The feature geometry of generic inclusive null DPs in Hungarian 169
(15) Ta kanjian ____ le.
he see (him) asp
‘He sees him.’
(Chinese, Huang 1989: 187)
In Type 4 Radical NSLs both generic inclusive and referential DPs can be null. This
produces an interesting alternation between 3sg generic inclusive and 3sg referen-
tial subjects, not found in the othe major types of NSLs. Thus, the two unexpected
properties of 3sg generic inclusive DPs in Type 4 Radical NSLs are that (i) they do
not require an antecedent and (ii) they alternate with 3sg referential pronouns. This is
demonstrated in (16)–(17):
(16) Ah Johni waa hai jingwok proi / proGN jiu
prt John say in England he / one need
gong jingman.
speak English
‘Johni says that in England hei/one needs to speak English.’
(Cantonese Chinese, Holmberg & Sheehan 2010: 130)
(17) Johni-wa kono beddo-de-wa yoku nemu-reru-to
John-top this bed-in-top well sleep-can-comp
proi /proGN iu.
(he/one) say
‘Johni says that hei/one can sleep well in this bed.’
(Japanese, Holmberg & Sheehan 2010: 130)
As will become clear from the rest of the paper, generic inclusive lexical and null DPs
in Hungarian differ from those in Type 1–Type 4 NSLs in two crucial respects: (i) they
do not alternate with referential pronouns (whereas they do in Radical NSLs); (ii) the
free occurrence vs. bound variable occurrence split of Hungarian generic inclusive
lexical vs. null DPs are not found in the four major types of NSLs. This challenges the
typology of NSLs offered by Roberts & Holmberg (2010).^3
1.2 Some facts about null DPs in Hungarian
Hungarian is a Null Subject Language (NSL) in the sense of Jaeggli and Safir (1989)
and in the sense of Roberts & Holmberg (2010). It allows (I) expletive null DPs, (18),
(II) referential null DPs, (19), (III) generic inclusive null DPs (20), and (IV) generic
- The syntactic behaviour of Hungarian null DPs patterns with that of null DPs in other
Uralic languages like Tundra Nenets (Vilkuna 1997), Mordvin (Salo 2010), and Northern
Saami (Julien,. p.c.).