Event Structure and the Left Periphery: Studies on Hungarian

E V E N T S T R U C T U R E A N D T H E L E F T P E R I P H E RY

S T U D I E S I N N AT U R A L L A N G U A G E A N D L I N G U I S T I C T H E O RY

VOLUME 68 Managing Editors Marcel den Dikken, City University of New York Liliane Haegeman, University of Lille Joan Maling, Brandeis University

Editorial Board Guglielmo Cinque, University of Venice Carol Georgopoulos, University of Utah Jane Grimshaw, Rutgers University Michael Kenstowicz, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Hilda Koopman, University of California, Los Angeles Howard Lasnik, University of Maryland Alec Marantz, Massachusetts Institute of Technology John J. McCarthy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Ian Roberts, University of Cambridge

The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.

EVENT STRUCTURE AND THE LEFT PERIPHERY Studies on Hungarian Edited by KATALIN E´. KISS Budapest, Hungary

A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-1-4020-4754-1 (PB) ISBN 978-1-4020-4753-4 (HB) ISBN 978-1-4020-4755-8 (ebook) Published by Springer, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. www.springer.com

Printed on acid-free paper

All Rights Reserved
2008 Springer No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.

TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

vii

KATALIN E´. KISS / Aims and Background KATALIN E´. KISS / The Function and the Syntax of the Verbal Particle BOLDIZSA´R ESZES / Verbal Particles Telicizing Stative Psych Verbs CHRISTOPHER PIN˜O´N / Definiteness Effect Verbs CHRISTOPHER PIN˜O´N / Weak and Strong Accomplishments ANIKO CSIRMAZ / Particles and a Two Component Theory of Aspect KATALIN E´. KISS / From the Grammaticalization of Viewpoint Aspect to the Grammaticalization of Situation Aspect ANIKO´ CSIRMAZ / Accusative Case and Aspect KATALIN E´. KISS / Apparent or Real? On the Complementary Distribution of Identificational Focus and the Verbal Particle ANIKO´ CSIRMAZ / Aspect, Negation and Quantifiers BALA´ZS SURA´NYI / Predicates, Negative Quantifiers and Focus: Specificity and Quantificationality of N-Words

1 17 57 75 91 107

REFERENCES INDEX

287 297

v

129 159 201 225 255

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This volume summarizes the results of a three-year project taking place at the Research Institute for Linguistics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, financed by OTKA, the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund, under grant TS 040 705. We wish to acknowledge both the financial support of OTKA, and the logistic and intellectual support of the Research Institute for Linguistics, including the intellectual contribution of two PhD students associated with our project, Annama´ria Bene and Csaba Olsvay. We have also greatly benefited by the comments of two anonymous reviewers.

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AIMS AND BACKGROUND

1.

AIMS

In the Minimalist framework, properties of syntax beyond those representing general properties of computational efficiency are believed to be derivable from the requirements of external systems accessing syntax. In line with these assumptions, the studies of this volume examine the hypothesis that the structure of the left periphery of the Hungarian sentence – displaying varying orders of the verb, the verbal particle, the focus constituent, the negative particle, and quantifiers, associated with different interpretations and aspectual values – is at least partially motivated by the structure of the event described; that is, event type correlates with word order, with the presence or absence of the verbal particle, with the presence or absence of an internal argument, with its [þ/
specific] feature, with the aspectual interpretation of the sentence, with the interpretation of focus, and with the interpretation of pronouns participating in negative concord, among others. Although the data to be analyzed are mainly Hungarian, the questions to be answered are of crosslinguistic relevance. They include questions like what role the verbal particle plays in determining aspect; whether it is a telicizer contributing to situation aspect, or a perfectivizer contributing to viewpoint aspect; and if the socalled aspectual argument, undergoing a delimited change and thereby measuring out the event, is invariably the internal argument. It is also questioned why verbs denoting a delimited change of state, and those denoting creation or coming into being project different syntactic structures, and how their syntactic differences correlate with the specificity feature of their internal argument. It is tested if the lack of morphological viewpoint aspect marking in a language means the absence of viewpoint aspect, and if the simultaneous marking of viewpoint aspect and situation aspect is redundant. The old question of what the source of the ‘exhaustive identification’ function of structural focus is will be given a new answer. The questions concerning negation include, among others, in what way negation affects aspect; what types of quantifiers – if any – pronominal elements participating in negative concord represent; and in what way their distribution is constrained by event structure. This introductory chapter is devoted to discussing some of the background notions that the studies of the volume adopt, and to outlining the basic claims that each of the papers defends.

1 ´ Kiss (ed.), Event Structure and the Left Periphery Studies on Hungarian, 1–15. Katalin E.
2008 Springer.

K ATA L I N E´ . K I S S

2 2.

BACKGROUND NOTIONS

2.1.

Event structure

The field of research referred to by the term ‘event structure’ in current linguistic theory has grown out of a seminal study of Zeno Vendler (1967).1 Vendler classified verbs according to the ‘‘time schemata they presuppose’’ – or, in a more linguistic terminology, according to the temporal properties of the predicates in which they can occur. These properties, for example, the features [þ/
durative], [þ/
bounded], and [þ/
homogeneous], have come to be understood to represent the properties of the events (or, in other terminologies, eventualities (Bach 1981), or situations (Smith 1991)) that the predicates denote. Vendler distinguished four major verb classes: states, activities, accomplishments, and achievements. States are durative and unbounded, involving no internal change – e.g. John knows Mary. Activities are also durative, with no inherent end point; however, unlike states, they express an ongoing change – e.g. John talked during the class. Accomplishments are non-homogeneous durative events, containing an ongoing activity with a necessary endpoint, a culmination – e.g. John mowed the lawn. Achievements lack duration; they involve a change with an immediate culmination – e.g. John found the ring. Vendler’s theory has been developed in various directions in lexical semantics, propositional semantics, and syntax alike. Of these developments, it is the theories of Krifka (1989, 1992), and Dowty (1991), introducing the notion of homomorphism between the theme argument denotation and the domain of the event, and the notion of incremental theme, that have had greatest influence on the studies of this volume, particularly on their interpretation of the notion of telicity (or inherent boundedness/ inherent delimitation), the property distinguishing accomplishments and achievements from states and activities. These theories have shown that in the case of telic predicates, the ‘part-of’ relation defined on the theme argument is also preserved in the domain of the event. That is, if x is part of y, then if a telic predicate maps y as theme onto event e, it must map x onto an event e¢ which is part of e. For example, in the case of the event of John eating an apple, a look at the apple will tell us if the event has not begun yet, or has taken place halfway, or has been completed altogether. This approach has helped the understanding of the role of the Hungarian verbal particle, an element predicating the resulting state or resulting location of the theme undergoing a delimited change. In the terminology of Dowty (1991), all themes displaying a theme-to-event homomorphism are incremental themes. The class of incremental themes contains two major subclasses: effected objects (e.g. in build a house, write a letter), and objects entailed to undergo a definite change of state (e.g. in paint a house, polish a shoe). Tenny (1994), on the other hand, categorizes these two types of themes separately, distinguishing incremental-theme predicates (i.e., essentially verbs of creation, consumption, and coming into being) from change-of-state predicates. Tenny also identifies a third major type of verbs in the case of which the changing of the theme is homomorphic with the passing of the event: verbs denoting motion along a path. In their case it is the path – whether explicit (e.g. in John played the

AIMS AND BACKGROUND

3

sonata) or implicit, with only its terminal point named (e.g. in John pushed the bike into the corner) – that measures out the event. The studies of this volume support the adequacy of Tenny’s classification. Incremental theme verbs, denoting creation or coming into being, taking a non-presupposed theme, and verbs denoting a delimited change of state or location, taking a presupposed theme, are syntactically encoded in radically different ways in Hungarian, and the syntactic encoding of the latter two subtypes, those denoting a delimited change of state, and those denoting a delimited change of location, also display systematic differences. What is more, the differences manifest in Hungarian shed light on similar differences in other languages, e.g. in English, as well (see chapters 4 and 5). 2.2.

Situation aspect versus viewpoint aspect

Event structure and aspect are overlapping notions; both concern the temporal organization of events/situations. In the theories of Vendler (1967), Comrie (1976), Dahl (1985), or Kiefer (1994), aspects are different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of situations; and situation types are related to aspect by constraining the aspectual possibilities of the verbs describing them. In the aspectual theory of Smith (1991), on the other hand, event structure, identified as the internal temporal structure of situations, represents one of the two ingredients of aspectual meaning. For Smith, the aspectual meaning of a sentence results from the interaction of situation type and viewpoint. Borik (2002) and Borik & Reinhart (2004) also put forth a two-component aspectual theory, calling the internal temporal organization of situations semantic aspect, as opposed to morpho-syntactic tense and viewpoint aspect. In Smith’s theory, situations differ with respect to duration, boundedness/telicity, and dynamism. Borik (2002) and Borik & Reinhart (2004), on the other hand, attribute a distinguished role only to the feature [þ/
telic] in categorizing types of semantic aspect. The content of the notion of telicity has been subject to much controversy. A family of interpretations – see Verkuyl (1972), Smith (1991), and Tenny (1994), among others – identify the telicity of a predicate with the inherent boundedness, or delimitation, of the event denoted. In a different approach, developing Vendler’s (1967) homogeneity property – represented by Dowty (1986), Krifka (1998), Borik (2002), and Borik & Reinhart (2004), etc. – atelic and telic predicates differ in whether they are homogeneous or non-homogeneous. The homogeneity of predicates is based on their subinterval property. In the formulation of Borik & Reinhart (2002), if a telic event holds at a given interval I, there can be no other interval distinct from I at which it also holds. That is, if the telic proposition John wrote his term paper is true of a two-week interval, it cannot also be true of a ten-day subinterval of the situation. For an atelic event, if it holds at an interval I, there is always some other interval at which it also holds. That is, if the atelic proposition John was playing tennis from 2 to 5 is true, then the truth of the proposition John was playing tennis from 3 to 4 also follows.

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K ATA L I N E´ . K I S S

Whereas situation type determines the inherent temporal properties of a situation, viewpoint determines if the sentence provides a complete or partial view of it. A situation represented in its entirety, with its initial point and end point included, exemplifies the perfective viewpoint – e.g. John ate the soup. A situation represented partially, without its initial point and end point, on the other hand, exemplifies the imperfective viewpoint – e.g. John was eating the soup. (Smith (1991) actually also allows a third viewpoint, the neutral one, associated with aspectually vague sentences.) The literature on aspect proposes several tests to distinguish telic predicates from atelic ones, and perfective predicates from imperfective ones. A more difficult question is how telicity can be distinguished from perfectivity; when the tests setting delimited predicates apart from non-delimited ones test telicity (i.e., inherent delimitation) and when they test perfectivity (i.e. delimitation imposed on the situation by the viewpoint). Delimited predicates can cooccur with time-span adverbials such as in an hour (e.g. John read the article in an hour), whereas non-delimited predicates accept durative adverbials such as for an hour (e.g. John was reading the article for an hour). Linguists identifying aspect with viewpoint aspect, e.g. Kiefer (1994), use this test to check perfectivity; Verkuyl (1972), Dowty (1986), Smith (1991), Borik (2000), and Borik & Reinhart (2004), on the other hand, regard it as a test of telicity. In the opinion of de Swart (1998, 2000) and Csirmaz (in chapters 6 and 10), what durative and completive time adverbials test is the þ or
value of the subinterval property. Both situation aspect and viewpoint aspect are marked for this property, and they can be marked for it differently – e.g. (1)

For two days, John was writing the essay in a week. ‘For two weeks John was engaged in an activity which would have led him to write the essay in a week.’

A generally accepted test of atelicity is the so-called progressive entailment; that is, in languages distinguishing the past progressive and the simple past, an atelic sentence in the past progressive entails the truth of the corresponding sentence in the simple past (see Dowty 1979). In the case of telic sentences, the entailment does not hold. This test shows the predicate watch TV to be atelic, and the predicate write an essay to be (potentially) telic: (2)

a. John was watching TV fi John watched TV. b. John was writing an essay fi / John wrote an essay.

In a version of this test proposed by Borik (2002), an atelic sentence in the present progressive entails the truth of the corresponding sentence in the present

AIMS AND BACKGROUND

5

perfect: (3)

a. John is watching TV fi John has watched TV. b. John is writing an essay fi / John has written an essay.

According to a telicity test proposed by Verkuyl (1972), a telic predicate associated with two conjoined temporal phrases is understood to denote two independent situations – see (4a). In the case of atelics, on the other hand, the sentence is ambiguous; it can denote either a single extended situation, or two distinct situations – see (4b): (4)

a. John went on a trip on Monday and on Tuesday. b. John was travelling on Monday and on Tuesday.

When we test (im)perfectivity, we test whether or not the situation denoted by the predicate is viewed as a whole, with its initial and end points included. When a perfective predicate, representing a complete event, is combined with a when-clause, the situations denoted by the two predicates are understood consecutively – see (5a). In the case of an imperfective main predicate, representing an event in progress, the interpretation is simultaneous – see (5b). (5)

a. When I entered, John closed the window. b. When I entered, John was closing the window.

A temporal clause introduced by after presupposes that the situation denoted by the main clause begins after the event in the temporal clause has ended, hence it only accepts a perfective main predicate. Compare: (6)

a. After I entered, John closed the window. b. *After I entered, John was closing the window.

A perfective predicate in the present tense has future reference – see (7a); the present tense form refers to the actual present only in the case of an imperfective verb – see (7b): (7)

a. John goes abroad. b. John lives abroad. 2.3.

The left periphery

It is evident that event type is determined primarily by the lexical core of sentence structure. It is less obvious that event structure also interacts with the

6

K ATA L I N E´ . K I S S

functional layers. The studies of this volume focus on the correlation of event structure and the structure and interpretation of the left periphery of the Hungarian sentence. Hungarian sentence structure represents a version (in fact, a prototype) of the articulated universal sentence structure emerging from the work of Rizzi (1997) and Cinque (1999), consisting of a lexical layer and a series of inflectional and complementizer projections. The highest functional heads of the Hungarian sentence – listed in (8b) – are nearly identical with those that Rizzi (1997, 2002) attributes to universal sentence structure – see (8a). (8)

a. Force > Top* > Int > Top* > Focus > Top* b. Force > Top* > (Int) > Dist > (Neg) > Focus > (Neg)

Like in universal sentence structure, the topmost projection of the Hungarian sentence is a ForceP, harboring the complementizer. It dominates a – possibly iterated – TopP projection, with a topic constituent in its specifier. TopP may dominate a rarely used interrogative projection (IntP), hosting a non-focussed mie´rt ‘why’ wh-phrase. Whereas in universal sentence structure this interrogative element can be followed by further topics, in Hungarian, it can dominate one or more DistP projections, the landing sites of distributive quantifiers. (If distributive quantifiers are preposed into scope positions by adjunction (Quantifier-Raising) instead of substitution, then no DistPs need to be assumed in the Hungarian sentence, either.) The next lower projection in both languages is a Foc(us)P, containing a focus in its specifier. FP can subsume further TopP projections in Italian, but not in Hungarian. Here is a Hungarian sentence realizing the projections represented in (8b): (9)

Nem tudom, [CP hogy [TopP Ja´nos [IntP mie´rt [DistP mindenkit [FocP not know-I that John why everyone-ACC EBE´DRE [hı´vott meg]]]]]]] lunch-for invited PRT ‘I wonder why John invited everyone FOR LUNCH.’

Negation is allowed by Rizzi (1997) (and also by Zanuttini (1994)) to appear between more than one functional projections, so the possibility of generating a NegP both above FP and below it is not a unique property of the Hungarian sentence, either, e.g.: (10)

[TopP Ja´nost [NegP nem [FocP TEGNAP [NegP nem [hı´vtam fel]]]]] John not yesterday not called-I up ‘It wasn’t yesterday that I didn’t call up John.’

AIMS AND BACKGROUND

7

Despite appearances, pre-focus negation is not constituent negation; it triggers the same negative concord that predicate negation does. Compare: (11)

a. [DistP Senkit [NegP nem [FocP E´N I nobody-ACC not ‘Nobody was invited BY ME.’ b. [TopP E´n [DistP senkit [NegP nem I nobody-ACC not ‘I did not invite anybody.’

[hı´vtam meg]]]] invited PRT [hı´vtam meg]]]] invited PRT

The lower section of the left periphery of the Hungarian sentence involves some open questions. As is clear from examples (9), (10), and (11), the focus, or the lower negative particle is immediately followed by the V. The problem is that, whereas in neutral sentences, the verb is preceded by its particle or bare nominal complement, in the presence of a focus and/or negation, the ‘particle/bare nominal, V’ order is reversed. Various explanations have been proposed for this phenomenon. For example, Brassai (1863–65), and E´. Kiss (1987, 1994) assume that the focus is in complementary distribution with the verbal particle/bare nominal complement, representing an alternative filler of the same preverbal slot, as shown in (12a). According to Brody (1990, 1995), the focus occupies the specifier of a higher projection (a FocusP) than that dominating the particle, and its immediately preverbal position is due to V-to-F movement. ((12b) is an updated version of a Brody-style structure.) Olsvay (2000b), on the other hand, assumes that in the presence of a negative particle and/or a focus the V moves into the head position of a Non-Neutral Phrase (NNP) (rather than into F or Neg); that is, the ‘V, particle’ order attested in the case of focus and/or negation arises from V movement to NN – see (12c). Chapter 9 of this book will adopt Olsvay’s proposal.

(12) a.

TopP Spec

Top’ Top

PredP

Spec Particle/Focus

Pred’

Pred

VP V

K ATA L I N E´ . K I S S

8

b.

TopP

Spec

TopP

c. Top’

Top

Spec

FocP

Spec Focus

Top

Foc’

Foc Vi

Top’ FocP

Spec Focus PredP

Spec Particle

Foc

Pred’

Pred ti

Foc’

VP

V ti

NNP

NN Vi

PredP

Spec Particle

Pred’

Pred ti

VP

V ti A problem that has so far raised doubts concerning focus theories involving V-movement is that they predict a fixed word order for the postverbal section of the sentence crossed by the V (e.g. the particle is expected to immediately follow the V in (12b,c)); in fact, however, the postverbal word order in the Hungarian sentence is free. Chapter 2 proposes a novel solution of this problem, claiming that V-movement to Pred in neutral sentences, and V movement across Pred to Non-Neutral in sentences involving negation and/or focussing creates a phase which has the V in its head, and the postverbal section in its domain. In the domain of this phase, to be handed over to Spell-Out, the projection which has its head removed is flattened at the syntax-phonology interface, and its constituents are reordered according to their phonological weight in PF. Observe what happens to the hierarchical left periphery of the PredP projection in (13a) when it becomes the domain of a higher phase (13b). If the different postverbal elements are replaced by shorter or longer expressions of the same category, the optimal postverbal order also changes, in accordance with Behaghel’s (1932) Law of the Growing Constituents.

AIMS AND BACKGROUND

(13)

9

a. [PredP Nagyon [PredP meg se´rtette [vP Boldizsa´r Lilit]]] PRT offended Boldizsa´r Lili-ACC very.much ‘Boldizsa´r offended Lili very much.’ nagyon Boldizsa´r ]]] b. [NegP Nem [NNP se´rtette [PredP meg Lilit ´ r-NOM PRT Lili-ACC very Boldizsa not offended {meg nagyon Ja´nos Piroska´t} PRT very.much John-NOM Piroska-ACC {meg Ja´nos Piroska´t olyan rettenetesen} PRT John-NOM Piroska-ACC so terribly

The category of the projection harboring the verbal particle is also a controversial issue of Hungarian syntax. Some analyses place the preverbal particle (and the bare nominal complement, which is in complementary distribution with the particle) in the lexical layer of the sentence. Horvath (1986), Brody (1990), and Szendro´´i (2003) assume that the particle is the left sister of the V under a V’ node. E´. Kiss (1994) places the particle into the specifier of VP. Nowadays, the preverbal particle position is more often analyzed as an A-bar position, the specifier of a functional projection, because it can also be filled by long movement from a lower clause, e.g.: (14) Fel kellene, hogy hı´vjuk Pe´tert. up needs that call-we Peter-ACC ‘It is necessary that we call up Peter.’ In view of examples like (14), the verbal particle is placed into the specifier of an AspP projection by Pin˜on (1995), den Dikken (2004), and E´. Kiss (2002a), and into the specifier of PredP in Csirmaz (2004) and in the studies of this volume. In chapter 6, Csirmaz argues for an AspP projection different from PredP, whose perfective/imperfective head is responsible for the viewpoint aspect of the sentence. AspP dominates PredP, and it triggers movement from the specifier or head of PredP. The inflectional layer of the Hungarian sentence involves a ModalityP, a TenseP, a MoodP, an AgrOP, and an AgrSP projection, with the modality, tense, mood, object agreement and subject agreement suffixes realized on the V in the opposite order, in accordance with the Mirror Principle (see Bartos 2000). The question whether the inflectional layer dominates PredP and AspP or is dominated by them cannot be decided empirically, but the universal hierarchy of Cinque (1999) suggests the former order. Thus the following heads are hypothesized in the lower section of the left periphery of the Hungarian sentence: (15)

AgrS > AgrO > Mood > Tense > Modality > Asp > Pred

K ATA L I N E´ . K I S S

10 For example: (16)

[AgrSP[AgrOP[MoodP[TP[ModP[AspPmegi[Asp’PERF[PredPti i -hat -0 -n-a´-tok]]]]]]]] PRT drink-POSS-PRES-COND-3-2PL ‘you would be allowed to drink it up’

The different types of adverbials are interspersed among the constituents of the left periphery basically as predicted by Cinque (1999) and, in a different framework, by Ernst (2002). The effect of event structure on the left periphery is manifested, among others, in the interaction of the verbal particle and viewpoint aspect – a question touched upon in chapter 2, and discussed in detail in chapter 6. Whereas the presence or absence, and the type of the verbal particle is a key ingredient of situation aspect, the position of the verbal particle will be shown to correlate with viewpoint aspect (which will be derived from the assumption that the Asp head imposes certain requirements on the type of element admitted to its specifier). The formal aspect of the interaction of event structure with focussing and negation, the (apparent?) complementary distribution of the focus constituent, the negative particle, and the verbal particle in the immediately preverbal position, is taken up in chapter 9. On the level of interpretation, the problem is whether focussing and negation neutralize situation aspect; whether negation indeed turns all types of events into states. These questions will be examined in chapter 10. Both situation aspect and viewpoint aspect are dependent on the specificity of the internal argument of the predicate. This correlation is a recurring theme of the chapters of this book, discussed in chapters 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, and 11. Telic predicates expressing a change of state or location take a specific internal argument and a verbal particle; whereas telic predicates expressing coming into being, appearance, or creation take a non-specific internal argument and no particle. Telic predicates of the latter type fail some of the standard tests of telicity – they are to be identified as weak accomplishments in chapter 5. The fact that event type correlates with the specificity feature of the internal argument has an interesting reflex in negative sentences: the universal or bound indefinite interpretation of negative pronominal elements participating in negative concord depends on the type of the event described in the sentence – as shown in chapter 11. Event structure also interacts with topic selection. This question, and, in general, the effect of event structure upon the discourse organization of the sentence was analyzed by E´. Kiss (2005a).

3.

THE PROBLEMS EXAMINED

The chapters of this volume study phenomena related to event structure in syntax and the syntax-semantics interface on the basis of Hungarian data; nevertheless, the generalizations arrived at promise to be of cross-linguistic relevance.

AIMS AND BACKGROUND

11

The primary indicator of event type in Hungarian is the presence or absence, the type, and the position of the verbal particle. Chapter 2, entitled The function and the syntax of the verbal particle, aims to provide a theory of the verbal particle which can predict both the functional interpretation and the structural position of the major types of Hungarian verbal particles. Particles are shown to fall into three major types, corresponding to three major types of events. Resultative particles mark telic sentences denoting a delimited change of state, terminative particles mark telic sentences denoting a delimited change of location, whereas locative particles mark sentences denoting existence or spatial configuration in a given location. Contrary to widespread assumptions, the verbal particle is not a perfectivizer; it marks situation aspect, and it has an indirect role in determining viewpoint aspect. The clarification of the function of the verbal particle leads to a syntactic analysis which treats the particle as a secondary predicate predicated of the theme argument, and identifies its canonical preverbal position as the specifier of a PredP projection. The proposed syntactic analysis correctly predicts that particles accompany only transitive and unaccusative verbs; unergatives can accept a particle only if they are complemented by a non-thematic object. It also falls out that telic predicates expressing the creation, or the coming into being, of their theme can involve no particle – because their [– specific] theme cannot function as the subject of predication. In the case of certain types of psychological verbs, some predictions of the theory of the verbal particle presented in chapter 2 are not borne out. Chapter 3, entitled Verbal particles telicizing stative psych verbs, examines in what way particle plus psychological verb combinations, taking an Experiencer subject and Theme or Stimulus object, expressing a change in the subject’s mental (emotional or perceptual) state, are special. These complex verbs, like meg-kedvel ‘come to like’ and meg-sajna´l ‘come to feel sorry for’ on the one hand, and meg-la´t ‘catch sight of’ and meg-hall ‘come to hear’, on the other hand, are derived from simple stative verbs (kedvel ‘like’, la´t ‘see’ etc.) by means of the verbal particle meg. The particle is identified as an eventuality description modifier mapping a state to an event, which brings about a change of situation aspect type by providing a dynamic meaning component. The semantic structure of these particle plus verb complexes is analyzed by introducing the notion of a mental change of state, using a scale-based degree semantics, originally developed for the semantic analysis of adjectives and certain English verb classes involving an incremental theme. These verbs also contradict generalizations concerning the mapping of lexical structure onto syntactic structure, hence they pose a problem for several current theories of the lexicon-syntax interface. For example, they necessitate a relaxation of the linking theory and the Measuring-Out Constraint of Tenny (1994). Whereas telic change-of-location and change-of-state predicates, including telic psych-verbs, take a verbal particle in Hungarian, telic incremental-theme predicates, i.e., verbs of creation, coming into being, and appearance, take none. Chapters 4 and 5 are devoted to the analysis of the latter type of predicates. Chapter 4 deals with definiteness effect verbs, which is a much larger set in Hungarian than has been

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identified in English. Chapter 4 also explains why; because definiteness effect verbs are systematically polysemous in that their so-called definiteness effect meaning is simply one of two or more meanings that they have. In Hungarian, the reading with the definiteness effect is easy to set apart because – unlike the other meaning(s), it is associated with the bare verb plus theme argument with no particle involved. In English, where the two readings can be realized by one and the same string, the systematic polysemy is less transparent. Concerning the definiteness effect meaning, it is claimed that there is both uniformity and diversity in the semantics of these verbs. The uniformity is seen in the idea that every definiteness effect verb introduces a novel discourse referent corresponding to its direct internal argument. The diversity is revealed in the idea that although every definiteness effect verb specifies an ‘end condition’ that comes to hold of its internal argument, the exact value of this end condition varies across subclasses of definiteness effect verbs, hence there is no single end condition that does duty for all definiteness effect verbs. Chapter 5 on Weak and strong accomplishments argues that the fact that telic change-of-state and change-of-location predicates, on the one hand, and predicates expressing creation, coming into being, and appearance, on the other hand, are encoded in different syntactic structures is not a syntactic idiosyncrasy; the different syntactic structures reflect semantic differences. Verbs of creation, coming into being, and appearance are not diagnosed as accomplishments by every traditional test – therefore, the category ‘weak accomplishment’ is introduced. It is argued that the essential difference between weak and strong accomplishments lies in the fact that the latter are presuppositional in a way that the former are not, and this difference is captured by means of a notion of finishing that figures in the analysis of strong accomplishments but not in that of weak accomplishments. Chapter 6, Particles and a two-component theory of aspect, adopts a version of the two-component aspect theory elaborated by Smith (1991) and Olsen (1997). It argues for the independence of situation aspect and viewpoint aspect, for example, by analyzing telic imperfective events. The chapter examines how Hungarian particles and other types of verbal modifiers affect the two kinds of aspect. Resultative and terminative particles, denoting an endpoint, can alter situation aspect properties by telicizing the event. Particles interact with the viewpoint specification of the event through their position relative to the verb. The telicizing effect of particles follows from a compositional approach to situation aspect. The interaction of particle position and viewpoint aspect is derived from the local relation between the two elements and the properties of viewpoint aspect. The viewpoint aspect of an event is encoded in the functional head Asp. It is argued that for all finite event descriptions in Hungarian, Asp is present and is marked as either perfective or imperfective. In order to derive the interaction of verbal modifiers and aspect, it is assumed that the Asp head has an EPP feature, which must be checked by the closest possible constituent, whether it be a particle to be moved from Spec,PredP to Spec,AspP, or the V to be moved from Pred to Asp. A terminative or resultative verbal modifier in Spec,AspP delimits the reference time just as it delimits the event time, and yields an output in which the reference time includes

AIMS AND BACKGROUND

13

the endpoint of the event. Since this is excluded by the definition of imperfective aspect, the EPP feature of an imperfective Asp cannot be checked by a terminative/ resultative particle; it is checked by the V moved to Asp, or by a verbal modifier which does not denote an endpoint. Chapter 7, entitled From the grammaticalization of viewpoint aspect to the grammaticalization of situation aspect, discusses a change in the history of Hungarian in the course of which the language has lost its complex tense system also encoding viewpoint aspect, and parallel with that process, it has developed a system of marking telicity – primarily by means of verbal particles. The chapter raises the question if the near simultaneity of these two processes was a mere coincidence. Although it does not challenge the claim that situation aspect and viewpoint aspect represent two separate subsystems of aspect, it argues that the overt morphological encoding of both systems would be redundant to a large extent, because viewpoint aspect correlates with situation aspect in a predictable way in the majority of cases. In the unmarked case, predicates marked as telic have the perfective viewpoint, and transitive and unaccusative atelic predicates have the imperfective viewpoint. In the case of unergative atelics, the viewpoint is identified on the basis of tense, time adverbials, and context. For the encoding of the occasional mismatches, the language adopts particular lexical, morphological, and syntactic means. Chapter 8, Accusative case and aspect, focusses on the function and the licensing conditions of non-thematic objects in Hungarian. The distribution of non-theta marked reflexives and body parts is accounted for by means of the requirement that the argument structure of the predicate contain at least one argument per subevent (the Argument per subevent condition of Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2001)). Other types of non-theta marked constituents are analyzed as situation delimiters, directly affecting the aspectual properties of the events they modify. Accusative marked situation delimiters include temporal and spatial measure adverbials, multiplicatives, and adjectives. It is shown that even though they all serve to delimit events, they do so in different ways. While temporal and measure adverbials merely denote the endpoint of the event, multiplicatives and adjectives introduce and modify a result. The syntax of the Hungarian verbal particle is intertwined with the syntax of identificational focus – as was briefly discussed above, in connection with structures (12a–c). Chapter 9, entitled Apparent or real? On the complementary distribution of identificational focus and the verbal particle, aims to clarify the structural positions of these two types of immediately preverbal constituents, disentangling and explaining the similarities and the differences in their syntactic behavior. It is claimed that what underlies the shared properties of foci and verbal particles/bare nominals is a functional and a phase-structural similarity. Not only the verbal particle and the bare nominal are predicates, predicated of the (explicit or implicit) theme argument of the verb, but the identificational focus is also a predicate, expressing specification, predicated of the open proposition constituted by the VP. The exhaustivity associated with structural focus is claimed to be an implicature of specificational predication. The similarities in the syntactic behavior of the verbal particle, the bare nominal, and the focus are derived from the fact that they play similar roles in phase-structure.

14

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PredP, with the verbal particle/bare nominal in Spec,PredP, and the functionally more extended FocP, with the identificational focus in Spec,FocP, represent different realizations of the v*P phase of the Hungarian sentence. Both of them are headed by the V (owing to V movement), and both of them have a postverbal domain that is reordered in the phonological component according to the phonological weight of the constituents, satisfying Behagel’s Law of the Growing Constituents (1932). The last two chapters of this book, chapters 10 and 11, examine how event structure interacts with negation. Chapter 10, entitled Aspect, negation, and quantifiers, explores the effect of clausal negation on aspect. Since negation allows modification by durative adverbials, it has been suggested that it is an aspectual operator, yielding derived states from all event predicates. This chapter argues that negation does not alter the aspectual properties of the event predicate. Rather, it yields a higher predicate of times which has the subinterval property, the property which adverbial modification is sensitive to. With negation present, the predicate of times modified by the durative adverbial applies to the reference time and not to the event time. It is shown that in addition to negation, the modification of reference time by durative adverbials is also licensed by downward entailing quantifiers and arguments modified by only. These data provide further arguments against the aspectual operatorhood of negation. It is noted that structurally case-marked adverbials are restricted to modifying the event time. It is argued that this restriction arises from locality constraints on case checking and adverbial modification. The chapter on Predicates, negative quantifiers and focus: specificity and quantificationality of n-words examines the consequences of the event-structure-motivated restrictions on the [þ/
specificity] feature of the theme argument in negative sentences. As discussed in chapters 4 and 5, verbs expressing creation, coming into being, and existence require their theme argument to be non-specific; their prefixed counterparts, on the other hand, only allow a theme represented by a specific, presuppositional noun phrase. In negative sentences in which the theme is a pronominal element participating in negative concord, the (non-)specificity requirement associated with the theme argument is reflected in the (non-)specific reading of the negative pronominal (called ‘n-word’) – e.g. (16)

a. Nem e´rkezett senki. not arrived nobody ‘There did not arrive anybody.’ b. Nem e´rkezett meg senki. not arrived PRT anybody ‘None of the persons has arrived.’

