Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Faculty of Social
Abstract
The paper aims to answer the question why object–verb agreement is blocked in
Hungarian, Tundra Nenets, Selkup, and Nganasan if the object is a first or
second person pronoun. Based on Dalrymple & Nikolaeva (2011), it is argued
that object–verb agreement serves (or served historically) to mark the secondary
topic status of the object. The gaps in object-verb agreement can be derived
from the Inverse Agreement Constraint, a formal, semantically unmotivated
constraint observed by Comrie (1980) in Chukchee, Koryak and Kamchadal,
forbidding object-verb agreement if the object is more ʻanimate’ than the
subject: The paper claims that the Inverse Agreement Constraint is a constraint
on information structure. What it requires is that a secondary topic be less
topical than the primary topic. An object more topical than the primary topic
can only figure as a focus. A version of the constraint can also explain why
Hungarian first and second person objects have no accusative suffix, and why
accusative marking is optional in the case of objects having a first or second
person possessor
