Cover not available
Article published In:
Studies in Language
Vol. 45:2 (2021) ► pp.428–469

Additive particle uses in Hungarian

A Role and Reference Grammar account

| Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
In this paper, we investigate empirical data that raise challenging issues with respect to focus sensitivity of the Hungarian additive particle is ‘also, too’. In Hungarian, the additive particle is attached to a constituent, and the is-phrase cannot occupy the structural focus position. This raises the issue how to capture the focus sensitivity of is. We propose a primarily pragmatic, context-based analysis of the Hungarian additive particle, where the particle associates with the pragmatic focus (Lambrecht 1994) determined on basis of the immediate question under discussion (Roberts 2012). Important evidence for this claim is that the Hungarian additive particle can take different semantic associates, corresponding to the pragmatic focus of the sentence. After discussing the Hungarian data, we will present the analysis in the framework of Role and Reference Grammar (Van Valin & LaPolla 1997; Van Valin 2005). To capture Hungarian and English data in a uniform way, important extensions of the framework will be proposed.
Keywords: additive particles, Hungarian, Role and Reference Grammar
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Additive particles and focus sensitivity
    • 1.2A short note on Hungarian sentence structure
  • 2.The Hungarian additive particle is
    • 2.1Syntactic host and semantic associate
    • 2.2Different semantic associates
  • 3.A context-based analysis
    • 3.1Pragmatic focus and local discourse context
      • 3.1.1Sentential semantic associate
      • 3.1.2Predicate associate
      • 3.1.3Narrow semantic associate
      • 3.1.4Interim summary
    • 3.2Further aspects
      • 3.2.1Prosody
      • 3.2.2Various uses and structural distribution
      • 3.2.3Postverbal occurrences
  • 4.Implementation in Role and Reference Grammar
    • 4.1RRG: Basic architecture
    • 4.2RRG: the focus projection
  • 5.Analysis: Additive particles in RRG
    • 5.1English additive particles
    • 5.2Hungarian additive particles
  • 6.Summary
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 22 October 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.19034.bal
References (72)
References
Alberti, Gábor & Anna Medve. 2000. Focus Constructions and the “Scope-inversion Puzzle” in Hungarian. In Gábor Alberti & István Kenesei (eds.), The structure of Hungarian VII, 93–117. Szeged: JATEPress.Google Scholar
Asher, Nicholas & Alex Lascarides. 2003. Logics of conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Balogh, Kata. 2009. Theme with variations. A Context-based analysis of focus. Amsterdam: ILLC, University of Amsterdam PhD dissertation.Google Scholar
Balogh, Kata & Corinna Langer. Forthcoming. Additive particles, focus sensitivity and prosody: the case of Hungarian. Submitted.
Barsalou, Lawrence W. 1992. Frames, concepts, and conceptual fields. In Adrienne Lehrer & Eva Feder Kittay (eds.), Frames, fields, and contrasts: New essays in semantic and lexical organization, 21–74. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Beaver, David I. & Brady Z. Clark. 2002. The proper treatments of focus sensitivity. In Line Mikkelsen & Christopher Potts (eds.), WCCFL 21 Proceedings, 15–28. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
. 2008. Sense and Sensitivity: How Focus Determines Meaning Explorations in Semantics. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Collins, Suzanne. 2009. Az éhezők viadala [The hunger games]. Budapest: Agave Könyvek. Translated by Benedek Totth.Google Scholar
Dowty, David. 1979. Word meaning and Montague Grammar. Dordrecht: Reidel. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
É. Kiss, Katalin. 1978. A magyar mondatok egy szintaktikai modellje [A syntactic model of Hungarian sentences]. Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 801. 261–286.Google Scholar
(ed.). 1995. Discourse configurational languages. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
. 1998. Identificational Focus versus Information Focus. Language 741. 245i273. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(ed.). 2002. The syntax of Hungarian. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2015. Discourse functions: The case of Hungarian. In Caroline Féry & Shinichiro Ishihara (eds.), The Oxford handbook of information structure, 663–685. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Forker, Diana. 2016. Toward a typology for additive markers. Lingua 1801. 69–100. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Genzel, Susanne, Shinichiro Ishihara & Balázs Surányi. 2015. The prosodic expression of focus, contrast and givenness: A production study of Hungarian. Lingua 1651. 183–204. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gyuris, Beáta. 2009. The semantics and pragmatics of the contrastive topic in Hungarian. Budapest: Lexica Ltd.Google Scholar
. 2012. The information structure of Hungarian. In Manfred Krifka & Renate Musan (eds.), The expression of information structure, 159–186. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Horváth, Júlia. 2007. Separating “focus movement” from focus. In Simin Karimi, Vida Samiian & Wendy K. Wilkins (eds.), Phrasal and clausal architecture. Syntactic derivation and interpretation. In honor of Joseph E. Emonds. 108–145. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2010. “Discourse features”, Syntactic displacement and the status of contrast. Lingua 1201. 1346–1369. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kallmeyer, Laura & Rainer Osswald. 2013. Syntax-driven semantic frame composition in lexicalized tree adjoining grammars. Journal of Language Modelling 1(2). 267–330. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2017. Combining predicate-argument structure and operator projection: Clause structure in Role and Reference Grammar. In Marco Kuhlmann & Tatjana Scheffler (eds.), Proceedings of the 13th International Workshop on Tree Adjoining Grammars and Related Formalisms (TAG+13), 61–70. Association for Computational Linguistics. Available at: [URL] (Last access: 13 May 2020).
