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Inflectional morphology in the Hungarian noun phrase: A typological assessment
... Moreover, the majority of the true postpositions are also usually repeated after the demonstratives, as we saw in (4) above. Such doubling is even (optionally) possible with 'fake' postpositions , such as kívül + superessive 'beside' , which are really nouns taking a case-marked complement, but then the demonstrative assumes the case form of the complement: 6 (11) ez-en kívül aˉkönyv-ön kívül this-superessive beside theˉbook-superessive beside 'besideˉthisˉbook'ˉ(Moravcsikˉ2003a:ˉ208) A final distinction between true postpositions and those taking case-marked complements is that the final -z of ez/az is 'deleted' before true postpositions, as in (12) where ez 'this' appears as e (Kenesei et al. 1998: 278; see also Moravcsik 2003a: 208): (12) A kulcs e mellett a könyv mellett van the key this near the book near is 'Theˉkeyˉisˉnearˉthisˉbook' I have taken it for granted that the case endings are bona fide affixes, rather than, say, clitics. This is justified by a number of properties. ...
... However, there is one construction in which the cases seem to behave more like edge inflections or phrasal affixes than like bona fide stem-based affixes. The . From Moravcsik's (2003a: 208f) discussion it would appear that demonstratives agree with the nouns even when the repeated element is a 'fake' postposition. However, she points out that this conclusion only holds if we regard the demonstrative as part of the NP constituent, and not in apposition. ...
... Some nouns undergo other types of stem allomorphy (Kenesei et al. 1998: 194; Moravcsik 2003a: ...
I argue that case markers in Hungarian are best thought of as 'fused postpositions' . There is no need to set up a separate syntactic or morphological [Case] attribute as such. Rather, we just need a morphological principle stating that nominals (including pronouns) have a special form, the traditional case form. In this respect Hungarian is crucially different from languages such as Latin (which requires both a morphological and a syntactic [Case] feature) or Finnish (which requires at least a syntactic [Case] feature). I discuss certain typological issues arising from this analysis, arguing that when grammarians refer to Hungarian 'cases' , they are really referring to a rather more general notion of 'canonical grammatical function markers on dependents' .
... We believe this to be a plausible analysis because (i) the case marker modifies the whole DP and not just parts of it, (ii) it is the nature of the K-head which determines the distribution of the whole phrase in the clause and (iii) it puts case markers on the same level as postpositions. And especially in Finno-Ugric languages, it has long been noted that there is probably not a good reason to distinguish between case markers and (at least some kinds) of postpositions (see Moravcsik 2003;Trommer 2008;Spencer and Stump 2013). ...
... We will, at this point however, not engage in the discussion about how many there really are and whether they can and should be analyzed as formally different from postpositions. SeeAlhoniemi (1993) on Mari andMoravcsik (2003),Trommer (2008),Spencer (2008) on the same issue in Hungarian.Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved. ...
We argue that the unusual morphological template in the noun phrase of Meadow Mari should be derived on the basis of a simple, semantically transparent syntax. In accordance with the Mirror Principle, the analysis we propose derives the actual surface order of morphemes in Mari by means of two postsyntactic reordering operations: A lowering operation and a metathesis operation. Evidence for this account comes from a process called Suspended Affixation. This process is known to delete the right edges of non-final conjuncts under recoverability. We show however, that Suspended Affixation in Mari does not apply to the right edges of surface orders. Rather, the right edges of an intermediate postsyntactic representation are relevant. Suspended Affixation applies after some but not all postsyntactic operations have applied. Thus, the account we present makes a strong argument for a stepwise derivation of the actual surface forms and thus for a strongly derivational architecture of the postsyntactic module.
... Interestingly, APls are possible with singular-but not plural-possessor agreement. This has been shown for Hungarian (Bartos 1999, Moravcsik 2003 and Turkish (Lewis To appear); see (24). Assuming possessor agreement is the realization of -features on the Poss head, under the current approach APls with plural possessor agreement are ruled out because they would involve moving Num 0 to Associative 0 over a Poss head bearing a plural [#] feature. ...
