In:Advances in the Syntax of DPs: Structure, agreement, and case
Edited by Anna Bondaruk, Gréte Dalmi and Alexander Grosu
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 217] 2014
► pp. 165–192
The feature geometry of generic inclusive null DPs in Hungarian
Published online: 14 October 2014
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.217.07dal
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.217.07dal
This paper claims that Hungarian allows generic inclusive subjects to be null only if they have a generic inclusive antecedent in an adjacent clause. This distinguishes Hungarian from all the other types of Null Subject Languages (NSLs) identified by Roberts & Holmberg (2010). The generic inclusive lexical
az ember
GEN ‘the man’ is a first person-oriented genericity-inducing lexical item that always receives widest scope interpretation, just like English
one.
The generic inclusive null subject,
pro
GEN, on the other hand, is an anaphor that requires a generic inclusive antecedent, as does English
oneself
(Moltmann 2006, 2010, 2012). A similar duality is observed with PRO, the silent counterpart of generic inclusive
one
in non-finite clauses.
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