It is contended in this chapter that this specificity–non-specificity contrast is to be analyzed in terms of an ambiguity in the interpretation of n-words themselves, between a quantificational and a non-quantificational lexical meaning. (16b) involves an n-word that is universally quantified and scopes above negation, while (16a)

AIMS AND BACKGROUND

15

involves a Heimian indefinite n-word, which is existentially closed in the scope of negation (cf. Heim 1982). Although the two resulting interpretations are logical equivalents, they are compositionally different and they behave differently in natural language. The chapter also investigates and derives the distribution of the two readings in various domains of the clause. Focussing affects the interpretation of n-words in an interesting way: their (morphosyntactically optionally realized) EVEN component (see Lee and Horn (1994), Lahiri (1998), and Horn (2000)) operates on the bare predicative restriction of n-words, treating it as an extreme element on a predicate scale (cf. Krifka 1995). NOTE 1

Vendler’s work was not without precedents; some of its basic ideas can be traced back to Ryle (1949).

K ATA L I N E´ . K I S S

T H E FU N C T I O N A N D T H E S Y N TA X O F T H E V E R B A L PA RT I C L E

1.

INTRODUCTION

Perhaps the hardest descriptive problem of Hungarian syntax is how to analyze the verbal particle. Is it a head or a phrase? What structural position does it occupy? Does it form a constituent with the V? Is its default preverbal position a base-generated or a derived position? Is its complementary distribution with the focus in the preverbal slot real or apparent? Does the reverse, V-particle order of negated sentences result from V-movement across the particle, or from the blocking of particle movement? How is the interaction of particle position and aspectual interpretation to be represented? Many of these questions also arise in the better known Indo-European languages – e.g. in the Germanic languages (even if they are exempt from the problem of the interaction of the particle with focussing), or in the Slavic languages (even if the Slavic equivalents of the Hungarian verbal particles are non-separable verbal prefixes, raising less word order problems). The questions arising have been given many different answers in the literature, and the proposed analyses seem to represent similar levels of descriptive adequacy, and seem to rely on principles of Universal Grammar to similar extents. The work summarized in this chapter has been motivated by the the assumption that the understanding of the role that the verbal particle plays in the conceptual-intentional interpretation of the sentence and in its prosodic realization may facilitate the selection of the most adequate syntactic representation. It is widely held that the verbal particle is a perfectivizing operator. This study will also confirm that the presence or absence, the type, and the position of the Hungarian verbal particle is related to the aspectual interpretation of the sentence. The view that the verbal particle denotes perfective aspect, however, will be refuted by demonstrating that not all perfective sentences involve a verbal particle, and not all sentences containing a particle are perfective. It will be claimed that particles contribute to aspectual interpretation by indicating situation aspect. Verbal particles will be shown to fall into three main classes. Resultative particles mark telic sentences describing an inherently delimited change of state, by denoting the resultant state of the individual undergoing the change. Terminative particles mark telic sentences describing an inherently delimited change of location, by denoting the end location of the moving individual. Locative particles appear in atelic sentences expressing existence or spatial configuration; they denote the location of the argument whose existence or spatial configuration is asserted. The interaction of particles with viewpoint aspect is indirect, the details of which will be examined in chapter 6. 17 ´ Kiss (ed.), Event Structure and the Left Periphery Studies on Hungarian, 17–55. Katalin E.
2008 Springer.

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18

The clarification of the functions of the verbal particle leads to a syntactic analysis which treats the particle as a secondary predicate predicated of the theme argument, and identifies its canonical preverbal position as the specifier of a PredP projection. The proposed syntactic analysis correctly predicts that particles accompany only transitive and unaccusative verbs; unergatives can accept a particle only if they are complemented by a pseudo-theme. It also falls out that telic predicates expressing the creation, or the coming into being, of their theme can involve no particle – because their [–specific] theme cannot function as the subject of predication. The effect of focussing and negation upon the proposed structure will be taken up in chapter 9 of this book. This chapter is organized as follows: Section 2 examines the distribution of verbal particles across situation types, as well as their functions and their syntactic licensing conditions. The three main types of verbal particles identified will be discussed in separate subsections. The resultative particles of telic change-of-state sentences are analyzed in section 2.1, and the terminative particles of telic change-oflocation sentences are examined in section 2.2. Section 2.3 discusses why telic sentences expressing creation or coming into being – unlike those expressing a change of state or a change of location – involve no verbal particle. The locative particles of atelic sentences expressing existence or spatial configuration in a particular location are investigated in section 2.4. Section 3 is devoted to the question whether resultative and terminative particles mark viewpoint aspect or situation aspect. Section 4 discusses the syntax of the verbal particle. 2.

T Y P E S O F V E R B A L PA RT I C L E S A N D S I T U AT I O N T Y P E S

As will be argued below, the presence or absence, and the type of the Hungarian verbal particle is determined by the type of the situation described in the given sentence.1 The classification of situations that underlies the distribution of verbal particles is a version of the typology of situations emerging from the work of Vendler (1967), Dowty (1991), Smith (1991), Tenny (1994), and others. The primary criterion of the classification of situations – and of the sentences describing them – is (a)telicity. Telic situations contain a change with a conclusion, an outcome, and, accordingly, telic sentences describe a process leading to a result. Whereas the traditional classification of telic sentences into accomplishments and achievements is based on the [þ/
durative] feature of the event (see Smith 1991:30), the classification to be adopted here, following Tenny (1994) in crucial respects, is based on the quality of the change denoted. Three types of telic sentences are distinguished: those describing a change of state, those describing a change of location, and those describing creation or coming into being. As will be shown (relying on E´. Kiss (2005b) in many respects), sentences describing a change of state or a change of location contain a resultative or a terminative verbal particle, respectively; those describing creation or coming into being, on the other hand, necessarily lack a particle. A third type of verbal particles marks a subtype of atelic sentences: those expressing existence or spatial configuration in a location.

S Y N TA X O F V E R B A L PA RT I C L E

2.1.

19

Resultative particles in telic change-of-state sentences

Telic change-of-state sentences describe a change of their theme argument which leads to its new state. The resulting state of the theme is sometimes expressed by an adjective phrase or a noun phrase – see (1a–c); in most cases, however, the resultative element is a verbal particle with little or no descriptive content – see (2a–c). a. E´va szo´´ke´re festette a haja´t. Eve blond-to dyed the hair-her ‘Eve dyed her hair blond.’ b. Eszter tı´z szeletre va´gta a torta´t. Esther ten slices-into cut the cake ‘Esther cut the cake into ten slices.’ c. A hu´s puha´ra fo´´tt. the meat tender -to cooked ‘The meet cooked tender.’ (2) a. E´va be-festette a haja´t. Eve in dyed the hair-her ‘Eve dyed her hair.’ b. Eszter fel-va´gta a torta´t. Esther up cut the cake ‘Esther cut up the cake.’ c. A hu´s meg-fo´´tt. the meat PRT cooked ‘The meat cooked.’

(1)

(The resultative or terminative verbal particle plus V complex is spelled as one word. For expository purposes, I separate them by a hyphen.) The particle be ‘in’ in (2a) plays the same role as szo´´ke´re ‘blond-to’ in (1a); it expresses that the object of dying, Eve’s hair, has assumed a new color as a result of the dying process. The function of the particle fel ‘up’ in (2b) is also similar to that of the noun phrase tı´z szeletre ‘ten slices-into’ in (1b); it shows that the cake, originally undivided, has been cut into pieces. The particle meg in (2c), too, has essentially the same function as the casemarked adjective in (1c): it means that the meat has attained the required (tender) state as a consequence of cooking.2 What the particles differ in from their phrasal counterparts is that they lack descriptive content; they merely mean that the individual affected by the given change has been totally affected, and it has attained the new state following from the given change. Both the sentences in (1a–c) and those in (2a–c) express that the events described have been completed; however, the completion is not marked by a particular tense of the verb (Hungarian has only two tenses: a past and a present); it is indicated by the resultative element predicating the resultant state of the theme. In the case of accomplishment predicates, the verb and the resultative element clearly correspond to the process component and the resultant state component of the complex event, respectively.3 Thus in (2a,b), festette ‘dyed’, va´gta ‘cut’, and fo´´tt

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20

‘cooked’ denote homogeneous processes affecting the theme; be ‘in’, fel ‘up’, and meg, on the other hand, denote the totally changed, new state attained by the theme after it has been affected by the given process in its entirety. Although the particles have no (or little) descriptive content in themselves, their meanings can be reconstructed from the meanings of their verbs. Each particle refers to the particular state resulting from the process specified by the given verb.4 The omission of the particle yields a regular process sentence: (3)

a. E´va festette a haja´t. Eve dyed the hair-her ‘Eve was dying her hair.’ b. Eszter va´gta a torta´t. Esther cut the cake ‘Esther was cutting the cake.’ c. A hu´s fo´´tt. the meat cooked ‘The meat was cooking.’

In the case of achievement predicates, the two components of the event are practically simultaneous, inseparable, therefore, the correspondence between the verb and the process phase, and between the resultative particle and the resultant state is less transparent. Observe: (4)

a. Ja´nos meg-tala´lta a gy u˝ r u˝ t. John PRT found the ring ‘John (has) found the ring.’ b. E´va fel-e´bredt. Eve up woke ‘Eve woke up/has woken up.’ c. Zolta´n el -e´rte a csu´csot. Zoltan PRT reached the top ‘Zoltan has reached the top.’

The verbs tala´l ‘find’, e´bred ‘wake’, and e´r ‘reach’ denote momentary changes affecting the theme, and the particles meg, fel ‘up’, and el ‘off’ refer to the resultant states of the theme. (4a,b) imply the resultant states asserted in (5a,b). ((4c) seems more idiosyncratic; the result state meaning component of el-e´r ‘reach’ cannot be lexicalized separately.) (5)

a. A the ‘The b. E´va Eve ‘Eve

gy u˝ r u˝ ring ring is fent up is up.’

meg-van. PRT is here.’ van. is

21

S Y N TA X O F V E R B A L PA RT I C L E

Nevertheless, the removal of the particle from an achievement predicate usually does not yield an acceptable semelfactive predicate expressing a momentary process: (6)

a. *Ja´nos ’tala´lta a ’gy u˝ r u˝ t.5 John found the ring b. *E´va ’e´bredt. Eve woke c. *Zolta´n ’e´rte a ’csu´csot. Zoltan reached the top

In (1a–c), the resultative phrases clearly represent secondary predicates predicated of the theme argument. Because of the similar role of the resultative particles in (2a–c), there is good reason to assume that they also function as secondary predicates predicated of the theme. The implication relations between (4a) and (5a), and between (4b) and (5b) suggest that this analysis can also be extended to achievement predicates – even if we also have to allow for non-transparent cases, in which the meaning of the particle plus verb complex cannot be divided into separate ‘momentary process’ and ‘result state’ components. Incidentally, the secondary predicate analysis of verbal particles also represents a main stream in the study of IndoEuropean verbal particles – see e.g. Kayne (1985), Hoekstra (1988), Larson (1988b), den Dikken (1995), and Winkler (1996). The assumption that the verbal particle is predicated of the theme argument is supported by the fact that the theme in a telic change-of-state sentence must be [þspecific] – whether the resultant state is expressed by a resultative phrase or by a particle. First let us consider some evidence that the theme argument of a resultative construction can only be [þ specific]. In Hungarian, there are two types of noun phrases that can only have a non-specific reading: bare singulars and bare plurals. Neither of them can represent the theme of a resultative construction:6 (7)

a. *E´va tı´z szeletre va´gott torta´t. / *E´va fel-va´gott Eve ten slices-into cut cake Eve up cut b. *Puha´ra fo´´tt tyu´k. / *Meg-fo´´tt tyu´k. PRT cooked hen tender cooked hen c. *Ja´nos meg-tala´lt gy u˝ r u˝ ket. John PRT found rings d. *Fel-e´bredtek la´nyok. up woke girls

torta´t. cake

The indefinite article, numeral determiners, or ne´ha´ny ‘some, a few’ can, in principle, have either a specific or a non-specific reading. According to En¸c (1991), a test of the specificity of an indefinite noun phrase is if it is interpreted as referring to a subset of a previously introduced set. Indefinite theme arguments in a resultative construction elicit this reading. If the resultative element is dropped, the

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22

‘subset’ reading is also lost. Compare: Az a´lla´sra ke´t dia´k jelentkezett. ‘To the job, two students applied.’ Tegnap be-hı´vtunk egy la´nyt interju´ra. yesterday in called-we a girl-ACC interview-for ‘Yesterday, we called in a girl for an interview.’ b. Az a´lla´sra ke´t dia´k jelentkezett. ‘To the job, two students applied.’ #Tegnap hı´vtunk egy la´nyt interju´ra. yesterday called-we a girl-ACC interview-for ‘Yesterday, we called a girl for an interview.’ (9) a. Pe´ter to¨bb oszta´lyta´rsa´val is besze´lni akart. ‘Peter wanted to talk with several of his classmates.’ Meg-va´rt ne´ha´ny la´nyt. PRT waited some girls-ACC ‘He waited for some girls.’ b. Pe´ter to¨bb oszta´lyta´rsa´val is besze´lni akart. ‘Peter wanted to talk with several of his classmates.’ #Va´rt ne´ha´ny la´nyt. waited some girls ‘He awaited some girls.’ (8)

a.

In the (a) cases, the object of the second sentence is understood to refer to a subset of the set mentioned in the first sentence. In the (b) cases, this reading is unlikely; in fact, the two sentences do not even seem to constitute a coherent text.7 The specificity requirement on themes functioning as subjects of resultative predicates is reminiscent of the specificity requirement on topics, and it may have the same source: both of them function as logical subjects of predication. Various descriptions of the logical subject–logical predicate relation share some version of the assumption that a necessary condition of logical subjecthood is that the constituent functioning as logical subject be associated with an existential presuppositon (cf. e.g. Strawson (1971), Kuroda (1972), Erteschik-Shir (1997)). Verbs denoting a change of state can be complemented with a non-specific theme argument, as well; in this case, however, they do not take a verbal particle. For example: (10)

a. Pe´ter fa´t va´gott. Peter wood-ACC cut ‘Peter cut (some) wood.’ b. Tyu´k fo´´tt a faze´kban. hen cooked the pot-in ‘A hen cooked in the pot.’

Notice that the sentences in (10) do not express accomplishments, i.e., inherently delimited, telic processes; they merely denote processes, which can be interpreted

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either imperfectively (with the initial point and end point of the process outside the event), as in (11a) and (12a), or perfectively (with the initial point and end point of the process included in the event), as in (11b) and (12b). a. Pe´ter o´ra´k hosszat fa´t va´gott. Peter hours long wood-ACC cut ‘Peter was cutting wood for hours.’ b. Pe´ter fa´t va´gott a ta´bort u˝ zho¨z. the camp-fire-to Peter wood-ACC cut ‘Peter cut some wood for the camp-fire.’ (12) a. Tyu´k fo´´ a faze´kban. hen cooks the pot-in ‘A hen is cooking in the pot.’ b. Ebe´dre tyu´k fo´´tt. lunch-to hen cooked ‘A hen (has) cooked for lunch.’

(11)

In the case of verbs denoting a momentary process, the ‘non-specific NP plus V’ combination is more likely to be interpreted perfectively: (13)

a. A repu¨lo´´ge´p fo¨ldet e´rt. the airplane ground-ACC touched ‘The airplane touched ground.’ b. A medve embert o¨lt. the bear man-ACC killed ‘The bear killed a man.’ c. Istva´n kezet ra´zott Pe´terrel. Stephen hand-ACC shook Peter-with ‘Stephen shook hands with Peter.’

According to Krifka (1992) and Tenny (1994), the fact that the internal argument of telic sentences cannot be represented by a bare nominal has a different reason; the internal argument serves to measure out, i.e., to delimit, the change described by the verb, and only a delimited, quantized noun phrase can function as a delimiter. However, as will be illustrated in section 2.4, locative particles, restricted to atelic sentences, also impose a specificity requirement on their logical subject in Hungarian. Returning to change-of-state sentences with a resultative particle, if the particle is a secondary predicate predicated of the theme, then unergative verbs, i.e., intransitive verbs with an agent argument, are predicted not to have one. This prediction is essentially borne out – cf. (14)

a. Ja´nos John

(*el) PRT

e´nekelt. sang

K ATA L I N E´ . K I S S

24 b. E´va Eve cf. (15)

(*el) PRT

olvasott. read

a. Ja´nos el -e´nekelte az a´ria´t. the aria John PRT sang ‘John sang/has sung the aria.’ b. E´va el -olvasta a cikket.8 Eve PRT read the article ‘Eve (has) read the article.’

Verbs like nyer ‘win’ and gyo´´z ‘win’ are also optionally transitive. As expected, they take a verbal particle only in their transitive use: La´szlo´ nyert/gyo´´zo¨tt. John won /won (17) a. La´szlo´ meg-nyerte a me´rko´´ze´st. the match La´szlo´ PRT won ‘La´szlo´ (has) won the match.’ b. Le´ko´ le -gyo´´zte Kramnyikot. Le´ko´ PRT defeated Kramnik ‘Le´ko´ (has) defeated Kramnik.’

(16)

An unergative verb can only be ‘telicized’, i.e., enabled to express an inherently delimited change, if it is supplied with both a pseudo-object and a resultative element – see in detail in chapter 8. The unmarked pseudo-object is the reflexive pronoun. The construction in (18a) expresses that the agent has attained a new state as a result of her own action. In certain idiomatic cases the pseudo-object is a bodypart of the agent – see (18b–c). (18)

a. E´va ki-dolgozta maga´t. Eve out worked herself ‘Eve worked herself tired.’ b. Zsuzsa ki-sı´rta a szeme´t. Susan out cried the eye-her ‘Susan cried her eyes out.’ c. Ja´nos le -ja´rta a la´ba´t John off walked the foot-his ‘John walked his feet sore.’

If we omit either the pseudo-object or the resultative particle, the sentences become sharply ungrammatical: (19)

a. *E´va ki Eve out

-dolgozott. worked

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25

b. *E´va dolgozta maga´t. Eve worked herself Unergatives may also allow a temporal pseudo-object, for example: (20)

a. Pe´ter a´t -aludta a de´luta´nt. Peter through slept the afternoon-ACC ‘Peter slept through the afternoon.’ b. Rozi el -besze´lgette az ido´´t. Rosy away talked the time-ACC ‘Rose talked away the time.’ c. Imre el -borozgatott ke´t o´ra´t. Imre away wined two hours-ACC ‘Imre spent two hours drinking wine.’

In a certain type of sentence the argument undergoing a delimited change of state is the experiencer. These sentences – to be discussed in detail in chapter 3 – also involve a verbal particle: (21)

´ gnes meg -szerette Jo´zsefet. a. A loved Joseph-ACC Agnes PRT ‘Agnes came to love Joseph.’ b. Jo´zsef meg -uta´lta a fo´´no¨ke´t. hated the boss-his Joseph PRT ‘Joseph came to hate his boss.’

In such sentences, it is not the particle but the verb that denotes the resultant state of the experiencer. The particle merely serves to indicate that the state of the experiencer is a resultant state. In this sentence type, it is the experiencer-subject that must be specific – see (22a). A non-specific theme object sounds somewhat more acceptable in this context – see (22b). (22)

a. ?*A tana´rt meg-szerette´k dia´kok. students the teacher-ACC PRT loved ‘(Some) students came to like the teacher.’ b. ??A tana´r meg-szeretett dia´kokat. students the teacher PRT liked ‘The teacher came to like (some) students.’ 2.2.

Terminative particles in change-of-location sentences

A subset of telic sentences express a delimited change of location. In such cases, the culmination – and completion – of the event is the attainment of the end

26

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location; the resultant state of the moving individual is its static end position. The end position attained is sometimes expressed by a preverbal noun phrase or postpositional phrase – see (23a–c), but in most cases, it is denoted by a verbal particle of a terminative role, i.e., an adverb with little descriptive content, as in (24a–c). The noun phrase or PP specifying the end location can optionally also be spelled out in the presence of a terminative verbal particle – see (25a–c). In such cases, the particle functions as a proadverbial double of the terminative noun phrase. a. Ja´nos az ablakhoz vitte a ta´vcso¨vet. John the window-to took the telescope ‘John took/has taken the telescope to the window.’ b. Zsuzsa a szoba´ba szaladt. Susan the room-into ran ‘Susan ran/has run into the room.’ c. Istva´n az asztalra tette a ko¨nyvet. Stephen the table-on put the book ‘Stephen (has) put the book on the table.’ (24) a. Ja´nos oda -vitte a ta´vcso¨vet. John there took the telescope ‘John took/has taken the telescope there.’ b. Zsuzsa be -szaladt. Susan in ran ‘Susan ran/has run in.’ c. Istva´n le -tette a ko¨nyvet. Stephen down put the book-ACC ‘Stephen (has) put down the book.’ (25) a. Ja´nos oda -vitte a ta´vcso¨vet az ablakhoz. John there took the telescope the window-to ‘John took/has taken the telescope to the window.’ b. Zsuzsa be-szaladt a szoba´ba. Susan in ran the room-in ‘Susan ran/has run into the room.’ c. Istva´n le -tette a ko¨nyvet az asztalra. Stephen down put the book the table-on ‘Stephen (has) put down the book on the table.’

(23)

In this type of sentence, too, the verb, and the terminative particle (or particle plus NP/PP complex) correspond to the two components of the complex event: the verb denotes the movement, and the terminative element denotes the resulting location of the moving theme. The adverbs oda ‘there-to’, be ‘into’, and le ‘down-to’ express that the end location of the moving individual is there, in, and down, respectively.9

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27

The omission of the terminative element from an accomplishment predicate yields an atelic sentence denoting a process: (26)

a. Ja´nos vitte a ta´vcso¨vet. John took the telescope ‘John was taking the telescope.’ b. Zsuzsa szaladt. Susan ran ‘Susan was running.’

In the case of achievements denoting a change of location, the momentary motion process and the attainment of the end location are practically simultaneous; hence cutting off the end location is usually impossible: (27)

*Istva´n Stephen

tette put

a the

ko¨nyvet. book

Some approaches, e.g. Hoekstra (1988, 2005), Larson (1988b), and Winkler (1996), analyze the terminative element of change-of-location sentences as a resultative secondary predicate. In Hungarian, too, the syntactic behavior of terminative particles is comparable to that of resultative particles. Thus terminative particles are also licensed in the presence of a [þspecific] theme, which is evidence of their status as secondary predicates predicated of the theme argument. (28) cf.

a. ?*Istva´n le -tett ko¨nyveket az asztalra. Stephen down put books the table-on b. Istva´n ko¨nyveket tett az asztalra.10 Stephen books-ACC put the table-on ‘Stephen put (some) books on the table.’

In (29a) below, the indefinite noun phrase egy kisla´nyt ‘a little girl-ACC’ is nonspecific in the sense of En¸c (1991), it can only marginally refer to a member of the previously introduced set; hence the text is not coherent. In (29b), which also contains a verbal particle, the specific reading is the primary one. (29)

a.

A gyerekek sze´tsze´ledtek. ‘The children dispersed.’ #Hı´vtunk egy kisla´nyt. called-we a little.girl-ACC ‘We called a little girl.’ b. A gyerekek sze´tsze´ledtek. ‘The children dispersed.’ Oda-hı´vtunk egy kisla´nyt. PRT called-we a little.girl-ACC ‘We called in a little girl [of them].’

K ATA L I N E´ . K I S S

28

Verbs of movement in the case of which the causer and the affected theme are represented by the same individual are claimed by Levin and Rappaport (1995) to be unaccusative when expressing directed motion, and to be unergative when expressing a manner of motion. This claim is also supported by facts of Hungarian. When combined with a goal/terminus argument, Hungarian verbs of motion take a verbal particle – see (30), which is evidence of their unaccusativity, i.e., their subject functioning as a theme with the terminus predicated of it. (30)

Zsolt el-futott/el-se´ta´lt a boltba.11 Zsolt off ran /off walked the store-to ‘Zsolt (has) ran/walked off to the store.’

As manner-of-motion verbs, on the other hand, these verbs take no particle, unless they are supplemented with a pseudo-object, as in (31b) – that is, they display the behavior of unergative verbs, illustrated above under (14)–(19). (31)

a. Zsolt Zsolt ‘Zsolt b. Zsolt Zsolt ‘Zsolt

futott/se´ta´lt. ran/walked was running/walking.’ ki-futotta/ki-se´ta´lta maga´t. out-ran /out-walked himself ran/walked himself tired.’

A pseudo-object and a terminus exclude each other. This falls out from the theory of Levin and Rappaport (1995); recall that in the presence of a terminus, the subject functions as the theme, i.e., there is no room for a pseudo-theme, as well. Compare (32a), containing a terminus, with (32b), containing a mere adjunct: (32)

a. *Zsolt ki-futotta/ki-se´ta´lta maga´t a boltba. Zsolt out ran /out walked himself the store-to b. Zsolt ki-futotta /ki-se´ta´lta maga´t a boltba menet. Zsolt out ran /out walked himself the store-to going ‘Zsolt ran/walked himself tired on his way to the store.’

Many motion verbs can also take a ‘‘route’’ or ‘‘path’’ pseudo-object, which, naturally, also licenses a verbal particle: (33)

a. Csaba le -futotta a marathoni Csaba down ran the Marathon ‘Csaba (has) run the Marathon distance.’ b. Pe´ter be-ja´rta a va´rost. Peter in walked the city-ACC ‘Peter (has) walked the city.’

ta´vot. distance-ACC

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29

Unexpectedly, the verbal particle also accompanies certain verbs which apparently lack a theme argument. For example: a. Zolta´n ra´-va´gott az asztalra. Zoltan on struck the table-on ‘Zoltan (has) struck on the table.’ b. Be´la bele-ru´gott az ajto´ba. Bela into kicked the door-into ‘Bela (has) kicked into the door.’ (35) a. A sofo´´r ra´-kiaba´lt a gyalogosra. the driver at shouted the pedestrian-at ‘The driver (has) shouted at the pedestrian.’ b. Sa´ra ra´ -ne´zett a gyerekekre. Sarah at looked the children-at ‘Sarah (has) looked at the children.’

(34)

A way of analyzing these sentences is to claim that they contain an implicit theme. In (34a,b), it is easy to recover the theme: in (34a), it is Zolta´n’s fist, and in (34b), it is Be´la’s foot. (Interestingly, if it is made explicit, it appears in the instrumental case: Zolta´n ra´-va´gott az o¨kle´vel az asztalra ‘Zoltan struck with his fist on the table’; Be´la beleru´gott a la´ba´val az ajto´ba ‘Bela kicked with his foot into the door’.) In (35a,b), it must be angry words or looks that are passed on. Alternatively, we could claim that these particles represent a different type: they are directional particles rather than secondary predicates predicating the end location of the theme. Summarizing sections 2.1 and 2.2: Telic predicates expressing a bounded change of state or a bounded change of location involve complex events consisting of a (durative or momentary) process and a resultant state/resultant location. Whereas the process is denoted by a verbal predicate, the resultant state or resultant location is denoted by a resultative or terminative verbal particle, respectively. Alternatively, the resultative or terminative element can also be expressed by a preverbal AdjP, NP/DP, or PP. (In the case of change-of-location sentences, the terminus can be denoted both by a particle marking the attainment of the resulting location, and a noun phrase specifying the resulting location.) The particle functions as a secondary predicate predicated of the theme, and it is licensed only if the subject of predication is a [þspecific] argument. 2.3. Why sentences expressing creation or coming into being contain no particle Besides sentences involving a theme undergoing a delimited change of state, and sentences involving a theme undergoing a delimited change of location, there is also a third major type of telic sentences: those expressing the creation/obtainment, or the coming into being/appearance of their theme. It is this type of theme that I will call ‘incremental theme’ – narrowing down the usage of this term known from the literature. Whereas in change-of-state and change-of-location sentences, the state or location of an already existing theme changes until a new state or new location is

30

K ATA L I N E´ . K I S S

attained, in creation/coming-into-being sentences the change is from non-existence to existence, or from absence to presence. Events of this type are completed when the referent of their theme appears in its entirety; the result is the theme itself. For example: a. Ja´nos ke´szı´tett egy repu¨lo´´ge´pmodellt. John prepared an airplane-model b. E´va hozott su¨teme´nyeket. Eve brought cookies (37) a. Szu¨letett egy gyerek. was.born a child ‘A child was born.’ b. Vende´gek e´rkeztek. guests arrived

(36)

The set of verbs capable of expressing creation/obtainment or coming into being/ appearance, and thereby occurring in the syntactic structure illustrated in (36)–(37) is not a closed set. Interestingly, in addition to verbs like szerez ‘obtain’, vesz ‘buy’, kap ‘receive’, alakul ‘formintransitive’, su¨l ‘bakeintransitive’, su¨t ‘baketransitive’, also the verbs eszik ‘eat’, iszik ‘drink’, and fogyaszt ‘consume’ display the syntactic behavior of this verb class. Perhaps it is the meaning component that they share with the verbs szerez ‘obtain’ and kap ‘receive’ that allows them to occur in this pattern. Some analyses, e.g. Tenny (1994), claim that these verbs are ‘reverse’ incremental theme verbs, expressing the reverse appearance, i.e., the disappearance, of their theme. However, other verbs expressing disappearance, e.g. meg-semmisı´t ‘annihilate’, el-tu¨ntet ‘cause to disappear’, el-t u˝ nik ‘disappear’, fel-robbant ‘explodetransitive’, fel-robban ‘explodeintransitive’, le-bont ‘dismantle’, sze´t-szed ‘take apart’, o¨ssze-te´p ‘tear up’, cannot appear in this syntactic structure. Compare: E´va evett egy alma´t. Eve ate an apple (39) a. *E´va semmisı´tett egy fe´nyke´pet. Eve annihilated a photo cf. b. E´va meg -semmisı´tett egy fe´nyke´pet. annihilated a photo Eve PRT (40) a. *Pe´ter -te´pett egy levelet. Peter tore a letter cf. b. Pe´ter o¨ssze -te´pett egy levelet. Peter up tore a letter ‘Peter tore up a letter.’ (38)

According to Szabolcsi (1986), verbs belonging to the creation/coming into being class all have an ‘exist’ component in the core of their meaning; they assert that their theme has come to exist or will come to exist in the domain of discourse. As Szabolcsi (1986) observes, since they assert the coming into being of their theme,

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31

they cannot at the same time also presuppose its existence, i.e., they cannot have it realized as a definite or a [þspecific] indefinite noun phrase, associated with an existential presupposition. (Chapters 4 and 5 of this book provide a detailed semantic analysis of this verb class from a somewhat different perspective.) A verb of the ‘creation/coming into being’ class is either ungrammatical with a definite or a [þspecific] indefinite theme argument (see (41a,b)), or it only has a process reading, denoting a change affecting an already existing individual (see (42)): a. *Ja´nos ’ke´szı´tette ’mindegyik ’repu¨lo´´ge´pmodellt.12 John prepared every airplane-model b. *’Szu¨letett a ’gyerek. was.born the child (42) a. E´va fe´l o´ra hosszat ette az alma´t. Eve half hour long ate the apple ‘Eve was eating the apple for half an hour.’ b. *E´va fe´l o´ra alatt ette az alma´t. Eve half hour within ate the apple (41)

If creation/coming into being sentences have a non-specific theme, and, if a verbal particle functions as a predicate predicated of a specific theme, then creation/coming into being sentences are predicted to involve no verbal particle. As the above examples show, this prediction is borne out. Actually, all the above verbs can also occur with a particle and a [þspecific] theme; however, the particle þV combinations express a change of state or a change of location affecting a referent which is presupposed to exist in some form. Compare: a. Ja´nos ke´szı´tett egy repu¨lo´´ge´pmodellt. John prepared an airplane-model ‘John (has) prepared an airplane model.’ b. Ja´nos el -ke´szı´tette a repu¨lo´´ge´pmodellt. John PRT prepared the airplane-model ‘John (has) prepared the airplane model.’ c. Ja´nos el -ke´szı´tett egy repu¨lo´´ge´pmodellt. airplane-model John PRT prepared an ‘John (has) prepared one of the airplane models.’ (44) a. E´va tala´lt egy gy u˝ r u˝ t. Eve found a ring ‘John (has) found a ring.’ b. E´va meg -tala´lta a gy u˝ r u˝ t. found the ring Eve PRT ‘Eve (has) found the ring.’ c. E´va meg -tala´lt egy gy u˝ r u˝ t. found a ring Eve PRT ‘Eve (has) found one of the rings.’ (43)

K ATA L I N E´ . K I S S

32 (45)

a. Sa´ra Sarah ‘Sarah b. Sa´ra Sarah ‘Sarah c. Sa´ra Sarah ‘Sarah

hozott su¨teme´nyt. brought cake (has) brought some cake.’ meg-hozta a su¨teme´nyt. PRT bought the cake (has) brought the cake.’ meg-hozott egy su¨teme´nyt. PRT brought a cake (has) brought one of the cakes.’

The (b) and (c) sentences all involve a theme argument whose referent has existed in some form previous to the event; i.e., they represent the type of specificity identified by En¸c (1991). In the case of (43c), egy repu¨lo´´ge´pmodellt corresponds to ‘one of the airplane models in question’. (44c) means that Eve has found one of the rings lost, and (45c) expresses that Sarah has brought one of the cakes previously agreed on. The meaning difference between (46a,b) is more subtle, and has been the topic of much discussion: (46)

a. Gyula ´ırt egy verset. Julian wrote a poem b. Gyula meg-ı´rt egy verset. poem Julian PRT wrote a

According to the literature, e.g. Ka´lma´n (1995) and Bende-Farkas (1995), (2001), and according to my own judgment, (46b) cannot be the opening sentence of a discourse. It is felicitous if the previous discussion has already involved prospective poems, or poems in preparation, or at least reference to some writing activity, from which poems can be inferred. Chapters 4 and 5 of this book will examine predicates expressing creation and coming into being in detail. What is relevant from the present perspective is that the type of telic sentence they represent involves no verbal particle, because its necessarily non-specific theme does not license one. A verb of creation/coming into being combined with a verbal particle undergoes a ‘‘type-shift’’; instead of creation or coming into being, it denotes a delimited change of state or a delimited change of location. 2.4.