This paper examines the associative plural construction in languages that use the multiplicative plural marker to derive the associative plural (henceforth plural pattern languages) and establishes a novel typological generalization about such languages: all plural pattern languages are either articleless or have affixal articles. To account for this previously unnoticed property of plural pattern languages, a new analysis is presented in which the plural pattern involves incorporation of Num0 to the head of a functional projection AssociativeP. It is then argued that associative plurals in South Slavic—which involve plural possessives —also show the plural pattern (i.e., also involve incorporation of the Num head), showing that the current approach can unify cross-linguistically dissimilar associative plurals under one analysis.
... However, some grammatical categories are marked on nouns as well as verbs, often leading to a certain amount of redundancy, e.g. when argument roles are specified both on the noun (through case) and on the verb (through affixes reflecting syntactic roles). While there is a widespread assumption that verbs tend to be morphologically more complex than nouns (Moravcsik 1994;Vigliocco et al. 2011), this assumption has not been tested empirically, and it appears that nouns and verbs can cover varying amounts of grammatical information across languages. ...
Nouns and verbs are known to differ in the types of grammatical information they encode. What is less well known is the relationship between verbal and nominal coding within and across languages. The equi-complexity hypothesis holds that all languages are equally complex overall, which entails trade-offs between coding in different domains. From a diachronic point of view, this hypothesis implies that the loss and gain of coding in different domains can be expected to balance each other out. In this study, we test to what extent such inverse coevolution can be observed in a sample of 244 languages, using data from a comprehensive cross-linguistic database (Grambank) and applying computational phylogenetic modelling to control for genealogical relatedness. We find evidence for coevolutionary relationships between specific features within nominal and verbal domains on a global scale, but not for overall degrees of grammatical coding between languages. Instead, these amounts of nominal and verbal coding are positively correlated in Sino-Tibetan languages and inversely correlated in Indo-European languages. Our findings indicate that accretion and loss of grammatical information in nominal words and verbs are lineage-specific.
... In Hungarian, the head noun of a possessive noun phrase always bears a morphological speci cation of the possessor (ház-am house-' 1 'my house', ház-ad house-' 2 'your house ', etc.). 2 The possessor morphology displays an alienability split that was rst investigated in Kiefer (1985) and subsequently mentioned by Elek (2000) and Moravcsik (2003). The split occurs almost only with 3rd-person possessor su xes. ...
... In adnominal possessive constructions, the possessum always takes a possessive marker that agrees with the person and number of the possessor. Certain nouns, however, take an additional su x when used with the third-person singular possessive marker (Moravcsik 2003) and di er with respect to their meaning (Elek 2000 Examples (26a) and (26b) illustrate the use of the RN talp ('sole') in accordance with its lexical type. A sole is typically a part of a shoe or a foot. ...
In this paper, we argue that nouns in each of their lexicalized meanings have certain referential properties encoded in their lexical entries. Due to these referential properties, the meaning variants of nouns are predisposed for certain determination. However, in actual use nouns often occur in grammatical contexts that differ from these predisposed uses. On the basis of data from typologically different languages, we argue that such grammatical variations follow systematic referential modification patterns of the respective meaning variant of a noun. In accordance with Löbner (2010), we will refer to the underlying cognitive processes as type shifts and show that they provide a stimulating approach to widely discussed phenomena such as definite article splits and alienability splits.
... It must be noted that, in Estonian, all oblique cases are built on the basis of the genitive stem. Given that there has been a long discussion of whether there is a difference between postpositions and oblique case markers in Finno-Ugric languages (see recent discussions of Hungarian in Moravcsik 2003, Spencer 2008, one possible alternative analysis is to take these case markers as Ps that themselves assign case to the individual conjuncts within the conjunction phrase. 5 Butt & King 2005 gives evidence that in Hindi, case markers are actually clitics that attach to the phrase as a whole. ...
