Aspectual cognate objects in Hungarian

Abstract

This paper examines aspectual cognate objects in Hungarian. Its main contribution lies in the syntactic and semantic analysis of three classes of accusative pseudo-objects, which are literally not cognate with the prototypical unergative verb they accompany but are demonstrated to be non-subcategorized and non-thematic elements that have the same role and the same syntactic and semantic properties as aspectual cognate objects in languages where these nominals are both semantically and morphologically related to the verb. In addition, the paper fills a typologically unexpected gap, considering that Hungarian, as a strong satellite-framed language, is predicted to have aspectual cognate object constructions.

The syntax of inner aspect in Hungarian

“…[12] Other subclasses of pseudo-objects are reflexives such as magát 'himself.ACC' in a resultative construction like álomba sírta magát '(he) cried himself to sleep' as well as accusative-marked temporal (két órát ʻtwo hour.ACCʼ), spatial (két métert ʻtwo meter.ACCʼ) or other measure phrases (kicsit ʻlittle.ACCʼ or sokat ʻa lot.ACCʼ); see Csirmaz (2008b) or Farkas (2021). The analysis proposed in this paper, however, does not extend to POs other than egyet ʻone.ACCʼ, egy jót ʻone good.ACCʼ or egy nagyot ʻone big.ACCʼ.…”

“…They are also non-subcategorized and non-thematic objects, which do not denote an affected entity. 12 They stand in contrast to subcategorized, referential and thematic internal arguments, as shown by the test of passivization below; see also Csirmaz (2008b), Farkas & Kardos (2018) or Farkas (2019Farkas ( , 2021:…”

“…The example in (40b) shows that the PO does not denote a referential entity, one that could be interpreted as the undergoer directly affected by the event of the verb, therefore it cannot appear in the derived subject position of passive structures, contra the object in (40a). For further syntactic tests that demonstrate the nonsubcategorized, non-referential and non-thematic quality of the PO, see Farkas (2021).…”

“…objects (CCOs) (É. Kiss 2004Kiss , 2005Kiss , 2008aKiefer 2006;Kardos 2012Kardos , 2016Kardos , 2019Farkas & Kardos 2018, 2019aFarkas 2019Farkas , 2020aFarkas , 2021Hegedűs 2020), there is no consensus on the right analysis regarding their syntactic behaviour. In this work, our main goal is to attribute the event aspectual interpretations associated with the different marking elements to the syntactic configuration characterizing these elements.…”

“…Although there is a sizeable literature on various aspectual markers such as verbal particles (VPrts), result predicates (RPs), pseudo-objects (POs) or created/consumed objects (CCOs) (É. Kiss 2004, 2005, 2008a, b; Kiefer 2006; Kardos 2012, 2016, 2019; Farkas & Kardos 2018, 2019a, b; Farkas 2019, 2020a, 2021; Hegedűs 2020), there is no consensus on the right analysis regarding their syntactic behaviour. In this work, our main goal is to attribute the event aspectual interpretations associated with the different marking elements to the syntactic configuration characterizing these elements.…”