Locative particles in sentences denoting existence or spatial configuration in a given location

In the lexical semantic theory of Talmy (1985), predicates expressing a state of locatedness are analyzed as a subset of Motion predicates. Motion predicates are made up of the set of translational Move predicates and the set of locational Be predicates. Talmy claims that a state of locatedness is universally conceived and subdivided into components in the same way as an event of translational movement. Hungarian supports this claim. Just as a predicate denoting translational

S Y N TA X O F V E R B A L PA RT I C L E

33

movement to a terminus is preceded by a terminative verbal particle, a predicate denoting existence or spatial configuration in a location is preceded by a locative particle (see Deme (1959)). Even the stems of the particles are often identical, only the endings are different; locational particles often contain an obsolate locative case suffix, instead of the ancient translational case suffix of terminative particles. Compare: (47)

(48)

(49)

(50)

(51)

a. Ja´nos ki -a´llt (az utca´ra). John out stood the street-to ‘John (has) stood out into the street.’ b. Ja´nos kint a´ll (az utca´n). John outside stands the street-on ‘John is standing outside in the street.’ a. A birko´zo´ le -feku¨dt (a fo¨ldre). the wrestler down lay the ground-on ‘The wrestler lay/has lain down onto the ground.’ b. A birko´zo´ lent fekszik (a fo¨ldo¨n). the wrestler down lies the ground-on ‘The wrestler is lying on the ground.’ a. Ra´ -le´pte´l (a la´bamra). onto stepped-you the foot-my-onto ‘You (have) stepped on my foot.’ b. Rajta a´llsz (a la´bamon). on stand-you the foot-my-on ‘You are standing on my foot.’ a. E´va ide -jo¨tt (az ablakhoz). Eve hereto came (the window-to) ‘Eve has come here to the window.’ b. E´va itt van (az ablakna´l). Eve here is (the window-at) ‘Eve is here at the window.’ a. A hiba be-keru¨lt (a programba). the mistake in got the program-in ‘The mistake has got into the program.’ b. A hiba bent maradt (a programban). the mistake in remained the program-in ‘The mistake has remained in the program.’

The locative particle also accompanies transitive verbs meaning ‘cause something to exist in a given location’, for example: (52)

a. Pe´ter bent hagyott egy hiba´t (a Peter in left a mistake the ‘Peter (has) left a mistake in the program.’

programban). program-in

K ATA L I N E´ . K I S S

34

b. E´va ott tartja az iratait (a Eve there keeps her papers the ‘Eve keeps her papers in the safe.’

pa´nce´lszekre´nyben). safe-in

As is clear from these examples, the locative particle – similar to the terminative one – can function as the proadverbial double of a locative noun phrase. The locative noun phrase can also replace the locative particle in its canonical, preverbal position: (53)

a. A birko´zo´ a fo¨ldo¨n fekszik. the wrestler the ground-on lies ‘The wrestler is lying on the ground.’ b. A la´bamon a´llsz. the foot-my-on stand-you ‘You are standing on my foot.’ c. E´va az ablakna´l van. Eve the window-at is ‘Eve is at the window.’ d. A hiba a programban maradt. the mistake the program-in remained ‘The mistake remained in the program.’

The sentences in (47)–(53) describe complex situations, similar to telic sentences involving a resultative or terminative element; however, in their case, the two components of the situation are of similar types (both are states), and they take place simultaneously rather then consecutively. Thus, whereas in the change-of-location sentences in (47a), (48a), and (49a), the V denotes the movement of the subject, and the particle denotes its resultant location, in the (b) sentences, the V expresses the position/static configuration of the subject, and the particle denotes its location. These sentences comprise two predications: e.g. (47b) says that John is standing, and he is outside in the street; or the transitive (52a) expresses that Peter left a mistake, and the mistake is in the program (or perhaps: ‘Peter let there be a mistake, and the mistake is in the program’). The verbs prototypically appearing in this construction are verbs of position or spatial configuration. At the same time, process verbs expressing the activity of an agent can also combine with a locative particle: (54)

a. Ja´nos John ‘John b. Ja´nos John ‘John

fent dolgozik (az emeleten). up works the first.floor-on is upstairs working.’ kint nyı´rja a fu¨vet (az udvaron). outside cuts the grass (the courtyard-in) is outside (in the couryard) cutting the grass.’

These sentences combine the statements ‘John is upstairs; he is working’, and ‘John is outside; he is cutting the grass’, respectively. What is more, the locative element

S Y N TA X O F V E R B A L PA RT I C L E

35

represents the main assertion; these sentences would be most felicitous as answers to the question ‘Where is John?’. On the surface, such sentences represent exceptions to the claim that the verbal particle is always predicated of the theme argument; in fact, however, the addition of the locative particle makes the activities denoted by dolgozik ‘is working’ and nyı´rja a fu¨vet ‘is cutting the grass’ state-like. Or perhaps (54a,b) are not particle constructions at all. Fent and kint – unlike e.g. el or meg – can also be analyzed as full-fledged, independent adverbs; perhaps they function as focussed adverbial adjuncts in (54). If the locative particle is combined with a verb denoting a position or spatial configuration, the verb constitutes a possible predicate also without the locative element: (55)

a. Ja´nos a´ll (az utca´n). John stands (the street-on) ‘John is standing (in the street).’ b. Pe´ter fekszik (a fo¨ldo¨n). Peter lies the ground-on ‘Peter is lying on the ground.’

If the locative noun phrase is spelled out postverbally without a proadverb double, it functions as an adjunct; it does not represent the main assertion. Verbs denoting nothing more, or little more, than existence, like van ‘be’, marad ‘remain’, or hagy ‘let’, are not substantial enough semantically to represent the predicate in themselves. They form a complex predicate either with the locative element (56), or with the theme represented by a bare nominal (57): (56)

a. A ke´p ott van a falon. the picture there is the wall-on ‘The picture is on the wall.’ b. A pe´nz ott maradt a fio´kban. the money there remained the drawer-in ‘The money remained in the drawer.’ c. Ja´nos ott hagyta az iratokat az ´ıro´asztalon. John there left the papers the desk-on ‘John left the papers on the desk.’ (57) a. A falon ke´p van. the wall-on picture is ‘There is a picture on the wall.’ b. A fio´kban pe´nz maradt. the drawer-in money remained ‘There remained money in the drawer.’ c. Ja´nos iratokat hagyott az ´ıro´asztalon. John papers left the desk-on ‘John left papers on the desk.’

K ATA L I N E´ . K I S S

36

Locative particles share the syntactic behavior of resultative and terminative particles; they are predicates predicated of a [þspecific] theme argument. (In (54a,b), their theme is at the same time also the agent of the verbal predicate.) A theme represented by a non-specific indefinite NP does not license a verbal particle. The following examples are ungrammatical as neutral sentences, with all major constituents but the V stressed: (58)

cf. (59)

a. *’Ott hever ’kutya a ’ku¨szo¨b there lies dog the threshold b. *’Itt a´llnak ’mellettem ’szo´nokok. here stand near.me speakers a. A the ‘The b. A the ‘The

elo´´tt.13 before

kutya ott hever a ku¨szo¨b elo ´´tt. dog there lies the threshold before dog is lying in front of the threshold.’ szo´nokok itt a´llnak mellettem. speakers here stand near.me speakers are standing near me.’

In the presence of a non-specific theme, the particle must be absent: (60)

a. A kirakatban ’ke´pek vannak. the shopwindow-in pictures are ‘In the shop-window there are pictures.’ b. A ku¨szo¨bo¨n ’kutya hever. the threshold-on dog lies ‘On the threshold, there is a dog lying.’

The specificity of the theme in constructions involving a locative verbal particle can be made clear by the following minimal pair: (61)

a. Az ´ıro´ szeret az a´llatairo´l ´ırni. ‘The writer likes to write about his animals.’ A legu´jabb rege´nye´ben is van ke´t kutya. his latest novel-in too are two dog ‘There are two dogs also in his latest novel.’ b. Az ´ıro´ szeret az a´llatairo´l ´ırni. ‘The writer likes to write about his animals.’ A legu´jabb rege´nye´ben is benne van ke´t kutya. his latest novel-in too in are two dog ‘There are two dogs (of his animals) also in his latest novel.’

Ke´t kutya can be identified as representing a subset of the set denoted by az a´llatai ‘his animals’ only in the presence of the verbal particle in (61b).

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37

Summarizing section 2: the three major types of verbal particles are associated with three major types of situations. Locative particles appear in sentences describing existence or spatial configuration in a given location, resultative particles appear in sentences describing a delimited change of state, and terminative particles appear in sentences describing a delimited change of location. A resultative or terminative particle turns a process predicate into an accomplishment.

3.

V E R B A L PA RT I C L E S A N D A S P E C T

It has been known for a long time that verbal particles contribute to the aspectual interpretation of sentences cf. e.g. Perrot (1966), Wacha (1976, 1989), E´. Kiss (1987), Kiefer (1992, 1994), Kiefer and Lada´nyi (2000). Assuming the twocomponent aspectual theory of Smith (1991), the question is if verbal particles play a role in determining situation aspect or viewpoint aspect. The conclusion at the end of section 2 suggested that the occurrence of various types of verbal particles is limited to particular types of situations. This section aims to examine whether the attested association of types of particles with types of situations means a direct correlation between them, or is merely an epiphenomenon derivable from the viewpoint-aspect marking function of particles. In other words, it aims to ascertain if the different types of particles indeed mark (a)telicity, rather than (im)perfectivity. The sentences with a resultative or terminative particle analyzed in sections 2.1 and 2.2 were both telic and perfective. Observe again some examples: a. E´va fel -va´gta a torta´t. Eve up cut the cake ‘Eve cut up the cake.’ b. Ju´lia fel -e´bredt Eve up woke ‘Eve woke up.’ (63) a. Pe´ter ki tolta a biciklit az utca´ra. Peter out pushed the bicycle the street-to ‘Peter pushed out the bicycle into the street.’ b. Az alma le -esett a fo¨ldre. the apple down fell the ground-to ‘The apple fell down onto the ground.’

(62)

These sentences are telic because they describe an inherently delimited change, and they are perfective because they represent an event with its initial point and its end point included. The question is which of these two properties is the direct consequence of the presence of the particle. Whereas a preverbal resultative particle always yields a perfective interpretation – see (62a,b) –, a postverbal resultative particle elicits an imperfective

K ATA L I N E´ . K I S S

38 reading. Compare: (64)

a. Amikor a vende´gek mege´rkeztek, E´va e´ppen va´gta fel a torta´t. when the guests arrived Eve just cut up the cake ‘When the guests arrived, Eve was just cutting up the cake.’ b. Amikor a vende´gek mege´rkeztek, E´va e´ppen fel -va´gta a torta´t. when the guests arrived Eve just up cut the cake ‘When the guests arrived, Eve had just cut up the cake.’ c. *Miuta´n a vende´gek mege´rkeztek, E´va ’va´gta fel a torta´t. after the guests arrived Eve cut up the cake ‘After the guests arrived, Eve was just cutting up the cake.’

The main clause of (64a), displaying a ‘V particle’ order, describes an activity in progress, without its initial and end points; i.e., the viewpoint of the clause is imperfective. This is in contrast to (64b), which is perfective, with the activity understood to be completed by the time referred to by the temporal clause. A complex sentence containing an after-clause requires the consecutive interpretation of the events described by the temporal clause and the main clause. (64c) is ungrammatical because the main clause is imperfective, describing an event in progress, i.e., the consecutive interpretation of the two events is impossible. The sentence type represented by the main clause of (64a) describes a telic situation with an inherent endpoint. The Hungarian equivalent of cut denotes a change affecting the object, and the Hungarian equivalent of the particle up expresses its total affectedness, which makes the continuation of the cutting process impossible. The endpoint of the situation, i.e., the attainment of the total affectedness of the cake, however, is outside the viewpoint of the given sentence. It is precisely this sentence type that is analyzed as telic imperfective by Smith (1991). If the postverbal particle is omitted, the resulting sentence will lack the feature [þtelic]. (65) means almost the same as the main clause of (64a) – except that it does not imply that Eve was in the process of cutting up the whole cake; it allows the interpretation that she just cut into it, or cut one piece from it: (65)

E´va e´ppen ’va´gta a ’torta´t. Eve just cut the cake ‘Eve was just cutting the cake.’

The comparison of (64a) and (65) suggests that what the presence of a resultative particle adds to the sentence is the feature [þtelic]. The relative position of the particle, on the other hand, affects the interpretation of viewpoint aspect. Sentences involving a movement verb and a terminative particle display the same word order variants associated with the same types of aspectual interpretation as sentences involving a change-of-state verb and a resultative particle.

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39

For example: (66)

a. Amikor e´szrevettem, Ja´nos e´ppen tolta ki a biciklit when noticed-I John just pushed out the bicycle (az utca´ra). the street-to ‘When I noticed him, John was just pushing out the bicycle into the street.’ b. Amikor e´szrevettem, Ja´nos e´ppen ki -tolta a biciklit when noticed-I John just out pushed the bicycle (az utca´ra). the street-to ‘When I noticed him, John had just pushed out the bicycle into the street.’ c. Amikor e´szrevettem, Ja´nos e´ppen tolta a biciklit. when noticed-I John just pushed the bicycle ‘When I noticed him, John was just pushing the bicycle.’

The ‘V particle’ order in (66a) denotes an action being in progress at the time referred to by the temporal clause, whereas the ‘particle V’ order in (66b) denotes an action completed by the time referred to by the temporal clause. Although both (66a) and (66c) describe situations from an imperfective point of view, (66a) remains a delimited telic situation with an inherent end point. Thus in (66a,b) alike, the verbal particle appears to be the carrier of the feature [þtelic]. Its position, on the other hand, interacts with the viewpoint aspect. The imperfective interpretation of the ‘V particle’ order in (64a) and (66a), and the perfective interpretation of the ‘particle V’ order in (64b) and (66b) raises the possibility of a different analysis, as well. Let us tentatively assume that the resultative or terminative verbal particle is a perfectivity marker; but it functions as such only when it occupies the specifier position of an AspP projection dominating VP, i.e., when it surfaces preverbally (see E´. Kiss 1994). Under this analysis, a [þperfective] Asp head requires the presence of a resultative or terminative particle in Spec,AspP, whereas a [
perfective] Asp head allows no other particle but a locative one there. The execution of this approach, however, would run into difficulties. Given that there are also perfective sentences with no particle – e.g. sentences expressing creation or coming into being, like (67a), or sentences describing processes finished in the past, like (67b), the presence of a resultative or terminative particle in Spec,AspP cannot be a condition of perfective aspect. (67)

a. E´va su¨to¨tt egy torta´t. Eve baked a cake b. E´va tegnap fo´´zo¨tt, mosott, e´s ne´zte a te´ve´t. Eve yesterday cooked, washed, and watched the TV-ACC ‘Yesterday, Eve cooked, washed clothes, and watched TV.’

40

K ATA L I N E´ . K I S S

The events in (67a,b) are represented in their entirety, with their initial and end points included, hence these predicates are perfective, despite the emptiness of Spec,AspP. In sentences containing a resultative or a terminative particle, e.g. in (64b) and (66b), on the other hand, an empty Spec,AspP cannot but yield an imperfective reading. There is also a further problem. An apparently terminative preverbal particle does not always elicit a perfective interpretation. Compare: (68)

a. A Duna bele -folyik a Fekete-tengerbe. the Danube into flows the Black See-into ‘The Danube flows into the Black See.’ cf. b. A tinta a tollbo´l bele -folyt a zsebembe. the ink the pen-from into flowed the pocket-my-into ‘The ink from the pen flowed into my pocket.’ (69) a. A bokor a´gai ki -hajlanak az utca´ra. the bush’s branches out lean the street-onto ‘The branches of the bush lean out into the street.’ cf. b. Pe´ter ki -hajolt az auto´ ablaka´n. Peter out leaned the car’s window-on ‘Peter leaned out of the window of the car.’ In the (b) sentences, the terminative particle denotes the resultant position of the moving theme; i.e., these sentences describe telic situations (accomplishments) looked at from a perfective viewpoint, as expected. In the (a) sentences, on the other hand, the very same verbal particle combined with the very same verb functions as a directional adverb rather than a terminative predicate. Although the movement has a goal in these sentences, as well, the attainment of the goal does not complete the process. In (68a), it is the particular semantics and pragmatics of the given predicate– argument complex that block the terminative reading of the particle, and elicit its directonal interpretation. The verb hajlik ‘lean’ in (69), on the other hand, is ambiguous; it has a primary ‘movement’ reading, and a secondary ‘position’ interpretation. The non-human subject of (69a) triggers the latter reading, whereas the human subject of (69b) triggers the former interpretation. Under the ‘movement’ reading, the particle functions as a terminative secondary predicate, whereas under the ‘position’ interpretation, it functions as a directional adverb. What these examples suggest is that not even a preverbal resultative or terminative particle expresses a specific, invariant viewpoint aspect. Verbal particles have an (often decisive) role in aspect marking by means of their contribution to the lexical meaning of the predicate. The type of aspect that is determined compositionally by the lexical meanings of sentence constituents is situation aspect. As is also clear from the above discussion, the correlation attested in (64a,b) and (66a,b) between the preverbal position of the terminative/resultative particle and perfective viewpoint, on the one hand, and between the postverbal position of the terminative/resultative particle and imperfective viewpoint, on the other hand, is an epiphenomenon rather than a direct, biunique relation. Its nature will be clarified in

41

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chapter 6, where it is claimed that the [
perfective] variant of the Asp head determining the viewpoint aspect of the Hungarian sentence does not tolerate a delimiting (resultative or terminative) constituent in its local environment. The conclusion that the verbal particle primarily marks situation aspect – by means of its lexical meaning, and it affects viewpoint aspect only indirectly – is also confirmed by the behavior of locative particles. Whereas resultative and terminative particles express telicity, locative particles, appearing in a type of stative sentences, those expressing existence or spatial configuration in a given location, are associated with atelicity. Just as sentences containing a resultative or terminative particle are usually perfective, but are also compatible with the imperfective viewpoint, sentences containing a locative particle are usually imperfective, but are also compatible with the perfective viewpoint – that is, they cannot be viewpoint aspect markers, either. Consider: (70)

Pisko´ta´t kavartam, meg-su¨to¨ttem, o¨t percig PRT -baked-I-it five minutes-for sponge.cake-ACC mixed-I hagytam a su¨to´´ben, majd kette´ -va´gtam. left-I-it the oven-in then two.into- cut-I-it ‘I mixed a sponge-cake, I baked it, I left it in the oven for five minutes, then I cut it into two.’

bent inside

The complex sentence in (70) describes a series of consecutive situations, which are represented in their entirety, from a perfective viewpoint. The predicate (a pisko´ta´t) bent hagytam a su¨to´´ben ‘I left (the sponge cake) in the oven’, involving a locative particle, denotes a state, and as a stage-level stative predicate combined with a time adverbial denoting a time span, it allows a perfective reading. I conclude that the verbal particle, whether resultative, terminative, or locative, plays a role in determining the situation aspect, i.e., basically, the [þ/
telic] nature, of sentences. Resultative and terminative particles have a telicizing effect, whereas locative particles occur in a type of atelic sentence. They are not direct aspectual operators; they assume an aspectual function by means of their lexical meaning (e.g., in the case of terminatives and resultatives, by means of their delimiting role). Particle position may affect the interpretation of viewpoint aspect (in the case of accomplishment predicates, the imperfective reading is elicited by the ‘V particle’ order). Viewpoint aspect will be argued in chapter 6 to be determined by an Asp head, which imposes certain cooccurrence restrictions on its environment, barring resultative and terminative elements from the domain of a [
perfective] Asp.

4.

4.1.

T H E S Y N TA X O F T H E V E R B A L PA RT I C L E

Against the Spec,AspP position of the particle

The discussion of the aspectual role of the verbal particle has led to the conclusion that the verbal particle is a secondary predicate, which plays a role in determining the

K ATA L I N E´ . K I S S

42

situation aspect of the sentence by adding a resultative, terminative, or locative component to the situation. This conclusion undermines the analysis of the verbal particle as a viewpoint aspect operator moved from the VP into the specifier of an AspP projection, as proposed e.g. by Pin˜on (1995), E´. Kiss (2002a), Alberti (2004), and den Dikken (2004). A further problem of the Spec,AspP approach is that it is also forced to treat the bare nominal complement, an alternative filler of the preverbal slot, on a par with the verbal particle – even though the aspectual operator role of bare nominals is even more questionable. Consider the Hungarian sentence structure assumed in this framework (emerging from the work of Brody (1995), Olsvay (2000a,b), E´. Kiss (2002a), etc.):

TopP

(71) Spec

Top’ Top

FocP

Spec

F’ F

AspP Spec

Asp’ Asp

VP V

XP*

The filling of Spec,AspP triggers V movement to Asp, and the filling of Spec,F(ocus)P goes together with further V movement from Asp to F. The main stress, indicating the left edge of the predicate phrase, falls on the first major post-topic category. In this structure, a stressed preverbal constituent is either an aspectual operator in Spec,AspP (with the V raised to Asp), or a focus expressing exhaustive identification, sitting in Spec,FP (with the V raised to F).14 A bare nominal complement, e.g. that in (72b), clearly does not express any exhaustive identification. According to the exhaustivity test of Szabolcsi (1981), if the (b) sentence of the following pair of examples is a logical consequence of the (a) sentence, the preverbal constituents are not exhaustive foci. (72)

a. Bara´tokat e´s rokonokat va´runk vacsora´ra. friends-ACC and relatives-ACC expect-we dinner-for ‘We are expecting friends and relatives for dinner.’

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43

b. Bara´tokat va´runk vacsora´ra. friends-ACC expect-we dinner-for ‘We are expecting friends for dinner.’ (72a) and (72b) can be simultaneously true, hence their preverbal bare nominals cannot sit in Spec,FP, the position of exhaustive focus. If the Hungarian sentence has the structure in (71), then the bare nominals must occupy Spec,AspP; structure (71) leaves no other position for them. Examining the contribution of the preverbal nominal to aspectual interpretation, we find that if the verb has a durative atelic meaning, the ‘bare nominal, V’ complex is also durative atelic, and its preferred reading is imperfective: (73)

a. E´va (ke´t o´ra hosszat) verset olvasott Eve two hour long poem-ACC read ‘Eve was reading poem(s) (for two hours).’ b. Miha´ly csomagot cipel. Michael parcel-ACC carries ‘Michael is carrying a parcel.’

If, on the other hand, the verb in the ‘bare nominal, verb’ complex is [-durative], the preferred reading of the predicate is perfective: (74)

a. E´va´nak (ma´jusra) gyereke szu¨letik. is.born Eve-DAT May-by child ‘To Eve, a child will be born by May.’ b. Bence levelet kapott. Bence letter-ACC got ‘Bence got a letter.’

In these sentences, the replacement of the bare nominal with an indefinite noun phrase does not change the aspectual interpretation, e.g.: a. E´va (fe´l o´ra hosszat) olvasott egy verset. Eve half hour long read a poem ‘Eve was reading a poem for half an hour.’ b. Miha´ly cipel egy csomagot. Michael carries a parcel ‘Michael is carrying a parcel.’ (76) a. E´va´nak (ma´jusra) szu¨letik egy gyereke. child Eve-DAT May-by is.born a ‘To Eve, a child is born by May.’ b. Bence kapott egy levelet. Bence got a letter (75)

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44

As these predicates have the same aspectual interpretation as the corresponding ‘bare nominal, V’ complexes, the bare nominal cannot be an aspect-marker. According to Komlo´sy (1994), a bare nominal like those in (72)–(76) is a predicative element; it is predicated of the internal argument incorporated into the verb. E.g. (74d) can be paraphrased as follows: (77)

Bence received x; x is of the kind ‘letter’

If the bare nominal complement and the verbal particle are indeed alternative fillers of the same syntactic slot, then their shared position must be simply a predicative position, because the predicative feature seems to be the only feature that they share. Both are predicates predicated of the theme argument – with the difference that, whereas the verbal particle has an explicit subject, the subject of a bare nominal is an implicit internal argument. 4.2.

Is the particle a head or a phrase?

Before we attempt to identify this predicative position in Hungarian sentence structure, we have to decide if it is a head or a phrase position, and if it is basegenerated or derived. These questions have been raised in the literature several times (see e.g. Sura´nyi (2002a), Olsvay (2000b; 2004), Koopman and Szabolcsi (2000)); several relevant arguments have been weighed – even if no conclusive answer has been arrived at. What underlies the head versus phrase question is whether or not the verbal particle or bare nominal complement forms a complex predicate with the verb, as is assumed e.g. in Ackerman (1984), Farkas and Sadock (1989), Brody (1990), Pin˜on (1995), E´. Kiss (1998a), or Szendro´´i (2003). The complex predicate analysis is supported by the fact that the particle and the V (and often also the bare nominal and the V) form a lexical unit, the meaning of which is sometimes non-compositional (or only partially compositional) – e.g. be-ru´g [lit. in-kick] ‘get drunk’, be-fejez [lit. in-head] ‘finish’, bakot lo´´ [lit. buck-ACC shoot] ‘make a mistake’, csu¨to¨rto¨ko¨t mond [lit. Thursday-ACC say] ‘fail’. This argument, however, is non-conclusive; after all, idioms are allowed by Universal Grammar to have simultaneously a non-compositional meaning and a phrasal structure. The usual syntactic tests of constituent structure argue against the complex predicate analysis of the ‘particle/bare nominal, V’ string, and, in general, against the head analysis of the particle and the bare nominal. Namely, i. The particle can serve as a short answer to a yes-no question. E.g.: (78)

a. ‘‘Meg-

etted az ebe´det?’’ ‘‘Meg.’’ ate-you the lunch PRT ‘Did you eat the lunch?’ ‘Yes.’ b. ‘‘Be-ru´gta´l?’’ ‘‘Be.’’ in kicked-you in ‘Did you get drunk?’ ‘Yes.’ PRT

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45

Cross-linguistically, only phrasal constituents can function as elliptical sentences. In Hungarian, too, a verb complement or an adjunct can constitute an elliptical sentence; a subconstituent of them, on the other hand, cannot: a. Magyar mondattani jelense´gekro´´l ´ırod a disszerta´cio´dat? Hungarian syntactic phenomena-on write-you the dissertation-your ‘Is it about Hungarian syntactic phenomena that you write your dissertation?’ b. *Nem, francia. no French c. Nem, francia´-k-ro´l. no French-PL-about ‘No, about French ones.’ (80) a. Egy fiaira bu¨szke apa mondta ezt? a his.sons.of proud father said that ‘Was it a father proud of his sons who said that?’ b. *Nem, la´nyaira. /*Nem, la´nyaira bu¨szke. no his.daughters.of no his.daughters.of proud ‘No, of his daughters.’ / ‘No, proud of his daughters.’ c. Nem, egy la´nyaira bu¨szke apa. no a his.daughters.of proud father ‘No, a father proud of his daughters.’

(79)

In (79), the answer francia´kro´l ‘about French-PL-ACC’ stands for the whole noun phrase, as is shown by the case ending, which can only be attached to the right edge of the noun phrase complementing the verb ´ır ‘write’. The missing part of the noun phrase, mondattani jelense´g ‘syntactic phenomenon’, is represented by an empty category. Apparently, a bare verb, or a ‘particle, V’ string can also serve as an elliptic answer: (81)

(82)

‘‘Hı´vtad Pe´tert korcsolya´zni?’’ called-you Peter-ACC to.skate ‘Have you asked Peter to come skating?’ ‘‘Meg-bı´zol a munkata´rsaidban?’’ PRT trust-you the co-workers-your-in ‘Do you trust your colleagues?’

‘‘Hı´vtam.’’ called-I ‘I did.’ ‘‘Meg-bı´zom.’’ PRT trust-I ‘I do.’

In the analysis to be proposed, the answers in (81–82) involve a phrase identified as a PredP, with the V moved to Pred, and with the remnant VP deleted. ii. An indefinite noun phrase can fulfil the same function in preverbal position as a bare nominal. It need not be understood as an exhaustive focus – as is shown by the

K ATA L I N E´ . K I S S

46 following exhaustivity test: (83)

a. Pe´ter Peter ‘Peter b. Pe´ter Peter ‘Peter

egy versen a poem-on is working on a egy versen a poem-on is working on a

e´s egy novella´n and a short.story-on poem and a short story.’ dolgozik. works poem.’

dolgozik. works

(83b) is a logical consequence of (83a) – hence the preverbal indefinite noun phrase of (83a,b) is not a focus. It must be an alternative filler of the position of the bare nominal, therefore, that position cannot be a head position. iii. A particle can move non-locally, which is typical of phrasal movement: (84)

Fel kell, hogy hı´vjam Marit ma up needs that call-I Mary-ACC this ‘It is necessary that I call up Mary tonight.’15

este. evening

iv. If the particle is generated as part of a complex predicate, the constructions in which it is separated from the V must involve excorporation, which has a theoretically dubious status. Here are two constructions in which the particle has left the alleged complex predicate: (85)

Ja´nos John is also ‘John

el akart menni a tegnapi elo´´ada´sra, e´s el off wanted to.go the yesterday’s performance-to and off ment. went-he wanted to go to yesterday’s performance, and go he did.’

The emphatic is always follows the first stressed major constituent of the second conjunct in a coordinated structure. It can follow an argument or an adjunct, but it cannot follow a subconstituent of them: (86)

Ja´nos az elso´´ sorban akart u¨lni, e´s az elso´´ sorban is u¨lt. John the first row-in wanted to.sit and the first row-in also sat-he ‘John wanted to sit in the first row, and in the first row he sat.’ b. *Ja´nos az elso´´ sorban akart u¨lni, e´s az elso´´ is sorban u¨lt. c. Ja´nos ele´g kora´n akart el -indulni, e´s ele´g kora´n is John fairly early wanted PRT to.leave and fairly early also indult el. left.he PRT ‘John wanted to leave fairly early, and fairly early he left.’ d. *Ja´nos ele´g kora´n akart elindulni, e´s ele´g is kora´n indult el. a.

S Y N TA X O F V E R B A L PA RT I C L E

47

The emphatic is can follow the verb, but it cannot follow the ’particle, V’ complex: (87)

a. Ja´nos menni sza´nde´kozott az elo´´ada´sra, e´s ment is John to.go wanted the performance-to and went-he also ‘John wanted to go to the performance, and go he did.’ b. *Ja´nos sza´nde´kozott el-menni az elo ´´ada´sra, e´s el-ment is. John wanted off to.go the performance-to and off went also

(86a,c) may involve phrasal movement into the specifier of an is projection, and (87a) may involve head (V) adjunction to is. One or the other of these two operations has applied to the verbal particle in (87), as well. Whether it has been subject to phrasal movement, as suggested above, or to head movement, it cannot be part of a complex verb. v. As is well-known, a particle can undergo focussing and contrastive topicalization, both of which represent phrasal movement:16 (88)

a. A lifttel LE -ment Ja´nos, nem FEL. the elevator-with down went John, not up ‘It was down that John went with the elevator, not up.’ fel pedig PE´TER. b. Le JA´NOS ment a lifttel, down John went the elevator-with up on.the.other.hand Peter ‘Down, it was John who went with the elevator, up, on the other hand, it was Peter.’

I conclude on the basis of the evidence listed in (i)–(v) that the particle is a phrase (an AdvP) consisting of a mere head. The facts in (i) and (iv) do not support the structure assigned to English particle verbs by Larson (1988b) and Winkler (1996), either. In their structure, the particle is a phrasal modifier of the V head:

(89)

VP V’ AdvP

V

However, if a modifier attached to a nominal is not a possible elliptical sentence, as was argued under (i) above, and cannot be followed by an emphatic is, as was shown under (iv), it is not clear why a modifier attached to the V should behave differently. 4.3.

The PredP hypothesis

If the particle phrase is not adjoined to V, it must be sitting in a specifier position. Then the question is if it occupies Spec,VP, or the specifier of a functional projection.

48

K ATA L I N E´ . K I S S

The following coordination facts from E´. Kiss (1998a) (i.e., the ungrammaticality of the (b) examples) would get a natural explanation if the verbal particle or the bare nominal complement occupied Spec,VP – at least under the assumption that nonmaximal projections cannot be coordinated: a. Ja´nos [VP MEG [V’ ette a po¨rko¨ltet]] e´s [VP MEG [V’ itta a bort]] John up ate the stew and up drank the wine ‘John ate (up) the stew and drank (up) the wine.’ ! b. *Ja´nos [VP MEG [V’ ette a po¨rko¨ltet] e´s [V’ itta a bort]] (91) a. Ja´nos [VP KEZET [V’ fogott Pe´terrel]] e´s [VP KEZET [V’ ra´zott hand-ACC shook John hand-ACC clasped Peter-with and Iva´nnal]] Ivan-with ‘John clasped hands with Peter and shook hands with Ivan.’ ! b. *Ja´nos [VP KEZET [V’ fogott Pe´terrel] e´s [V’ ra´zott Iva´nnal]]

(90)

However, there is a powerful argument against the Spec,VP-position of particles and bare nominals. The preverbal position of the particle or bare nominal is a landing site for long movement; hence it cannot be a base-generated position; it must be in the specifier of a functional head attracting the particle. The particle or bare nominal can undergo long movement (across a non-finite or even a finite clause) if the matrix verb is a modal or aspectual auxiliary or semi-auxiliary, not denoting a separate event.17 (92)

a. Be fogok/akarok/szeretne´k /szoktam menni az in will-I/want-I/would.like-I/used-I to.go the ‘I will/want/would like/used to go in to the show.’ b. Be szabad menned. in may go-INF-2SG ‘You may go in.’ c. Ja´nos be kell, hogy fejezze a munka´t. finish the job John PRT needs that ‘John needs to finish the job.’ d. De´lre ebe´det kell, hogy fo´´zzek. cook-I noon-by lunch-PRT needs that ‘By noon, I need to cook lunch.’

elo´´ada´sra. show-to

The particle plays the same role whether it immediately precedes its lexical verb or a matrix auxiliary, therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that it occupies the same position, the specifier of a functional projection, in both cases. Following Koster’s (1994) analysis of Dutch, and Csirmaz’s (2004) analysis of Hungarian, I assume that this projection is a PredP.

