The syntactic position and quantificational force of FCIs in Hungarian

Abstract

The topic of my paper is the syntax and the quantificational force of free-choice items (FCIs) in Hungarian. FCIs such as any have been at the forefront of research interest in the past decades (e.g., Ladusaw 1979; Kadmon & Landman 1993; Giannakidou 2001). The close interdependence of syntactic, semantic and even pragmatic considerations makes the study of FCIs one of the most interesting research programmes. Earlier investigations of the syntax and semantics of FCIs in Hungarian include Hunyadi (1991; 2002), Abrusán (2007) and Szabó (2012). In my paper, I show that FCIs in Hungarian occupy the syntactic position associated with distributive quantifiers (É. Kiss 2010). Furthermore, I examine the quantificational force of FCIs by the well-known battery of quantification tests (for a previous application for Hungarian, cf. Surányi 2006): almost-modification, modification by exceptive phrase, donkey anaphora, predicative use, is-modification, incorporation and split reading with modals. My findings of mixed quantificational behaviour provide further corroboration for the analysis of FCIs as quantificationally underspecified intensional dependent indefinites.