The syntax of emphatic positive polarity in Hungarian: Evidence from ellipsis

This paper studies the expression of emphatic positive polarity in Hungarian, providing evidence for an affirmatively specified polarity projection in the left periphery, PolP. The evidence comes from the realm of two ellipsis phenomena: TP-ellipsis flanked by a sentence internal affirmative particle igen and V-stranding ellipsis in polarity contexts, whose syntactic licensor is the head specified for positive polarity. The contexts in which PolP can be diagnosed involve the expression of conversational moves such as affirmative confirmations and reversing reactions given to default assertions and polar questions, and clauses expressing contrasting polarity.

► Hungarian has an affirmatively specified polarity projection, PolP. ► PolP occurs in emphatic affirmative contexts. ► The affirmative polarity head can be lexicalized by a stress morpheme or by igen. ► Affirmative PolP licences V-stranding ellipsis.