In this article, I argue that all of the conjuncts in nominal conjunction always bear the same case. Apparent counterexamples, where conjuncts seem to differ in morphological case marking, are due either to a misanalysis of the underlying syntactic structure or to superficial morphological processes that create the impression of a difference in case marking. Once we control for phenomena of this sort (namely &P clitics, suspended affixation, and allomorphy), we find that case marking in nominal conjunction is always symmetric. This finding is in stark contrast to the phenomenon of ϕ agreement, which is known to exhibit asymmetries in conjunction. I show that the Chomskyan account of case assignment, according to which case arises only as a reflex of ϕ agreement, cannot account for this mismatch without stipulative assumptions. The pattern follows straightforwardly, however, if we assume that case assignment proceeds on the basis of syntactic structure while ϕ agreement can be either syntactic or postsyntactic. Finally, I show that the generalization established can be used as a simple diagnostic to distinguish syntactic case‐marking alternations from morphological ones.
... Dékány's (2011) conclusion that the pronoun is not in the complement position of oblique case particles (but 'stands in an appositive-like relation to the case marker'; cf. Bartos 1999, Moravcsik 2003) entails that oblique case constructions featuring an overt pronoun involve a pro in the complement position of the case particle (which we analyse as a P): ...
Universal Grammar places a restriction on self-embedding recursion structures created through External Merge: A phasal category of type α can be embedded in a phasal category of the same type where there is a c-command relation between the heads of the two instances of α only if the two instances of α are separated by a phase head. This restriction (the exact counterpart of the familiar c-command cum phasemate requirement that is imposed on identical copies of a single category under Internal Merge) explains a variety of hitherto poorly understood properties of the noun phrase. The set of elements that are eligible to serve as nondative possessors in Hungarian possessive DPs is shown to fall out from the recursion restriction: all and only those possessors that are not as large as DP can be placed in the caseless possessor position in the immediate c-command domain of the D head of the possessive noun phrase; dative possessors are in the specifier position of the possessive DP, not c-commanded by its D head and hence immune to the recursion restriction. The recursion restriction sheds new light on the syntax of the possessive noun phrase, the nature of possessor drop, and the structure and distribution of demonstratives. The analysis also presents an empirical case for labeling of XP–YP structures via ϕ-feature sharing.
... It is well known that the relative order of agreement markers with respect to other morphemes shows considerable cross-linguistic variation both in the clause and within the noun phrase (see Ouhalla, 1991;Julien, 2002and Ouali, 2011 for the clause and Moravcsik, 2003 for the noun phrase, among others). This paper examines why the Hungarian NP exhibits possessive agreement > case order while the PP shows the opposite, case > possessive agreement order. ...
This paper inquires into two issues of Hungarian PPs. Firstly, when Hungarian pronouns bear an oblique case, the case marker must be followed by possessive agreement. Secondly, this pronoun-case-agreement order contrasts with the order found in garden variety possessive structures: ordinary possessive DPs feature the order noun-agreement-case. The goal of this paper is to offer an account of these puzzling phenomena. I argue that a PP structure in which PPs are projected from a silent place noun and the Ground is merged as the possessor of place (Terzi 2005, 2008, 2010; Botwinik-Rotem 2008; Botwinik-Rotem and Terzi 2008; Pantcheva 2008; Cinque 2010a; Noonan 2010, and Nchare and Terzi 2014) allows an enlightening analysis of the appearance and position of the possessive agreement in PPs. I also discuss how certain surface differences between PPs and ordinary possessive constructions can be accounted for while maintaining the possessive analysis of PPs. By showing that a PP structure with a possessive core yields a natural account of the intricate Hungarian data, the paper strengthens the case for a possessive-based approach to PPs in Universal Grammar.
... In the above example, the postposition liye is labeled as BEN, i.e., the benefactive marker. The term "benefactive marker" is not in common use, but we do find it in the literature as Heine & Kuteva (2002), Trask (1997) and Moravcsik (2003) have used the term. Hence, if the beneficiary role is marked by any form that is different from the dative marker, such marker is termed as the beneficative marker in the context of this dissertation. ...
... (The dative nek-is an exception here, having 3rd person neki for the expected neke.) The stem of the case postposition is sometimes identical to (an allomorph of) the corresponding nominal case marker, but usually it shows partial or total suppletion (Moravcsik 2003a:161). The system is described by KVF:270f. ...