Kallmeyer, Laura, Rainer Osswald & Robert D. Van Valin, Jr. 2013. Tree wrapping for Role and Reference Grammar. In Glyn Morrill & Mark-Jan Nederhof (eds.), Proceedings of Formal Grammar 2012 and 2013 Lecture Notes in Computer Science 80361, 175–190. Berlin: Springer.Google Scholar
Kenesei, István. 1997. On the syntactic options of focus. Unpublished manuscript, University of Delaware, Newark and JATE, Szeged.Google Scholar
. 1998. Adjuncts and arguments in VP-focus in Hungarian. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 45(1–2). 61–88. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2006. Focus as identification. In Valéria Molnár & Susanne Winkler (eds.), The architecture of focus, 137–168. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Kiefer, Ference. 2005. On the information structure of the Hungarian sentence. Hungarian Studies 19(2). 255–265. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
König, Ekkehard. 1991. The meaning of focus particles: A comparative perspective. London/New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Krifka, Manfred. 1998. Additive particles under stress. In Devon Strolovitch & Aaron Lawson (eds.), Proceedings of SALT 81, 111–128. Cornell University: CLC Publications.Google Scholar
. 2006. Association with focus phrases. In Valéria Molnár & Susanne Winkler (eds.), The architecture of focus, 105–136. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Krifka, Manfred & Renate Musan (eds.). 2012. The expression of information structure. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kripke, Saul A. 2009. Presupposition and anaphora: Remarks on the formulation of the projection problem. Linguistic Inquiry 40(3). 367–386. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information structure and sentence form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Langer, Corinna. 2019. Focus sensitivity and prosodic structure in Hungarian: A case study on the additive particle is. Düsseldorf: Henrich-Heine-Universität MA Thesis.Google Scholar
Löbner, Sebastian. 2014. Evidence for frames from human language. In Thomas Gamerschlag, Doris Gerland, Rainer Osswald & Wiebke Petersen (eds.), Frames and concept types, 23–67. Berlin: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2017. Frame theory with first-order comparators: Modeling the lexical meaning of punctual verbs of change with frames. In Helle Hvid Hansen, Sarah E. Murray, Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh & Henk Zeevat (eds.), Proceedings of the Eleventh International Tbilisi Symposium on Language, Logic, and Information LNCS 10148, 98–117. Heidelberg/New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Mayer, Mercer. 1967. A boy, a dog and a frog. New York: Dial Books for Young Readers.Google Scholar
. 1969. Frog, where are you? New York: Dial Books for Young Readers.Google Scholar
. 1973. Frog on his own. New York: Dial Books for Young Readers.Google Scholar
. 1974. Frog goes to diner. New York: Dial Books for Young Readers.Google Scholar
Mayer, Mercer & Marianna Mayer. 1971. A boy, a dog, a frog and a friend. New York: Dial Books for Young Readers.Google Scholar
. 1975. One frog too many. New York: Dial Books for Young Readers.Google Scholar
Onea, Edgar. 2007. Exhaustivity, focus and incorporation in Hungarian. In Maria Aloni, Paul Dekker & Floris Roelofsen (eds.), Proceedings of the Sixteenth Amsterdam Colloquium, 169–174. Amsterdam: ILLC, University of Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Osswald, Rainer & Laura Kallmeyer. 2018. Towards a formalization of Role and Reference Grammar. In Rolf Kailuweit, Lisann Künkel & Eva Staudinger (eds.), Applying and expanding Role and Reference Grammar (NIHIN Studies), 355–378. Freiburg: Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Universitätsbibliothek.Google Scholar
Petersen, Wiebke. 2015. Representation of concepts as frames. In Thomas Gamerschlag, Doris Gerland, Rainer Osswald & Wiebke Petersen (eds.), Meaning, frames, and conceptual representation (Studies in Language and Cognition 2), 43–67. Düsseldorf: Düsseldorf University Press. [Commented reprint: originally published 2007 In Jurģis Šķilters, Fiorenza Toccafondi & Gerhard Stemberger (eds.): Complex cognition and qualitative science (The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication 2), 151–170. Riga: University of Latvia.]Google Scholar
Riester, Arndt. 2015. Analyzing Questions under Discussion and information structure in a Balinese narrative. In Atsuko Utsumi & Asako Shiohara (eds.), Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Information Structure of Austronesian Languages, 1–26. Tokyo: Tokyo University ILCAA, TUFS.Google Scholar
