Back to restitutives (again): A syntactic account of restitutive and counterdirectional verbal particles in Hungarian

Abstract

This paper discusses two Hungarian verbal particles that belong to the semantic group of repetitive elements. The main focus is on the verbal particle újra ‘again’, which has primarily been discussed as an adverb with repetitive and restitutive meanings (with the exception of Csirmaz 2015) but can be a verbal particle, which is distinct both from the adverb and from most other verbal particles. The verbal particle vissza ‘back’, which expresses counterdirectionality will be claimed to be like typical, primarily directional verbal particles and to be a part of the result component of the argument structure. Újra ‘again’ as a verbal particle is analyzed on a par with some non-directional particles and idiomatic resultative phrases that are inserted into the structure in a functional projection below the external argument.

The syntax of inner aspect in Hungarian

“…In the latter case, there is an intonational break before the postverbal result phrase. If the particle and the result predicate co-occur in the same clause, we claim, along with Hegedűs (2020: 328), that, given that they lexicalise information about the same endpoint, they do not challenge the constraint that an event can be delimited only once (see Tenny 1994).…”

“…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.…”

“… [10] As pointed out by Hegedűs (2020), native speakers have different intuitions as to whether result predicates like that in (37) are contained in the same clause that also contains the verbal particle or they are just an afterthought, in which case they are outside the clause. In the latter case, there is an intonational break before the postverbal result phrase.…”

Syntax of Hungarian

“…For the aspectual reading of gyorsan 'quickly', see Eszes (2009). On the repetitive vs. restitutive readings of újra 'again', see Csirmaz (2015Csirmaz ( , 2016; Hegedűs (2020).…”