Anatomy of Hungarian aspectual particles

Aspectual particles. We explore the behaviour and morphosyntax of a subset of aspectual particles in Hungarian, including meg and még. We argue that in a number of cases, the properties of the specific particles are predictable. In cases where no specific predictions are possible, we note that the attested behaviour is expected. The Hungarian facts are reminiscent of patterns found in Hindi and Nepali. Not only does this investigation address the development and internal structure of aspectual particles in Hungarian specifically, but it also has wider implications for understanding aspectual particles in natural language more generally. Hungarian meg. The particles considered in this paper are derivatives of meg (historical data are from Zaicz 2006). In the description, we only distinguish present-day Hungarian from earlier Hungarian (in most cases, this is old Hungarian). Let us consider various forms of meg first. Note that it is plausible, given the characterizations of earlier interpretation, that meg1 and meg2 were originally identical — certainly in earlier texts they are homographs. According to Zaicz 2006, még derives from meg2. (1) a. meg1 (particle): “back (direction)”; present day: perfectivizer b. meg2: “again, back (direction)”; present day: “and” (cp. és) (2) még : (from meg2 “again, back”); present day: “still” The ‘again’ / ‘back’ ambiguity is expected; similar facts are seen in English (esp. early English; see Beck 2005, Beck & Gergel 2015, Gergel et al 2016) as well as in Indo-Aryan languages like Gujarati (Patel-Grosz & Beck 2014). The meaning relevant for the emergence of other forms, we suggest, is ‘again’, which can be defined as given below in (3) (cp. Beck 2005). The other senses discussed below (“still” &c) are more restricted versions of “again”, i.e. they entail “again”. (3) JagainKc,g,w = λti.λel.λP⟨l,⟨i,t⟩⟩ : ∃t′ ≺ t[∃e′[P (e′, t′)]].P (e)(t) = 1 Még and its relation to meg1/2 Még is ambiguous, including temporal & marginality interpretations: (4) János J-nom még still (mindig) always olvas reads