Cover not available
Article published In:
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 EngineeringIsrael
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
References (65)
References
Barwise, Jon & Robin Cooper. 1983. Generalized quantifiers and natural language. Linguistics and Philosophy 41. 159–219. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bende-Farkas, Ágnes. 2014. From A-quantification to D-quantification: Universal quantifiers in the sentence and in the Noun Phrase. In Katalin É. Kiss (ed.), The evolution of functional left peripheries in Hungarian syntax, 83–12. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2019. The semantics of Old Hungarian floating mind ‘all’ . Paper presented at the 11th International Conference on the Structure of Hungarian, ICSH11, Bucharest, June 7. [URL] (Accessed 14 June 2022)
Borer, Hagit. 2005. In name only. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Brisson, Christine M. 1998. Distributivity, maximality and floating quantifiers. New Brunswick: Rutgers University PhD dissertation.
Cardinaletti, Anna & Michal Starke. 1999. The typology of structural deficiency: A case study of the three classes of pronouns. In Henk van Riemsdijk (ed.), Clitics in the languages of Europe, 145–233. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chierchia, Gennaro. 1998. Reference to kinds across language. Natural Language Semantics 61. 339–405. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Csirmaz, Aniko & Anna Szabolcsi. 2012. Quantification in Hungarian. In Edward L. Keenan & Denis Paperno (eds.), Handbook of quantifiers in natural language, 399–465. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dékány, Éva K. 2011. A profile of the Hungarian DP: The interaction of lexicalization, agreement and linearization with the functional sequence. Tromsø: University of Tromsø PhD dissertation. [URL] (Accessed 14 June 2022)
Dékány, Éva & Aniko Csirmaz. 2018. Numerals and quantifiers. In Gábor Alberti & Tibor Laczkó (eds.), Syntax of Hungarian: Nouns and noun phrases, vol. 21, 1044–1150. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. [URL] (Accessed 14 June 2022)
Dékány, Éva & Veronika Hegedűs. 2015. Word order variation in Hungarian PPs. In Katalin É. Kiss, Balázs Surányi & Éva Dékány (eds.), Approaches to Hungarian: Papers from the 2013 Piliscsaba conference, vol. 141, 95–120. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dowty, David R. 1987. Collective predicates, distributive predicates and all. In Ann Miller & Zheng-sheng Zhang (eds.), Proceedings of the 1986 Eastern States Conference on linguistics, 97–115. Columbus: Ohio State University.Google Scholar
Dowty, David R. & Belinda Brodie. 1984. The semantics of “floated” quantifiers in a transformationless grammar. Proceedings of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 31. 75–90.Google Scholar
É. Kiss, Katalin. 1992. Az egyszerű mondat szerkezete [The structure of the simple sentence]. In Ferenc Kiefer (ed.), Strukturális magyar nyelvtan: Mondattan [A structural grammar of Hungarian: Syntax], vol. 11, 79–177. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.Google Scholar
É. Kiss, Katalin. 2002. The syntax of Hungarian. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Elbourne, Paul D. 2005. Situations and individuals. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Frege, Gottlob. 1960. On sense and reference. In Peter Geach & Max Black (eds.), Translations from the philosophical writings of Gottlob Frege, 2nd edn., 56–78. Oxford: Blackwell. [URL] (Accessed 14 June 2022)
Gil, David. 1982. Distributive numerals. Los Angeles: University of California PhD dissertation.
. 2013. Distributive numerals. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds.), The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. [URL] (Accessed 14 June 2022)
Groot, Casper de. 2017. The essives in Hungarian. In Casper de Groot (ed.), Uralic essive and the expression of impermanent state, 325–351. Amsterdam: John Bejnamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gyuris, Beáta. 2002. The semantics of contrastive topics in Hungarian. Budapest: Eötvös Loránd University PhD dissertation.
Hegedűs, Veronika & Éva Dékány. 2021. The internal syntax of PPs. In Katalin É. Kiss, Veronika Hegedűs, Hans Broekhuis, Norbert Corver & István Kenesei (eds.), Syntax of Hungarian: Postpositions and postpositional phrases, 193–250. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heim, Irene. 1982. The semantics of definite and indefinite NPs. Amherst: University of Massachusetts PhD dissertation.
Heusinger, Klaus von. 2002. Reference and representation of pronouns. In Horst J. Simon & Heike Wiese (eds.), Pronouns: Representation and grammar, 109–135. Amsterdam: John Benjamin. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hofweber, Thomas. 2005. Number determiners, numbers, and arithmetic. The Philosophical Review 1141. 179–225. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Höhn, Georg F. K. 2017. Non-possessive person in the nominal domain. Cambridge: University of Cambridge PhD dissertation.
