Anikó Lipták

On event operator movement in English factives

In this paper by Haegeman and Ürögdi (H&Ü for short) Haegeman’s earlier invervention-based account for the lack of main clause phenomena in adverbial clauses is extended to factive complements and other referential types of embedded CPs. The original intervention account is based on the assumption that fronted arguments (an instance of main clause phenomena) are quantificational elements that intervene with quantificational movement of adverbial (wh-)operators of the temporal, spatial or conditional types to Sp,CP in adverbial clauses. The illegitimate configurations that are due to intervention problems (defined in terms of blocking features) are of the following sort:

Passive potential affixation: syntax or lexicon?

In this paper we will argue that contrary to the received view passive potential affixation in Hungarian primarily derives complex syntactic objects rather than adjectives. By means of a number of tests we show the differences between the two classes of items bearing the homophonous affix -hato/hető : one a nonfinite verb form, the other a lexicalized adjective. In addition to a syntactic analysis of this composite affix, a typology is provided for languages that have similar constructions.

Dissecting Adpositional Particle Constructions: Remarks from Ellipsis

This paper contributes to the study of inflected reduplicating adpositional particle constructions by investigating their behavior under ellipsis. It will be shown that just like any separable particle, inflected reduplicating adpositional particles can be severed from the rest of the clause via the phenomenon of particle stranding and this phenomenon has properties that bear on the analysis of these constructions. The novel observations in the domain of ellipsis are predicted by some but not all approaches to inflected adpositional particle constructions, particularly they motivate rethinking some aspects of the syntactic approaches currently available.