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49

However, if we assign to (90b)–(91b) the structures represented in (93), we lose the explanation of their ungrammaticality. (93)

po¨rko¨ltet] a. *Ja´nos [PredP MEG [VP ette a PRT ate the stew John b. *Ja´nos [PredP KEZET [VP fogott Pe´terrel] clasped Peter-with John hand-ACC

e´s [VP itta a bort]] and drank the wine e´s [VP ra´zott Iva´nnal]] and shook Ivan-with

A possible way of resolving the contradiction is to assume V-to-Pred movement, as shown in (94). V-to-Pred movement presumably also takes place in sentences involving no verbal particle. PredP is subsumed by AspP, TenseP, and TopP projections. Csirmaz argues in chapter 6 that AspP has an EPP feature, hence it is to be filled by the closest possible filler: by the particle/bare nominal in Spec,PredP, or in case Spec,PredP is empty, by the V. Tense agrees with the nominative subject without attracting it.

(94)

TopP Spec Jánosi

Top’ Top

TenseP Spec

Tense’

Tense

AspP Spec

Asp’

Asp

PredP Spec kezet j

Pred’ Pred fogott k

VP

V tk

DP NP DP t i t j Péterrel

K ATA L I N E´ . K I S S

50

Assuming (94), the ungrammatical coordination structures in (90b)-(91b)/(93) could not be derived in any way. If V-to-Pred movement follows coordination, then it violates the coordinate structure constraint in (93). If V-to-Pred movement precedes VP coordination, the resulting V-initial constituent, a Pred’, is not a possible target of coordination. The remnant VP, on the other hand, is predicted to undergo coordination, correctly: (95)

a kerı´te´sre]]]] Ja´nos [PredP fel [Pred’ ugrott [VP [VP a fo¨ldro´´l John up jumped the ground-from the fence-on e´s [VP a kerı´te´sro´´l a teto´´re]] and the fence-from the roof-on ‘John jumped up from the ground to the fence, and from the fence to the roof.’

As regards ellipsis, it must be a PF rule (the ellipted material must be visible at LF); hence it might be the case that the constraints it is subject to are different from those operative in syntax. Perhaps the string to be ellipted must form a constituent, but not necessarily a maximal one. Then the short answer e.g. in (78a,b), consisting of a mere particle, could be derived by Pred-deletion. The elliptical sentences in (81) and (82) could be the result of VP-deletion following V-to-Pred movement. The proposed structure may have a source similar to the structure assigned to particle verbs by Larson (1988a,b) and Winkler (1996), in which the internal argument (NP2), functioning as the subject of the secondary predicate (XP), c-commands its predicate, as required by the predication theory of Williams (1980) and Rothstein (1985):

(96)

vP NP1

v’ v

VP NP2

V’ V

XP

It is possible that Hungarian sentences containing a complex predicate also derive from a hierarchy like (96), which is obliterated by V movement to Pred. As argued in chapter 9, V movement in Hungarian causes the collapse of the projections deprived of their head, and their reordering according to the phonological weight of the constituents. Koster (1994) proposed the following theory about the motivation of particle movement into Spec,PredP. (Similar ideas were put forth independently by Alberti (1997), as well.) The complement of a verb can be licensed in two ways: it can be an

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51

argument or part of the predicate. Complements which are of a predicative nature can only be licensed in the latter way; that is, they must check their [þpred] feature in Spec,PredP. As regards Hungarian, I assume that the finite verb of the sentence (or in verbless sentences, the nominal predicate) also has a [þpred] feature in need of checking, which is checked by V-to-Pred (or in lack of a V, by N/Adj-to-Pred) movement. For example: (97)

a. Ja´nos John ‘John b. Ja´nos John ‘John

[PredP olvastai [VP ti az u´jsa´got]] read the newspaper was reading the newspaper. [PredP tana´ri [NP ti ]] teacher is a teacher.’

Csirmaz argues in chapter 6 that the highest element in PredP, i.e., the particle/ bare nominal landing in Spec,PredP, or the V in sentences with no particle, is moved on string-vacuously into the specifier or head position of AspP. The ’V, Particle’ order of telic imperfective sentences, illustrated in (65) and (66a), and in (98) below, is also the result of V movement to Asp. The [þimperfective] Asp head of such sentences does not accept a delimiting terminative or resultative particle in Spec,AspP, hence the closest potential filler of Asp is the V, moving across the particle: (98)

Ja´nos e´ppen [AspP csuktai [PredP be ti [VP ti az ajto´t]] John just closed in the door ‘John was just closing the door.’

The ‘V Particle’ order attested in sentences containing a focus or a negative particle (or both) is also assumed to be the result of V movement across the particle. These constructions will be analyzed in detail in chapter 9. Briefly, the V in nonneutral sentences (including also imperatives) raises to the head position of a Non-Neutral Phrase (as proposed by Olsvay (2000b)). In the case of negation, the Non-Neutral Phrase merges with a Neg head projecting a NegP, whereas in the case of focussing, the Non-Neutral Phrase (or the NegP derived from it) merges with a Foc(us) head projecting a FocP. The resulting constructions represent various realizations of a phase with the V in its head, and with the post-verbal domain handed over to Spell-Out. At the syntax-phonology interface, the projections having lost their head (VP, vP, and PredP) are flattened, and their constituents are rearranged according to phonological weight, beginning with the lightest constituent, and ending with the heaviest one. Observe the position of the particle in imperative, negative,

K ATA L I N E´ . K I S S

52 and focus constructions: (99)

a. [NNPSza´molja´toki [AspP o¨sszej ti [PredP tj ti [VP ti a szavazatokat!]]]] PRT the votes count ‘Count the votes!’ b. [NegP Nem [NNP sza´molta´ki [AspP o¨sszej ti [PredP tj ti [VP ti a szavazanot counted-they PRT the votes tokat]]]]] ‘They did not count the votes.’ c. [FocP csak KETTEN pro [NNP sza´molta´ki [AspP o¨sszej ti [PredP tj ti only two counted PRT [VP ti a szavazatokat]]]]] the votes ‘Only two persons counted the votes.’ 5.

S U M M A RY

This chapter has argued that the verbal particle, a seemingly idiosyncratic category of the Hungarian sentence, can be given a systematic analysis on the basis of which both its functional and its syntactic properties can be predicted. As regards its function, it has been claimed that it plays a role in determining the situation aspect of sentences. The three major types of verbal particles mark three major types of events. Resultative particles mark telic sentences denoting a delimited change of state, terminative particles mark telic sentences denoting a delimited change of location, whereas locative particles mark sentences denoting existence or spatial configuration in a given location. Contrary to wide-spread assumptions, the verbal particle is not a perfectivizer; it only plays an indirect role in determining viewpoint aspect. The syntactic analysis of the verbal particle has led to the conclusion that it is a phrasal category (an AdvP consisting of a mere head), moving first to the specifier of a PredP projection, and then to the specifier of AspP encoding viewpoint aspect. (The latter move might be blocked by a constraint to be discussed in chapter 6.) The particle (as well as the bare nominal complement) moves to Spec,PredP in order to check its [þpred] feature. Owing to checking requirements, the V also moves to Pred. In nonneutral sentences the V raises across the particle into the head of a Non-Neutral Phrase to be merged with a F(ocus) or a Neg head. In the resulting phase, the constituents of the post-head domain are rearranged according to phonological weight. NOTES 1

2

Precedents for this claim can be found in Kiefer (1992), and Kiefer and Lada´nyi (2000), who argue that certain types of particles serve to denote particular types of Aktionsart, a notion related to situation aspect. It would also deserve some consideration why resultative adjectives are often case-marked, e.g.: szo ´´ke´-re fest ‘blond-onto dye’, boldog-ga´ tesz ‘happy-to make’, a´tla´tszo´-va´ va´lik ‘transparent-to become’. If only noun phrases can be case-marked, then these phrases may contain an empty noun phrase. The case marking seems to suggest that the resultative phrase is theta-marked by the verb – as proposed by Larson (1988b).

S Y N TA X O F V E R B A L PA RT I C L E 3 4

5

53

Non-compositional idioms like be-ru´g ‘get drunk’ lit. ‘in kick’ represent exceptions to this claim. Although without its verb, a given particle usually gives no information on the quality of the result state it denotes, its choice is not completely idiosyncratic. Be ‘in’, fel ‘up’, and the most unmarked meg denote different kinds of complete affectedness; however, the examination of the semantic differences of the various verbal particles is beyond the scope of this paper. For information on this issue, see Perrot (1966), Szili (2001) etc. The symbol ’ marks stress. Stress is indicated so as to ensure a neutral prosody. Some of the sentences in (6) can be grammatical if they contain a focus, e.g.: (i) ’JA´NOS tala´lta a gyur ˝ ut. ˝ John found the ring ‘It was John who found the ring.’

6

This sentence is a ‘creation’ sentence, discussed in section 2.3 and in chapters 4–5. The theme of a creation predicate is represented by a non-specific indefinite NP – unless the sentence contains a focus, which renders the theme presupposed. In Hungarian, generic plurals have a definite article – see (i); therefore, bare plurals are not ambiguous between a non-specific and a specific (i.e., generic) reading. (i) A go´lya´k Afrika´ban telelnek. the storks Africa-in spend.winter ‘Storks spend the winter in Africa. ’

7

According to En¸c (1991), a universally quantified expression is specific. E´. Kiss (1993) also argues that a quantified expression counts as specific if it denotes a set whose elements are known. In any case, a verbal particle is compatible with a quantified theme argument, e.g.: (i) Ja´nos meg-hı´vott valakit/ mindenkit. PRT invited somebody/everybody John ‘John invited somebody/everybody.’

8

E´. Kiss (2005b) examines apparent counterexamples to the claim that unergative verbs cannot be associated with a resultative particle, e.g.: (i) Pe´ter meg-reggelizett. Peter PRT breakfasted ‘Peter had breakfast.’ (ii) E´va ki-takarı´tott/el-mosogatott. Eve out cleaned/up washed ‘Eve did the cleaning/did the washing up.’

9

10

(i) is argued to have a theme incorporated into the verb, whereas the predicates in (ii), expressing institutionalized activities, are claimed to have an implicit theme. Actually, these adverbs look directional rather than locational, because in addition to an obsolete stem, they also contain the obsolete -a´/-e´ lative case suffix even if sometimes the case ending has already worn off, as in the case of fel ‘up’. In fact, however, this suffix merely serves to convey the ‘terminus’ theta-role assigned to the locative element by the verb. That is, just as in the case of piros-ra fest ‘red-to paint’, piros ‘red’ denotes the end state of the object, and -ra ‘to’ marks that this end state is in a resultative relation to the verb, in the case of az asztal-ra tesz ‘the table-on put’, or ra´-tesz ‘onto put’, az asztal ‘the room’, and the obsolete stem of ra´ ‘on’ denote the end location of the moving individual, and the -ra ‘to’ suffix of asztal, and the -a´ ‘to’ suffix implicit in ra´ express that this end location is in a terminative relation to the verb. In fact, the versions in (i) and (ii) are also grammatical: ¨ NYVEKET KO tett le az asztalra. (i) Istva´n Stephen books-ACC put down the table-on ‘It was books that Stephen put on the table.’

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54

(ii) ISTVA´N tett le ko¨nyveket az asztalra. ‘It was Stephen who put down books on the table.’ A sentence with a verbal particle and a bare nominal theme can be acceptable if the verbal particle is postverbal; however, the resulting sentence is not inherently delimited: ¨ NYVEKET KO tett le az asztalra. (iii) Az elado´ 10 percig the shop-assistant 10 minute-for books-ACC put down the table-on ‘For 10 minutes, it was books that the shop assistant put down on the table.’

11

Such postverbal verbal particles are not resultative or terminative secondary predicates but directional adverbs. Particles like el ‘off’, ki ‘out of’ often denote the end location of centrifugal motion. In that case, the source of the motion can also be expressed, but the particle invariably doubles the terminus argument – see (i), unless it is replaced by it, as in (ii): ha´zbo´l (az utca´rai). (i) E´va kii -szaladt a Eve out ran the house-from (the street-into) ‘Eve (has) run out of the house (into the street).’ cf. (ii) E´va az utca´ra szaladt (a ha´zbo´l).

12

A way of neutralizing the non-specificity requirement on the theme is to focus something in the sentence, as a result of which the theme argument becomes presupposed. In this case, it can be represented by a [þspecific] noun phrase. Thus, (41a) is acceptable in the following context: (i) Ja´nos John

13

KE´SZI´TETTE PREPARED

mindegyik each

repu¨lo´´ge´pmodellt, air-plaine modell,

nem not

VETTE BOUGHT

´o´ket. them

If the locative particle and its associate are focussed, the examples in (59) become acceptable, for example: ¨B ˜ TT. hever kutya a KU¨SZO ELO (i) OTT there lies dog the threshold before ‘It is in front of the threshold that a dog is lying.’

Chapter 9 will solve the mystery why there is a grammaticality difference between example (58a) and example (i). Essentially, the particle and its associate in (i) are not predicated of the theme subject; they are focussed, which means that they are predicated of the open sentence represented by the rest of the sentence. That is, (i) expresses the following predication relation: (ii) [ahol where 14

15

16 17

kutya dog

hever] lies

[az it

ott, there

a the

ku¨szo¨b threshold

elo ´´tt before

van] is

In fact, there is also a landing site for wide-scope universal quantifiers in the preverbal section of the predicate phrase; this is, however, irrelevant for the discussion. Szendro ´´i (2003) assumes that the particle, generated under a complex predicate, undergoes focus movement to Spec,FP in such cases. For arguments that focussing cannot take place via head movement, see Horvath (2005). The construction illustrated in (92) has been analyzed in many different ways in the literature. Farkas and Sadock (1989) analyze it in the autolexical framework, which allows different moduls of grammar to assign partially noncongruent representations to the same linguistic entity. In their analysis, the verbal particle e.g. in (92a) forms a unit with the infinitive selecting it in lexicosemantic structure, and with the compound verb consisting of the auxiliary and the infinitive in morphological structure. Koopman and Szabolcsi (2000) derive (92a) by the cyclic movement of the infinitive phrase combined with VP-extraction, which leaves the verbal particle stranded. The studies in E´. Kiss and van Riemsdijk (2004) assume various versions of cyclic, phrasal particle movement in constructions like (92a) (see e.g. Alberti’s, Brody’s, and Olsvay’s papers). E´. Kiss (2004b), on the other hand,

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assumes the reanalysis of the VP layers into a single verb phrase, projecting a single PredP. According to Szendro ´´i (2003; 2004), particle movement in (92a) is movement for stress. (Semi-)auxiliaries cannot occupy the most heavily stressed leftmost position of a predicate phrase; hence they must be preceded by a focus, a negative particle or by a verbal particle/bare nominal borrowed from their infinitival complement. Den Dikken (2004) argues that particles undergoing long movement, and those undergoing short movement have different landing sites–hence this argument against placing particles in Spec, VP is invalid.

´ R ESZES BOLDIZSA

V E RB A L PA RT I C L E S T E L I C I Z I N G S TAT I V E PS Y C H V E R B S

1.

INTRODUCTION

This chapter aims to analyze two groups of Hungarian psychological verbs and their verbal particles. After discussing some classificatory issues in section 2, I conclude that these particles play a telicising role because the situation type of the base verb they are attached to is different from that of the resulting complex verb. In section 3, I attempt to show that these verbs pose a problem for current theories of the syntax-semantics interface, as they have rather peculiar mapping properties. Section 4 provides a semantic analysis in an aspectual framework which explains the notion of mental change in terms of scale structures. The final section deals with the semantic representation of the causative forms of psychological verbs in Hungarian. 2.

CLASSIFYING PSYCHOLOGICAL VERBS IN HUNGARIAN

We can make a distinction between simple and complex verbs in Hungarian (see Chapter 2). Among the complex transitive verbs expressing psychological changes there are verbs containing the particle meg, and among these, we can distinguish between Experiencer-subject and Experiencer-object verbs. The first subgroup includes such verbs as meg-szeret ‘come to love’ or meg-e´rt ‘come to understand’, ‘grasp’, while the second subgroup ones like meg-ijeszt ‘frighten’ or meg-zavar ‘disturb’. I discuss only Experiencer-subject verbs in this paper. The verbs belonging to this subgroup can be sorted into three types depending on their meaning. (1) Hungarian Experiencer-subject verbs containing the particle meg: a. verbs expressing changes in emotional states: meg-szeret ‘come to love’, meggy u˝ lo¨l ‘come to hate’, meg-irigyel ‘become envious of’, meg-sajna´l ‘take pity on’ etc. b. verbs expressing changes in perceptual states: meg-la´t ‘spot’, meg-hall ‘come to hear’, meg-pillant ‘glimpse’ etc. c. verbs expressing changes in cognitive states: meg-e´rt ‘understand’, meg-tud ‘come to know’ etc. 57 ´ Kiss (ed.), Event Structure and the Left Periphery Studies on Hungarian, 57–73. Katalin E.
2008 Springer.

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In considering the semantic role of the particle with respect to the base verb, it may be helpful to choose the Vendlerian verb classes as a starting point. Vendler (1967) classified English verbs (and verb phrases) into aspectual categories on the basis of their duration, culmination and temporal structure: they can denote states, activities, accomplishments or achievements (see Chapter 6). States have no internal structure, hence their time interval is divisible. Activities are ongoing durative events without a necessary endpoint. Accomplishments are durative events with an obligatory endpoint (culmination), while achievements are non-durative, being identical with their own instantaneous culmination. The typical achievements (e.g. reach the top) are preceded by a preparatory phase. Several authors introduce a fifth verb class whose members lack such preparatory phases (e.g. sneeze, flash etc.). Smith (1991) refers to them as semelfactive verbs, while others call them punctuals. Smith (1991) argues for a two-component theory of aspect, introducing the notions of situation aspect and viewpoint aspect (see Chapter 6). Situation aspect encodes the differences between the Vendlerian verb classes based on the temporal structure of the situations, while viewpoint aspect presents different perspectives on situations. As Smith shows, (a)telicity, a distinction which turns on whether an event has a natural endpoint or outcome, is a feature used in classifying types of situation aspect. Activities and semelfactives are atelic events, while accomplishments and achievements are telic. On the other hand, (im)perfectivity – a distinction which has to do with viewing a situation either in its totality or as a partial one – belongs to viewpoint aspect. I set aside cognitive change-of-state verbs because in my opinion they require a special analysis (though certain general observations apply to them, too), and wish to discuss only subclasses (1a) and (1b) in detail. In order to analyze their meaning, first I would like to clarify the role of the particle meg in an informal way. Members of (1a), (1b) and (1c) are often categorized as inchoative verbs which express a kind of situation aspect, since their particles are supposed to carry a special meaning related to the beginning of an event. However, I agree with Kiefer (2000a) that this is an incorrect approach, because unlike other complex verbs the verbs belonging to these classes do not express the beginning of an emotional, perceptual or cognitive state, but rather a process or an (instantaneous) change which results in a state.1 Thus, it cannot be said that they introduce any situation type. So what is the role of meg in psych verbs, if it does not introduce a particular situation type the same way as other particles (or meg in its other uses) do which slightly modify but otherwise preserve the meaning of the base verb? It cannot telicize the base verb in the sense of creating a telic state from an atelic one, as the situation type of states cannot be made telic. Still, I think there is another straightforward sense of ‘telicization’ in which these particles telicize the stative verbs, because the result of their application is a new telic verb, with an aspectual type different from that of the base verb. Filip (2000) argues that though verbal prefixes in Russian make the predicate they apply to a telic one, they cannot be markers of perfectivity because they behave like derivational morphemes, while verbal aspect in Slavic languages is a

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grammatical (inflectional) category. She analyses them as so-called ‘eventuality description modifiers’ which affect the situation type of the predicate they modify, being mappings from the sets of eventualities of any type into sets of events ((PROCESS [ STATE [ EVENT) ! EVENT). In terms of Filip’s approach, I take the Hungarian verbal particles contained in psych verbs to be eventuality description modifiers, mappings of the kind STATE ! EVENT (the description EVENT covers accomplishments and achievements), and suppose that they are not markers of perfectivity, which is a type of viewpoint aspect. At this point we may ask what the aspectual classification of the verbs belonging to (1a) in terms of situation aspect is: should we consider them accomplishments, or achievements with a preparatory phase? On one approach, members of (1a) would qualify as accomplishments containing a durative phase and a culmination point in their lexical event structure. Another possibility may be that this structure does not include any duration: on this approach, they would be categorized as a kind of achievements with a presupposed preparatory phase. My proposal is that Hungarian psych verbs in (1a) can be classified as accomplishment verbs on the basis of the following contrast: Pe´ter de´luta´n 4 o´ra´ra meg-tala´lta a kulcsot. PRT-find the key-ACC Peter-NOM afternoon 4-by ‘Peter found the key by 4 o’ clock in the afternoon.’ b. Pe´ter az o ´´sz ve´ge´re meg-kedvelte az iskola´t. the school-ACC. Peter-NOM the autumn end-by PRT-like ‘Peter came to like the school by the end of the autumn.’ (3) a. Pe´ter de´luta´n 4-kor meg-tala´lta a kulcsot. PRT-find the key-ACC Peter-NOM afternoon 4-at ‘Peter found the key at 4 o’ clock in the afternoon.’ b. #Pe´ter de´luta´n 4-kor meg-kedvelte az iskola´t. PRT-like the school-ACC. Peter-NOM afternoon 4-at ‘Peter came to like the school at 4’ o clock in the afternoon.’

(2)

a.

Meg-tala´l ‘find’ is a particleþverb combination that expresses an achievement and presupposes a preparatory phase of searching in most contexts (when it cooccurs with the time adverbial 4 o´ra´ra ‘by four o’clock’ in (2a) it certainly has this presupposition). In general, achievements can be anchored to a moment of time, independently of whether they presuppose a preparatory phase or not. (3a) shows that this is valid for the complex verb meg-tala´l. However, meg-kedvel cannot be an achievement verb because adding an adverb expressing a point of time (a ‘momentary adverbial’) as in (3b), results in semantic anomaly. (Smith (1991, p. 55) points out that in English an inceptive interpretation arises when certain accomplishments are combined with momentary adverbials, but this is not the case in the examples above). As all the verbs belonging to (1a) (in contrast to those in (1b)) behave like megkedvel with respect to modification, I conclude that (1a) should be categorized as a

60

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subclass of accomplishments (while those in (1b) are obviously achievements, and those in (1c) may be either accomplishments or achievements). To sum up, I propose that we should consider the meaning of the particle meg applied to the base verbs of (1a) an ‘eventuality description modifier’ (EDM). This EDM changes the situation aspect type, resulting in an accomplishment by complementing the original state with a preceding durative phase. The subjects of the sentences containing the verbs in (1a) have the thematic role Experiencer, so they belong to the group of non-agentive accomplishment verbs. The base verbs of many accomplishments express the activity/process leading to a result (e.g., eszik ‘eat’ is the activity leading to the total consumption of some food expressed by meg-eszik valamit ‘eat up something’), while those in (1a) do not. I would like to point out two differences between accomplishments that contain a base verb expressing an activity leading to a result state and those in (1a), whose base verbs express the result state itself: (A) accomplishments with activity-expressing base verbs can generally be modified with the adverbs partially/halfway, but the members of (1a) cannot. (4)

a. Pe´ter re´szben/fe´lig megette az alma´t. the-apple-ACC Peter-NOM partly/halfway PRT-eat ‘Peter ate the apple partly/halfway.’ b. #Pe´ter re´szben/fe´lig meg-kedvelte Marit. Mary-ACC. Peter-NOM partly/halfway PRT-like ‘Peter came to like Mary partly/halfway.’

(4b) cannot be interpreted as meaning that Peter’s emotional state of liking at the end of some process was only half of a normal state of liking, because a stative eventuality does not allow such degrees. (B) While in general it is the object of transitive accomplishment verbs that ‘measures out’ the temporal course of the event (see Tenny (1994)), the verbs of (1a) are different because their subject is the measuring-out argument. We may think about the relevant change of state as the intensification of an attitude’s emotional component. Based on (A) and (B), I propose that complex Hungarian accomplishment and achievement verbs can be categorized according to the thematic role of the subject and the meaning of the base verb (i.e., whether it expresses a result state). Subject thematic role: þ/
Agent (þ/
AG) Base verb meaning: þ/
result state (þ/
RS) We can distinguish four groups, which might be helpful in considering their aspectual structure:

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Groups (A) and (B) include verbs whose base verbs do not express result states. (A)
RS, þAG : meg-eszik valamit ‘eat up something’, ki-takarı´t valamit ‘clean up something’ etc. (B)
RS,
AG: le-esik ‘fall down’, fel-emelkedik ‘rise up’, megsza´rad ‘dry out’ etc. Groups (C) and (D) include verbs whose base verbs express result states. (C) þRS,
AG: (C1): transitive/ intransitive psych verbs: meg-kedvel valakit (come to like someone), meg-haragszik valakire (get angry with someone) etc. (C2) achievement verbs: fel-forr (boil up) etc. (D) þRS, þAG: inchoative accomplishment verbs: fel-a´ll (stand up), le-u¨l (sit down) etc. Before presenting a detailed semantic analysis, I discuss their so-called mapping properties to draw some conclusions about psych verbs in general. 3.

PSYCH VERBS IN MAPPING THEORIES

There are several current theories about the syntactic realization of the arguments of predicate types in natural language. These so-called mapping theories belong to the interface between syntax and lexical semantics, devised to provide different accounts of the regular patterns in the syntactic expression of arguments. These regularities are usually formulated as ‘linking rules’ that associate certain semantic roles with grammatical functions. Since the role of an argument depends on the meaning of the predicate selecting it, the latter is an important factor in determining the structure of the clause. Some scholars (e.g., Dowty (1991)) claim that it is the arguments’ protothematic properties that count, others are of the opinion that it is the aspectual value of the predicate (Tenny (1994)), while others again (e.g., Croft (1991)) consider causation as the decisive factor. The authors analyzing the mapping properties of psych verbs draw on Croft’s generalization (Croft (1986)) that partly resulted from the investigation of two main classes of English psych verbs, the fear and the frighten classes. What is surprising about these classes is that their members come in pairs that are near synonyms, but their arguments are mapped in quite different ways onto syntactic positions, as the following examples illustrate: Experiencer-subject fear-class (5) a. John fears dogs. c. John likes Mary. e. John regards Mary as pompous.

Stimulus-subject frighten-class b. Dogs frighten John. d. Mary pleases John. f. Mary strikes John as pompous.

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Croft’s generalization amounts to this: Experiencer-subject psych verbs are always stative, while Stimulus-subject verbs can be either stative or inchoative. The Hungarian transitive psych verbs considered in this chapter constitute a counterexample to this generalization, as they express specific changes in the mental state of the Experiencer argument which is their subject, so it seems that these verbs have rather peculiar mapping properties. In what follows, I will present the difficulties with psych verbs by sketching one of the current mapping theories. Tenny (1994) proposed a theory of argument structure based on the aspectual properties of the verb. The central principle of her approach is the Aspectual Interface Hypothesis (Tenny (1994, pp. 115–116)): Aspectual Interface Hypothesis: The universal principles of mapping between thematic structure and syntactic argument structure are governed by aspectual properties. Constraints on the aspectual properties associated with direct internal arguments, indirect internal arguments, and external arguments in syntactic structure constrain the kinds of event participants that can occupy these positions. Only the aspectual part of thematic structure is visible to the universal linking principles. According to Tenny, two aspectual properties may affect the realization of arguments, namely, ‘measuring out’ and ‘delimitedness’. The latter corresponds to the property of ‘telicizing’ mentioned earlier. The following examples illustrate these notions: (6) (7)

The gardener ripened the fruit. The ball cracked the glass.

(8)

John ate the apple.

(9) (10)

Mary climbed the ladder. John hiked to the top of the hill.

Sentences (6)–(10) show that it is the entity that moves or undergoes some change of state that measures out the event (in (9) it is the length of the ladder traversed), while the goal of the movement delimits the motion event. Tenny postulates two constraints to ensure that the argument measuring out the event is expressed as a direct internal argument and the one delimiting the event as either a direct or indirect internal argument: Measuring-Out Constraint on Direct Internal Arguments: a. The direct internal argument of a simple verb is constrained so that it undergoes no necessary internal motion or change, unless it is motion or change which ‘measures out the event’ over time (where ‘measuring

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out’ entails that the direct argument plays a particular role in delimiting the event). b. Direct internal arguments are the only overt arguments which can ‘measure out the event’. c. There can be no more than one measuring out for any event described by a verb. The Terminus Constraint on Indirect Internal Arguments: a. An indirect internal argument can only participate in aspectual structure by providing a Terminus for the event described by the verb. The Terminus causes the event to be delimited. b. If the event has a Terminus, it also has a Path, either implicit or overt. c. An event as described by a verb can only have one terminus. Tenny formulates the following constraint on external arguments: The Non-Measuring Constraint on External Arguments (NMC): An external argument cannot participate in measuring out or delimiting the event described by a verb. An external argument cannot be a Measure, a Path or a Terminus. As I noted, though the meanings of such pairs as fear vs. frighten are closely related, the Experiencer of fear is syntactically realized as the subject while the Experiencer is a grammatical object in the sentences containing frighten. This seems to contradict the Non-measuring-out Constraint which does not allow external arguments to measure out the event. However, as Tenny points out, Experiencersubject psych verbs in English do not refute the NMC because they can be interpreted only as having a static meaning, so their Theme cannot be a participant undergoing any change of state. Tenny’s aspectual mapping theory thus makes the following predictions with respect to the two classes of psych verbs: a. When the internal argument is a Theme, the sentence can only be interpreted as having a static meaning. (fear-class) b. When the direct internal argument is an Experiencer and the subject is a Theme, it is the Experiencer that measures out the event, so the sentence can be interpreted as expressing some change of state. (frighten-class) However, since Tenny accepts Croft’s generalization, we could not explain the characteristics of Hungarian psych verbs within the framework of her theory. Moreover, a more general problem arises: why can only internal arguments measure out and delimit events? In other words, is it necessary that external arguments do not have the measuring-out property? Tenny answers this question affirmatively, stressing that the external argument does not belong to the so-called event nucleus which is the aspectual structure forming part of a more general event structure. Though a verb may exactly determine

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the change which its direct internal argument has to undergo, it does not determine what should happen to the external argument during the event. According to Tenny, the external argument’s possible changes, movements or activities are not determined by the verb at all, and these processes cannot be considered a scalar change in a single property (Tenny (1994, p. 87)). For example, if John bakes a cake, the cake undergoes a determinate change as it gets gradually baked until the end of the process. By contrast, while baking the cake, John may perform different activities in various orders. I think Tenny’s theory is inadequate in this respect. As Dowty (1991, pp. 570– 571) pointed out, it is not clear whether Tenny’s constraints are empirical generalizations or theoretical postulates. If they are contingent generalizations, they can be challenged by empirical data. However, if they are not, one should give a proper analysis of the apparent counterexamples in line with the postulates. I think this would be impractical, considering the verbs Dowty refers to. He mentions several transitive verbs in English (such as enter, exit, pierce, reach, leave and cross) whose external arguments are apparently assigned the measuring-out role: (11)

At the turtle race, the winning turtle crossed the finish line in 42 seconds.

(12)

The crowd exited the auditorium in 21 minutes.

(13–15) show that the sentences containing these verbs pass the measuring-out tests proposed by Tenny. (13)

John entered the icy water a little further.

(14) (15)

The turtle crossed the finish line slowly. a. John entered the water completely. entails b. John was completely in the water.

Being transitive, these verbs cannot be unaccusatives (by the definition of ‘unaccusative’), and it would be implausible to argue that they have two internal arguments in their lexical representation. I agree with Dowty that this would indeed be arguing in a circle to save the original postulates, since we don’t have any evidence suggesting that these verbs actually have two internal arguments. As we can see, there are some verbs that do not fit Tenny’s NMC. In this respect, the Hungarian verbs in (1a) are similar to Dowty’s examples, as they have an external argument which measures out the event. The English verbs which Dowty mentions and the Hungarian psych verbs show the limits of the aspect-based mapping theories, and also that one cannot entirely rely on Croft’s generalization in analyzing psych verbs. 4.

A S E M A N T I C A N A LY S I S

My aim in this section is to provide a compositional semantic analysis for the two verb groups (1a) and (1b), assuming that the meaning of the complex verb is jointly

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determined by the meaning of the particle and that of the base verb. As the base verb denotes a state which the subject argument has to reach by the end of the mental event, we may reasonably assume that the meaning of the particle contributes the dynamics of the change of state. Several theories have already been proposed to deal with aspectual phenomena in different languages. Among the formal approaches, Krifka’s mereological theory (Krifka 1992) based on the part-whole relationship especially stands out. Krifka intends to explain the role of object arguments in the first place by using algebraic structures to model the relevant properties of arguments and verb meanings. He assumes that objects and events form algebraic semi-lattices with respect to the so-called sum operation. His theory captures the traditional opposition between atelic and telic situations by introducing the notions of cumulative and quantized reference types, which can be given an exact algebraic representation. In general, we can characterize the relevant predicates of physical objects or events in these terms. Nominal phrases with cumulative reference type (i.e., mass nouns like wine) denote both the parts and the sum of two quantities of matter. By contrast, NPs with quantized reference cannot be truly predicated of the parts of the entities belonging to their extensions: the proper parts of a glass of wine cannot be called glasses of wine. We can make the same distinction among event predicates, too: run has cumulative reference, so it is atelic, while run three miles has quantized reference and is telic. In the case of VPs with a quantized Theme argument (e.g., drink a glass of wine) the parts of the event and those of the Theme can be brought into correspondence with each other (within algebraic semantics, this part-by-part correspondence is expressed by a special function known as a homomorphism). The VP is quantized (telic) in such cases because the Theme argument is itself quantized, so for instance, we can consider the time by which the Theme argument, e.g., a glass of wine is totally consumed as the endpoint of drinking a glass of wine. An important alternative to the mereological theories of aspect is the scalebased analysis (Hay et al 1999). A scale is a set of points ordered along a given dimension. This dimension can be length, volume, temperature, brightness, etc. This approach does not require a part-by-part correspondence (homomorphism) between arguments and events, because it assumes that it is not the Theme that undergoes the change but some of its properties (volume, area, etc.). This change can be characterized with the help of a scale. The aspectual classification of a sentence depends on whether the degree of change – the so-called difference value – is quantized (delimited) or not. I can see two advantages of this analysis as compared to the mereological aspectual theories. First, besides explaining the changes in object arguments, it can provide an account of the changes in subject arguments, too (e.g., in the arguments of certain psych verbs). Second, it accounts for sentences like (16): (16) Peter’s cheeks reddened in ten seconds.

