szĂłrendi opciĂłknak megfelelĹ‘ kĂĽlönbözĹ‘ deriváciĂłk minden szempontbĂłl megegyezĹ‘ elemeket tartalmaznak, gazdaságosság szempontjábĂłl mĂ©gsem egymás versenytársai, mert eltĂ©rĹ‘ összjelentĂ©seket (pl. hatĂłkör, informáciĂłszerkezet) valĂłsĂtanak meg. (B): A szĂłrendi alternáciĂł egymástĂłl minimálisan kĂĽlönbözĹ‘ deriváciĂłk megegyezĹ‘ vagy egymással nem rendezhetĹ‘ mĂ©rtĂ©kű gazdaságosságábĂłl ered. VĂ©gĂĽl pedig, a kutatás szerint a magyar posztverbális mezĹ‘ jelentĂ©stani kĂĽlönbsĂ©gekkel nem korreláltathatĂł szĂłrendi szabadságáért az Ăşn. Scrambling mozgatás egy tĂpusa felelĹ‘s, mely sem az (A), sem pedig a (B) tĂpusĂş elemzĂ©st nem teszi lehetĹ‘vĂ©, s Ăgy valĂłdi kihĂvást jelent az MP gazdaságossági hipotĂ©zise számára. | This project has investigated the key manifestations of syntactic ?freedom? in the Hungarian clause, adopting the perspective of the Minimalist Program (MP). The syntactic optionality exhibited by the set of phenomena analyzed here proved to either (A) be merely apparent as far as the grammar itself is concerned, or (B) to be due to unordered degrees of grammatical economy. (A): Although the lexical items participating in the alternating word order patterns have identical forms, at least one element bears different lexical properties (meaning, or morphosyntactic features) in the alternants, which, therefore, are not true free variants. The derivations corresponding to the respective word order options may also be composed of fully identical elements, yet, they are not each other?s competitors in terms of grammatical economy, hence they cannot give rise to true syntactic optionality, in cases where the individual derivations target different global meanings (scope interpretation, information structure etc). (B): The syntactic optionality stems from the fact that the degrees of grammatical economy characterizing the alternative derivations are equal (or not comparable in terms of the economy metric). Finally, the freedom of postverbal word order falls neither under (A) nor under (B): the Scrambling movement that brings it about is a truly optional operation in Hungarian (where it incurs no interpretive differences), thus posing a real challenge to the current MP
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