Abstract

The paper presents an analysis of the results of three perception experiments that aimed to investigate the scope of postverbal quantifiers in Hungarian. These experiments found no correlations between wide vs. narrow scope readings of postverbal quantifiers and their stressed vs. unstressed pronunciations, contradicting a widespread assumption. In addition to the dominance of scope interpretation that corresponds to the linear order of constituents, previously unnoticed effects of the syntactic or thematic role of the postverbal quantifier and of the type of preverbal operator in the same sentence were found. These might indicate a more complex interaction of several factors or point to a greater role of extra-grammatical effects in determining the scope of quantifiers in Hungarian than previously assumed. The paper also addresses methodological issues that arise in the course of eliciting scope judgments experimentally.

Highlights

  • The paper presents an analysis of the results of three perception experiments that aimed to ­investigate the scope of postverbal quantifiers in Hungarian

  • Nvestigations reported on here were i) to see whether the scope effect discussed by the above authors can be confirmed exntally, and ii) to find out whether the effect is really due to prosody d be attributedArtto. 83s,opmagee 2oofth32er factors known to influence the scGoypureis and Jackson: Scope marking and prosody ators cross-linguistically

  • 3.1.4 Results The results of the two experiments turned out to be interesting in several ways. They contradict the view according to which stress has an effect on the scope of postverbal quantifiers, and second, they indicate that scope judgments might be influenced by other grammatical features whose effects have not yet been investigated for Hungarian

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Summary

Introduction

The paper presents an analysis of the results of three perception experiments that aimed to ­investigate the scope of postverbal quantifiers in Hungarian. In addition to the ­dominance of scope interpretation that corresponds to the linear order of ­constituents, ­previously unnoticed effects of the syntactic or thematic role of the postverbal quantifier and of the type of preverbal operator in the same sentence were found. These might indicate a more complex i­nteraction of several factors or point to a greater role of extra-grammatical effects in ­determining the scope of quantifiers in Hungarian than previously assumed. Spec VP ollowing examIpnlet,hewfhoilclohwcinognteaxianms paleD, PwhiincheacochntaoifnsthaeDpPreinveerabcahl of the preverbal positions indis indicated abocvaet,edthaebsocvoep, ethseosfctohpeesquofanthteifiqcuaatniotinfiaclaetixopnraelsesxiopnressasiroens are unambiguous: a quantifier frameworks discucs-sceodminmSaencdtiionng2anshdarpereÉc.eKdisins’gs aasnsuomthpetrioonnseonaltshoehparsevsecrobpael over it (É. Kiss 2002: 111). of different constituent types, though not necessarily her views on how it should ed

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