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In:Approaches to Hungarian: Volume 15: Papers from the 2015 Leiden Conference
Edited by Harry van der Hulst and Anikó Lipták
[Approaches to Hungarian 15] 2017
► pp. 183–208

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Chapter 7
Hungarian classifier constructions, plurality and the mass–count distinction

Published online: 24 August 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1075/atoh.15.07sch
Abstract
We argue that Hungarian has both mass and count nouns, and a plural marker which is sensitive to the distinction, as well as a system of sortal classifiers. In English, most nouns are either mass (e.g mud) or count (e.g. book), and there are only a limited number of fully flexible nouns with both mass and count forms (e.g. stone/stones). In Hungarian, however, most count nouns are flexible, and a noun like rózsa ‘rose’ is ambiguous between a mass and a count item. This results in two ways of counting: rózsa as a count noun can be directly modified by a numeral as in két rózsa ‘two roses’, but if it is a mass noun counting uses a classifier construction as in két szál rózsa.
Article outline
  • 1.The problem
  • 2.Plurality is not a classifier
  • 3.Evidence for a mass/count distinction in Hungarian
  • 4.Flexible nouns
  • 5.Some crosslinguistic contextualisation
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (22)
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