On the (Un)Bearable Lightness of Being an LFG Style Copula in Hungarian

Tibor Laczkó

Abstract

This paper develops the first comprehensive LFG analysis of the five most important types of copula constructions in Hungarian. I basically adopt Dalrymple et al.'s (2004) programmatic view, which admits diversity both in c-structure and in f-structure across and within languages, and which postulates that the "postcopular" constituent can be the functional cohead of the copula, in which case the copula itself is only a formative, it can have the open XCOMP function and it can also have the closed PREDLINK function. (This contrasts with Butt et al.'s (1999) and Attia's (2008) uniform PREDLINK approach at the f-structure level.) On the basis of the behavior of the construction types in question, I employ the functional cohead device, the PREDLINK tool (but not as the only uniform tool); however, (contrary to Dalrymple et al. (2004)) I claim that there is no need for the XCOMP treatment. At the same time, I also argue that in the case of some construction types, it is most appropriate to assume that the postcopular constituent has an OBL function.

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