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´ R ESZES BOLDIZSA

Sentence (16) poses a problem for Krifka’s mereological theory: the parts of Peter’s cheeks cannot be made to correspond to the parts of the reddening event because usually all or most of the parts are reddening simultaneously. However, within the scale-based approach this change can be explained by representing the intensity of the relevant property (redness) on a scale. Ramchand (1997) points out that there are other types of Themes (or Patients) besides those of verbs of creation or consumption. She designates these Patient arguments using the labels Patþ/
and PatLOC. Objects of type Patþ/
are the arguments of the so-called degree achievement verbs like the transitive lengthen, widen, and the intransitive cool. (17) shows that the verbs belonging to this class are aspectually ambiguous: (17) The soup cooled (in an hour/for an hour). Hay, Kennedy and Levin explain this by assuming that the hearer infers the difference value by drawing a conversational implicature, because the degree of change is not given explicitly in the meaning of the sentence. The telic reading provides the most informative interpretation of the sentence because a certain delimited degree is available in most contexts, namely the room temperature. By contrast, the durative time adverbial cancels this implicature, so the sentence may also receive an atelic reading. However, if we add an adverb denoting an explicit degree (e.g., completely), the aspectual ambiguity disappears and only the telic reading remains. In my opinion, the scalar analysis of Hay, Kennedy and Levin may provide a general theoretical framework for the analysis of the verbal particles in Hungarian. It seems that many Hungarian verbal particles signal that the change reached a scalar limit, that is, they can delimit the scalar difference value which is relevant for the given change. As this value is often contextually given, this fact should be reflected in the meaning representation of the particles, which means that their meaning should include the scale structure on which the contextually provided value can be reached. For example, the particle ki (out) in (18) presumably refers to the fact that the color of Peter’s cheeks reached a certain (conventionally given) degree. (18)

Pe´ter arca kipirult. Peter-NOM cheeks PRT-redden. ‘Peter’s cheeks reddened.’

I turn to presenting the formal details of the scalar analysis. According to Kennedy and Levin (2002), the meaning of an intransitive verb expressing a gradable change can be characterized by using the INCREASE relation: (19)

V1¼‚x‚d‚e.INCREASE(GV(x))(d)(e)

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67

INCREASE is a three-place relation between the Theme argument x characterized by the gradable property (GV) associated with the verb, the degree-of-change d and the change-of-state event e. It expresses that the degree of the gradable property of the Theme increased by degree d during the change. dA scale is defined as an ordering on a set of values. In analyzing psych verbs, let us assume that in their case the scalar structure (S) is the partially ordered set of the intensity of certain selected psychological states represented by points p1, . . . ,pn. The degrees (d) are the intervals on the scale. We can define the set of positive degrees (POS (S)) corresponding to the change of intensity from a lesser to a greater degree as (20) shows. (20)

POS(S) ¼ {d S j $p12d 8p22 S [p2 < p1 ! p22d]}

The instances of the scheme d<0, i> (where i is a positive real number) denote the positive degrees. The addition of degrees is defined in (21): (21)

d<0, i> þ d<0, j> ¼ d< 0, i þ j>

(22) gives the difference value: (22) jjINCREASE(j(x))(d)(e)jj ¼ 1 iff j(x) (SPO(e)) þ d ¼ j(x) (EPO(e)) Here SPO is the starting point of the ‘run-time’ (temporal interval) of event e involving a change of state, while EPO is the endpoint of the run-time. (23) gives the truth conditions of (22) in detail: jjINCREASE(j(x))(d)(e)jj¼1 $ the degree to which x has property j at the beginning of the event increased with degree d results in the degree to which x has property j at the end of the event e. (23) and (25) show the application of the INCREASE relation:

(22)

(23) John lengthened the rope. (23)

a. (Paraphrase): John caused the length of the rope to increase by some amount.

The non-causative part of the meaning of (24) can be represented by (25): (24)

$e,d[ INCREASE(long (rope))(d)(e)]

The difference value d in (25) is existentially bound by default. Hay, Kennedy and Levin distinguish four ways of specifying the difference value: (A) The difference value is explicitly expressed in the sentence

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68

(A1) by quantized measure phrases: (26) The workers are widening the road 5 meters. (27) The lake cooled 4 degrees in four days. (A2) by non-quantized measure phrases: a bit, a quantity, a part (28) The soup is cooling a bit. (A3) by scalar adverbs: among them, the maximizing ones (completely, totally, halfway) have a quantizing effect, as they indicate that the change reached a certain limit on the scale. By contrast, minimizing adverbs express that the change cannot go beyond a given limit (slightly, partially, somewhat). (B) The difference value can be lexically inferred in the case of verbs derived from closed-scale adjectives, since it is given in the semantic characterization of the adjective. The adjectives empty, straight and dry are closed-scale ones, because their associated scales have a maximal value, while long, wide and short and the corresponding derived verbs are open-scale ones. (C) The difference value can be inferred from the context: (29)

The tailor lengthened Peter’s pants.

In (29), it is the context of the utterance that provides the difference value, which is based on the average length of Peter’s pants. (D)

In the ‘Elsewhere case’ when neither a measure phrase nor the scalar properties of the predicate nor the context provides the difference value, Hay, Kennedy, and Levin assume that it is existentially bound in the formula, so we get a nonquantized, atelic predicate. A relevant example is the verb lengthen in (24), which is atelic in its default interpretation.

According to my proposal, in case of the verbs in (1a), the particle meg creates accomplishment verbs from stative ones, while it creates achievements from stative base verbs in the case of group (1b) I think it is plausible to suppose that emotional states come about as a result of an event involving a mental change of state whose endpoint is the emotional state denoted by the base verb. The events expressed by verbs like meg-szeret ‘come to love’ or meg-sajna´l ‘come to take pity on’ involve the intensification in the emotional component of a sympathetic attitude, while those expressed by e.g., meg-gy u˝ lo¨l ‘come to hate’ or meg-uta´l ‘come to loathe’ involve the intensification of an antipathetic attitude. Though I will use the scale-based analysis to represent the meaning of these sentences, I see no obstacle in complementing it with some definitions widely used in

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the mereological approach. Following Krifka (1992), I suppose that the domains of eventualities and objects form separate semi-lattices structured by an idempotent, commutative and associative sum operation (t). The extensions of the predicates ST, T and E contain states, time intervals and events respectively. The following definitions are needed for the analysis: (30)

8x,y[xvy $ xty¼y] (part relation (partial order))

(31) (32)

8x,y[x@y $ xvy  : x¼y] (proper part (strict partial order)) 8x,P[ATOM(x, P) $ P(x)  : $y[y@x  P(y)] (x is a P-atom)

That is, x is a P-atom with respect to predicate P if and only if it has property P but has no proper parts with property P. (33)

8P[ATOM(P) ! 8x [P(x) ! $y[y v x  ATOM(y, P)]]] (P has atomic reference)

Predicate P has atomic reference if and only if each entity x belonging to its extension has an atomic part. (34)

ATOM(T)  8t[Ta(t) $ ATOM(t, T)]

The set of time intervals has atomic reference: the set of atoms (Ta) includes the time points. (35)

8e, t[EPO(e)¼t $ Ta(t)  t v
(e)  8t’ [t’ v
(e) ! t’  t ]]

The function EPO assigns the endpoint of their runtime to eventualities.  is a linear order (temporal precedence/identity) on the set of intervals. Following Pin˜o´n (2001a), we can define the following relations on the unified domain of events and states: (36)

Complete temporal precedence (): a strict partial order

(37)

Immediate temporal precedence: v  v’¼def v  v’  :$ v’’[v v’’  v’’  v’] Final proper part: v @fin v’¼def v @ v’  : $ v’’ [v’’@ v’  v  v’’]

(38)

The proper part of an eventuality is a final proper part of it if the proper part starts later but ends at the same time as the eventuality. According to Pin˜o´n (2001a), accomplishment and achievement verbs both express changes in certain states, so he refers to them with the general term ‘Change-of-State predicates’. He defines the notion of change of state as

´ R ESZES BOLDIZSA

70 follows: (39)

Change-of-State(e, x, s, P) ¼ def Theme(e, x)  e  s  P(s)  Theme(s, x)  8e’ [e’@ e  : (e’ @fin e) ! : $s’ [e’  s’  P(s’)  Theme(s’, x)]]

A change of state is a four-place relation between events, ordinary objects, states, and types of states. An object x comes to be in a state s of type P by virtue of e just in case x is the Theme of e, e immediately precedes s, s is of type P, x is the Theme of s, and no proper part e’ of e that is not also a final proper part of e is immediately followed by a state s’ of type P of which x is the Theme. The verbs in (1a) and (1b) denote a mental change-of-state (MCS) which is a variant of the change-of-state relation. I define a stative base verb as a five-place relation between Experiencers, Themes/Stimuli, states, times (endpoints) and degrees. (40) MCS(e, x, y, s, P,d <0, k>) ¼def Exp(e, x)  (Theme(e, y) | Stimulus(e, y))  P(y)(x)(s)(EPO(e)) (d<0, k>)  8e’[(e’@e  : (e’@fin e)) ! 8s’8t : [e’  s’  P(y)(x)(s’)(t)(d<0, k>)]] Definition (40) is intended to cover psych verbs whose object argument can be either Theme ((1a)) or Stimulus ((1b)). We have to introduce a further distinction concerning the relation between psychological states and the verbal predicates (the base verbs of the verbs in (1a)) that can be applied to them. I suppose that the mental state has its characteristic property (e.g., liking) right from the beginning of the change (which distinguishes it from other psychological states that the Experiencer may undergo during the relevant time interval), so the so-called mental change-of-state is not really a change from one state to another but rather a change in the degree of intensity of the relevant state which is assumed to be present all along. Still, for some pragmatic reasons we cannot apply the corresponding verbal predicate properly until this degree has reached a certain value. This is presumably due to a more general restriction on the felicitous use of natural language predicates, which could adequately be spelled out in a detailed analysis of vagueness. Let us assume a closed scale with bounds 0 and 1, and let us make a distinction between the characterizing predicate and the properly applicable verbal predicate. The latter can be properly applied only if the intensity of the state reached a certain (relatively high) degree, let us say 0.9 on the scale (of course, it is an idealization because this limit is vague.) I assume that in the initial situation the characterized state has a minimal non-zero degree so that the characteristic property can be predicated of it, though I will not introduce it into the formal representation for the sake of simplicity. The degrees between 0.9 and 1 are ones where the intensity may increase further, as the following

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sentence shows: (41)

Ja´nos egyre inka´bb meg-kedvelte John-NOM more and more PRT-like ‘John came to like Mary more and more.’

Marit. Mary-ACC.

This sentence is not about how the state of liking originally arose: it presupposes that John already likes Mary and asserts that the degree of his emotion increased further. To represent the meaning of the particle meg contained by the verbs in (1a), a modified version of the INCREASE relation is needed. The re-defined INCREASE is a three-place relation between states, degrees and events: (42)

jjINCREASE (s) (d <0, i>) (e)jj¼1 iff the intensity of state s increases by degree d during the event e.

Second, we have to build the scalar limit value into the meaning of the particle. (43) shows the meaning of the particle meg applicable to the verbs of (1a). (43)

[meg1 Part] ) ‚P,y,x,e$s,t0[P(y)(x)(s)(t0) (d <0,0>)  INCREASE(s)(d <0,j>)(e)  MCS(e,x,y,s,P,d <0,j>)  0.9  j]

where d <0, j> is a degree by which the intensity of a state s has to increase in order to reach or exceeda certain limit (0.9) from whichthe verbalpredicate P can beproperlyapplied to s. Figure 1 illustrates three possible mental change-of-state events, each starting at t0 and ending within the range between degrees 0.9 and 1 at t1, t2 and t3 respectively:

t1 t2 t3 d<0,0>

d<0,0.9>

d<0,1>

MCS events The denotation of the transitive verb kedvel ‘like’ is a five-place relation: (44)

[kedvelV] ) ‚y,x,s,t,d[Liking(s)  Exp(s,x)  Theme(s,y)  Hold(s,t,d)]

where the relation Hold expresses that a state of intensity d holds at time t. Thus we can compositionally derive the meaning of the verb meg-kedvel ‘come to like’ from the meanings of the particle and the base verb. (45)

[[meg1 Part][kedvel V] V] ) ‚y,x,e$s, t0[Liking(y) (x) (s) (t0) (d<0,0>) 

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72

INCREASE (s) (d<0,j>)(e)  MCS (e, x,y, s, ‚y,x,s,t,d[Liking(s)  Exp(s,x)  Theme(s,y)  Hold (s,t,d)], d <0,j>)  0.9  j] The verb meg-kedvel ‘come to like’ is a three-place relation between Experiencers, Themes and events, denoting events that lead to a certain degree of a result state s by an increase in the intensity of this state. I take the particle meg as attached to the base verbs of those in (1b) to denote atomic mental changes of state (punctual eventualities), so it has a meaning which is different from that of meg1. Moreover, the definition of MCS has to be modified, because the notion of intensity cannot be applied to perceptual mental states, so the degree argument is unnecessary. (46–48) show how the meaning of the verb meg-la´t ‘spot’ can be compositionally derived from the base verb la´t ‘see’: (46) (47) (48)

[meg2 Part] ) ‚P,y,x,e$s[ATOM(e,E)  MCS(e,y,x,s,P)] [la´t V] ) ‚y,x,s[Seeing (s)  Exp (s, x)  Stim(s, y)] [[meg2 Part] [la´t V]V] ) (y, x, e $s [ATOM(e,E)  MCS(e, x,y,s, ‚y,x,s [Seeing(s)  Exp(s,x)  Stim(s,y)])]

Due to their atomic, punctual event structure, the verbs in (1b) cannot co-occur either with unbounded (durative) or with bounded (time-span) temporal adverbials. In their case, the role of the particle is restricted to the introduction of the atomic change of state. 5.

T H E R O L E O F P S Y C H O L O G I C A L C A U S AT I O N

In this section I will briefly outline a problem needing further research. We have already seen that within the scale-based approach the Causer role is not considered directly relevant to the scalar semantics of change-of-state verbs. However, in Hungarian the causative -tAt suffix can be applied to psych verbs expressing changes in emotional states, so we should take into account a meaning component of mental causation as well. Komlo´sy (2000) distinguishes between two basic types of causative verbs: in the case of the verbs belonging to the so-called ‘causing’ type, causation amounts to some kind of physical manipulation: (49)

(49)

a. Mari tisztı´tja a ruha´t. Mary-NOM cleans the clothes-ACC ‘Mary is cleaning the clothes.’ b. Mari forgatja a kereket. Mary-NOM turns the wheel-ACC ‘Mary is turning the wheel.’

The other causative verb group (the so-called ‘factitives’) includes verbs whose base verbal predicate expresses the action of an Agent, while the newly introduced Agent (or non-agentive Causer) forces the original Agent to perform the action.

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(50)

Mari levelet ´ırat Mary-NOM letter-ACC write-CAUS ‘Mary has Peter write a letter.’

73

Pe´terrel. Peter-with.

As Komlo´sy notes, the meaning of meg-kedveltet is not ‘to force someone to like someone’, but ‘to make it happen that someone likes someone’. Consider (51): (51)

Anna meg-kedveltette Ann-NOM PRT-like-CAUS ‘Ann made Peter like John.’

Ja´nost John-ACC

Pe´terrel. Peter-with.

This means that psychological verbs belong to the causing type, but the relevant states come about as a result of some ‘psychological manipulation’ instead of physical intervention. At this point, it may seem unclear whether a causal relation of this kind can be adequately represented in the formalism with the CAUSE relation as (e.g.) in Dowty (1979) (or with its modified version applying to events), or whether we have to introduce another special relation to account for fact causation, because it may seem that the Causer arguments of psych verbs can be states, events and even facts, which contrast them with cases of purely physical manipulation. (52)

Az (a te´ny) hogy Mari beteg, meg-ijesztette Ja´nost. The (fact) that Mary-NOM ill PRT-frighten-CAUS John-ACC. ‘The fact that Mary is ill frightened John.’

At first sight, sentence (52) seems to justify the assumption that the Causer arguments of the mental CAUSE relation may be facts besides events and states. (I should add that the relation CAUSE has only propositional arguments in Dowty’s original definition.) It might be thought that this would necessitate the reinterpretation of thematic roles (in order to introduce the category of facts as Causers), but this would contradict the highly plausible claim that facts are causally inert, not being able to exercise any causal effect directly. At most, a fact may affect a person’s behavior only after he grasped it and the subsequent mental process influences his other mental states. This can be adduced as an important argument if we are to insist that psychological causation should be uniformly represented as a relation between eventualities in all cases. NOTE 1

Kiefer (2000a: p. 291) argues that the function of the particle meg of psych verbs cannot be that of introducing situation aspect. According to him, in the case of meg-szeret and similar psych verbs, the particle meg cannot introduce inchoative or resultative situation aspect, because it does not meet one of his criteria for introducing that aspect type: the meaning component introduced by the particle does not simply modify but instead essentially transforms the core meaning of the static base verb.

´N ˜O CHRISTOPHER PIN

D E F I N I T EN E S S E F F E C T V E R B S

1.

DIAGNOSING DEFINITENESS EFFECT VERBS

Hungarian has a sizable class of verbs that exhibit a so-called definiteness effect (DE). The verbs belonging to this class (DE-verbs) display certain properties that clearly distinguish them from related verbs with similar lexical content. Descriptively, DEverbs are verbs of change which express that something comes into existence or becomes available in a particular fashion.1 The aim of any account of DE-verbs in Hungarian should be to make this sort of characterization more precise, because not every verb of change which expresses that something comes into existence or becomes available in a particular fashion is a DE-verb. In this section, I will discuss three general prohibitions that DE-verbs exhibit before turning to my account of them in section 2. 1.1.

Prohibition against definites

Perhaps the most striking feature of DE-verbs is that they do not permit their internal argument to be realized as a definite noun phrase just in case the clause that they head lacks a focused constituent2 and the aspectual value of the clause is an accomplishment or an achievement:3 (1)

a.

b. (2)

a.

b. (3)

a.

b. (4)

a.

Sa´ra ´ırtde egy levelt. Sarah wrote a letter.ACC ‘Sarah wrote a letter.’ a levelt. #Sa´ra ´ırtde Sarah wrote the letter.ACC Rebeka festettde egy kepet. Rebecca painted a picture.ACC ‘Rebecca painted a picture.’ kepet. #Rebeka festettede a Rebecca painted the picture.ACC Da´niel tala´ltde egy toja´st. Daniel found an egg.ACC ‘Daniel found an egg.’ tojast #Da´niel tala´ltade a Daniel found the egg.ACC E´rkezettde egy vende´g. arrived a guest ‘A guest arrived.’ 75

Katalin E´. Kiss (ed.), Event Structure and the Left Periphery Studies on Hungarian, 75–90.
2008 Springer.

´N ˜O CHRISTOPHER PIN

76 b. #E´rkezettde arrived

a the

vendeg. guest

The natural way of correcting the (b)-sentences in (1)–(4) would be to employ a corresponding verb with a verbal particle (which is typically meg ‘PRT’, akin to a perfective verbal prefix; see chapter 2): (5)

a. Sa´ra meg-ı´rta a levelet. Sarah PRT-wrote the letter.ACC ‘Sarah wrote the letter.’ b. Rebeka meg-festette a ke´pet. Rebecca PRT-painted the picture.ACC ‘Rebecca painted the picture.’ c. Da´niel meg-tala´lta a toja´st. the egg.ACC Daniel PRT-found ‘Daniel found the egg.’ d. Meg-e´rkezett a vende´g. PRT-arrived the guest ‘The guest arrived.’

If the clause in question has a focused constituent or if it is understood as an activity, then (what superficially appears to be) a DE-verb can appear with a definite noun phrase that realizes its internal argument, as seen in (6a) and (6b), respectively, for festette ‘painted’:4 (6)

a. REBEKA festette a ke´pet (e´s nem SA´RA) REBECCA painted the picture.ACC and not SARAH ‘It was Rebecca who painted the picture (and not Sarah).’ b. Rebeka ege´sz de´luta´n festette a ke´pet. Rebecca whole afternoon painted the picture.ACC ‘Rebecca painted the picture the whole afternoon.’

In the case of achievements (e.g., (3) and (4)), an activity reading is excluded for independent reasons, which leaves focusing as an option: (7)

toja´st. DA´NIEL tala´lta a DANIEL found the egg.ACC ‘It was Daniel who found the egg.’ b. #Da´niel ege´sz de´luta´n tala´lta a Daniel whole afternoon found the a.

toja´st.’ egg.ACC

The most straightforward assessment of these data is that the verb forms ´ırta ‘wrote’, festette ‘painted’, tala´lta ‘found’, and e´rkezett ‘arrived’ in (5)–(7) are not instances of the DE-verbs ´ırde ‘write’, festettede ‘paint’, tala´ltade ‘find’, and

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77

e´rkezikde ‘arrive’, respectively, but rather of corresponding non-DE-verbs (as already suggested by the lack of the superscript ‘de’). Although these corresponding non-DEverbs would be morphologically indistinguishable from the DE-verbs, they would differ semantically, lacking a DE-meaning. If correct, a scenario emerges in which the meaning of a DE-verb and a counterpart with a verbal particle are both based on or derived from the meaning of a corresponding non-DE-verb, as schematized in (8a) and (8b) for fest ‘paint’. Arguably, the activity reading of fest ‘paint’ (festact; see (6b)) is also derived, as is suggested in (8c). In this scenario, there is no direct connection between a DE-verb, a counterpart with a verbal particle, and its activity counterpart – they are related only via the corresponding non-DE-verb. (8)

a. fest b. fest c. fest

(‘paint’) (‘paint’) (‘paint’)

,! ,! ,!

festde meg-fest festact

(‘paint’) (‘PRT-paint’) (‘paint’)

The alternative would be to say that there is a single DE-verb (e.g. festde ‘paint’) whose DE-meaning ‘disappears’ or is ‘neutralized’ in certain contexts (e.g. in megfest ‘PRT-paint’ and in (6)), but not only does this seem less promising, it has also never been worked out. Strictly speaking, the prohibition against definites with DE-verbs does not rule out specific indefinites, though one has to be clear about which sense of ‘specific indefinite’ is at issue. If the speaker simply has a particular referent in mind (which is the epistemic construal), then DE-verbs are compatible with specific indefinites in this sense, as illustrated for hozde ‘bring’ in (9c) (see also Bende-Farkas 2001, p. 57): (9)

Sa´ra hozottde egy la´nyt a bulira. sarah brought a girl.ACC the party.to ‘Sarah brought a girl to the party.’ la´nyt a bulira. b. #Sa´ra hoztade a Sarah brought the girl.ACC the party.to a bulira, akit c. Sa´ra hozottde egy (bizonyos) la´nyt Sarah brought a certain girl.ACC the party.to who.ACC re´go´ta ismerek. for-a-long-time know.I ‘Sarah brough a certain girl to the party who I’ve known for a long time.’ a.

Less straightforward is the question of whether DE-verbs are compatible with specific indefinites in En¸c ’s (1991) sense of a contextually familiar set of individuals from which a novel individual is chosen. As Bende-Farkas (2001, p. 56) points out, a discourse such as the following is incoherent, which suggests that the answer is no: (10)

a. Ke´t dia´k elte´vedt. two student got-lost ‘Two students got lost.’

´N ˜O CHRISTOPHER PIN

78 b. #Ja´nos John

tala´ltde egy found a

la´nyt. girl.ACC

The girl that John finds in (10b) cannot (intentionally) be one of the students that gets lost in (10a). At the same time, however, overt partitives seem to be much more acceptable: (11)

az elte´vedt dia´kok ko¨zu¨l. a. ?Ja´nos tala´ltde egyet students from-among John found one.ACC the lost ‘John found one of the lost students.’ a meghı´vott vende´gek ko¨zu¨l. b. ?Sa´ra hozottde egyet guests from-among Sarah brought one.ACC the invited ‘Sarah brough one of the invited guest.’

An interfering factor in (10) is that the meaning of tala´lde ‘find’ (in contrast to that of meg-tala´l ‘PRT-find’) excludes the possibility of a previous search, and yet the coherence of the discourse in (10) would require at least a modest search by John for the lost students. Note that if one is willing to construe John’s finding of a girl in (10b) as purely accidental and as unrelated to the fact that two students get lost in (10a), it is possible that the girl John finds in (10b) just happens to be one of the lost students. Such an accidental finding is apparently easier to construe in (11a), where there is less pressure to accommodate a preceding discourse (precisely because there is no preceding discourse). In view of these considerations, probably the safest strategy for the time being is not to build into the meaning of DE-verbs en bloc the prohibition that the novel referent they introduce may belong to a contextually familiar set of individuals, since this would run the risk of ruling out even accidental inclusion in such a set. 1.2.

Prohibition against strong quantifiers

DE-verbs do not allow their internal argument to be realized as a (strongly) quantificational noun phrase: a. *Rebeka minden ke´pet festettde. Rebecca every picture.ACC painted b. Rebeka minden ke´pet meg-festett. Rebecca every picture.ACC painted ‘Rebecca painted every picture.’ (13) a. Sa´ra minden alma´t evettde. Sarah every apple.ACC ate b. Sa´ra minden alma´t meg-evett. Sarah every apple.ACC PRT-ate ‘Sarah ate every apple.’ (14) a. *E´rkezettde minden vende´g. arrived every guest (12)

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b. Meg-e´rkezett minden PRT-arrived every

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vende´g. guest

Other strong quantifiers such as a legto¨bb ‘most’ and mindegyik ‘each’ are also excluded, but these are morphosyntactically definite, because they trigger the definite object conjugation:5 (15)

a. *Sa´ra Sarah b. Sa´ra Sarah ‘Sarah

mindegyik alma´t ettede. each apple.ACC ate mindegyik alma´t meg-ette. each apple.ACC PRT-ate ate each apple.’

Observe that DE-verbs are compatible with indefinite weak quantifiers such as numerals and sok ‘many, much’:6 (16)

a. Rebeka festettde ha´rom ke´pet. Rebecca painted three picture.ACC ‘Rebecca painted three pictures.’ b. Da´niel tala´ltde sok toja´st. Daniel found many egg.ACC ‘Daniel found many eggs.’

An interesting exception to the prohibition against strong quantifiers is the determiner mindenfe´le ‘every kind of’, which is acceptable with DE-verbs: (17)

a. Rebeka mindenfe´le ke´pet festettde. (cf. (12)) Rebecca every-kind-of picture.ACC painted ‘Rebecca painted every kind of picture.’ b. Sa´ra mindenfe´le alma´t evettde. (cf. (13a)) Sarah every-kind-of apple.ACC ate ‘Sarah ate every kind of apple.’ vende´g. (cf. (14a)) c. E´rkezettde mindenfe´le arrived every-kind-of guest ‘Every kind of guest arrived.’

These examples suggest that it is not universal quantification per se that is responsible for the unacceptability in the (a)-sentences of (13)–(15) but rather the sorts of entities that are universally quantified over. 1.3.

Prohibition against wide-scope indefinites

DE-verbs do not allow an indefinite noun phrase that is linked to their internal argument to take scope over negation (cf. (1)–(4)): (18)

a. *Sa´ra Sarah

egy nem ´ırtde not wrote a

levelet. letter.ACC

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b. *Rebeka nem festettde egy ke´pet. Rebecca not painted a picture.ACC c. *Da´niel nem tala´ltde egy toja´st. Daniel not found an egg.ACC d. *Nem e´rkezettde egy vende´g. not arrived a guest The natural way of repairing these sentences would be to drop the indefinite article: (19)

a. Sa´ra nem ´ırt levelet. Sarah not wrote letter.ACC ‘Sarah didn’t write a letter.’ b. Rebeka nem festett ke´pet. Rebecca not painted picture.ACC ‘Rebecca didn’t paint a picture.’ c. Da´niel nem tala´lt toja´st. Daniel not found egg.ACC ‘Daniel didn’t find an egg.’ d. Nem e´rkezett vendeg. not arrived guest ‘A guest didn’t arrive.’

However, as suggested by the lack of the superscript ‘de’, the verbs in (19) are not DE-verbs, because the positive versions of these sentences involve semantically and syntactically incorporated complements which are semantically unspecified for number (where ‘unspecified for number’ means one or more): (20)

a. Sa´ra levelet ´ırt. Sarah letter.ACC wrote ‘Sarah wrote letters (lit.: letter-wrote).’ b. Rebeka ke´pet festett. Rebecca picture.ACC painted ‘Rebecca painted pictures (lit.: picture-painted).’ c. Da´niel toja´st tala´lt. Daniel egg.ACC found ‘Daniel found eggs (lit. egg-found).’ d. Vende´g e´rkezett. guest arrived ‘Guests arrived (lit. guest-arrived).’

Another way of repairing the sentences in (18) is to append the element sem ‘neither’ to the indefinite: (21)

egy levelet a. Sa´ra nem ´ırtde Sarah not wrote a letter.ACC ‘Sarah didn’t write a single letter.’

sem. neither

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b. Rebeka nem festettde egy ke´pet sem. Rebecca not painted a picture.ACC neither ‘Rebecca didn’t paint a single picture.’ sem. c. Da´niel nem tala´ltde egy toja´st Daniel not found an egg.ACC neither ‘Daniel didn’t find a single egg.’ d. Nem e´rkezettde egy vende´g sem. not arrived a guest neither ‘A single guest didn’t arrive.’ Observe that indefinites headed by numerals pattern more generally like those headed by egy ‘a’ but with the difference that in this case the option of deleting the numeral is not available as a repair strategy (cf. (19)): (22)

a. *Rebeka Rebecca b. Rebeka Rebecca ‘Rebecca

nem not nem not didn’t

(cf. (16a)) festettde ha´rom ke´pet. painted three picture.ACC festettde ha´rom ke´pet sem. painted there picture.ACC neither paint three pictures at all.’

The difficulty in (18) and (22a) seems to be that the indefinites cannot remain in the scope of negation for some reason7 and yet they cannot take wide scope over negation either, because the DE-verbs prohibit this. In (19), (21), and (22b), the indefinites have been altered so that they can remain in the scope of negation, which renders the sentences acceptable. In this connection, notice that the indefinites in (18) and (22a) must take wide scope over negation with the corresponding verbs with a verbal particle from (5):8 a. Sa´ra nem ´ırt meg egy levelet. (cf. (18a)) letter.ACC Sarah not wrote PRT a ‘There was a letter that Sarah didn’t write.’ b. Rebeka nem festett meg egy ke´pet. (cf. (18b)) picture.ACC Rebecca not painted PRT a ‘There was a picture that Rebecca didn’t paint.’ c. Da´niel nem tala´lt meg egy toja´st. (cf. (18c)) Daniel not found PRT an egg.ACC ‘There was an egg that Daniel didn’t find.’ d. Nem e´rkezett meg egy vende´g. (cf. (18d)) guest not arrived PRT a ‘There was a guest that didn’t arrive.’ (24) Rebeka nem festett meg ha´rom ke´pet. (cf. (22a)) picture.ACC Rebecca not painted PRT three ‘There were three pictures that Rebecca didn’t paint.’

(23)

These data support the view that the reason why the indefinites in (18) and (22a) must take wide scope over negation is independent of the phenomenon of DE-verbs.

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The role played by DE-verbs in this matter is that they do not permit the indefinites to take scope over negation, in contrast to the corresponding verbs with a verbal particle, which do. 2.

A N A LY Z I N G T H E D E F I N I T E N E S S E F F E C T

As already hinted at in section 1.1, a leading idea of the analysis to follow is that verbs which participate in the definiteness effect are systematically polysemous in that their definiteness effect meaning is simply one of two or more meanings that they may have (e.g., recall (8)). The convention adopted was that if V is a verb that participates in the definiteness effect, then Vde is the syntactic representation of V on its definiteness effect meaning. I speak of ‘systematicity’ because the polysemy in question is not an idiosyncratic property of certain individual verbs but is rather always a more general property of a class of verbs. Moreover, the polysemy is syntactically conditioned in that the definiteness effect meaning is available only if certain syntactic conditions are satisfied. In this section, I will first touch upon the syntactic side of the analysis before turning to its semantic side. There is by now a sizeable literature on the definiteness effect in Hungarian, beginning with Wacha (1978, chapter 4) and continuing with Szabolcsi (1986), Harlig (1989, chapter 5), Szabolcsi (1992, chapter 4), Bende-Farkas (1995), Ka´lma´n (1995), E´. Kiss (1995), Maleczki (1995), Alberti (1998), Bende-Farkas (2001), Maleczki (2001), Ka´lma´n and Varasdi (2005), and Maleczki (2005) (and this list is not necessarily exhaustive). While it would take a separate work to discuss the various proposals (and such a discussion would be complicated by the fact that certain authors continue to revise their earlier proposals), it is only recently that formally explicit analyses of the definiteness effect have begun to appear (most notably, Bende-Farkas 2001 and Ka´lma´n and Varasdi 2005). The present approach is probably closest in spirit to Szabolcsi’s (1986) original treatment, which was informally cast in Dowty’s (1979) framework, though it aims to disencumber her notion of EXIST of real existence and to substitute for it the dynamic semantic notion of the introduction of a novel discourse referent.9 2.1.

