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Approaches to Hungarian 17: Special issue of the Journal on Uralic Linguistics 1:2 (2022)
Edited by Tamás Halm, Elizabeth Coppock and Balázs Surányi
[Journal of Uralic Linguistics 1:2] 2022
► pp. 181–214

Hárman, sokan, mindannyian

A presuppositional analysis to -AN-marked numerals and quantifiers in Hungarian

| Afeka Tel Aviv Academic College of Engineering , Israel

This paper examines the semantics of -AN-suffixed numerals and quantifiers in Hungarian. The main aim is to provide a compositional analysis that captures the wide variety of uses of -AN-marked numerals. While in the literature -AN has been treated as an adverbial suffix, I claim that the -AN-marking on numerals and quantifiers is a different mechanism than its phonologically similar adverbial counterpart. I present a number of grammatical phenomena in support of the assumption that -AN is associated with the [+plural] and [+human] features and I propose that they are realized as a presupposition. I argue that -AN is a predicate at type <e,t>, λx: HUMANS.(x) and show that -AN-suffixed numerals are complex predicates that presuppose a plurality of human beings and have the cardinality property provided by the numeral. In accounting for all positions -AN-marked numerals and quantifiers occur in, two main categories emerge: the predicative position and adnominal pronominal constructions.

Keywords: numerals, quantifiers, -AN-marking, word formation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Ruling out alternative analyses
    • 2.1-AN is not a collective suffix
    • 2.2-AN is not an adverbial suffix
  • 3.Inherent features: [+human], [+plural]
    • 3.1Humanness
    • 3.2Pluralness
  • 4.The analysis
    • 4.1-AN: A predicate at type <e,t>
    • 4.2Numerals
    • 4.3The semantics of NUM-AN
      • 4.3.1A presuppositional approach
  • 5.Accounting for the range of constructions
    • 5.1NUM-AN in predicative position
    • 5.2NUM-AN in adnominal pronominal constructions
      • 5.2.1NUM-AN in extended personal pronoun DPs
      • 5.2.2NUM-AN in focus, topic, and contrastive topic positions
      • 5.2.3NUM-AN with quantifiers
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 17 November 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jul.00009.sch
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