On a type of counterfactual construction

Katalin É. Kiss | Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Pázmàny Péter Catholic University

This paper analyzes a Hungarian modal construction with a counterfactual, reproaching reading. Hungarian optative, imperative and reproaching sentences involve a MoodP below their topic projection. Their Mood head is merged with a projection having a matching modal feature: a NonNeutP with a conditional or imperative verb raised to NonNeut, or a NegP having a negative particle with a modal feature (ne) in Neg. The affirmative version of this structure is similar to that of Class I languages of Rivero and Terzi (1995), involving verb movement – except that the landing site of the verb is lower than C. Since V-movement cannot cross NegP, the negative particle assumes a modal feature, whereby it satisfies the requirement of Mood being adjacent to a modal head. Hungarian also has an optative and imperative pattern typical of Class II languages, involving a mood marker in Spec,CP.

Published online: 08 December 2011
https://doi.org/10.1075/atoh.12.04kis

Cited by

Cited by other publications

Lipták, Anikó & Andrés Saab

2019. Hungarian particle reduplication as local doubling. Acta Linguistica Academica 66:4 ► pp. 527 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 25 december 2020. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.