Two syntactic conditions

Basically, there are two syntactic conditions on DE-verbs. The first is that the clause that a DE-verb appears in be neutral, i.e., lack a focused constituent in preverbal position; and the second is that the direct internal argument10 of a DE-verb be realized by a DP, i.e., by a noun phrase that cannot be syntactically incorporated. On the polysemy hypothesis, the first condition amounts to saying that if a verb has a DE-meaning, then it cannot have that meaning in a non-neutral clause (which, of course, still allows it to appear with a non-DE-meaning in a non-neutral clause). If the model of Hungarian syntax that one adopts requires the verb to occupy different positions in neutral and non-neutral clauses, then then this first condition can be stated as a positional constraint. For example, in E´. Kiss model of chapter 9 the verb moves to Pred in neutral clauses and but moves to an even higher functional

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projection in non-neutral clauses, thus the first condition in her approach would be tantamount to saying that DE-verbs have to occupy Pred . However, in a model that attributed the same position to the verb in both neutral and non-neutral clauses, explicit reference would have to be made to the lack of a focused constituent. Adopting E´. Kiss’s model for concreteness, the first syntactic condition on DE-verbs could be formulated as the following constraint: (25)

Vde: [Pred0 [Pred Vde i ] [VP [V ti] . . . ]]

This constraint requires that a DE-verb appear in Pred , having raised there from V. As pointed out above, if the verb raises no further than Pred in E´. Kiss’s approach, then the clause in question must be neutral, i.e., there cannot be a focussed constituent in the specifier of a higher projection, hence this information does not have to be encoded separately in (25). For an example of this constraint in action, consider the relevant part of the structure assigned to the sentence in (1a): (26)

Sa´raj [PredP [Pred0 [Pred ‘Sarah wrote a letter.’

´ırtde i ]

[VP [V ti]

egy

levelet tj]]]

As mentioned at the outset, the second syntactic condition is that the direct internal argument of a DE-verb be realized by a DP. An explicit statement of this condition would require reference to the link between argument structure and syntactic subcategorization, which I do not explicitly discuss here, thus the following formulation will have to suffice for present purposes: (27)

The direct internal argument of a DE-verb is syntactically realized as a DP.

Assuming that DPs cannot be syntactically incorporated, this constraint rules out the possibility that the direct internal argument of a DE-verb is syntactically incorporated. In Hungarian, a syntactically incorporated constituent appears unfocused in preverbal position without a determiner (recall (20)). In this sense, incorporated constituents are like verbal particles. Although it is still a matter of debate whether incorporated constituents (and verbal particles, for that matter) are syntactically heads (e.g. N s) or phrases (e.g. NPs), they are clearly not DPs. In sum, the effect of the condition in (27) is that DE-verbs do not syntactically incorporate their direct internal argument. Nevertheless, from the present perspective, there is a curious mismatch between syntax and semantics in the case of DE-verbs, because although DE-verbs do not syntactically incorporate their direct internal argument, they do semantically incorporate it, which is the topic that I turn to next. 2.2.

A dynamic semantic analysis

There is both uniformity and diversity in the semantics of DE-verbs. The uniformity is seen in the idea that every DE-verb introduces a novel discourse marker

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corresponding to its internal argument. The diversity is revealed in the idea that although every DE-verb specifies an end condition that comes to hold of its internal argument, the exact value of this end condition varies across subclasses of DE-verbs, hence there is no single end condition that does duty for all DE-verbs. 2.2.1. The framework The background framework presupposed here is an event semantics with a provision for the handling of discourse referents. Although event semantic frameworks (e.g., that of Krifka 1992) usually do not offer a means of dealing with discourse referents, it is feasible to extend them with a treatment of discourse referents familiar from dynamic semantic frameworks. The leading idea behind the treatment of discourse referents in a dynamic semantic framework (e.g., see Heim 1982, Krifka 1993, Chierchia 1995, Muskens 1996) is to analyze a (declarative) sentence as operating on or updating information states in such a way that the information about the active discourse markers thus far is inherited from the ‘input information state’ and any changes that the meaning of the sentence makes to the inventory of discourse markers is encoded in the ‘output information state’. For present purposes, an information state can be modeled as a set of discourse referent assignment functions (or more simply, discourse referent assignments), the idea being that such functions can adequately encode the necessary information about discourse referents. In this setting, sentences can be analyzed as functions from (input) information states to (output) information states, and in what follows, such functions will be represented by expressions of the form ‚I‚g[ . . . ], where I is a variable for information states (a set of discourse referent assignments) and g is a variable for discourse referent assignments. Expressions of this type are also known as updates. Furthermore, in order to account for semantic composition in this framework, natural language predicates are analyzed as having both an argument for discourse referent assignments and an argument for information states. In addition, verbs are assumed to have an event argument,11 as is usual in an event semantics. More technically, the models assumed here include a universe of discourse A (a, b, c, . . . ), which contains as pairwise disjoint subsets a set O of ordinary individuals (x, y, z, . . . ), and a set E of events (e, e0 , e00 , . . . ). The models also include a set D of discourse referents (1, 2, 3, . . . ), which can be identified with the set of positive integers, and a set G of discourse referent assignments (g, ”, g0 , . . . ), which is the set of (total) functions from D to A. If d is a discourse referent, then g ¼ ”[d!a] means that g is identical to ” except that g(d) ¼ a. The more compact statement g ¼ ”[d] means that there is an a such that g ¼ ”[d!a]. In this case, the sortal status of a is determined by the predicate in question. Finally, in addition to an interpretation function, the models also include the usual (static) assignments to variables, but these do not figure explicitly in the semantic representations. 2.2.2. Uniformity in novelty As mentioned above, the unity in the semantics of DE-verbs stems from the claim that they all introduce a novel discourse referent. This idea is implemented as in (28), where an intransitive DE-verb Vde,1 is analyzed as a

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four-place relation between discourse referent assignments g, information states I, events e, and predicates P such that a discourse referent 1 is introduced so that the corresponding relation Vde holds between e and g(1) and P holds between g, I, and g(1), as in (28a), and the analysis of a transitive DE-verb is parallel but with an extra argument x for the verb’s external argument, as in (28b).12 Evidently, this analysis takes seriously the idea that a DE-verb has the force of a (dynamic) existential quantifier built into its meaning. (28)

Vde,1 a. ‚P‚e‚I‚g[9v[I(v)  g¼v[1]]  V(e,g(1))  P(g,I,g(1))  I(g)], if Vde,1 is intransitive b. ‚P‚x‚e‚I‚g[9v[I(v)  g¼v[1]]  V(e,x,g(1))  P(g,I,g(1))  I(g)], if Vde,1 is transitive

For an extended application of the present approach, let us work through the analysis of the following text: (29)

Sa´ra ´ırtde,5 egy levelet. Feladta5. letter.ACC she-mailed-it5 Sarah wrote5 a ‘Sarah wrote a letter. She mailed it.’

The semantic derivation of the (dynamic) event predicate corresponding to the first sentence in (29) is detailed in (30).13 (30)

a. Sa´ra (Sarah) sarah b. ´ırde,5 (‘write5-’) ‚P‚x‚e‚I‚g[$v[I(v)  g¼v[5]]  write(e,x,g(5))  P(g,I,g(5))  I(g)] c. egy levelet (‘a letter.ACC’) ‚y‚I0 ‚g0 [letter(y)  I 0 (g0 )] de,5 5 egy levelet (‘write a letter.ACC’) d. ´ır ‚P‚x‚e‚I‚g[$v[I(v)  g¼v[5]]  write(e,x,g(5))  P(g,I,g(5))  I(g)](‚y‚I0 ‚g0 [letter(y)  I0 (g0 )]) ¼ ‚x‚e‚I‚g[$v[I(v)  g¼v[5]]  write(e,x,g(5))  letter(g(5))  I(g)] e. Sa´ra ´ırde,5 egy levelet (‘Sarah write5 a letter.ACC’) ‚x‚e‚I‚g[$v[I(v)  g¼v[5]]  write(e,x,g(5))  letter(g,I,g(5))  I(g)](sarah)¼ ‚e‚I‚g[$v[I(v)  g¼v[5]]  write(e,sarah,g(5))  letter(g(5))  I(g)]

As seen in (30a), proper names are treated simply as constants. The analysis of ´ırde,5 ‘write5-’ in (30b) is an instance of the pattern in (28b). Since the internal argument of

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´ırde,5 ‘write5-’ is a (dynamic) predicate of ordinary objects and not an individualdenoting argument, we are forced to analyze egy levelet ‘a letter.ACC’ in (30c) as a (dynamic) predicate of ordinary objects, but this causes no difficulty, because it is feasible to analyze indefinite DPs such as egy levelet ‘a letter.ACC’ in this way. In (30d) and (30e), respectively, the result of functionally applying the meaning of ´ırde,5 ‘write5-’ first to the meaning of egy levelet ‘a letter.ACC’ and then to the meaning of Sa´ra ‘Sarah’ is given. In order to transform the (dynamic) event predicate in (30e) into an update (i.e., function from information states to information states) that is the logical type of sentence meanings, the event variable has to be existentially bound. This can be accomplished by an assertion operator !3 (‘!’ is also mnemonic for Hungarian a´llı´t ‘claim, assert’) that introduces a novel discourse referent for the event argument, as in (31), where E is a variable for relations between discourse referent assignments, information states, and events: (31)

!3

‚E‚I‚g[$v[I(v)  g¼v[3]]  E(g,I,g(3))  I(g)]

Applying !3 to the (dynamic) event predicate in (30e), we obtain the following: (32)

!3 Sa´ra ´ırde,5 egy levelet (‘Sarah write5 a letter.ACC’) ‚E‚I‚g[$v[I(v)  g¼v[3]]  E(g,I,g(3))  I(g)](‚e0 ‚I0 ‚g0 [$v0 [I0 (v0 )  g0 ¼v0 [5]]  write(e,sarah,g0 (5))  letter(g0 (5))  I(g)]) ¼ ‚I‚g[$v[I(v)  g¼v[3]]  $v0 [I(v0 )  g¼v0 [5]]  write(g(3),sarah,g(5))  letter(g(5))  I(g)] def = S-i

This formula denotes a function from (input) information states I to (output) information states (‚g[ . . . ]) such that the discourse referent assignments g update I with new assignments to the discourse referents 3 and 5 so that Sarah writes g(5) in an event g(3), g(5) is a letter, and I holds of g. In other words, I is updated to contain only those assignments g such that Sarah writes a letter g(5) in an event g(3). The second sentence of (29) has an implicit subject pronoun that is anaphorically dependent on Sa´ra ‘Sarah’ and an implicit object pronoun that is anaphorically dependent on the indefinite description introduced by ´ırde,5 ‘write5-’, which is instantiated as egy levelet ‘a letter.ACC’. The (dynamic) event predicate corresponding to this sentence is given in (33a), and the result of applying !3 to it is shown in (33b). (33)

a. Feladja5 (‘she mail it5’) ‚e‚I‚g[mail(e,sarah,g(5))  I(g)] b. !7 Feladja5 (‘she mail it5’) ‚E‚I‚g[$v[I(v)  g¼v[7]]  E(g,I,g(7))  I(g)](‚e0 ‚I0 ‚g0 [mail(e0 ,sarah,g0 (5))  I0 (g0 )]) ¼ ‚I‚g[$v[I(v)  g¼v[7]]  mail(g(7),sarah,g(5));  I(g)] def = S-ii

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Observe that the meaning of the verb feladja5 ‘she mail- it5’ does not introduce a novel discourse referent for its internal argument—rather, it simply makes use of one (namely, 5) that has already been introduced. Of course, in combination with the assertion operator the sentence does introduce a novel discourse referent for the event argument of the verb. The meaning of the sentence, then, both ‘tests’ the input information state I to verify that the value that g assigns to 5 is mailed by Sarah and updates I with the information that g assigns to 7 an event in which Sarah mails g(5). In order to semantically conjoin the two sentences of (29) to yield a text, we require a notion of dynamic conjunction that applies to two updates to yield a new update. Technically, dynamic conjunction is implemented by applying the update denoted by the first sentence to the information state that results when the update denoted by the second sentence is applied to the input information state. The syntactic marker of dynamic conjunction is E´S (Hungarian e´s means ‘and’), as defined in (34), where S and T are variables for updates. (34)

E´S

‚S‚T‚I‚g[S(g,‚v[T(v,I)])]

The result of applying E´S to the two sentences in (29) (in their order of occurrence) is shown as follows: (35)

!3 Sa´ra ´ırde,5 egy levelet E´S !7 Feladja5 (‘Sarah write5 a letter.ACC and she mail it5) ‚S‚T‚I‚g[S(g,‚v[T (v,I)])](S-i)(S-ii) ¼ ‚I‚g[S-i(g,‚v[S-ii(v,I)])]¼ ‚I‚g[$v[I(v)  g¼v[3]]  $v0 [I(v0 )  g¼v0 [5]]  write(g(3),sarah,g(5))  letter(g(5))  $v00 [I(v00 )  g¼v00 [7]]  mail(g(7),sarah,g(5))  I(g)]

The resulting formula for the text denotes a function from (input) information states I to (output) information states (‚g[ . . . ]) such that I is updated with assignments g that assign to 5 a letter that Sarah writes and mails, to 3 an event in which she writes g(5), and to 7 an event in which she mails g(5). This extended application of the present dynamic semantic approach to the text in (29) has shown how the meaning of a DE-verb introduces a novel discourse referent for its direct internal argument and can bind further occurrences of this referent beyond the syntactic scope of its clause. 2.2.3. Accounting for the prohibitions The analysis presented in the previous section can account for the three prohibitions of DE-verbs that were discussed in section 1. The first prohibition, against definites (see section 1.2), follows from the fact that DE-verbs introduce a novel discourse referent for their direct internal argument.

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Although a full demonstration of how this prohibition is derived would require a more detailed treatment of definites than I can provide here, the idea (following Heim 1982) is that definites are familiar in the sense that they presuppose that their discourse referent is already assigned to a salient individual satisfying the descriptive content in question in the input information state.14 To see how this idea is implemented in the present framework, let us consider the semantic derivation of the unacceptable sentence in (1b). Since ´ırde ‘write’, like DE-verbs in general, takes a (dynamic) predicate argument for their internal argument, the definite DP a9 levelet ‘the9 letter.ACC’ should be analyzed as a predicate and not as a individual term: (36)

a9 levelet (‘the9 letter.ACC’) ‚x‚I‚g[8v[I(v) ! x¼v(9)  letter(v(9))]  I(g)]

In this analysis, the meaning of a9 levelet ‘the9 letter.ACC’ denotes a relation between updates and ordinary individuals x such that every assignment v in the input information state I assigns the discourse referent 9 to x, which is a letter. Observe that no new information is added to I, which is meant to capture the idea that definites are familiar. Given the analysis of a9 levelet ‘the9 letter.ACC’ in (36), it is sufficient to derive the verb phrase of (1b) (cf. (30d)) to see what goes wrong: (37)

#ı´rjade,9 a9 levelet (‘write9 the9 letter.ACC’) ‚P‚x‚e‚I‚g[$v[I(v)  g¼v[9]]  write(e,x,g(9))  P(g,I,g(9))  I(g)](‚y‚I0 ‚g0 [8v0 [I0 (v0 ) ! y¼v0 (9)  letter(v0 (9))  I0 (g0 )]) ¼ ‚x‚e‚I‚g[$v[I(v)  g¼v[9]]  write(e,x,g(9))  8v0 [I(v0 ) ! g(9)¼v0 (9)  letter(v0 (9))]  I(g)]

The problem is that whereas the meaning of ´ırjade,9 ‘write9-’ introduces the novel discourse referent 9 for its internal argument, the meaning of a9 levelet ‘the9 letter.ACC’ presupposes that this referent is familiar. Technically, a conflict arises because the meaning of the verb updates the input information state with a novel assignment of 9 to a letter, and yet the meaning of the definite presupposes that all of the assignments in the input information state already assign 9 to a letter. More generally, it is clear that this kind of conflict will always arise between DE-verbs and definite DPs for their direct internal argument. The prohibition against strong quantifiers (see section 1.2) follows from the fact that DE-verbs take a predicate and not an individual argument as their direct internal argument. The problem is that strong generalized quantifiers such as minden vende´g ‘every guest’ (see (14)) and mindegyik alma´t ‘each apple.ACC’ (see (15a)) cannot be analyzed as predicates of individuals, which would be necessary in order for DEverbs to apply to them.15 The apparent exception to this prohibition is the determiner mindenfe´le ‘every kind of’ in (17), presumably because this determiner is second-order, quantifying

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over sets of individuals. Since DE-verbs provide a predicate argument that may be quantified over, it is expected that they should be compatible with mindenfe´le ‘every kind of’. For an idea of what is at issue, consider the following static semantic analysis of the sentence in (17c): (38)

E´rkezikde mindenfe´le vende´g (‘arrive every-kind-of guest’) 8P[P  guest  P 6¼ Ø ! $e$x[arrivede(e,x)  P(x)]]

Informally, this formula states that for every kind of guest there is an event in which such a guest arrives. Although the recasting of this static analysis in a dynamic framework would require us to address more precisely the interaction of DE-verbs with DPs headed by mindenfe´le ‘every kind of’, the basic point is that DE-verbs allow in principle for their predicate argument to be quantified over. Finally, the third prohibition, against wide-scope indefinites (see section 1.3), is also due to the fact that DE-verbs take a predicate argument as their internal argument. If the indefinite DP representing the direct internal argument of a DE-verb is a predicate and not a quantifier, then it does not bear scope and hence cannot move out of the scope of negation, as seen in (18), which contrasts with (23), in which the object DPs are quantifiers and therefore can move out of the scope of negation. However, the problem in (18) is that the indefinite DPs cannot remain in the scope of negation either,16 unlike in (19), where the indefinites are nouns or NPs (but not DPs), thus a conflict arises. A way to resolve this conflict is to append the element sem neither to the indefinites, thereby making them negative polarity items and allowing them to remain in the scope of negation, as in (21). In conclusion, the idea that DE-verbs take a predicate argument and introduce a novel discourse referent corresponding to their direct internal argument, as implemented in the dynamic semantic analysis in the previous section, is successful in accounting for the three prohibitions that DE-verbs exhibit and which are discussed in section 1. NOTES 1

2

3

4

Note that this characterization excludes the classical example of a DE-verb, namely, van ‘there is’, because it is not a verb of change, and in this respect it is not consonant with Szabolcsi’s (1986) original classification. However, although I will focus on DE-verbs that are verbs of change, one can think of the class of DE-verbs as being divided into two nonoverlapping subclasses, a small closed one containing van ‘there is’ (and perhaps akad ‘occur, turn up’: Akadt egy proble´ma ‘turned-up a problem’) and a large open one containing verbs of change. By ‘focused constituent’ is meant an identificational focus in preverbal position – see chapter 9. A clause without a focused constituent is also called ‘neutral’. Since Hungarian has both an indefinite and a definite object conjugation (which are not glossed here), the exact form of the verb depends on the (in)definiteness of the direct object noun phrase, the indefinite conjugation being the ‘elsewhere’ choice. A focused constituent is marked by SMALL CAPS.

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The situation with a legto¨bb ‘most’ is less straightforward, because a noun phrase headed by a legto¨bb ‘most’ can only appear in clauses with a focused constituent, but DE-verbs are excluded from such clauses to begin with, if my reasoning above is correct. Keve´s ‘few, little’ could also be listed here, but a noun phrase headed by keve´s ‘few, little’ obligatorily appears in the preverbal focus position, and so it is not immediately apparent whether such clauses should count as neutral or not. Arguably, however, such clauses are neutral, because it is the inherent negative meaning of keve´s ‘few, little’ ( nem sok ‘not many, not much’) that attracts it to the focus position. According to Anna Szabolcsi (pers. comm.), indefinites headed by egy are so-called positive polarity items, which seems descriptively correct. Presumably, this would also generally be true of indefinites headed by numerals. One effect of sem ‘neither’ would then be to create a negative polarity item out of a positive polarity item. A verbal particle normally appears after its host verb in negative sentences. Early versions of the present approach were presented at the Sixth Symposium on Logic and Language in Budapest on 30 Aug. 1998 and at the Fifth International Conference on the Structure of Hungarian in Budapest on 21 May 2001. See van Geenhoven (1998) for a Semantic account of incorporation in the same vein, though she does not discuss Hungarian, where as I point out below, DE-verbs do not syntactically incorporate their direct internal argument. In case of more than one internal argument, the ‘direct internal argument’ is the theme/patient argument. The term ‘event’ is used in its broad sense, as covering processes and states as well. By convention, a superscript indicates the discourse referent introduced and a subscript, the intended antecedent discourse referent. In what follows, tense will be ignored and the question of how proper names should be treated in a dynamic framework will be set aside (see Muskens 1996). Strictly speaking, Heim does not attribute a uniqueness presupposition to definites. McNally (1998) analyzes existential there as taking a predicate argument in order to account for the parallel restriction in English. Recall footnote 7 for the suggestion that such DPs are positive polarity items and that the addition of sem neither makes them negative polarity items.

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WEAK AND STRONG ACCOMPLISHMENTS

1.

DISTINGUISHING ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Traditional tests for distinguishing accomplishments from activities in English (e.g. see Dowty 1979, chapter 2.2.3) include compatibility with temporal in-phrases and the availability of two interpretations when modified by almost, as seen by the contrasts in (2)–(6), where paint a picture and write a paper are accomplishment verb phrases and paint pictures and write papers, activity verb phrases. Following Rapp and von Stechow (1999), the two readings of almost will be called the ‘counterfactual’ and the ‘scalar’ interpretation, respectively. (1) a. Rebecca painted a picture. b. Rebecca painted pictures. (2) a. Rebecca painted a picture in an hour. b. #Rebecca painted pictures in an hour. (3) a. Daniel wrote a paper. b. Daniel wrote papers. (4) a. Daniel wrote a paper in three days. b. #Daniel wrote papers in three days. (5) a. Rebecca almost painted a picture. counterfactual: Rebecca did not begin painting a picture scalar: Rebecca did not finish painting a picture b. Rebecca almost painted pictures. counterfactual: Rebecca did not begin painting pictures (no scalar interpretation) (6) a. Daniel almost wrote a paper. counterfactual: Daniel did not begin writing a paper scalar: Daniel did not finish writing a paper b. Daniel almost wrote papers. counterfactual: Daniel did not begin writing papers (no scalar interpretation) Despite initial appearances, I want to argue that the two aforementioned criteria do not diagnose a single class of accomplishments. In particular, the criterion of compatibility with in-phrases picks out a larger class of accomplishments than the availablity of two readings when modified by almost. I will refer to as ‘weak accomplishments’ those accomplishments that are compatible with in-phrases but which 91 Katalin E´. Kiss (ed.), Event Structure and the Left Periphery Studies on Hungarian, 91–106.
2008 Springer.

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exhibit only a counterfactual interpretation when modified by almost and call ‘strong accomplishments’ those accomplishments that are compatible with in-phrases and have both a counterfactual and a scalar interpretation in combination with almost. This classification is summarized as follows: (7) a. weak accomplishments are compatible with in-adverbials but have only the counterfactual interpretation with almost b. strong accomplishments are compatible with in-adverbials and have both a counterfactual and a scalar interpretation with almost c. accomplishments are compatible with in-adverbials (i.e., every accomplishment is either weak or strong) In a way, weak accomplishments are less robust accomplishments than strong accomplishments are because they share with activities the property that only a counterfactual interpretation is available when modified by almost – in this sense, they are closer to activities than strong accomplishments are. The main empirical argument for the distinction between weak and strong accomplishments comes from languages that distinguish them more sharply than English does.1 One such language is Hungarian, which has a class of verbs that may head verb phrases which (by means of aspectual composition) express weak but not strong accomplishments. To see this, let us consider the behavior of the verbs fest ‘paint’ and ´ır ‘write’ with respect to the two diagnostics mentioned in (7): (8)

(9)

a.

b.

(10)

(11)

a.

b.

Rebeka festett egy ke´pet. Rebecca painted a picture.ACC ‘Rebecca painted a picture.’ Rebeka egy o´ra alatt festett egy ke´pet. (cf. (2)) Rebecca an hour under painted a picture.ACC ‘Rebecca painted a picture in an hour.’ Rebeka majdnem festett egy ke´pet. (cf. (5)) Rebecca almost painted a picture.ACC ‘Rebecca almost painted a picture.’ counterfacutal: Rebecca did not begin painting a picture (no scalar interpretation) Da´niel ´ırt egy dolgozatot. Daniel wrote a paper.ACC ‘Daniel wrote a paper.’ Da´niel ha´rom nap alatt ´ırt ety dolgozatot. (cf. (4)) Daniel three day under wrote a paper.ACC ‘Daniel wrote a paper in three days.’ Da´niel majdnem ´ırt egy dologozatot. (cf. (6)) Daniel almost wrote a paper.ACC ‘Daniel almost wrote a paper.’ counterfactual: Daniel did not begin writing a paper (no scalar interpretation)

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Since fest egy ke´pet ‘paint a picture.ACC’ and ´ır egy dolgozatot ‘write a paper.ACC’ pattern according to (7a), they are weak accomplishments. Strong accomplishments in Hungarian are overwhelmingly based on verbs with verbal particles.2 The strong accomplishments corresponding to fest ‘paint’ and ´ır ‘write’ are meg-fest ‘PRT-paint’ and meg-ı´r ‘PRT-write’ (both with the verbal particle meg). In contrast to fest egy ke´pet ‘paint a picture.ACC’ and ´ır egy dolgozatot ‘write a paper.ACC’, meg-fest egy ke´pet ‘PRT-paint a picture.ACC’ and meg-ı´r egy dolgozatot ‘PRT-write a paper.ACC’ pattern according to (7b) and hence are strong accomplishments:3 (12)

(13)

a.

b.

(14)

(15)

a.

b.

Rebeka meg-festett egy ke´pet. picture.ACC Rebecca PRT-painted a ‘Rebecca painted a picture’ Rebeka egy o´ra alatt meg-festett egy ke´pet. (cf. (2)) Rebecca an hour under PRT-painted a picture.ACC ‘Rebecca painted a picture in an hour’ Rebeka majdnem meg-festett egy ke´pet. (cf. (5)) PRT-painted a picture.ACC Rebecca almost ‘Rebecca almost painted a picture’. counterfactual: Rebecca did not begin painting a picture scalar: Rebecca did not finish painting a picture Da´niel meg-ı´rt egy dolgozatot. paper.ACC Daniel PRT-wrote a ‘Daniel wrote a paper.’ Da´niel ha´rom nap alatt meg-ı´rt egy dolgozatot. (cf. (4)) Daniel three day under PRT-wrote a paper.ACC ‘Daniel wrote a paper in three days’ Da´niel majdnem meg-ı´rt egy dolgozatot. (cf. (6)) PRT-wrote a paper.ACC Daniel almost ‘Daniel wrote a paper in three days’ counterfactual: Daniel did not begin writing a paper scalar: Daniel did not finish writing a paper

Another respect in which the morphologically simple verbs fest ‘paint’ and ´ır ‘write’ differ from meg-fest ‘PRT-paint’ and meg-ı´r ‘PRT-write’ is that the former are compatible with bare plural object noun phrases, whereas the latter are not: Rebeka ke´peket festett. Rebecca pictures.ACC painted ‘Rebecca painted pictures.’ b. #Rebeka meg-festett ke´peket. Rebecca PRT-painted pictures.ACC (17) a. Da´niel dolgozatokat ´ırt. wrote Daniel papers.ACC ‘Daniel wrote papers.’ (16)

a.

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94 b.

Da´niel Daniel

meg-ı´rt PRT-wrote

dolgozatokat. papers.ACC

It would be attractive to relate this contrast to the idea that meg-fest ‘PRT-paint’ and meg-ı´r ‘PRT-write’ are strong accomplishments, whereas fest ‘paint’ and ´ır ‘write’ are not, and this is indeed what I aim to do.

2.

A N A LY Z I N G A C C O M P L I S H M E N T S

The intuition behind the distinction between weak and strong accomplishments that I want to pursue is that strong accomplishments encode a notion of finishing that weak accomplishments do not encode. It is this notion of finishing that accounts both for the (optional) presupposition of strong accomplishments that there is an earlier event of the same type that affects the object in question (as witnessed by the two interpretations with majdnem ‘almost’; see (13b) and (15b)) and for the observation that strong accomplishments are incompatible with bare plural noun phrases (see (16b) and (17b)). Since weak accomplishments do not exhibit these two properties, the conclusion is that they do not encode this notion of finishing. In this section, I will explicate the notion of finishing that is needed and illustrate its application in the analysis of strong accomplishments.4 2.1.

The framework

The background framework assumed here is an event semantics with a provision for the handling of presuppositions. Although event semantic frameworks (e.g., that of Krifka 1992) usually do not offer a means of analyzing presuppositions, it is feasible to extend them with a treatment of presuppositions familiar from dynamic semantic frameworks. The leading idea behind the treatment of presuppositions in a dynamic semantic framework (e.g., see Krifka 1993, Chierchia 1995) is to analyze (declarative) sentences as operating on or updating contexts in such a way that the presuppositional content of a sentence must be satisfied in the ‘input context’ and the assertive content of the sentence, in the ‘output context’. For present purposes, a context can be modeled as simply a set of possible worlds (also called a context set), the idea being that the context represents the information that is still under consideration. In this setting, sentences can be analyzed as functions from (input) context sets to (output) context sets, and in what follows, such functions will be represented by expressions of the form ‚C‚w[ . . . ], where C is a context set variable and w is a world variable. Expressions of this type are known as updates. Furthermore, in order to account for semantic composition in this framework, natural language predicates should be analyzed as having both a world and a context set argument. In addition, verbs are assumed to have an event argument,5 as is usual in an event semantics.

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Weak accomplishments

To get a feel for how the mechanics of the present framework function, let us consider how the sentence in (8) is derived. (In what follows, tense will be ignored.) The verb of creation fest ‘paint’ is analyzed as a five-place relation between worlds w, context sets C, events e, and two ordinary individuals x and y (agents and things painted, respectively) such that x paints y in e of w in C, as in (18a).6 Both egy ke´pet ‘a picture.ACC’ and Rebeka are basically treated as generalized quantifiers but with the difference that they apply to four-place relations R between worlds, context sets, events, and ordinary individuals and yield a three-place relation between worlds, context sets, and events, as in (18b)–(18c). (18) a. fest (‘paint’) ‚y‚x‚e‚C‚w[C(w)  paint(w,e,x,y)] def = PAINT b. egy ke´pet (‘a picture.ACC’) ‚R‚e‚C‚w[C(w)  $x[R(w,C,e,x)  picture(w,x)]] def = a-picture c. Rebeka ‚R‚e‚C‚w[C(w)  R(w,C,e,rebecca)] def = REBECCA In order for fest ‘paint’ to be able to combine with egy ke´pet ‘a picture.ACC’, the verb’s type must be raised so as to take a generalized quantifier argument, and the result of this type-raising is shown in (19), where fest" ‘paint’ indicates the type-raised variant of fest for generalized quantifier objects and ] is a variable for generalized quantifiers.7 (19) fest" (‘paint’) ‚R‚]‚x‚e‚C‚w[](w,C,e, ‚y‚e 0 ‚C 0 ‚w 0 [R(w 0,C 0 ,e 0 ,x,y)])](paint) ¼ ‚]‚x‚e‚C‚w[](w,C,e,‚y‚e 0 ‚C 0 ‚w 0 [paint(w 0,C 0 ,e 0 ,x,y)])] ¼ ‚]‚x‚e‚C‚w[](w,C,e, ‚y‚e 0 ‚C 0 ‚w 0 [C 0 (w 0 )  paint(w 0,e 0 ,x,y)])] The result of applying fest" to egy ke´pet is given in (20), which yields the information that x paints a picture in e of w in C. (20) fest" egy ke´pet (‘paint a picture.ACC’) ‚]‚x‚e‚C‚w[](w,C,e,‚y‚e 0 ‚C 0 ‚w 0 [C 0 (w 0 )  paint(w 0,e 0 ,x,y)])](a-picture) ¼ ‚x‚e‚C‚w[C(w)  $y[paint(w,e,x,y)  picture(w,y)]] Since the generalized quantifier representing Rebeka can unproblematically apply to this relation, no type-raising is necessary, and the result of the application is the

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following event predicate, which relative to a context set C and a world w denotes the set of events in which Rebecca paints a picture in w of C: (21) Rebeka fest" egy ke´pet (‘Rebecca paint a picture.ACC’) ‚x‚e‚C‚ w[C(w)  $y[paint(w,e,x,y)  picture(w,y)]](REBECCA) ¼ ‚e‚C‚w[C(w)  $y[paint(w,e,rebecca,y)  picture(w,y)]] The final step is to existentially bind the event argument, which may be achieved by means of a declarative operator, as defined in (22), where E is a variable for event predicates (i.e., relations between worlds, context sets, and events). (22)

‚E‚C‚w[C(w)  $e[E(w,C,e)]]

DECL

The result of applying the declarative operator to the event predicate in (21) is the update shown in (23), which adds to the context set the information that there is an event in which Rebecca paints a picture. (23)

Rebeka fest" egy ke´pet ( (8)) ‚E‚C‚w[C(w)  $e[E(w,C,e)]] (‚e‚C‚w[C(w)  $y[paint(w,e,rebecca,y)  picture(w,y)]]) ¼ ‚C‚w[C(w)  $e$y[paint(w,e,rebecca,y)  picture(w,y)]]

DECL

As an aside, in order to retrieve the corresponding static proposition (construed as a set of possible worlds) from an update, a special ‘down’ operator (+) is employed that applies the update to the set of possible worlds W (also called the world set), as defined in (24), where U is a variable for updates. (24) +

‚U‚w[U(w,W)]

Applied to the update in (23), this operator yields the following prepositional formula, which denotes the set of worlds in which Rebecca paints a picture: (25) +

Rebeka fest" egy ke´pet ( (8)) ‚U‚w[U(w,W)](‚C‚w[C(w)  $e$y[paint(w,e,rebecca,y)  picture(w,y)]]) ¼ ‚w[W(w)  $e$y[paint(w,e,rebecca,y)  picture(w,y)]]

DECL

By replacing the (variable) context set with the (fixed) world set, the ‘down’ operator effectively trivializes the contribution of context, precisely because it makes every context the universal context. By aspectual composition (following Krifka 1992), the event predicate in (21) is quantized with respect to its event argument, which is a property that accomplishments

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have and one that is presumably needed for compatibility with temporal alatt-phrases (in-phrases). In Krifka’s framework, a verb with an incremental theme argument that combines with an object noun phrase whose nominal head is quantized results in a verb phrase that is quantized with respect to its event argument. Adapting the notion of quantized reference to three-place relations P between worlds, context sets, and individuals (ordinary individuals or events), we can say that P is quantized (QUA) just in case the definition in (26) is satisfied, where a and b stand for individuals. The event predicate in (21) is quantized in this sense.8 def

(26) QUA = ‚P[8w8a8b[(P(w,W,a)  P(w,W,b)) ! :b @w a]] Without going into the semantics of temporal alatt-phrases (in-phrases), the following analysis of egy o´ra alatt (‘in an hour’) suffices for present purposes: (27) egy o´ra alatt (‘in an hour’) ‚E‚e‚C‚w[C(w)  E(w,C,e)  an-hour(w,e)  QUA(E)] Applied to the (quantized) event predicate in (21), this function restricts the context set to those worlds and events in which Rebecca paints a picture in an hour: (28) Rebeka egy o´ra alatt fest" egy ke´pet ( (9a)) ‚e‚C‚w[C(w)  $y[paint(w,e,rebecca,y)  picture(w,y)]  an-hour(w,e)  QUA(‚e‚C‚w[C(w)  $y[paint(w,e,rebecca,y)  picture(w,y)]])] Returning to the update in (23), observe that there is no presupposition involved in this analysis of the sentence in (8), which seems to be correct, given that only a counterfactual interpretation is available with majdnem ‘almost’ (see (9b)). However, due to the lack of a presupposition, there is no straightforward way for majdnem ‘almost’ to modify the reading represented in (23) to yield a scalar interpretation. Although a detailed discussion of the lexical semantics of majdnem ‘almost’ is beyond the scope of this chapter,9 we can reasonably think of it as a modifier of updates with the following content: (29) majdnem (‘almost’) ‚U‚C‚w[C(w)  :U(w,C)  $w 0 [C(w 0 )  U(w 0,C)  close(w 0,w)]] def = almost In prose, the effect of majdnem ‘almost’ is to negate the update for the output worlds w but to presuppose that it holds of a world w 0 ‘close’ to w in the context set C. Applied to the update in (23), the analysis of majdnem ‘almost’ restricts the context set to those worlds in which Rebecca does not paint a picture but she almost

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98 does so: (30)

Rebeka majdnem fest" egy ke´pet ( (9b)) ‚C‚w[almost(w,C,‚C 0 0 ‚w 0 0 [C 0 0 (w 0 0 )  $e$y[paint(w 0,e,rebecca,y)  picture(w 0,y)]])] ¼ ‚C‚w[C(w)  :$e$y[paint(w,e,rebecca,y)  picture(w,y)]  $w 0 [C(w 0 )  $e$y[paint(w 0,e,rebecca,y)  picture(w 0,y)]  close(w 0,w)]]

DECL

From the present perspective, the fact that the sentence in (9b) lacks a scalar reading is tantamount to saying that it does not encode the necessary notion of finishing – in other words, it is a weak accomplishment and not a strong accomplishment. For the analysis of strong accomplishments, a notion of finishing needs to be introduced, which is what I turn to next. 2.3.

