6.3 Ellipsis in Hungarian
6.3.1 Sluicing and VP-ellipsis
The question arises whether and to what extent the analysis given in §6.2 can be applied to other languages, such as Hungarian; in English, the higher copy of the quantified expression is regularly eliminated in the [Spec,CP] position due to the Overtness Requirement but this is not so in languages that have overt comparative operators. Yet, the final linear structure of comparative subclauses in Hungarian tends to be strikingly similar to their English counterparts: that is, only contrastive elements are preserved and the quantified expression is not visible either.
First of all, let us consider examples containing a given verb: in all of these cases there is a synonymous pair of sentences where one contains a full subclause and the other shows the result of ellipsis. I will argue that in these elliptical examples the [E] feature is located on a functional head right above the TP/IP and lower than the CP, and the effects are essentially similar to sluicing and VP-ellipsis in English.
Consider the following examples for predicative structures:
(28) a. Mari
‘Mary was taller than Peter.’
b. Mari
‘Mary was taller than Peter.’
The sentence in (28a) represents the full structure of a predicative comparative subclause, that is, the subclause where no ellipsis has taken place. By contrast, the one in (28b) is the result of ellipsis, since only a contrastive DP (Péter) remains overt and both the finite verb (volt) and the quantified expression (amilyen ma-gas) are elided. As far as their semantics is concerned, the two sentences are equivalent. The question that arises is how the quantified expression is deleted since Comparative Deletion is not applicable (the operator being visible); fur-thermore, (28a) suggests that the quantified expression and the finite verb are not even adjacent.
Before attempting to provide an answer to this, let us see some examples for nominal comparatives:
‘Mary bought more cats than Peter did.’
b. Mari
‘Mary bought more cats than Peter did.’
The (more) complete string is given in (29a) and the one in (29b) is the result of ellipsis affecting the quantified DP (ahány macskát) and the lexical verb (vett).
The picture is similar in the case of attributive structures:
(30) a. Mari
‘Mary bought a bigger cat than Peter did.’
b. Mari
‘Mary bought a bigger cat than Peter did.’
Again, (30a) shows the complete string containing the finite verb and the quan-tified DP (amilyen nagy macskát), while in (30b) these elements have been elided from the subordinate clause. Both in (29) and in (30), it seems that the quantified expression and the finite verb are not adjacent. Therefore, the question posed in connection with (28) remains: that is, how both of these elements can be elided if the elements are not adjacent. There are two basic possibilities. First, there might be two different processes involved (even though the elimination of the highest copy of the quantified expression cannot be the result of Comparative Deletion).
Second, there may be a single process that is able to affect both elements that are adjacent at some point. In what follows, I will argue for the latter.
That there is indeed a correlation between the deletion of the quantified ex-pression and the finite verb is shown by the phenomenon descriptively termed Comparative Verb Gapping by Bacskai-Atkari & Kántor (2012). This is the ob-servation “that if the operator is deleted, the finite verb must also be deleted”
(Bacskai-Atkari & Kántor 2012: 49). In other words, while examples (28)–(30) clearly show that structures containing both the quantified expression and the finite verb are grammatical and so are ones where both of these elements are elided, the absence of an overt quantified expression seems to require the dele-tion of the finite verb. This is demonstrated by the ungrammaticality of the fol-lowing sentences (see also the examples given in Bacskai-Atkari & Kántor 2012:
54–56):
‘Mary was taller than Peter.’
b. * Mari
‘Mary bought more cats than Peter did.’
c. * Mari
‘Mary bought a bigger cat than Peter did.’
The ungrammaticality of the examples in (31) shows that the deletion of the quantified expression should affect the given finite verb as well.
The core argument of Bacskai-Atkari & Kántor (2012: 56–59) is that when there is no overt quantified expression in a Hungarian comparative subclause, it is so because the operator failed to undergo movement to the [Spec,CP] position before spell-out to PF. However, it is ungrammatical to have a phrase containing a relative operator in its base position; more precisely, there is an unchecked [+rel] feature on the operator, and the construction can be saved only by deletion (Bacskai-Atkari & Kántor 2012: 58).
Interestingly, the phenomenon is not restricted to comparative subclauses but can be found in certain relative clauses as well; consider the following set of examples (based on Bacskai-Atkari & Kántor 2012: 59, ex. 32):
(32) a. Ugyanazt
‘I am reading the same book that Peter is reading.’
b. Ugyanazt
‘I am reading the same book that Peter is reading.’
c. * Ugyanazt
‘I am reading the same book that Peter is reading.’
d. Ugyanazt
‘I am reading the same book that Peter is reading.’
The relative clauses in (32) differ from ordinary relative clauses in that they also contain the complementiser mint ‘as’. However, the structure is not com-parative: only non-degree equation is involved in the sense that a given entity is identified with another one, but note that there are no degree expressions either in the matrix clause or in the subordinate clause. The point is that since there is an overt complementiser at the left periphery, the relative operatoramit ‘what’
may be deleted, which would not be possible otherwise. Since Hungarian lacks zero relative operators, the absence of an overt relative operator from a relative clause can only be the result of deletion.
The full version is given in (32a), containing both the operator and the finite verb (olvas); note that the verb can be elided even if the operator is overt, as shown by (32b) and the same would be true for comparatives as well (cf. Bacskai-Atkari & Kántor 2012: 59). The ungrammatical configuration in (32c) lacks an overt operator but the finite verb is present; finally, the construction in which
both the operator and the finite verb are deleted is again grammatical, as in (32d).
This reinforces the hypothesis that the absence of the operator (or of the phrase containing the operator) is due to some ellipsis process that takes place in the verbal domain: that is, when the operator fails to move up to the [Spec,CP] posi-tion.