Hungarian nouns take some seventeen or so suffixal case inflections, e.g. ház ‘house (nominative)’ ∼ ház-ban ‘in a house (inessive)’. Personal pronouns have corresponding case-marked forms but these are not formed by means of suffixal case inflections. Instead, postposition-like stems expressing the individual cases are inflected for each pronoun’s person and number in exactly the same way that nouns inflect for possessor agreement or true postpositions inflect for a pronominal complement (inessive benn-e ‘in him’, benn-ük ‘in them; cf. könyv-e ‘his book’, könyv-ük ‘their book’ from the noun könyv; mögött-e ‘behind him’, mögött-ük ‘behind them’ from the postposition mögött). This manner of case marking embodies a highly unusual pattern of ‘functor-argument reversal’, which is problematic for many models of morphosyntax. In our account of this phenomenon, we adopt the modification of Stump’s (2001) Paradigm Function Morphology proposed by Stump (2002); this modification (‘PFM2’) distinguishes form paradigms (expressing morphological properties) from content paradigms (expressing syntactic properties). We also distinguish absolute forms from (bound) conjunct forms of the case postpositions. Pronominal case forms are built on the case postpositions’ absolute forms and a rule of paradigm linkage that effects functor-argument reversal guarantees that their person-number inflection realizes the content of each pronoun.
... Just like Turkish, all of Hungarian inflectional morphology seems to be suffixal (with the possible exception of verbal prefixes). Some Hungarian postpositions, as in the case of Turkish postpositions, also govern the case of the preceding nominal (Rounds 2001; Moravcsik 2003). The examples in (19) illustrate some possible postpositional phrases in ...
This article investigates the morphologization of postpositions and presents structural properties of Turkish postpositions and their frequency of occurrence. Turkish postpositional phrases provide chunks comprised of a frequently co-occurring case suffix on the complement followed by a postposition. According to the Linear Fusion Hypothesis (Bybee 2002), such chunks provide ideal conditions for phonological fusion. In contrast to this view, this paper shows that there is no fusion between the frequently co-occurring case suffixes and postpositions. Instead, postpositions following an uninflected form of complement have a greater chance of turning into case suffixes or clitics than those following a case-inflected form. Case suffixes serve as constant indicators of a word boundary before postpositions, thereby blocking the bonding between the postposition and the complement. Simple frequency and linearity, therefore, cannot be the sole conditions in the morphologization of postpositions.
... The methodological principles required for the description of the possessive de- clension in Erzya parallel work in the MORPHO-SEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF THE HUNGARIAN NOUN PHRASE by Moravcsik (2003). Her work is quite compatible with the prepara- tory morpho-semantic evaluation required in the construction of a nite-state two-level morphological parser, such as implemented in the Open Morphology of the Helsinki Finite-State Transducer (<http://www.ling.helsinki. ...
