Abstract
This chapter illustrates various semantic types of quantifiers, such as generalized existential, generalized universal, proportional, definite and partitive which are defined in the Quantifier Questionnaire in Chapter 1. It partitions the expression of the semantic types into morpho-syntactic classes: Adverbial type quantifiers and Nominal (or Determiner) type quantifiers. For the various semantic and morpho-syntactic types of quantifiers it also distinguishes syntactically simple and syntactically complex quantifiers, as well as issues of distributivity and scope interaction, classifiers and measure expressions, and existential constructions. The chapter describes structural properties of determiners and quantified noun phrases in Hungarian, both in terms of internal structure (morphological or syntactic) and distribution.
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Notes
- 1.
In addition to el, olvas may appear with other particles; the interpretation is somewhat different (for example, with fel ‘up’, the meaning is ‘read aloud’ and with meg ‘perfective’, the resulting interpretation is ‘count up’).
- 2.
The word bármelyik is morphologically complex; it contains the wh-word melyik ‘which’ and the morpheme bár ‘any’.
- 3.
Similarly to bármelyik in the preceding example, bárki is morphologically complex, containing bár ‘any’ and the wh-word ki ‘who’.
- 4.
The determiner mindegyik may appear with a mass noun if the latter has a kind reading. With this coerced interpretation, (36c) is acceptable.
- 5.
- 6.
The verbs differ in object agreement. Indefinite objects trigger the ‘indefinite’ agreement and universals as well as negated quantifiers trigger the ‘definite’ agreement.
- 7.
The word annyi is glossed as either ‘as many’ or ‘as much’ because the Hungarian equivalent can appear with either count or mass nouns.
- 8.
The suffix -as in hármas yields an adjective from the numeral.
- 9.
Both examples are multiply ambiguous, as they permit a participant, temporal and spatial key reading as well; see the discussion immediately below.
- 10.
Néhány ‘several’ is morphologically complex. It contains the suffix hány, which means ‘how many/much’ is isolation (cf. vala-hány ‘some’). The prefix né- has an existential interpretation; it is also found in né-ha (né-if) ‘sometimes, infrequently’ and né-hol (né-where) ‘someplace’.
- 11.
See Section 8.9.3 on more details concerning the suffix -nyi.
- 12.
Torta ‘cake’ is a count rather than a mass noun; it can appear with plural marking (torták ‘cakes’), and the resulting interpretation is that of multiple cakes rather than multiple types (or individual portions) of cakes.
- 13.
If the classifiers darab ‘piece’ vs. adag ‘portion’ are taken to identify count and mass nouns, respectively, then some nouns are ambiguous. Csokoládé ‘chocolate’ and torta ‘cake’ can appear with both classifiers. Ignoring coerced interpretations, bor ‘wine’ and lekvár ‘jam’ are only acceptable with adag ‘portion’, while könyv ‘book’ or vers ‘poem’ only permits the classifier darab ‘piece’. The former are thus mass nouns, while the latter are count.
- 14.
- 15.
There are no vala-NPIs that correspond to the first two NPIs.
- 16.
The suffix -es, glossed as ‘adj’, yields an adjective.
- 17.
The suffix -nyáj is a bound morpheme which only appears in mindnyájan ‘everyone’.
- 18.
Disregarding A-quantifiers, comparable vala- and né- expressions systematically differ in that vala- expressions have an existential or non-specific interpretation. Né- expressions generally require multiple referents and denote a relatively small number (between 3 and 5).
- 19.
Csupa is similar to German lauter, discussed in Eckardt (2006).
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Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge our language consultants who provided judgements for some of the examples, especially Barbara Egedi, Beáta Gyuris and György Rákosi as well as an anonymous reviewer and the editors.
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Csirmaz, A., Szabolcsi, A. (2012). Quantification in Hungarian. In: Keenan, E., Paperno, D. (eds) Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 90. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2681-9_8
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