This article explores the syntax of radically truncated clauses in colloquial Hungarian. I argue that radically truncated clauses arise when, in informal speech situations and under time pressure, the derivation is terminated prematurely, at the VP level, and the bare VP (lacking any of the higher functional projections) is sent to spellout (PF) and semantic interpretation (LF). Due to their radically truncated nature, such clauses provide us a unique window through which it becomes possible to explore the fine structure of the minimal VP in itself. I show that radically‐truncated‐clause data are highly relevant to various theoretical questions, such as the head–complement branching order, the adjunction analysis of topicalization and quantification, and the split‐DP proposal. I argue that observations about radically truncated clauses support the availability of OV as a nonderived, basic word order, that they are in line with the adjunction analysis of topicalization and quantifier raising, and that they corroborate the split‐DP analysis of arguments. The discussion is supported with evidence from corpus data and with rigorous statistical analysis of grammaticality‐judgment‐survey results.
This paper provides a new analysis for the semantics and pragmatics of weak (permission/ acquiescence) imperatives. In a significant modification to the To-Do-List (or minimal semantics -strong pragmatic) theory of imperatives (Portner 2007;von Fintel & Iatridou 2017), I argue that in weak imperatives, the utterance of the imperative is directed not at the To-Do-List of the addressee, but at a separate list which contains the set of possible courses of action contemplated by the addressee (which I term the List of Actions Under Consideration by the addressee). I support this claim by a new detailed analysis of free-choice item licensing in imperatives (based on the dependent indefinite analysis of FCIs put forth by Giannakidou 2001). I also show how my model correctly predicts that strong imperatives are felicitous out of the blue whereas weak imperatives need the prejacent to be already part of the context. It is also pointed out how this new approach helps us cut through the familiar controversy of whether weak imperatives can create obligations. Finally, I argue that the strong vs. weak imperative distinction is orthogonal to the degree of speaker endorsement (pace von Fintel & Iatridou 2017): this claim is also supported by a new look at data from Rhaetoromance (Poletto & Zanuttini 2003), where the strong vs. weak imperative distinction is encoded overtly on the morphosyntactic level in a binary fashion.
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