Object agreement and locality in Hungarian

Abstract

The paper claims that the two types of object agreement in Hungarian, definiteness agreement and the special lak-agreement form used for the combination of first person singular subject and second person object arguments, are the result of different syntactic operations. The argumentation is based on the different distribution of the two agreement types. To diagnose the nature of the conditions for agreement we use infinitival embedded clauses, at times with multiple embedded constructions. Six different patterns are discussed showing sensitivity to locality. Definiteness agreement turns out to be more restricted than lak-agreement. While the condition for definiteness agreement is the availability of a position where accusative case can be checked, we claim that no such condition holds for lak-agreement.