Kenesei István: Argument Structure in Hungary (Budapest, 2001)
Tibor Laczkó: A comprehensive analysis of -ó/-ő, a multifunctional deverbal nominalizer in Hungarian
Tibor Laczkó 5 Concluding remarks The most important aspects of my analysis of -Ó nominals in Hungarian have been as follows. • These nominal forms are not derived by conversion from -Ó participles: instead, they are derived by a separate nominalizing process. • I have distinguished three homophonous -Ó nominalizing suffixes. -Ó, derives nominals which denote the external argument of the input verb (basically: agents, experiencers or instruments). -02 creates nominals denoting the typical location of the action denoted by the input verb. -03 derives simple event nominals. -ót and -02 are absolutely productive and -03 is entirely unproductive in present day Hungarian. • “Occasional” -0| nominals inherit the argument structure of the input verb. “Typical” -Ói nominals are derived from the former by conversion. They do not inherit the argument structure, and they are very often lexicalized in specific meanings. • Locative -02 nominals never inherit the input verb’s argument structure. • The conversion of “typical” -0| nominals and the derivation of locative -02 nominals fundamentally create potential words. As a result, an -Ó nominal sometimes can be three-way ambiguous: ‘typical doer’, ‘typical instrument’ and ‘typical location’. It is always the specific need in a particular communicative situation which determines which of the three potential words will become an actually existing word and, on occasion, whether that actually existing word will become lexicalized or not. References Alberti, Gábor. 1995. “Role Assignment in Hungarian Possessive Constructions”. Approaches to Hungarian 5. Ed. by István Kenesei, 11-28. Szeged: József Attila University. Bresnan, Joan. 1982. “The Passive in Lexical Theory”. The Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations. Ed. by Joan Bresnan, 3-86. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press. Grimshaw, Jane. 1990. Argument Structure. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press. Károly, Sándor. 1956. “Igenévrendszerünk a kódexirodalom első szakaszában”. Nyelvtudományi Értekezések 10. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. Kiefer, Ferenc. 1998. “Alaktan”. Új magyar nyelvtan [New Hungarian Grammar], Ed. by Katalin E. Kiss, Ferenc Kiefer & Péter Siptár, 185-289. Budapest: Osiris. Kiefer, Ferenc ed. 2000a. Strukturális magyar nyelvtan: Morfológia [The Structure of Hungarian: Morphology]. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. Kiefer, Ferenc. 2000b. “A szóösszetétel”. Strukturális magyar nyelvtan: Morfológia [The Structure of Hungarian: Morphology]. Ed. by Ferenc Kiefer, 519-567. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. Komlósy, András. 1992. “Régensek és vonzatok”. Strukturális magyar nyelvtan: Mondattan [The Structure of Hungarian: Syntax]. Ed. by Ferenc Kiefer, 299-527. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. Laczkó, Tibor. 1995. The Syntax of Hungarian Noun Phrases - A Lexical-Functional Approach. Metalinguistica 2. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. 48