The paper claims that the syntax of Hungarian is so extremely transparent from a pragmasemantic point of view that certain (complex-event-related) deverbal nominal constructions can have an internal information structure consisting of internal-scope taking dependents. The scope-semantic source of… read more
This paper argues that a Hungarian nominal head may have a phonetically non-empty complement zone — if certain “felicity conditions” are satisfied. Our approach relies on the introduction of two new constituency tests (based on certain properties of the contrastive topic and on the order of certain… read more
Conversational partners’ “ideal” information states – their knowledge (about the world and each other), their beliefs (with different degrees of certainty), their desires and intentions (of different degrees of intensity) – can be specified at any point in the conversation. The various elements… read more
The paper demonstrates that, in opposition to accepted wisdom, questions often exhibit various degrees of certainty, while answers express different types of uncertainty. The analysis of polar questions and answers draws heavily on the representation of mental states and applies a formal… read more