It has to be highlighted that ordinary relative clauses in Hungarian do not con-tain the complementisermint‘as’: they are introduced by a zero complementiser and contain overt relative operators, there being no zero relative operators in Hungarian. If, however, there is an overtmintin the subclause, the relative oper-ator is licensed to be absent (under the conditions discussed in connection with (32) above) since there is an overt marker introducing the subordinate clause.
In other words, the sentences in (32a) and (32b) would be grammatical without mint as well. It is also worth mentioning that the pronoun in the matrix clause is a composite of the prefixugyan- ‘same’ and the pronounazt ‘that.acc’ but it could appear in the simple form ofazt as well; however, for most of my infor-mants, the constructions sound more natural with the emphatic version given in (32). Since the pronoun is also marked for case, the DP containing the lexical noun (a könyvet ‘the book’) can also be left out. The variations concerning rel-ative clause constructions containing the matrix pronominal elementugyanazt and the overt relative pronounamitare summarised in (33) below:
(33) Ugyanazt
‘I am reading the same (book) that Peter is reading.’
Interestingly, the same options are available for comparatives expressing equal-ity; these contain the matrix clausal pronounolyan‘so’ orugyanolyan‘self-same’
and if there is an overt comparative operator in the subclause, the complemen-tisermintcan be left out, as in (34):
(34) Ugyanolyan
‘The book I am reading is like the one Peter is reading.’
Again, the noun can be left out of the matrix clause, provided that the pronoun ugyanolyantakes the relevant case endings (this of course results in a change in the meaning), as given in (35):
(35) Ugyanolyat
‘What I am reading is like what Peter is reading.’
The same option is available in ordinary comparative subclause expressing equality, as illustrated in (36):
(36) Mari
‘Mary is as tall as her mother.’
However, this is not possible in comparatives expressing inequality, as demon-strated by (37):
‘Mary is taller than her mother.’
This shows that there is a difference in the selectional restrictions between the two types: while the degree elementolyanmay select for a comparative sub-clause introduced bymint or by zero, the degree element -bb‘-er’ selects exclu-sively formintas a C head. The requirement to have an overt relative operator in the subordinate clause in the absence ofmintis a requirement that holds in the subclause and is essentially one that makes the presence of some overt clause-type marker necessary: in this respect, a relative operator is sufficient because it is also equipped with the [+rel] feature and in comparatives also with a [+compr]
feature. I will not venture to investigate the difference betweenolyanand -bbin this respect, especially as the phenomenon is attested cross-linguistically and the requirement to have overt complementisers in comparative subclauses express-ing inequality seems to be universally applicable (see Bacskai-Atkari 2016 for a detailed analysis).
Let us now return to the clauses in (28b), (29b) and (30b), repeated here for the sake of convenience in (38):
(38) a. Mari
‘Mary was taller than Peter.’
b. Mari
‘Mary bought more cats than Peter did.’
c. Mari Mary
nagyobb bigger
macskát cat.acc
vett, bought.3sg
mint than
Péter.
Peter
‘Mary bought a bigger cat than Peter did.’
Bacskai-Atkari & Kántor (2012: 57–59) argue in these constructions containing ellipsis sluicing takes place: therefore, they all contain an [E] feature on the F (focus) head and thus the complement of the F head is elided, as given in (39):4
(39) FP
DPi Péter
F′ F
∅ [E]
TP
tivolt [QPamilyen magas]
tivett [DPahány macskát]
tivett [DPamilyen nagy macskát]
The analysis follows van Craenenbroeck & Lipták (2006), who claim that sluic-ing in Hungarian is carried out by an [E] feature on the F head; on the other hand, it is also a fairly standard assumption that PF may save a construction via deletion, which eliminates some uninterpretable feature (see the discussion in Chapter 4 and also Kennedy & Merchant 2000: 131 and Merchant 2009: 145–151).
As Chapter 3 argued in connection with extractable degree operators, the quantified expression moves up first to the edge of the verbal domain and sub-sequently to [Spec,CP], and a contrastive lexical AP is preferably stranded in [Spec,FP]. In the elliptical examples, however, there is obviously no movement to the edge of the verbal domain since then the lexical element in the quantified expression should precede the focussed DPPéter, which is not the case. Alterna-tively, the ellipsis domain could be larger by way of placing the [E] feature on a C head, but then the entire subclause would have to be elided. Since the FP is a functional projection above the TP, the ellipsis process is indeed similar to En-glish sluicing. On the other hand, since the FP is the highest projection to which the verb may move and the constituent located in [Spec,TP] regularly moves up
4Bacskai-Atkari & Kántor (2012) identify the FP as a FocP, and no TP below it, just a functional vP, in line with more traditional analyses of the Hungarian clause. I follow É. Kiss (2008a) in assuming the presence of a TP below the FP, but I differ from her analysis in that I do not treat the FP as a designated Focus projection. This has the advantage that the ability of the F head to host an [E] feature follows naturally from its status as a left-peripheral functional head.
to the [Spec,FP] position (cf. É. Kiss 2008a), locating the [E] feature on F is also similar to VP-ellipsis in English. The point is that if there is an [E] feaure on the F head, the verb does not move up to F, unlike in non-elliptical constructions.
On the other hand, note that the informational structural status of the quanti-fied expression does not affect the ellipsis processes as in English. The reason be-hind this is that they are not the lower copies of a moved constituent that may be realised overtly under special conditions, but are the only copies since movement has not taken place. Furthermore, due to the presence of an overt operator with unchecked features, they are ungrammatical in their base position irrespectively of whether they are contrastive or not. Consequently, elliptical comparatives of the type in (39) are only possible if the quantified expression is given since the elimination of an F-marked phrase would violate recoverability.