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Article published In: Approaches to Hungarian 19:
Edited by Edgar Onea and Balázs Surányi
[Journal of Uralic Linguistics 4:1] 2025
► pp. 4–50

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Variations on factivity in Hungarian

ORCiD logo with link | ENS, EHESS, PSL Research University, CNRSParis
Published online: 10 July 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jul.00038.abr
Abstract
In this paper I examine the empirical properties of so-called factive verbs in Hungarian, with an emphasis on various syntactic, morphological and pragmatic factors that induce factivity alternations with the same predicates. On the basis of these facts I argue that factivity is not a single property, but a set of properties: a speaker-related evidential veridical inference, a subject-related evidential veridical inference and the projection of the speaker-related veridical inference from the scope of entailment-cancelling operators. Although a default pragmatic principle favours the co-occurrence of these properties, morpho-syntactic and contextual cues can signal non-speaker-veridical or non-projective readings. The lexical meaning of so-called factives does not entail the truth of the complement, only suggesting that the attitude is based on a certain type of evidence.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The verb know
    • 2.1The textbook case
    • 2.2The anaphoric case
    • 2.3The evidential case
    • 2.4Preverbal evaluative adverbs
    • 2.5Focus on the pronoun azt ‘it.acc’
    • 2.6Know in Hungarian: Summary
    • 2.7Comparisons: Korean, Turkish, Azeri
  • 3.Some other factives and non-factives in Hungarian
    • 3.1Verbs compatible with úgy
    • 3.2Veridical verbs not compatible with úgy
    • 3.3Verbs of communication
  • 4.Propositional anaphors and information structure
    • 4.1The proleptic pronoun
    • 4.2The position of the proleptic pronoun
    • 4.3The role of interpretation
  • 5.The origins of ‘factivity’
    • 5.1Background on presuppositions
    • 5.2Roads to ‘factivity’ in Hungarian
    • 5.3Which inferences are speaker-veridical?
    • 5.4What information projects?
  • 6.Perspective shift
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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