Finishing and strong accomplishments

As an initial guide to finishing, let us consider how the verb finish is understood. The meaning of a sentence such as that in (31a) seems to presuppose that Rebecca or someone else began painting the picture in question. This is supported by the observation that the corresponding negative sentence also implies that Rebecca or someone else began painting the picture: (31) a. Rebecca finished painting a/the picture. b. Rebecca didn’t finish painting a/the picture. presupposition: Rebecca or someone else began painting the picture in question More generally, finish is used to assert that a final part of an event of a particular type takes place and to presuppose that the initial part of such an event takes place earlier. Since the present goal is not so much to analyze the meaning of the verb finish per se but rather to appeal to a slightly revised notion of finishing, the strategy will be to make the presupposition dependent on whether the final part of the event in question is also a proper part of that event (in which case there is a presupposition regarding the initial part) or whether the final part is an improper part of that event (in which case there is no need for a presupposition regarding the initial part). In other words, the notion of finishing that we are after should have the informal paraphrase ‘either an event of a particular type takes place, or a final part of an event of a particular type takes place and it is presupposed that the initial part of the event takes place earlier’. Arguably, the meaning of finish only allows for the second case (hence there is necessarily a presupposition), whereas the revised notion of finishing also allows ‘a final part’ to be construed as an improper part (in which case the presupposition falls away – this is the first case), which is what we want here. Furthermore, the meaning of finish allows the agent of the presupposed event to differ from the agent of the asserted event, whereas the revised notion of finishing

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that we aim for requires them to be identical. In sum, then, the revised notion of finishing sought here is both broader and narrower than the meaning of finish. Another important component of the meaning of the verb finish is that if an event of a particular type is finished, then an event of that type cannot be continued. To illustrate, if Rebecca finished painting a picture is true, then no continuation can be part of a larger event in which Rebecca paints a picture, for otherwise she would have merely stopped painting a picture but not yet have finished painting one. Indeed, this condition on the lack of a continuation can account for why finish but not stop is incompatible with activities (Dowty 1979, p. 57): (32) a. Rebecca finished painting a picture. b. #Rebecca finished painting pictures. (acceptable only if a fixed number of pictures is understood) (33) a. Rebecca stopped painting a picture. b. Rebecca stopped painting pictures. The problem with (32b) is that there could be a continuation which is part of a larger event in which Rebecca paints pictures, hence the condition that a continuation with respect to that event type not be possible is not satisfied.10 Since it seems reasonable to treat the condition on the lack of a possible continuation as a presupposition of finish (e.g., it cannot be negated), this condition also figures as a presupposition in the notion of finishing that will be defined next. Now that the vital ingredients of finishing have been introduced (again, these are: an assertion of the whole event or of a final part of the event, a presupposition of the initial part of the event in the case of the latter, and a presupposition of a lack of a continuation of the event type in both cases), the next step is to define a relation that captures this notion of finishing. Strictly speaking, we need to define two relations, one for the case of the whole event, and the other for the case of a final part of the event. The first relation is finish-1, a six-place relation between worlds w, context sets C, events e, ordinary individuals (agents) x, generalized quantifiers ], and relations T (representing transitive verbs), as defined in (34).11 (34)

def

finish-1 = ‚T‚]‚x‚e‚C‚w[](w,C,e,T(x))  8w 0 8e 0 8x 0 [W(w 0 )  ](w 0,W,e 0 ,T(x 0 )) ! :$e00 [e 0 w 0 e 0  ](w 0,W,e 0 w 0 e 0 ,T(x 0 ))]]]

In this definition, ‘’ stands for temporal precedence and ‘ ’ for (mereological) sum. In prose, the first line asserts that an event of the type determined by T and ] takes place, whereas the second and third lines express the presupposition that any event of this type lacks a continuation. Observe that the world set W is used in the formulation of the second presupposition, because the lack of a continuation should not depend on a particular context set C. The second relation is finish-2, which is more complex than finish-1 because it involves the additional presupposition that a proper part of the patient is affected in

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an earlier event of the type determined by T and ]: (35)

def

finish-2 = ‚T‚}5D‚x‚e‚C‚w[

$y 0 [C(w)  ](w,C,e,‚y‚e 0 ‚C 0 ‚w 0 [T(w 0,C 0 ,e 0 ,x,y –w 0 y 0 )])  8w 0 [C(w 0 ) ! $e 0 [](w 0,C,e 0 , ‚y‚e 0 ‚C 0 ‚w00 [T(w00,C 0 ,e00 ,x,y 0 )  y 0 @w 0 y])  e 0 w 0 e]]]  0 0 8w 8e 8x 0 [W(w 0 )  ](w 0,W,e 0 ,T (x 0 )) ! :$e00 [e 0 w 0 e00  ](w 0,W,e 0 w 0 e00 ,T(x 0 ))]]] In this definition, ‘–’ stands for mereological difference and ‘@’ for proper part. Note that the mereological difference of two individuals x and y (x–wy, for a world w) is that part of x which remains when y is subtracted from it. Informally, the second through sixth lines of this formula state that there is an individual y 0 such that the difference of y (the patient) and y 0 participates in e, whose type is determined by T and ] (this is the assertion), and that y 0 participates in an earlier event e 0 of the same type (this is the first presupposition). The seventh and eight lines express the second presupposition, familiar from (34), that an event of this type lacks a continuation. Let us consider how the relations finish-1 or finish-2 figure in the analysis of the sentence in (12). One of these first applies to a relation T (representing a transitive verb), then to a generalized quantifier ] (representing the object noun phrase), and finally to an ordinary individual x (representing the external argument of the verb). If we think of finish-1 and finish-2 as alternative interpretations of the verbal particle meg (meg1 vs. meg2), as shown in (36a), then the two representations of the morphologically complex verb meg-fest ‘PRT-paint’ are derived by applying finish-1 and finish-2 to

PAINT

(from (18a)), as seen in (36b):

(36) a. meg1 (‘PRT’) finish-1 meg2 (‘PRT’) finish-2 b. meg1-fest (‘PRT-paint’) ‚]‚x‚e‚C‚w[finish-1(w,C,e,x,],PAINT)] meg2-fest (‘PRT-paint’) ‚]‚x‚e‚C‚w[finish-2(w,C,e,x,],PAINT)] Next comes the verb phrase, which is derived by applying one of the formulas in (36b) to the generalized quantifier representing the object noun phrase egy ke´pet ‘a picture.ACC’ (from (18b)): (37) a. meg1-fest egy ke´pet (‘PRT-paint a picture.ACC’) ‚x‚e‚C‚w[finish-1(w,C,e,x,a-picture,PAINT)]

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b. meg2-fest egy ke´pet (‘PRT-paint a picture.ACC’) ‚x‚e‚C‚w[finish-2(w,C,e,x,a-picture,PAINT)] These formulas in turn serve as possible inputs to the generalized quantifier representing the subject noun phrase Rebeka (from (18c)): (38) a. Rebeka meg1-fest egy ke´pet (‘Rebecca PRT-paint a picture.ACC’) ‚e‚C‚w[REBECCA(w,C,e, ‚y‚e 0 ‚C 0 ‚w 0 [finish-1(w 0,C 0 ,e 0 ,y,a-picture,PAINT)])] b. Rebeka meg2-fest egy ke´pet (‘Rebecca PRT-paint a picture.ACC’) ‚e‚C‚w[REBECCA(w,C,e, ‚y‚e 0 ‚C 0 ‚w 0 [finish-2(w 0,C 0 ,e 0 ,y,a-picture,PAINT)])] Finally, the result of applying the declarative operator (from (22)) to these two event predicates are the (now unpacked) updates shown in (39) and (40), respectively. Rebeka meg1-fest egy ke´pet ( one reading of (12)) ‚C‚w[C(w)  $e$y[paint(w,e,rebecca,y)  picture(w,y)]  8w 0 8e 0 8x 0 [W(w 0 )  $y[paint(w 0,e 0 ,x 0 ,y)  picture(w,y)] ! :$e00 [e 0 w 0 e00  $y[paint(w 0,e 0 w 0 e00 ,rebecca,y)  picture(w 0,y)]]]] (40) DECL Rebeka meg2-fest egy ke´pet ( another reading of (12)) ‚C‚w[$y 0 [$e$y[paint(w,e,rebecca,y –w y 0 )  picture(w,y)]  8w 0 [C(w 0 ) ! $e 0 [paint(w 0,e 0 ,rebecca,y 0 )  y 0 @w 0 y  picture(w 0,y)  e 0 w 0 e]]]  8w 0 8e 0 8x 0 [W(w 0 )  $y[paint(w 0,e 0 ,x 0 ,y)  picture(w,y)] ! :$e00 [e 0 w 0 e00  $y[paint(w 0,e 0 w 0 e00 ,rebecca,y)  picture(w 0,y)]]]]

(39)

DECL

The update in (39) asserts that Rebecca paints a picture y (in its entirety) and presupposes that an event of this type cannot be continued. In contrast, the update in (40) asserts that there is a y 0 such that Rebecca paints the mereological difference between a picture y and y0 and presupposes that she paints y 0 earlier, where y 0 is a proper part of a picture y, and also presupposes that an event of the type determined by T and ] cannot be continued.12 Strictly speaking, nothing in this update forces the y in the assertion and the y in the (first) presupposition to be identical, though both have to be pictures. How ever, since y0 has to be a proper part of both, this constrains the referents of the two instances of y to be at least overlapping, e.g., two properly overlapping pictures. No harm is caused by this slight looseness, because there is no prohibition against the possibility that y 0 is a proper part of another picture as well as long as Rebecca ends up painting one of them.

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Comparing the update in (40) to the one in (39), it is not so difficult to see how modification by majdnem ‘almost’ (see (29)) would yield a scalar interpretation in the case of the former but a counterfactual interpretation in the case of the latter, which would correspond to the two readings of (13b). In this respect, the update in (39) is similar to the one in (23) for the weak accomplishment in (8) (cf. also (30)). Since in both of the latter cases the existence of the whole event is asserted, the negation contained in majdnem ‘almost’ would serve to negate the existence of the whole event, with the presupposition that the whole event takes place in a ‘close’ world in the context set. Of course, the two updates in (23) and (39) are still distinguished by the presupposition of the latter that the event type cannot be continued, but this has no bearing on the role of majdnem ‘almost’. In contrast, in the case of (40), the effect of majdnem ‘almost’ would be to negate the assertion that there is an event in which Rebecca paints the remainder of the picture, but it would preserve the presupposition that she paints a proper part of it in an earlier event. This presupposition would be preserved (and the second one as well) because of the presupposition of majdnem ‘almost’ that there is an event of this type in a ‘close’ world in the input context set. If this presupposition of majdnem ‘almost’ is satisfied, then the presuppositions of the update in (40) would also be satisfied, which would apply to every world in the context set – what would get negated is only that Rebecca paints the remainder of the picture. In sum, the content of majdnem ‘almost’ modifies the assertive content of an update, and where there is a presupposition of an earlier event, as on the construal of strong accomplishments with finish-2, we predict a scalar reading, but where there is not such a presupposition, as in the case of weak accomplishments and the other construal of strong accomplishments (with finish-1), we predict only a counterfactual reading. 2.4.

Negation

It is well-known that negation is normally a ‘hole’ with respect to presuppositions, i.e., the presuppositions of a sentence are preserved when the sentence is negated, as was illustrated for finish in (31b). My analysis of weak and strong accomplishments predicts that they will behave differently under negation. In particular, since weak accomplishments are not presuppositional, this should be confirmed by negation, which should simply negate the existence of an event of the type in question, whereas since strong accomplishments have one or two presuppositions, these presuppositions should be preserved under negation. Consider the following contrasts in this light:13 (41)

a. Rebeka nem festett egy ke´pet sem. (cf. (8)) Rebecca not painted a picture.ACC none ‘Rebecca didn’t paint a picture.’ unambiguous: Rebecca didn’t begin painting a picture

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b. Rebeka nem festett meg egy ke´pet sem. (cf. (12)) pictures.ACC none Rebecca not painted PRT a ‘Rebecca didn’t paint a picture.’ ambiguous: (i) Rebecca didn’t begin painting a picture; (ii) Rebecca didn’t finish painting a picture (42) a. Da´niel nem ´ırt egy dolgozatot sem. (cf. (10)) Da´niel not wrote a paper.ACC none ‘Daniel didn’t write a paper.’ unambiguous: Daniel didn’t begin writing a paper b. Da´niel nem ´ırt meg egy dolgozatot sem. (cf. (14)) paper.ACC none Daniel not wrote PRT a ‘Daniel didn’t write a paper.’ ambiguous: (i) Daniel didn’t begin writing a paper; (ii) Daniel didn’t finish writing a paper The sentences in (41a) and (42a) are negations of weak accomplishments and the effect of negation is simply to deny the existence of an event of corresponding type – such sentences have only one reading. In contrast, the sentences in (41b) and (42b) are negations of strong accomplishments and we find that they have two readings, depending on whether or not an initial part of the event in question is presupposed. The two readings of the sentences in (41b) and (42b) depend on whether the presupposition of an earlier event is absent or present (which in turn depends on which version of meg ‘PRT’ is chosen), but it is easy to see that negation preserves the second presupposition regarding a lack of a continuation of the event type. More precisely, just as strong accomplishments in positive sentences are not compatible with bare plural object noun phrases (cf. (16b) and (17b)), nor are the corresponding negations of strong accomplishments compatible with such noun phrases, as shown in (43b) and (44b). Rebeka nem festett ke´peket. (cf. (16a)) Rebecca not painted pictures.ACC ‘Rebecca didn’t paint pictures.’ b. #Rebeka nem festett meg ke´peket. (cf. (16b)) Rebecca not painted PRT pictures.ACC (44) a. Da´niel nem ´ırt dolgozatokat. (cf. (17a)) Daniel not wrote papers.ACC ‘Daniel didn’t write papers.’ b. #Da´niel nem ´ırt meg dolgozatokat. (cf. (17a)) Daniel not wrote PRT papers.ACC

(43)

a.

Naturally, the simple verbs in (43a) and (43b), which express weak accomplishments and hence lack the presupposition that the event type cannot be continued, are perfectly compatible with bare plural object noun phrases.

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In the present framework (see also Krifka 1993, pp. 282–283), negation can be analyzed as a modifier of updates with the assertion that the update does not hold of the output worlds w and the presupposition that there is at least one world w 0 in the input context set that the update holds of, as shown in (45). Insofar as this presupposition of negation is satisfied by at least one world in the input context set, the presuppositions of the update are also satisfied in the input context set, which accounts for the fact that negation preserves any presuppositions of the sentence that it negates.14 (45) nem (‘not’)

‚U‚C‚w[C(w)  :U(w,C)  $w 0 [U(w 0,C)]]

The analysis of the negated weak accomplishment in (41a) (ignoring the possible contribution of the negative polarity marker sem ‘none’) is the result of applying nem ‘not’ to the update in (23): (46) nem DECL Rebeka fest" egy ke´pet ( (41a)) ‚C‚w[C(w)  :$e$y[paint(w,e,rebecca,y)  picture(w,y)]  $w 0 [C(w 0 )  $e 0 $y 0 [paint(w 0,e 0 ,rebecca,y 0 )  picture(w 0,y 0 )]]] In this case, since the weak accomplishment does not have any presuppositions of its own, the effect of negation is simply to update the context set to contain those worlds in which Rebecca does not paint a picture. The analysis of the first reading of the negated strong accomplishment in (42b) is given in (47), which is the result of applying nem ‘not’ to (the packed form of) the update in (39) (cf. (38a)). (47) nem DECL Rebeka meg1-fest egy ke´pet ( first reading of (42b)) ‚C‚w[C(w)  :$e[REBECCA(w,C,e, ‚y‚e 0 ‚C 0 ‚w 0 [finish-1(w 0,C 0 ,e 0 ,y,a-picture,PAINT)])]  $w 0 $e00 [REBECCA(w 0,C,e00 , ‚y‚e 0 ‚C 0 ‚w 0 [finish-1(w 0,C 0 ,e 0 ,y,a-picture,PAINT)])]] Like the update in (46), this one negates in the output context set the existence of the whole event in which Rebecca paints a picture, but in contrast to the former, it presupposes that this event type cannot be continued. This presupposition survives negation because of the presupposition of negation that the update holds in at least one world in the input context set. Finally, the analysis of the second reading of the negated strong accomplishment in (42b) is shown in (48), which is the result of applying nem ‘not’ to (the packed form of) the update in (40) (cf. (38b)). (48) nem DECL Rebeka meg2-fest egy ke´pet ( second reading of (42b))

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‚C‚w[C(w)  :$e[REBECCA(w,C,e, ‚y‚e 0 ‚C 0 ‚w 0 [finish-2(w 0,C 0 ,e 0 ,y,a-picture,PAINT)])]  $w 0 $e00 [REBECCA(w 0,C,e00 , ‚y‚e 0 ‚C 0 ‚w 0 [finish-2(w 0,C 0 ,e 0 ,y,a-picture,PAINT)])]] Due to the relation finish-2, this update carries the additional presupposition that Rebecca paints a proper part of the picture in an earlier event – what is negated is that she paints the remainder of the picture in the output context set. 2.5.

Conclusion

Although both strong and weak accomplishments are quantized, as suggested by their compatibility with temporal alatt-phrases (in-phrases), strong accomplishments, in contrast to weak accomplishments, are analyzed with the help of one of relations finish-1 and finish-2. Accordingly, the sentence in (12) (as analyzed in (39) and (40)) is a strong accomplishment, whereas the one in (8) (as analyzed in (23)) is a weak accomplishment. Thanks to the relations finish-1 and finish-2, strong accomplishments have one or two presuppositions that weak accomplishments lack. The first presupposition, contributed by finish-2, is very palpable and states that the initial part of the event in question has taken place earlier with the same agent, which leads to the scalar reading with majdnem ‘almost’ in (13b) and (15b) and the second reading of (41b) and (42b). The second presupposition, contributed by both finish-1 and finish-2, is less obvious at the phrasal level, but it cashes out at the verb level. More specifically, this presupposition constrains the kind of object noun phrases that verbs expressing strong accomplishments can combine with, as a consequence of the condition that events of the type in question cannot be continued, as seen in (16b) and (17b). A goal in further work will be to integrate more explicitly the distinction between weak and strong accomplishments into a theory of aspectual composition. NOTES 

1

2

3

4

Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at the Eight Symposium on Logic and Language in Debrecen, Hungary on 27 Aug. 2004 and at the University of Leipzig on 29 June 2005, and I wish to thank those audiences for their comments and questions. Arguably, the counterfactual reading is the more prominent one in (5a) and (6a), which may suggest that the ‘default’ tendency is to interpret (1a) and (3a) as weak accomplishments. Verbal particles in Hungarian are often called ‘preverbs’ or (less accurately) ‘verbal prefixes’. For background on verbal particles, see chapter 2 and E´. Kiss (2002a, chapter 3.6). I employ a hyphen to separate a verbal particle from its host verb, although they would be written together according to Hungarian orthography Out of the blue, it would be more natural to use definite object noun phrases in (12)–(15), but I use indefinite noun phrases in order to maintain as close as possible the parallel with the unprefixed verbs, which resist definite objects (see chapter 4). Ka´lma´n (1995, pp. 226–227) presents a similar intuition about the difference between verbs such as ´ır ‘write’ and meg-ı´r ‘PRT-write’, but his focus is on the so-called definiteness effect exhibited by ´ır ‘write’ and comparable simple verbs, which I discuss in chapter 4. For a recent more general discussion

106

5 6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

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of the various functions that verbal particles in Hungarian have, see chapter 2 and E´. Kiss (2004a). In particular, note that the verbal particle meg has more than one meaning and that another one is analyzed in chapter 3. The term ‘event’ is used in the broad sense, as covering processes and states as well. If I am right in saying that definiteness effect verbs take a predicate argument as their internal argument (as I argue in chapter 4), then for consistency fest ‘paint’ in (18a) (cf. (8)) – which is really festde – should also receive such an analysis. However, since the analysis of definiteness effect verbs is not the main issue in this chapter, I put aside the definiteness effect here and assume for convenience that such verbs take an individual argument as their internal argument, which also has the benefit of keeping the comparison between fest ‘paint’ and meg-fest ‘PRT-paint’ as close as possible. Ultimately, though, the meaning of festde is not identical to the meaning of fest ‘paint’, though it is based on it. This is not the only way to combine a verb with a generalized quantifier object (e.g., movement at Logical Form would be an alternative), but nothing crucially depends on this choice here. This definition of quantized reference makes use of the world set W, because the question of whether P is quantized should not depend on a particular context set C. See Rapp and von Stechow (1999) for a treatment of German fast ‘almost’ and Morzycki (2001) for a recent analysis of almost. This is because paint pictures is an activity, where the corresponding relation is cumulative with respect to its event argument (see Krifka 1992). It would be straightforward to modify the definition of finish-1 for application to relations representing intransitive verbs, but I focus on the case of transitive verbs here. Engelberg (2002, p. 396) claims that the German verb aufessen ‘eat up’ is ambiguous between having a presupposition regarding the existence of an earlier event and not having this presupposition. In present terms, aufessen ‘eat up’ is a strong accomplishment, similar to Hungarian meg-eszik ‘PRT-eat’ in this respect. The negative polarity marker sem ‘none’ is needed in (41)–(42) in order for the indefinite noun phrases to take narrow scope with respect to negation. Without sem ‘none’, noun phrases headed by egy ‘a’ are so-called positive polarity items and must take wide scope with respect to negation (but this is disallowed with the simple verbs – see chapter 4.) This strategy was also adopted in the analysis of majdnem ‘almost’ in (29), as discussed above.

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PA RT I C LE S A N D A T W O C O M P O N E N T T H E O RY O F A S P E C T

This chapter argues that Hungarian is best described by adopting a two component theory of aspect, which distinguishes situation and viewpoint aspect. Situation aspect concerns properties of the event description, and viewpoint aspect establishes aspectual properties external to the event description. It is argued that Hungarian particles, similarly to non-particle constituents, play a role in both types of aspect: their presence can affect situation aspect properties, and their position can vary according to the viewpoint specification. The effect on either aspectual component is a consequence of the denotation of the particle or the similar non-particle constituent. It is also shown that situation and viewpoint aspect characterizes all event descriptions, not only those which show an overt difference between different aspect markings. The proposed account assumes a compositional account of situation aspect, and derives the distribution of particles by appealing to the semantic properties of particles and viewpoint aspect. The chapter is organized as follows. Section 1 outlines the two component theory of aspect. Section 2 compares situation and viewpoint aspect and argues that they need to be distinguished in Hungarian. Section 3 proposes that viewpoint aspect is marked even in those environments where this aspect marking is consistently absent. Section 4 considers some possibilities for encoding viewpoint aspect, and proposes a hybrid approach to derive the attested particle patterns. On a more general note, section 5 extends the conclusions of section 3 and argues that no special category of neutral aspect (Smith 1991) needs to be assumed for languages which fail to overtly mark viewpoint aspect. 1.

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A number of authors argue against a homogeneous view of aspect (Smith 1991, Klein 1994, Olsen 1997, Bertinetto 2001, Borik 2002, among others). Even though the terminology used varies widely, they all agree that it is necessary to distinguish properties that are ‘internal’ to the eventuality from those that are imposed on the eventuality from ‘outside’.1 To describe these two notions of aspect, I will use the terms situation aspect and viewpoint aspect, respectively. The remainder of this section contains a brief discussion of the two types of aspect and specific assumptions about them.

107 Katalin E´. Kiss (ed.), Event Structure and the Left Periphery Studies on Hungarian, 107–128.
2008 Springer.

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1.1.

Situation aspect

Situation aspect encodes the Vendlerian distinctions of states, activities, achievements and accomplishments. The features [durative], [telic] and [dynamic] encode these classes (Smith 1991), as shown in the following table. Table 1 Situation aspect classes [durative]

[dynamic]

[telic]

þ þ
þ


þ þ þ



þ þ

States Activities Achievements Accomplishments

The feature [durative] distinguishes instantaneous and durative event descriptions2 and [dynamic] differentiates states from dynamic event descriptions. The feature [telic] singles out event descriptions with an inherent endpoint (Smith 1991), a characterization which is qualified below. The Vendlerian categories are exemplified in the following examples. (1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

State Ja´nos aludt J-NOM slept ‘Ja´nos slept’ Activity Ja´nos futott ran J-NOM ‘Ja´nos ran’ Achievement Ja´nos meg nyerte J-NOM perf won ‘Ja´nos won the race’ Accomplishment Ja´nos ´ırt egy J-NOM wrote one ‘Ja´nos wrote a letter’

a the

versenyt race-ACC

levelet letter-ACC

Since this discussion focuses on the contrast between telicity and viewpoint aspect, the features [dynamic] and [durative] will be ignored in the remainder of this section. The feature [telic], as noted above, can be characterized, as in Smith 1991, as identifying event descriptions with an inherent endpoint. For purposes of this discussion, I assume a definition of telicity in terms of the subinterval property (Dowty 1979).3

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Atelic event descriptions such as activities have the subinterval property: if Ja´nos runs from 1:00 to 3:00, then he also runs during all subintervals of this time interval.4 In contrast, telic event descriptions lack the subinterval property. If Ja´nos wrote a letter during the time interval stretching from 1:00 to 3:00, then he did not write a letter during every single subinterval of this interval, since he finished the letter at three o’clock. The telicity of the event description is not necessarily determined by the lexical properties of the verb (Smith 1991, Verkuyl 1993). E´. Kiss 1987, Kiefer (1992, 1994), and references cited therein note that particles can affect the aspectual properties of an event description in Hungarian. Accordingly, a particle can telicize an inherently atelic event description, as the following examples show. (5)

a. Ja´nos J-NOM ‘Ja´nos b. Ja´nos J-NOM ‘Ja´nos

futott ran ran’ ki futott (az utca´ra) out ran the street-onto ran out to the street’

(atelic)

(telic)

The telicity of the event description can be shown by adverb modification. Foradverbs (as well as its Hungarian a´t and -ig-adverb counterparts) can only measure the event time of atelic event descriptions. In-adverbs, and their Hungarian alatt counterparts modify telic event descriptions. (6)

a. Ja´nos ke´t e´s fe´l o´ra´n a´t futott J-NOM two and half hour-on across ran ‘Ja´nos ran for two hours and a half’ (atelic) b. Ja´nos ke´t e´s fe´l perc alatt ki futott J-NOM two and half minute under out ran az utca´ra the street-onto ‘Ja´nos ran out to the street in two minutes and a half’ (telic)

As the previous examples show, the telicity of event descriptions is compositionally determined, based on the interpretation of the constituents that are part of the event description. A given particle does not necessarily telicize a lexically atelic predicate. The same particle telicizes an inherently atelic predicate in (7a) and (8a), and appears in an atelic event description in (7b) and (8b), respectively. (7)

a. Ja´nos ki futott az utca´ra the street-onto J-NOM out ran ‘Ja´nos ran out to the street’ (telic) b. Az a´g ki hajolt az u´t the branch-NOM out leaned the road ‘The branch leaned above the road’ (atelic)

fo¨le´ above

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a. Ja´nos fel e´pı´tett egy ha´zat one house-ACC J-NOM up built ‘Ja´nos built a house’ (telic) b. Ja´nos fel olvasott J-NOM up read ‘Ja´nos read aloud’ (atelic)5

In sum, instead of the lexical entry of individual predicates or particles, it is the interpretation of the constituents that determines the telicity of the resulting complex predicate. As noted by E´. Kiss (chapter 2), the particles which telicize an inherently atelic event description have a resultative or terminative interpretation. The particle and its optional associate az utca´ra (‘the street-onto’) are goals in (7a), and the particle fel (‘up’) denotes a result in (8a). The effect of particles on telicity is not surprising, since goals and resultatives generally yield a telic event description, as shown in the following examples. The parallelism between telicizing particles and their lexical counterparts extends even further; in absence of particles, resultatives and goals appear in the immediately preverbal position which is otherwise occupied by particles (see section 4 for accounts of movement to the preverbal position). (9)

(10)

Ja´nos (ke´t perc alatt) az utca´ra futott J-NOM two minute under the street-onto ran ‘Ja´nos ran out to the street’ Ja´nos (fe´l o´ra alatt) tiszta´ra mosta J-NOM half hour under clean-onto washed a ruha´t the dress-ACC ‘Ja´nos washed the dress clean’

As in the case of particles, it is a constituent interpreted as a goal or resultative which telicizes the event description. Accordingly, whenever the preverbal sublative constituent is not interpreted as a goal no telic event description arises. In (11) the sublative a falra ‘onto the wall’ expresses location, and thus appears in an atelic event description. (11)

Az a´g a falra the branch-NOM the wall-onto ‘The branch leaned onto the wall’

hajlott leaned

It was shown that telicity, a situation aspect property of event descriptions, is compositionally determined. In this respect, particles fail to show a surprising behavior, since they contribute to the situation aspect property of the complex event description just as lexical resultatives and goals do.

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1.2.

