Lexical-semantic properties and contextual factors in the use of verbs of work with implicit subject arguments in Hungarian

Abstract

In Hungarian, verbs of work can occur with implicit subjects not only because of the pro-drop property of Hungarian, but on the basis of the interaction between their lexical-semantic representation and contextual information as well. The present paper intends to examine thoroughly what kind of lexical-semantic representation can be assumed for Hungarian verbs of work and how lexical-semantic and contextual factors license the occurrence of verbs of work with implicit subjects in Hungarian. Bearing in mind these two goals the paper proposes two alternative explanations. According to the first explanation, the lexical-semantic representation of verbs of works puts a selection restriction on the type of the subject argument, which can license the subjectless use with a generic reading. The type of subject must be the particular person with the profession in question. Such kind of lexical-semantic representation can be interpreted in two ways: Either only the activities denoted by the verbs of work are in the focus of attention in a context, or their subjects as well. If only activities are in the focus of attention, the agents, syntactically realizable as subjects, should not be explicitly expressed. The subjects are available as background information provided by the selection restrictions. According to the second explanation, the implicit subjects are licensed by the interaction between the encyclopedic information stored under the conceptual addresses of verbs of work and the other lexemes in utterances. In this analysis, the information concerning the type of the subject arguments has not built in the lexical-semantic representations, instead it is stored under the verbs' conceptual address and becomes available in the course of interpretation. In both cases an interaction between the lexical-semantic representations and the context must be assumed.