Eseménynaptár

Részletek

Predicative possession in Hungarian is expressed by the help of existential BE, a dative possessor
and a nominative theme. As copular BE is zero in the present indicative, it is excluded from
possessive sentences, where BE is always lexicalized. Szabolcsi (1992, 1994) derives possessive
BE-sentences in Hungarian from existential BE with a single possessive DP argument, in which
the possessor appears either in the nominative or in the dative case.
The paper argues that Hungarian possessive BE and existential BE are both dyadic unaccusatives,
whose VP-layer resembles psych-predicates of the piacere-type (Belletti&Rizzi 1988). The
proposed analysis derives the Definiteness Restriction from the lexical-semantic properties of
possessive and existential BE, preserving the structural difference between monadic unaccusative
copular BE vs. dyadic unaccusative possessive and existential BE.