111

Viewpoint aspect

As described above, the term situation aspect refers to properties of the event description proper. Viewpoint aspect, which may be either perfective or imperfective, expresses properties that are external to the event description.6 If the event description is imperfective, only a part of the event is relevant or asserted. With perfective aspect, the complete (maximal) event is considered. The perfective–imperfective distinction is illustrated below for Hungarian. Formally, the position of the particle correlates with the viewpoint specification of the event description: the particle immediately precedes the verb if the event description is perfective, and follows it whenever the event description is imperfective (Kiefer 1992, 1994, E´. Kiss 2002a).7 In terms of interpretation, the two viewpoint aspect categories can be distinguished by the ordering with respect to a when-clause. While the perfective matrix event is interpreted as entirely following the event described in the when-clause (12), the imperfective event both precedes and follows the event in the when-clause (13). (12)

(13)

Ja´nos J-NOM ‘Ja´nos Ja´nos J-NOM ‘Ja´nos

haza ment (amikor meg la´tta home went when perf saw went home (when he saw Mari)’ ment haza (amikor meg la´tta went home when perf saw was going home (when he saw Mari)’

Marit) M-ACC Marit) M-ACC

I assume a characterization of viewpoint aspect based on Reichenbach 1947 and Klein 1994. Perfective and imperfective aspect are defined as different orderings of two time intervals: the event time and the reference time. The event time is the runtime of the event, and the reference time is a time interval distinct from the event time. The role of reference time is viewed somewhat differently by a number of authors. Reichenbach 1947 and Hornstein 1990, for instance, distinguish complex perfective tenses from simple tenses. In complex perfective tenses the event time is not ordered with respect to the utterance time, but the reference time that is distinct from the event time. Demirdache and Uribe-Etxebarria 2000, 2004, in contrast, assume that the relation between reference time and event time encodes perfect and imperfective aspect. In perfect event descriptions, the reference time follows the event time, and in imperfectives, the reference time is contained within the event time. It can be shown that apart from perfect and imperfective, a perfective aspect must also be distinguished. Perfective aspect, which can be described as the reference time containing the event time, is overtly marked in Mandarin (e.g. Smith 1991) and Bole (Gimba 2000), among others. In order to accommodate perfective aspect as well as imperfective and perfect, I follow Klein 1994, Olsen 1997, Iatridou et al. 2001 and von Fintel and Iatridou 2002 in assuming that these aspectual categories are encoded by two distinct heads. A perfect head Perf encodes perfect aspect. A viewpoint aspectual head Asp encodes perfective and

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imperfective aspect. Accordingly, it can impose two orderings: either the reference time contains the event time (perfective) or the reference time is contained within the event time (imperfective). In addition, I assume that the initial and final endpoints of the event time cannot be contained in the reference time of an imperfective event description, as suggested in different terms by Smith 1991.8 This ordering of the event time and the reference time is similar to the description of perfective and imperfective aspect in Smith 1991. Smith 1991 characterizes perfective event descriptions as representing the whole event or situation, and imperfectives as spanning an interval which is internal to the situation. The relative ordering of the perfective and imperfective event description and the situation in Smith 1991 is the same as assumed above for reference time and event time. Thus the proposed formalization captures the convergence of a number of different approaches. The different interpretations of perfective and imperfective event descriptions in (12) and (13) can be described straightforwardly by the present approach. The time established by the when-clause is ordered with respect to the reference time rather than the event time. In all of these examples, the reference time follows the time of the whenclause.9 If the event description in the matrix clause is perfective, then the event follows the time of the when-clause, since the reference time includes the event time. With imperfective viewpoint specification, the matrix event is interpreted as ongoing at the time of the when-clause. Again, this interpretation follows from the reference time being (properly) included in the event time of an imperfective event description. I assume that perfective or imperfective situation aspect is encoded by an appropriate aspectual head in Asp (Demirdache and Uribe-Etxebarria 2000, Iatridou et al. 2001). Asp takes vP as its complement and in turn, AspP serves as the complement of T. The reference time (i) is merged as an argument of Asp, in Spec,AspP. (14)

TP T

AspP

i Asp

vP

It was argued above that situation aspect encompasses properties of the event description (telicity, durativity and dynamicity). Viewpoint aspect, in contrast, reflects the ordering of the event time and the reference time. This account mirrors the intuition that situation aspect describes properties ‘internal’ to the event, and viewpoint aspect those ‘outside’ of it. The following section presents further evidence for the separation of the aspect components in Hungarian. 2.

THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE TWO ASPECT SYSTEMS

As suggested above, situation and viewpoint aspect are independent components of the aspectual system. This section offers some arguments from Hungarian for the separation of the two components.

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The framing effect, described by Jespersen 1931, is shown by imperfective, but not by any perfective event description. The framing effect is the requirement that the event be anchored to some specific time, which can be provided by the present tense (the utterance time) or, with past tense marking, by another past event. In the absence of an overt or contextually salient event, the past tense imperfective event description is ungrammatical. (15)

a. Ja´nos megy fel a le´pcso´´n NOM goes up the stair-on J‘Ja´nos is going up the stairs’ (present progressive) b. Ja´nos ment fel a le´pcso´´n *(amikor csengettek) rang-3pl J-NOM went up the stair-on when ‘Ja´nos was going up the stairs *(when the bell rang)’ (past progressive)

The difference between the two aspectual components is also shown by the ordering of events, which is sensitive to the viewpoint rather than situation aspect specification. As the examples in section 1.2 show, the ordering with respect to a whenclause depends on the perfectivity of the event description. Perfective event descriptions follow the time of the when-clause, while imperfective ones are already in progress at that time. (16)

a. Amikor csengettek, Ja´nos le ment a le´pcso´´n J-NOM down went the stair-on when rang-3PL ‘When the bell rang, Ja´nos went down the stairs’ (perfective; consecutive) b. Amikor csengettek, Ja´nos ment le a le´pcso´´n J-NOM went down the stair-on when rang-3PL ‘When the bell rang, Ja´nos was going down the stairs’ (imperfective; in progress)

The interpretation of present tense forms is also sensitive to the viewpoint rather than the situation aspect properties of event descriptions. The present imperfective form of dynamic predicates, like states, has an ongoing interpretation. A present perfective, however, form can only be interpreted as referring to a future or habitual event. (17)

a. Ja´nos le megy a le´pcso´´n J-NOM down goes the stair-on ‘Ja´nos goes down the stairs’ (perfective; future or habitual) b. Ja´nos megy le a le´pcso´´n J-NOM goes down the stair-on ‘Ja´nos is going down the stairs’ (imperfective; in progress)

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Finally, the subinterval property, which holds both in the situation and viewpoint aspect domain, also provides an argument for the separation of these components. As noted in section 1, telicity, a situation aspect property, can be defined in terms of the subinterval property. If a telic event description holds for a time interval, then it doesn’t hold for all subintervals of that interval. In contrast, an atelic predicate (18a) holds for the event time as well as all subintervals of the event time. The subinterval property can also hold in the viewpoint aspect domain. Imperfective event descriptions have the subinterval property: if the imperfective event description, as in (18b), is true of a time interval, then it is also true of all subintervals of that interval. Perfective event descriptions, in contrast, lack the subinterval property. If the perfective event description in (18c) is true for the interval between 1:00 and 2:00, for example, then it does not hold for all subintervals of that interval.10 (18)

a. Ja´nos gyalogolt J-NOM walked ‘Ja´nos walked’ / ‘Ja´nos was walking’ (atelic perfective or imperfective) b. Ja´nos ment haza J-NOM went home ‘Ja´nos was going home’ (telic imperfective) c. Ja´nos haza ment J-NOM home went ‘Ja´nos went home’ (telic perfective)

The situation and the viewpoint aspect components can be modified by durative adverbs. The durative for-adverb modifies predicates of times which have the subinterval property, while an in-adverb modifies those which lack that property. In (19a), the situation aspect of the event description lacks the subinterval property, hence the event time can be modified by an in-adverb. Imperfective viewpoint aspect, in contrast, has the subinterval property, hence modification by a for-adverb is grammatical. The simultaneous modification by the two durative adverbs expresses that for ten minutes, Ja´nos was engaged in an activity which would result in his reaching the top of the mountain in two hours (cf. also de Swart 1998, 2000). No similar ambiguity can be observed in Hungarian with respect to the correlates of the English durative adverbs. In the discussion I treat Hungarian -ig adverbs as equivalent to English for-adverbs and requiring the subinterval property, and Hungarian alatt adverbs as behaving identically to in-adverbs. The behavior of durative in-adverbs in Hungarian is distinct from their English counterparts, since alatt adverbs, unlike in-adverbs, can only modify perfective telic event descriptions (19b). English in-adverbs can modify any telic event description, independently of its viewpoint aspect specification. The Hungarian equivalent, an alatt adverb, only modifies telic event descriptions. As shown in (19c,d), an imperfective telic event description can be modified by an -ig adverb, the equivalent of a for-adverb.

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Modification by both an -ig and an alatt adverb, parallel to the English (19a), is ruled out (19e) (E´. Kiss (chapter 1)). (19)

a. ?For ten minutes, Ja´nos was going up the mountain in two hours b. Ja´nos ke´t o´ra alatt fel ment a hegyre J-NOM two hour under up went the mountain-onto ‘Ja´nos went up the mountain in two hours’ (perfective telic) c. Ja´nos ment fel a hegyre J-NOM went up the mountain-onto (amikor do¨ro¨gni kezdett) when rumble-INF began ‘Ja´nos was going up the mountain when it started to rumble’ (imperfective telic) d. Ja´nos tı´z percig ment fel a hegyre J-NOM ten minute-until went up the mountain-onto ‘Ja´nos was going up the mountain for ten minutes’ (imperfective telic) e. *Ja´nos tı´z percig ment fel ke´t o´ra alatt J-NOM ten minute-until went up two hour under a hegyre the mountain-onto ‘For ten minutes, Ja´nos was going up the mountain in two hours’ (imperfective telic)

The different behavior of Hungarian alatt adverbs and English in-adverbs can be captured as the Hungarian adverb permits no subinterval property either in the situation or the viewpoint aspect component. In English, in-adverbs are grammatical whenever the situation aspect lacks the subinterval property, indepently of the properties of the viewpoint aspect component. In contrast, Hungarian alatt adverbs require lack of the subinterval property in both aspectual components. Concerning -ig and for-adverbs, the English adverbs and their Hungarian counterparts behave alike. These adverbs can modify an event description if it has the subinterval property, either in the situation or the viewpoint aspect component. Since an event description in Hungarian cannot be modified by an alatt and an -ig adverb at the same time, there is no direct argument available for the conflicting subinterval properties of situation and viewpoint aspect. In spite of the lack of direct evidence for the two aspectual components in Hungarian, it can be shown that both aspectual components exist. An atelic event description, such as (20), allows modification by an -ig adverb in the absence of correlates of imperfective event descriptions (framing effect, obligatory simultaneous interpretation with a when-clause and obligatory ongoing interpretation). Atelic event descriptions can be thus modified by an -ig adverb even

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when they are perfective, since situation aspect specification has the subinterval property. (20)

Ja´nos tı´z percig gyalogolt J-NOM ten minute-until walked ‘Ja´nos walked for ten minutes’

In contrast, whenever telic event descriptions appear with -ig adverbs (19d), they show properties of imperfectives. Since these properties, generally associated with imperfectives, necessarily arise, I conclude that the time associated with viewpoint aspect can be modified by -ig adverbs, even if the event description in question is telic.11 In sum, several arguments support the distinction between situation and viewpoint aspect in Hungarian. It was shown that even though the subinterval property can be interpreted in both aspectual domains, the specifications are independent for situation and viewpoint aspect. In addition, a number of properties are determined by the viewpoint specification of the event description rather than situation aspect, including the framing effect, event ordering and the interpretation of present tense forms. 3.

VIEWPOINT ASPECT IN HUNGARIAN

As argued above, situation and viewpoint aspect needs to be distinguished in Hungarian. These two aspectual components cannot be collapsed, since the subinterval property in the situation aspect domain does not have the same effects as that in the viewpoint aspect domain. Whenever the event description is imperfective, having the subinterval property in the viewpoint aspect component, it displays properties associated with imperfectives in general (the framing effect, obligatory simultaneous interpretation and ordering with when-clauses). The previous examples illustrating the effects of different viewpoint aspect specifications involved particle verbs with a telicizing particle. These event descriptions show an overt difference between perfective and imperfective forms: the particle is immediately preverbal in the former, but appears postverbally in the latter. This section proposes that perfective or imperfective aspect is specified for all event descriptions in Hungarian, including those which fail to show an overt difference between the two readings. In section 5, it is suggested that the generality of viewpoint aspect specification is, in fact, universal and is also present in languages which uniformly lack overt viewpoint aspect specification. As noted by Kiefer 1994, the Hungarian event descriptions which lack particles may be interpreted as imperfectives, and the same holds for verbs modified by nontelicizing particles. All of the following event descriptions have a perfective or imperfective interpretation, which results in a variable ordering with respect to when-clauses. The available readings can be disambiguated by the adverbs e´ppen (‘just then’) and ro¨gto¨n (‘immediately’), which appear with imperfective and perfective event descriptions, respectively.

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a. Amikor csengettek, Ja´nos (e´ppen) telefona´lt J-NOM just then phoned when rang-3PL ‘When the bell rang, Ja´nos was talking on the phone’ (in progress; imperfective) b. Amikor csengettek, Ja´nos (ro¨gto¨n) telefona´lt J-NOM immediately phoned when rang-3PL ‘When the bell rang, Ja´nos called immediately’ (consecutive; perfective) (22) a. Amikor csengettek, Ja´nos (e´ppen) fel mosott J-NOM just then up washed when rang-3PL ‘When the bell rang, Ja´nos was washing the floor’ (in progress; imperfective) b. Amikor csengettek, Ja´nos (ro¨gto¨n) fel mosott J-NOM immediately up washed when rang-3PL ‘When the bell rang, Ja´nos washed the floor immediately’ (consecutive; perfective)

(21)

The event descriptions lacking telicizing particles also show a variability in the interpretation of present tense forms. The interpretations of imperfective event descriptions, with an ongoing interpretation, and that of perfective event descriptions, with a futurate or habitual interpretation, are both possible. (23)

(24)

Ja´nos J-NOM ‘Ja´nos Ja´nos J-NOM ‘Ja´nos

telefona´l phones is speaking on the phone’ / ‘Ja´nos often calls’ fel mos up washes is washing the floor’ / ‘Ja´nos often washes the floor’

The variable interpretation of these event descriptions is most straightforwardly accounted for by assuming that they can have either a perfective or an imperfective viewpoint specification. I assume that similarly to the event descriptions containing a telicizing particle, the event descriptions in question can also be either perfective or imperfective, depending on the aspectual head merged in Asp. The interpretation of the event description simply varies according to the viewpoint specification of the event description.12 It is attractive to adopt a parallel treatment of predicates with and those lacking a telicizing particle, where event descriptions can appear with either a perfective or an imperfective Asp head. The difference between event descriptions with a telicizing particle (which show word order variation according to the viewpoint aspect specification) and those without such a particle can be captured as the consequence of the

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denotation of the particle. Section 4 presents an account which derives the behavior of the two types of event description. 4.

PA RT I C L E S A N D A S P E C T

I suggested above that it is desirable to assume that all event descriptions are specified as either perfective or imperfective in Hungarian. This section offers an account of the interaction of particles and the generally available viewpoint aspect, including the alternating or constant position of the former.13 Before delving into the interaction of viewpoint aspect and particles, let us consider again how particles affect situation aspect. It was argued in section 1 that particles can telicize the event description only when they denote an endpoint, namely a result or goal. In this respect, particles behave like other constituents; all of these elements only affect situation aspect properties when denoting an endpoint. Particles also behave like non-particle constituents with similar meaning in their interaction with viewpoint aspect. The alternation of telicizing particles in perfective and imperfective event descriptions is parallel to non-particle resultatives and goals. If a neutral event description is perfective, both particles and non-particles precede the verb. With imperfective viewpoint aspect, both follow the event, as shown in (25) and (26), respectively.14 a. Ja´nos le ment a le´pcso´´n J-NOM down went the stair-on ‘Ja´nos went down the stairs’ (perfective) b. Ja´nos ment le a le´pcso´´n J-NOM went down the stair-on ‘Ja´nos was going down the stairs’ (imperfective) (26) a. Ja´nos a teto´´re ment J-NOM the roof-onto went ‘Ja´nos went to the roof’ (perfective) b. Ja´nos ment a teto´´re J-NOM went the roof-onto ‘Ja´nos was going to the roof’ (imperfective)

(25)

Bare plurals and particles which do not denote an endpoint fail to show an alternation related to viewpoint aspect. Both perfective and imperfective event descriptions appear with these constituents in preverbal position. (27)

a. Ja´nos fel mosott J-NOM up washed ‘Ja´nos washed the floor’ / ‘Ja´nos was washing the floor’ (perfective / imperfective)

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b. Ja´nos ablakot mosott J-NOM window-acc washed ‘Ja´nos cleaned a window / windows’ / ‘Ja´nos was cleaning a window / windows’ (perfective / imperfective) Three accounts of the position of particles (and related constituents) are discussed below. It is argued that the account which fares best appeals to the effect of constituents on situation aspect and to the aspectual properties of viewpoint aspect. It is also shown that particles do not show an unexpected behavior. This conclusion is in line with the point made above for situation aspect, where I noted that particles and non-particle constituents with similar semantic properties have the same effect on aspectual properties. As noted, particles appear in a preverbal position in perfective event descriptions and in certain cases, in imperfective event descriptions as well. Building on Farkas and Sadock 1989, Koopman and Szabolcsi 2000, E´. Kiss (chapter 2) and others, I assume that particles are phrases rather than heads and are merged within the vP. As discussed in E´. Kiss (chapter 2), a number of accounts have been proposed for the identity of the preverbal landing site of particles and for the motivation of movement. In this section I consider two families of these proposals, those of particle movement targeting Spec,AspP (Pin˜o´n 1995, E´. Kiss 2002, Alberti 2004) and Spec,PredP (Koster 1994, E´. Kiss (chapter 2)). I propose that a hybrid account, which adopts assumptions from both of these approaches, accounts most successfully for the attested patterns. 4.1.

Particles in Spec,AspP

A number of accounts propose that preverbal particles in neutral sentences move to Spec,AspP (Pin˜o´n 1995, E´. Kiss 2002a, Alberti 2004). The Spec,AspP position as the landing site reflects the intuition that particles affect the aspectual properties of the event description. E´. Kiss 2002a, building on Pin˜o´n 1995, Kiefer 1994 and others, proposes that prefixes in preverbal positions act as aspectualizers or aspectual operators, perfectivizing the event description. The variation in the position of particles is straightforwardly described: since the particle is a perfectivizer, it cannot move to the specifier position of an imperfective Asp head (28)

ment a le´pcso´´n ] a. Ja´nos [AspP le down went the stair-on J-NOM ‘Ja´nos went down the stairs’ (perfective)

This account, also discussed in E´. Kiss (chapter 2), raises a number of questions. Of these, I mention two below. If particle movement to the preverbal position targets Spec,AspP in neutral clauses and the same account is invoked for bare noun objects, then presumably bare nouns are identical to perfectivizing particles in their interpretational effects.

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This is, however, not the case. Bare objects neither telicize the event description, nor do they enforce a perfective aspect of the event description. (29)

Ja´nos kenyeret evett J-NOM bread-ACC ate ‘Ja´nos ate bread’ / ‘Ja´nos was eating bread’ (perfective / imperfective)

The same holds for those particles which do not denote an endpoint. They precede the verb in perfective and imperfective event descriptions alike. (30)

Ja´nos fel mosott J-NOM up washed ‘Ja´nos washed the floor’ / ‘Ja´nos was washing the floor’ (perfective / imperfective)

If particles and bare noun objects are to be treated the same way, then the aspectual properties of these elements and their effect on the event description cannot be responsible for preverbal movement. In addition, particles and other constituents can affect the aspectual properties of the event description even if they are not in the preverbal (arguably Spec,AspP) position. Situation aspect is determined compositionally, as noted in section 1. Thus a particle denoting a goal or result can telicize the event description irrespectively of the position where it appears. The considerations above address the motivation of particle movement. Particles are not necessarily aspectualizers, and can affect aspectual properties even when they are not in the preverbal position. Particle movement, then, cannot be driven by the need of ‘aspectualizers’ to appear in Spec,AspP. It is still possible, however, that particles move to a Spec,AspP position; this hypothesis will be adopted in section 4.3. Before proceeding, however, let us consider the arguments and motivation for a different position, Spec,PredP as the landing site. 4.2.

Particles in Spec,PredP Based on Koster 1994 and Csirmaz 2004, E´. Kiss (chapters 2, 9) argues that preverbal particles (as well as other elements with particle-like distribution) are located in the specifier of PredP. PredP is merged on top of the verb phrase and restricts the range of constituents which can appear in its specifier position. Following Koster 1994, E´. Kiss (chapters 2, 9) assumes that only predicative elements can appear in Spec,PredP. With this treatment of particles, E´. Kiss avoids a commitment to the aspectualizer nature of particles. In addition, the movement of predicative elements to Spec,PredP allows a uniform treatment of particles, bare noun objects and other constituents which immediately precede the verb in neutral clauses. The proposed structure is shown below.

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Ja´nos [PredP le ment a down went the J-NOM ‘Ja´nos went down the stairs

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le´pcso´´n ] stair-on

Concerning the motivation of movement to Spec,PredP, E´. Kiss (chapter 2) adopts the proposal of Koster 1994 for Dutch particles. According to Koster 1994, constituents theta-marked by the verb can be licensed in two ways: (a) they can be arguments or (b) they may be part of the predicate. In the latter case, they suggest, the constituent must move to a position within PredP to be licensed. Implementing this account for Hungarian, E´. Kiss (chapter 2) notes that Hungarian verbs are predicative, and argues that particles and bare nouns are predicative as well. In accordance with the predicative licensing requirement, verbs must always move to the Pred head. In addition, whenever present, particles and bare nouns need to move to Spec,PredP in order to be licensed.15 Given the predicative nature of particles and bare nouns, their preverbal distribution is derived. Under this approach it remains unaccounted for, however, why particle position can interact with viewpoint aspect. Recall that telicizing particles, which denote an endpoint, only precede the verb in perfective event descriptions. If the viewpoint aspect is imperfective, they follow the verb. Since the PredP projection does not, by assumption, house viewpoint aspectual operators or have an aspectual interpretation, the correlation is unexpected. The following section bridges the gap between the position of particles and their interaction with viewpoint aspect. 4.3.

A hybrid account

The issues raised above can be accounted for if the two previous accounts are merged. The motivation for particle movement is adopted from E´. Kiss (chapter 2), and the landing site of particle movement is identified as Spec,AspP. This hybrid account avoids the problems raised, as shown below. In addition, it also allows the Hungarian aspect system to be assimilated to those independently argued for (Reichenbach 1947, Klein 1994, among others). Before turning to particle position and viewpoint aspect, let us consider how situation aspect is determined in the proposed hybrid framework. As noted in section 1, situation aspect is determined compositionally. For concreteness, I assume that situation aspect properties are determined within the vP. The compositionality of situation aspect amounts to allowing the vP-internal constituents to affect situation aspect properties. For instance, a particle or other constituent denoting an endpoint, merged within vP, will appear in a telic event description. Irrespective of the inherent properties of the verb, the constituents denoting an endpoint result in telicity. Viewpoint aspect, as noted above, is crucially distinct from situation aspect, since it is determined by the Asp head. I assume that an aspectual head, namely perfective or imperfective is merged in Asp, unambiguously determining the viewpoint aspect properties of the event description.

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It is the AspP projection where particles move when they appear in preverbal position. I assume that the AspP dominates PredP, as shown below. (32)

[AspP particlei Aspperf [PredP ti [vþPred] [vP . . . ]]]

With respect to the trigger of movement to Spec,AspP, I assume that the Asp head has an EPP feature which requires the closest constituent to move to an AspP-internal position. I also assume that the EPP feature is category-neutral; that is, it can be checked by any overt constituent as long as economy conditions are satisfied (e.g. the moved constituent is closest to Asp). As in the previous example, whenever a particle is present, it is the particle which appears in Spec,AspperfP, being the constituent closest to Asp.16 In the absence of a particle or other constituent in Spec,PredP, it is the Pred head that moves to Asp, checking the EPP feature of Asp. (33)

[AspP [[vþPred]iþAsp] [PredP ti [vP . . . ]]]

The constituent which moves to AspP is determined by the constituents within PredP. If the specifier of PredP is filled, then the specifier moves to check the EPP feature. If the specifier is not filled, then the complex Pred head raises. The proposed account, where the EPP feature of Asp can be satisfied by either an XP or a head is at odds with the proposal of Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou 1998. They argue that the EPP feature of T can be checked by a head or a phrase, subject to parametric variation. In null subject languages EPP is checked by a head, hence no subject raising to Spec,TP is triggered by that feature. In contrast, in non-null subject languages the EPP feature of T is checked by an XP, hence the movement of the subject or that of some other XP to Spec,TP. Unlike Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou 1998, I suggest that either an XP or a head can move to check the EPP feature of Asp in Hungarian. The head, Pred moves only if the movement of the phrase in Spec,PredP is ruled out by the incompatibility of imperfective aspect and constituents denoting an endpoint in AspP. Within the framework of Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou 1998, this amounts to the claim that languages can also opt for moving either a phrase or a head to check an EPP feature, an optionality resolved by economy or other, well-formedness conditions17. If all particles move to Spec,AspP, the behavior of particles with perfective and imperfective aspect can be accounted for by appealing to aspectual properties. Recall from the previous discussion that only telicizing particles, which denote the endpoint of an event, are excluded from the specifier of imperfective AspP. If the event description is perfective, all particles can appear in Spec,AspP. (34)

a. Ja´nos ment haza (imperfective) J-NOM went home ‘Ja´nos was going home’ b. Ja´nos haza ment (perfective) J-NOM home went ‘Ja´nos went home’

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a. Ja´nos fel olvasott (imperfective / perfective) J-NOM up read ‘Ja´nos was reading aloud’ / ‘Ja´nos read aloud’

The ungrammaticality of an endpoint-denoting particle in the specifier of an imperfective Asp follows from the definition of imperfectives proposed in section 1. A perfective event description was defined as one where the reference time contains the event time. For the reference time of imperfective event descriptions, it was assumed that it is properly contained in the event time. An additional constraint on imperfectives, also noted in section 1, is that the endpoints of the event time cannot be contained in the reference time. No such restriction holds for perfective event descriptions, where the reference time – contrary to imperfectives – must contain the complete event time. I suggest that if a particle denoting the endpoint of the event appears in Spec,AspP, then it delimits the reference time, just as it delimits the event time of telic event descriptions. If the reference time is delimited, then it cannot serve as an argument of imperfective aspect. This leads to the ungrammaticality of imperfective viewpoint aspect with a telicizing particle in Spec,AspP. Locative particles and bare noun objects are not delimiters, and hence do not delimit the event or reference time. These constituents are free to move to Spec,AspP in perfective and imperfective event descriptions alike to check the EPP feature of Asp. Contrary to the ‘aspectualizer’ account sketched in section 4.1, in this system it is not the aspectualizer nature of particles which drives their movement. Instead, particles interact with viewpoint aspect, determined in the Asp head, as described above. The particles which denote an endpoint move to Spec,AspP in perfective event descriptions, but fail to move (and so stay in PredP) if the viewpoint aspect is imperfective. In contrast, the particles that do not describe an endpoint move to Spec,PredP in perfective and imperfective event descriptions alike. Two aspects of the account are worth emphasizing. First, the trigger of particle movement is independent from aspectual properties of either the particle or the event description itself. Based on E´. Kiss (chapter 2), it was assumed that it is the proximity of Spec,PredP constituents that forces particle movement to check the EPP feature of Asp. Second, the landing site of particles and other preverbal elements is Spec,AspP. By tying together particles and viewpoint aspect, it is derived that preverbal particles can interact with reference time. Telicizing particles, which delimit the reference time when they appear in that position, are excluded from the specifier of an imperfective AspP since they delimit the reference time. It is also worth noting that this account does not appeal to particles specifically. It is expected, then, that the conclusions also hold of non-particle telicizing constituents. It was shown in (26), repeated below, that this is indeed the case. Non-particle resultatives and goals pattern with particles; they are preverbal in perfective event descriptions but follow the verb if the event description is imperfective.

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a. Ja´nos a teto´´re ment J-NOM the roof-onto went ‘Ja´nos went to the roof’ b. Ja´nos ment a teto´´re J-NOM went the roof-onto ‘Ja´nos was going to the roof’ 5.

NEUTRAL ASPECT

In the preceding sections I suggested that all Hungarian event descriptions are specified for either perfective or imperfective aspect, including those which show no overt difference between these two forms. This proposal can be extended to languages which consistently fail to show an overt viewpoint aspect difference, either by the lack of overt aspect marking restricted to certain tenses or universally in the given language. I propose that if an event description has both perfective and imperfectivelike interpretation, this arises from the ambiguity in viewpoint aspect specification. This proposal is at odds with the neutral aspect account of Smith 1991 (p77 ff). Smith 1991 considers two accounts of event descriptions with aspectually variable interpretation: an account in terms of neutral aspect, and one where the event descriptions lack viewpoint specification. Smith 1991 argues that these event descriptions have a third, neutral viewpoint aspect marking. Smith cites two arguments to support this conclusion. First, the event descriptions give rise to both perfective and imperfective like interpretation with respect to event ordering. This excludes an account where the viewpoint aspect is reduced to unambiguously perfective or imperfective specification of the event description. In addition, Smith 1991 shows that a number of readings which would be expected if the event descriptions lacked viewpoint specifications do not arise. The missing reading illustrated and discussed in detail is the one which is available for overt imperfective marking of achievements. In the terms of Smith 1991, the overtly marked past imperfective marking in French yields an interpretation which focuses on the preliminary interval of an instantaneous achievement. The imperfective event description marks the preparatory stage leading up to the entering in the store, but does not assert that the culmination took place. (37)

Il entrait dans un magasin a store he enter-PAST.IMPERF in ‘He was entering a store’ (Smith 1991:197)

No similar interpretation is available for achievements in the future, which, according to Smith 1991, is only compatible with the neutral viewpoint aspect. Future tense, as in gagnera (‘will win’) can only refer to the achievement itself, indicating that imperfective aspect is not available for future event descriptions.

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# Le cheval gagnera le course mais il ne gagnera pas the horse will win the race but he ne will win not ‘The horse will be winning the race but he will not win’ (Smith 1991:80)

Smith 1991 assumes that if no viewpoint aspect was specified, then the preparatory stage interpretation of achievements would be available. She concludes that it is neutral viewpoint aspect which allows a perfective- and imperfective-like interpretation, but disallows readings such as the preparatory interpretation of achievements. I propose that the conclusion of Smith 1991 does not necessarily hold. It is possible to account for the data by assuming that the event descriptions in question are ambiguous; they can either be specified as perfective or imperfective. Specifically, I assume that the viewpoint aspectual operator present in the structure is either perfective (Perf) or imperfective (Imperf). The ambiguous viewpoint aspect specification accounts for the fact that the event descriptions can be interpreted as either perfective or imperfective. With respect to the disallowed readings, I suggest that their availability is more generally restricted. The preparatory stage reading, for instance, is not necessarily available with overt imperfective marking either. As noted by Smith 1991, overt imperfective marking on an achievement can trigger a preparatory stage interpretation, which refers to the stage preceding the culmination. The preparatory reading is illustrated in (37) and (39). Similarly, the overt perfective marking a stative predicate such as have can trigger an aspect shift to an inceptive interpretation. In the Mandarin (40), the overt perfective marking le triggers an inceptive interpretation. (39) (40)

John was reaching the top (when the rain started to pour) Zhangsan you le yi da bi qian Z has le one big amount money ‘Zhangsan got a lot of money’ (Lin 2004a,b)

While overt perfective and imperfective marking can trigger the readings mentioned above, they do not necessarily do so. As shown below, the overt imperfective marking in Mandarin fails to yield the preparatory stage interpretation for achievements. Similarly, the overt perfective marking in Italian does not allow states to have a coerced inceptive interpretation. (41)

*zhege laoren zai chuan this old.man at bed de shihou, ta de jiaren GEN gen time he shen pang body side ‘This old man was dying in the around him’

shang zheng right.then dou zou family all TOP

zai want zai sit

si die ta de at he

bed with his family sitting

GEN

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Gianni si e` fidato del suo manager in occasione Gianni si is trusted of his manager in time di quel difficile compito of that difficult situation ‘Gianni trusted / *came to trust his manager in that difficult situation’

The availability of coerced readings, including the preparatory stage interpretation of achievements, can vary even if the viewpoint aspect is overtly marked. In sum, the absence of coerced readings is not an argument against the presence of perfective or imperfective aspect marking. I assume that the possibility of coercion, where a viewpoint aspect marking allows a reading distinct from the readings defined in section 1, needs to be defined independently for a given language and viewpoint aspect.18 An economy consideration also supports the proposed account, which allows for either perfective or imperfective specification of all event descriptions. If the variable interpretation of ambiguous event descriptions follows from their ambiguous viewpoint aspect specification, then it is not necessary to assume the third, independent category of neutral aspect.19

6.

S U M M A RY

This chapter discussed a two-component theory of aspect. It was argued that the distinction between situation and viewpoint aspect is desirable on both general grounds and based on considerations specific to Hungarian. I showed that Hungarian particles interact with both kinds of aspect: the presence or absence of some particles can affect situation aspect, and the position of telicizing particles interacts with viewpoint aspect. It was argued that even though overt distinctions between perfective and imperfective aspect are limited, it is desirable to assume perfective or imperfective specification for all event descriptions in Hungarian. As for the specific implementation of aspect, I suggested that the two types of aspect are encoded differently. Situation aspect is calculated compositionally, while viewpoint aspect is encoded by an aspectual operator heading the designated AspP projection. In order to account for the interaction of particles and viewpoint aspect, I suggested that particles can raise to Spec,AspP from a lower Spec,PredP position. A particle in Spec,AspP can interact with viewpoint aspect by delimiting the reference time just as it delimits the event time. Since the reference time of imperfective event descriptions cannot include the endpoint of the event, no telicizing constituent can appear in the specifier of an imperfective AspP. The account proposed is not specific to particles, since it relies on the position within PredP for triggering movement and the denotation of the moved constituent for the interaction with viewpoint aspect. It applies, instead, to all types of constituents in AspP, without a restriction on their categorical or semantic properties.

T W O C O M P O N E N T T H E O RY O F A S P E C T

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NOTES 

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8

For comments and discussions about the research described in this chapter, I wish to thank Sabine Iatridou, David Pesetsky, Shigeru Miyagawa, the audience of Console XII and the Cornell Symposium on Language Universals, as well as the participants of the Hungarian research project (Katalin E´. Kiss, Christopher Pin˜o´n, Boldizsa´r Eszes, Bala´zs Sura´nyi), Csab