Pronominal Possessors and Syntactic Functions in the Hungarian Possessive Noun Phrase

Laczkó, Tibor and Rákosi, György (2019) Pronominal Possessors and Syntactic Functions in the Hungarian Possessive Noun Phrase. In: Proceedings of the LFG'19 Conference. LFG Online Proceedings (19). Australian National University, Canberra, pp. 149-169.

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Abstract

In this paper we develop an LFG analysis of the binding relations of Hungarian anaphors when they occur within possessive DPs. The reflexive is subject to the Minimal Complete Nucleus Condition, and the reciprocal is subject to the Minimal Finite Domain Condition. When either the reflexive or the reciprocal pronoun occurs within a possessive DP, neither of them can be anaphorically bound from outside if this DP contains the definite article (Rákosi 2017, to appear). Our analysis has two crucial aspects. On the one hand, we introduce a new feature: “binding domain delimiter” associated with the lexical form of the definite article. We use this feature as a negative off-path constraint in modelling the relevant binding relations. On the other hand, following Laczkó (2004, 2009), we assume that within Hungarian possessive DPs there are two [–r] grammatical functions available to arguments of complex event nominals: POSS and SUBJ. Both can be overtly realized by either the nominative or the dative possessor constituent, and, in addition, SUBJ can also be PRO. Thus, we create a DP-internal antecedent for the anaphors in a principled manner, which, in turn, can be controlled from outside the DP.

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