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Approaches to Hungarian: Volume 14: Papers from the 2013 Piliscsaba Conference
Edited by Katalin É. Kiss, Balázs Surányi and Éva Dékány
[Approaches to Hungarian 14] 2015
► pp. 167–185

Free Choice and Aspect in Hungarian

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The goal of this paper is to explore the interaction of verbal particles and FCIs in Hungarian. Our proposed solution is that sentences containing verbal particles and FCIs are interpreted as generics/habituals, where the FC-phrase (analyzed as a dependent indefinite) is bound (and thus, licensed) by a silent gen operator carried by the verbal particle. This proposal is supported by independent evidence (both from Hungarian and cross-linguistic) and fits into current theories FCIs, genericity and the quantificational force of verbal particles. Beside finding that verbal particles in Hungarian are capable of generic quantification, we also show that (1) genericity in Hungarian is primarily a pragmatic phenomenon and that (2) languages differ in terms of the formal semantics of individual-level predicates (presence/absence of inherent gen operator), and that the licensing of FCIs can be used as a diagnostic tool for this. Our paper also sheds light on the conundrum why FCIs are straightforwardly licensed in generics in many languages (e.g. English) but not in Hungarian. Our results also lend considerable further empirical support to the dependent indefinite analysis of FCIs.

Published online: 3 June 2015
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https://doi.org/10.1075/atoh.14.07hal
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Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Halm, Tamás
2019. The semantics of weak imperatives revisited: Evidence from free-choice item licensing. Acta Linguistica Academica 66:4 ► pp. 445 ff. DOI logo
Lipták, Anikó & Andrés Saab
2019. Hungarian particle reduplication as local doubling. Acta Linguistica Academica 66:4 ► pp. 527 ff. DOI logo

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