This dissertation is a synchronic description of adnominal person in the highly synthetic morphological system of Erzya as attested in extensive Erzya-language written-text corpora consisting of nearly 140 publications with over 4.5 million words and over 285,000 unique lexical items. Insight for this description have been obtained from several source grammars in German, Russian, Erzya, Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian, as well as bounteous discussions in the understanding of the language with native speakers and grammarians 1993 2010. Introductory information includes the discussion of the status of Erzya as a lan- guage, the enumeration of phonemes generally used in the transliteration of texts and an in-depth description of adnominal morphology. The reader is then made aware of typological and Erzya-specifc work in the study of adnominal-type person. Methods of description draw upon the prerequisite information required in the development of a two-level morphological analyzer, as can be obtained in the typological description of allomorphic variation in the target language. Indication of original author or dialect background is considered important in the attestation of linguistic phenomena, such that variation might be plotted for a synchronic description of the language. The phonological description includes the establishment of a 6-vowel, 29-consonant phoneme system for use in the transliteration of annotated texts, i.e. two phonemes more than are generally recognized, and numerous rules governing allophonic variation in the language. Erzya adnominal morphology is demonstrated to have a three-way split in stem types and a three-layer system of non-derivative affixation. The adnominal-affixation layers are broken into (a) declension (the categories of case, number and deictic marking); (b) nominal conjugation (non-verb grammatical and oblique-case items can be conjugated), and (c) clitic marking. Each layer is given statistical detail with regard to concatenability. Finally, individual subsections are dedicated to the matters of: possessive declension compatibility in the distinction of sublexica; genitive and dative-case paradigmatic defectivity in the possessive declension, where it is demonstrated to be parametrically diverse, and secondary declension, a proposed typology modifiers without nouns , as compatible with adnominal person. Väitöskirjatyöni on synkroninen kuvaus ersän kielen monipuolisesta omistusliitteiden käytöstä. Tutkimusaineistona on käytetty ersänkielisiä tekstikorpuksia, jotka koostuvat lähes 140 julkaisusta, yli 4,5 miljoonasta sanasta ja yli 285000 erillisestä sanamuodosta. Kuvauksen pohjana ovat erikieliset ersän kieliopit. Keskusteluilla niin ersää äidinkielenään puhuvien kuin muiden kielioppien kirjoittajien kanssa vuosina 1993 2010 on ollut tärkeä merkitys sille, miten työ kokonaisuudessaan on muotoutunut. Väitöskirjan alkuosassa pohditaan ersän kielen asemaa ja sen tulevaisuutta. Myös ersän äännejärjestelmän kuvaus sekä perusteellinen ja monipuolinen ersän nominaalilausekkeiden rakenteiden kuvaus sisältyy väitöskirjan alkuosaan. Luvussa 1.3. käsitellään persoonatutkimuksen taustaa ja tutkimuksia, jotka koskevat typologiaa ja eri kieliopeissa käsiteltyjä ersän persoonarakenteita. Kuvauksen menetelmissä (luku 2.) on hyödynnetty kielen morfologisen tason kuvausta varten kehitettyä kaksitasomallia, jota voidaan käyttää sanamuotojen morfologisessa analyysissa. Tätä analyysia voidaan taas hyödyntää ersän allomorfisen variaation typologisesta kuvauksesta. Hypoteesina on, että tekstin alkuperäisen kirjoittajan taustaa ja myös murretaustaa koskeva tieto on tärkeä kielellisten ilmiöiden kuvauksissa; näiden tietojen käyttäminen mahdollistaa kielen variaation synkronisen kuvauksen. Fonologiseen kuvaukseen (luku 3.) kuuluu 6-vokaalinen ja 29-konsonanttinen foneemijärjestelmä (2 uutta), jota on käytetty automaattisesti jäsennettyjen tekstien tarkekirjoituksessa. Lisäksi tarjotaan lukuisia sääntöjä, joiden avulla kuvataan allofonista vaihtelua. Ersän nominaalilausekkeiden taivutus esitetään kolmena kerrostumana. Nämä kerrostumat jaetaan (luku 4.2.1.-3.) substiivityyppiseen, johon sisältyy sijan, luvun ja deiksiksen merkintä, (luku 4.2.4.) nominaalikonjugaatioon: tämä koskee ersän nominatiivi- ja oblikvisijaisia nomineja, postpositioita, adverbeja ja infinitiivejä, ja (luku 4.2.5.) partikkelien merkintään. Jokaisen kerrostuman kuvauksessa esitetään tilastollista tietoa siitä, miten eri elementit voidaan liittää toisiinsa. Erikseen käsitellään luvussa 4.3. possessiivitaivutuksessa esiintyviä sijamuotoja suhteessa semanttisiin alileksikoihin, luvussa 4.4. possessiivitaivutuksen genetiivin ja datiivin vajaaparadigmaisuutta ja parametrista eroavaisuutta, ja luvussa 4.5 laajennettua modifioija ilman pääsanoja typologiaa, ja sen yhteen sopivuus adnominaalisen persoonan kanssa.
