The feature geometry of generic inclusive null DPs in Hungarian 171
(22) Az emberGN mindig aggód-ik, [hogy
the man always worry-pres 3 sg that
le-zuhan-0 a repülőgép].
off-fall-pres 3 sg the airplane
‘One always worries that the airplane will crash.’
Hungarian referential arguments can be freely dropped, therefore 3sg null DPs are
normally interpreted with unique reference:
(23) Mindig aggód-ik proi/proGN, [hogy
always worry-pres 3 sg (he)/(one) that
le-zuhan-0 a repülőgép].
off-fall-pres 3 sg the airplane
‘S/he /*One always worries that the airplane will crash.’
One could easily infer from these facts that Hungarian is a Type 3 Consistent NSL, like
Italian, where generic DPs must always be lexically expressed and referential DPs can
always be null:
(24) Se si è morti, non ci si muove piu.
if one is dead not rfl one move any more
‘If one is dead, one does not move any more.’
(25) *Se proGN è morti, non ci proGN muove piu.
if (one) is dead not rfl (one) move any more
‘If one is dead, one does not move any more.’
(Italian, D’Alessandro & Alexiadou 2003: 35)
This is, however, not the case. The Italian generic inclusive si ‘one’ cannot serve as an
antecedent for pro, (26), (see Chierchia 1995):
(26) *Sii a detto che proi vinceranno.
si perf said that (they) win.3pl
‘Peoplei say that (they)i will win.’
(Italian, Chierchia 1995: 109)
The generic inclusive lexical DP az ember ‘one’ in Hungarian, by contrast, can always do
so, irrespective of whether the lexical antecedent itself is a canonical nominative sub-
ject, as in (27), or a dative experiencer subject, shown in (28) (see Dalmi 2000, 2005 ):^5
- In these examples generic inclusive lexical DPs are in a discourse-semantically neutral po-
sition on the left periphery (C-domain) of the sentence. When uttered with contrastive topic
(/) or contrastive focus () intonation contour, the overt 3sg pronoun ő ‘s/he’ is required. Such
discourse-semantically marked sentences are not discussed in this paper.