2020. The third person gap in adnominal pronoun constructions. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 51. Article 69. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ionin, Tania & Ora Matushansky. 2006. The composition of complex cardinals. Journal of Semantics 231. 315–360. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2018. Cardinals: The syntax and semantics of cardinal-containing expressions. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kenesei, István, Robert M. Vago & Anna Fenyvesi. 2000. Hungarian. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Krifka, Manfred. 1989. Nominal reference, temporal constitution and quantification in event semantics. In Renate Bartsch, Johan van Benthem & P. van Emde Boas (eds.), Semantics and contextual expression, 75–115. Dordrecht: Foris. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1992. Thematic relations as links between nominal reference and temporal constitution. In Ivan A. Sag & Anna Szabolcsi (eds.), Lexical matters, 29–52. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information.Google Scholar
Landman, Fred. 1989a. Groups, I. Linguistics and Philosophy 121. 559–605. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1989b. Groups, II. Linguistics and Philosophy 121. 723–744. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1991. Structures for semantics. Dordrecht: Kluwer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2000. Events and plurality: The Jerusalem lectures. Dordrecht: Kluwer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2003. Predicate-argument mismatches and the adjectival theory of indefinites. In Martine Coene & Yves D’hulst (eds.), From NP to DP: The syntax and semantics of noun phrases, vol. 11, 211–237. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2004. Indefinites and the type of sets. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011. Boolean pragmatics. In Jaap van der Does & C. Dutlih Novaes (eds.), ‘This is not a Festschrift’: A Festschrift for Martin Stokhof. [URL] (Accessed 14 June 2022)
Lasersohn, Peter. 1995. Plurality, conjunction and events. Dordrecht: Kluwer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lengyel, Klára. 2000. A melléknév [The adjective]. In Borbála Keszler (ed.), Magyar grammatika [Hungarian grammar], 142–151. Budapest: Tankönyvkiadó.Google Scholar
Link, Godehard. 1983. The logical analysis of plurals and mass terms: A lattice-theoretical approach. In Rainer Bauerle, Christoph Schwartze & Arnim von Stechow (eds.), Meaning, use and the interpretation of language, 302–323. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Longobardi, Giuseppe. 1994. Reference and proper names: A theory of N-movement in syntax and logical form. Linguistic Inquiry 251. 609–665.Google Scholar
Longobardi, Guiseppe. 2005. Toward a unified grammar of reference. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 241. 5–44. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Maling, Joan M. 1976. Notes on quantifier-postposing. Linguistic Inquiry 71. 708–718.Google Scholar
Marácz, László. 1986. Dressed or naked: The case of the PP in Hungarian. In Abraham Werner & Sjaak de Meij (eds.), Topic, focus and configurationality: Papers from the 6th Groningen Grammar Talks, Groningen, 1984, 223–252. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Matushansky, Ora. 2006. Why Rose is the Rose: On the use of definite articles in proper names. Empirical Issues in Formal Syntax and Semantics 61. 285–308. [URL] (Accessed 14 June 2022)
. 2008. On the linguistic complexity of proper names. Linguistics and Philosophy 311. 573–627. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Oravecz, Csaba, Tamás Váradi & Bálint Sass. 2014. The Hungarian Gigaword Corpus. In Nicoletta Calzolari, Khalid Choukri, Thierry Declerck, Hrafn Loftsson, Bente Maegaard, Joseph Mariani, Asuncion Moreno, Jan Odijk & Stelios Piperidis (eds.), Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC’14), 1719–1723. Reykjavik: ELRA. [URL] (Accessed 14 June 2022)
Peredy, Márta. 2010. Nincs van [No copula in 3sg]. In Zsuzsanna Gécseg (ed.), LingDok 9. Nyelvész-doktoranduszok dolgozatai, 145–172. Szeged: JATE Press.Google Scholar
Postal, Paul M. 1974. On raising: One rule of English grammar and its theoretical implications. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Roehrs, Dorian. 2005. Pronouns are determiners after all. In Marcel den Dikken & Christina M. Tortora (eds.), The function of function words and functional categories, 251–285. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rothstein, Susan. 2009. Individuating and measure readings of classifier constructions: Evidence from Modern Hebrew. Brill’s Annual of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics 11. 106–145. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2012. Numericals: Counting, measuring and classifying. Proceedings of Sinn Und Bedeutung 161. 527–542. [URL] (Accessed 14 June 2022)
. 2017. Semantics for counting and measuring. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schvarcz, Brigitta R. 2014. The Hungarians who say -nyi: Issues in counting and measuring in Hungarian. Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University MA thesis.
2022. Nouns, numbers and classifiers in Hungarian. Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University PhD dissertation.
Schwarzschild, Roger. 2011. Stubborn distributivity, multiparticipant nouns and the count/mass distinction. In Suzi Lima, Kevin Mullin & Brian Smith (eds.), NELS 39: Proceedings of the 39th annual meeting of the North East Linguistic Society, 661–678. Amherst: GLSA Publications.Google Scholar
Sharvy, Richard. 1980. A more general theory of definite descriptions. The Philosophical Review 891. 607–624. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Simon, Eszter & Bálint Sass. 2012. Nyelvtechnológia és kulturális örökség, avagy korpuszépítés ómagyar kódexekből [Language technology and cultural heritage, or, corpus building from Old Hungarian codices]. Általános Nyelvészeti Tanulmányok XXIV1. 243–264. [URL] (Accessed 14 June 2022)
Szőke, Bernadett. 2015. Az értelmezős szerkezetek vizsgálata a magyar nyelvben [Exploring appositive constructions in Hungarian]. Szeged: University of Szeged PhD dissertation. DOI logo
. 2018. Appositive constructions. In Gábor Alberti & Tibor Laczkó (eds.), Syntax of Hungarian: Nouns and Noun Phrases, vol 21, 896–932. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. [URL] (Accessed 14 June 2022)
Tompa, József. 1968. Ungarische Grammatik [Hungarian grammar]. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wohlmuth, Kata. 2019. Atomicity and distributive reference. Barcelona: Universitat Pompeu Fabra PhD dissertation.
Zweig, Eytan. 2006. Nouns and adjectives in numeral NPs. In Leah Bateman & Cherlon Ussery (eds.), NELS 35: Proceedings ofthe 35th conference of the North East Linguistic Society, 663–675. Amerst: GLSA Publications.Google Scholar