. 2019. Constructing QUD trees. In Malte Zimmermann, Klaus von Heusinger & Edgar Onea (eds.), Questions in discourse. Volume 2: Pragmatics, 164–193. Leiden: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Roberts, Craige. 2003. Uniqueness in definite noun phrases. Linguistics and Philosophy 261. 287–350. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2012. Information structure: Towards an integrated formal theory of pragmatics. Semantics and Pragmatics 5(6). 1–69.Google Scholar
Rooth, Mats. 1985. Association with focus. Amherst: University of Massachusetts PhD dissertation.Google Scholar
. 1992. A theory of focus interpretation. Natural Language Semantics 11. 75–116. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Selkirk, Elisabeth. 1996. Sentence prosody: Intonation, stress, and phrasing. In John A. Glodsmith (ed.), The handbook of phonological theory, 550–569. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Skopeteas, Stavros, Ines Fiedler, Samantha Hellmuth, Anne Schwarz, Ruben Stoel, Gisbert Fanselow, Caroline Féry & Manfred Krifka. 2006. Questionnaire on Information Structure: Reference manual (Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure 4). Potsdam: University of Potsdam.Google Scholar
Spencer, Andrew & Ana R. Luís. 2012. Clitics. An introduction. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stalnaker, Robert. 2002. Common ground. Linguistics and Philosophy 25(5–6). 701–721. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Surányi, Balázs. 2011. A szintaktikailag jelöletlen fókusz pragmatikája [On the pragmatics of the syntactically unmarked focus]. Általános Nyelvészeti Tanulmányok XXIII1. 281–313.Google Scholar
. 2015. Discourse-configurationality. In Caroline Féry & Ishihara (eds.), The Oxford handbook of information structure, 422–440. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Szabolcsi, Anna. 1981. The semantics of topic-focus articulation. In Jeroen Groenendijk, Theo Janssen & Martin Stokhof (eds.), Formal methods in the study of language. Proceedings of the 3rd Amsterdam Colloquium, 513–540. Amsterdam: Mathematisch Centrum.Google Scholar
. 1994. All quantifiers are not equal: the case of focus. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 42(3/4). 171–187.Google Scholar
. 1997. Strategies for Scope Taking. In Anna Szabolcsi (ed.), Ways of Scope Taking, 109–154. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2013. Quantifier particles and compositionality. In Maria Aloni, Michael Franke & Floris Roelofsen (eds.), Proceedings of the 19th Amsterdam Colloquium, 27–34. Amsterdam: ILLC, University of Amsterdam.Google Scholar
. 2017. Additive presuppositions are derived through activating focus alternatives. In Alexandre Cremers, Thom van Gessel & Floris Roelofsen (eds.), Proceedings of the 21st Amsterdam Colloquium, 455–464. Amsterdam: ILLC, University of Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Szabolcsi, Anna & Adrian Brasoveanu. 2013. Quantifier particles and compositionality. In Maria Aloni, Michael Franke & Floris Roelofsen (eds.), The dynamic, inquisitive, and visionary life of ψ,?ψ, and ◊ψ. A festschrift for Jeroen Groenendijk, Martin Stokhof, and Frank Veltman, Amsterdam: ILLC, University of Amsterdam. Available at: [URL] (Last access: 13 May 2020).
Szendrői, Kriszta. 2001. Focus and the syntax-phonology interface. London: University College London PhD dissertation.Google Scholar
. 2003. A stress-based approach to the syntax of Hungarian focus. The Linguistic Review 201. 37–78. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Valin, Robert D., Jr. 2005. Exploring the syntax-semantics interface. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2006. Semantic macroroles and language processing. In Ina Bornkessel, Matthias Schlesewsky, Bernard Comrie & Angela D. Friederici (eds.), Semantic role universals and argument linking, 263–301. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Van Valin, Robert D., Jr. & Randy LaPolla. 1997. Syntax: Structure, meaning, and function. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vendler, Zeno. 1967. Linguistics in philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vilkuna, M. 1989. Free word order in Finnish. Its syntax and discourse functions. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.Google Scholar
Wedgwood, Daniel. 2007. Identifying inferences in focus. In Kerstin Schwabe & Susanne Winkler (eds.), On information structure, meaning and form, 207–228. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zwicky, Arnold M. 1985. Clitics and particles. Language 61(2). 283–305. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Balogh, Kata
2024. Negation and Information Structure in Tree-Wrapping Grammar. In Logic and Engineering of Natural Language Semantics [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 14569], ► pp. 37 ff. DOI logo
Balogh, Kata & Corinna Langer
2022. Additive particles, prosodic structure and focus sensitivity in Hungarian. Linguistics 60:1 ► pp. 277 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. 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.