Open AccessArgument inheritance and left periphery in Hungarian infinitival constructions
Author(s) -
Tibor Szécsényi
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
proceedings of the international conference on head-driven phrase structure grammar
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1535-1793
DOI - 10.21248/hpsg.2013.11
Subject(s) - infinitive , linguistics , word order , verb , mathematics , sentence , argument (complex analysis) , order (exchange) , dependent clause , philosophy , biochemistry , chemistry , finance , economics
Hungarian infinitival constructions have both mono-clausaland bi-clausal properties at the same time. The arguments of the infinitive behave the same way asthe arguments of the finite verb do, but the non-finite verb has its own left periphery. Afterdiscussing the general description of Hungarian sentence structure and presenting an HPSG analysisfor it – including a description of the connection between word order and scope order in theHungarian left periphery – this paper presents an analysis for Hungarian infinitivalconstructions. The analysis lexically distinguishes the left peripheral arguments of the infinitivefrom its complements, and allows the infinitive and its left peripheral arguments to formconstituents, while the complements of the infinitive are inherited to the finite verb.