This chapter examines possessive DPs and the functional projections involved in their structure. I discuss the position of the possessive suffix, the possessive agreement and the possessor. I depart from the mainstream analysis of Hungarian possessive structures on two important points: I suggest that inalienable possessors are merged lower than alienable possessors, and I propose that the possessive agreement features are hosted by a functional projection whose interpretable feature content is referential anchoring.
This chapter explores the principal phenomena surrounding Hungarian personal pronouns and proposes modifications of their standard analyses on many points, especially in the case of plural pronouns. I first introduce the associative plural morpheme and discuss its semantic contribution as well as its position in the functional sequence. Then I turn to personal pronouns. After discussing their general syntactic and morphological properties, I proceed to examine the functional projections involved in their structure. In contrast to the mainstream view, I suggest that the plurality of first and second person pronouns comes from the Associative Plural head rather than the Num head. In the case of third person pronouns, I distinguish between strong and weak pronouns and propose distinct structures for them.
Overabundance is defined as the situation in which two (or more) inflectional forms are available to realize the same cell in an inflectional paradigm. The paper presents a general introduction to overabundance, using the Canonical Typology framework. After an overview of ways in which overabundance can occur in paradigms, several criteria are introduced and discussed that allow us to establish a canonical typology of overabundance. Furthermore, various types of conditions on the selection of one or another of the forms in a relation of overabundance are reviewed. Studies of several cases from different languages are used to illustrate more and less canonical, and more or less conditioned, cases of overabundance.
This dissertation provides a novel perspective on direct object marking. The theory is developed in the Nanosyntactic framework on the basis of Hungarian data. It is then extended to lay the foundations for a nanosyntactic analysis of direct object marking cross-linguistically.
Case marking of the object is often claimed to be driven specifically by two referential properties of the object, animacy and definiteness. Data from 744 languages, however, provide typological evidence that there is no universal preference for object case marking to be driven by these properties, but at the same time provide strong evidence that object case marking tends to be restricted in some way rather than be generalized across all objects. I argue that the independence of object case marking from these two semantic-pragmatic properties may be explained by the instability of their relationship, and that economy provides a feasible explanation for restricting case marking to only some objects.
Programmatic proposals are presented for identifying the boundary between stem and affix in morphologically complex words. This is part of the wider, largely unresearched, problem of segmenting words into morphs. Two principles are proposed for expediting stem segmentation: the Strictly Morphomic Stem Hypothesis (‘all stems are morphomic’) and the Stem Maximization Principle (‘a putative inflection must unambiguously realize a coherent set of morphosyntactic properties, otherwise it is part of a morphomic stem’). It is proposed that there should be a separate stem formation component with essentially the same architecture as the inflectional component to define members of the stem space.
The dative reanalysis ‘origins’ explanation for prenominal periphrastic possessive constructions (PPPCs) in Dutch has been maintained for well over a century. This paper brings new evidence to bear on this hypothesis, arguing that while genitive relational case marking on the possessor NP in earlier Dutch PPPCs is clearly attested, we lack evidence that the dative was used in this way. Instead, two types of case marking strategies are in use in earlier Dutch PPPCs — one relational and one concordial — as a solution to case conflict in instances which would otherwise give rise to double case marking. Historical and present-day dialect data from German is also examined to address the common assumption that developments in Dutch PPPCs mirrored those in German. Similar to Dutch, clear evidence attests to genitive relational case marking in earlier German PPPCs.
One of the most striking trends across linguistic research in recent years has been the examination of the interfaces between the various subcomponents of the language faculty. Yet, approaches to these interfaces across different theoretical frameworks differ substantially. This volume pulls together research into Morphology and its interfaces from researchers employing a variety of different theoretical and methodological perspectives: Morphology is a diverse field, and rather than aiming to collect works sharing a particular approach or framework of assumptions, this collection instead captures the diversity and provides an overview of the state of the research field while also addressing particular empirical phenomena with up-to-date analyses. The articles collected provide case studies from a diverse variety of languages revealing properties of the interfaces that morphology shares with syntax, semantics, phonology, and the lexicon, while the volume's inclusive cross-theoretical approach will serve to introduce readers to the findings of alternative frameworks and methodologies.
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