DOUBLE FOCUS AND DOUBLE NEGATION IN HUNGARIAN

• Authors: Kenesei Istvan
• Languages of publication: HU

Abstracts

EN

This paper describes a focus-related phenomenon that has not been discussed in the literature to date: the case in which a negated focus is preceded by a question word. The circumstances of its emergence are clarified and the conditions of its occurrence are stated: only discourse-bound question words can figure in such constructions, and it seems to be probable that the reason why multiple foci occurring in positive sentences differ from focus in negative wh-questions is that Hungarian surface sentences must exactly reflect semantic (scope) relations. If the verb were to precede a negated focus, scope problems corroborated by independent evidence would result. It is furthermore explored how the subsystems of grammar force the single possible solution to emerge. Applying a 'copy and deletion' type of movement operations, a better account can be provided for why and how the form of a sentence that serves as a basis for logico-semantic interpretation differs from its phonetic implementation. Finally, a brief overview of possibilities of responses to (multiple) question + negated focus sentences is provided - with the consequence that interesting relationships can be found between the occurrence of contrastive topic and contrastive focus.

Keywords

EN

DOUBLE NEGATION

Discipline

• PHILOLOGY_&_LINGUISTICS: PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS

• Publisher: Society of Hungarian Linguistics
• Journal: Magyar Nyelv (Hungarian Language)
• Year: 2005
• Volume: 101
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 178-196
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Kenesei Istvan

• Istvan Kenesei, for postal address contact the journal editor; www.c3.hu/~magyarnyelv/

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

09HUAAAA070910