In:Approaches to Hungarian: Volume 12: Papers from the 2009 Debrecen Conference
Edited by Tibor Laczkó and Catherine O. Ringen
[Approaches to Hungarian 12] 2011
► pp. 85–108
On a type of counterfactual construction
Katalin É. Kiss | Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Pázmàny Péter Catholic University
Published online: 8 December 2011
https://doi.org/10.1075/atoh.12.04kis
https://doi.org/10.1075/atoh.12.04kis
This paper analyzes a Hungarian modal construction with a counterfactual, reproaching reading. Hungarian optative, imperative and reproaching sentences involve a MoodP below their topic projection. Their Mood head is merged with a projection having a matching modal feature: a NonNeutP with a conditional or imperative verb raised to NonNeut, or a NegP having a negative particle with a modal feature (ne) in Neg. The affirmative version of this structure is similar to that of Class I languages of Rivero and Terzi (1995), involving verb movement – except that the landing site of the verb is lower than C. Since V-movement cannot cross NegP, the negative particle assumes a modal feature, whereby it satisfies the requirement of Mood being adjacent to a modal head. Hungarian also has an optative and imperative pattern typical of Class II languages, involving a mood marker in Spec,CP.
Cited by (2)
Cited by two other publications
Lipták, Anikó & Andrés Saab
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