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Abstract

In this paper I examine the empirical properties of so-called factive verbs in Hungarian, with an emphasis on various syntactic, morphological and pragmatic factors that induce factivity alternations with the same predicates. On the basis of these facts I argue that factivity is not a single property, but a set of properties: a speaker-related evidential veridical inference, a subject-related evidential veridical inference and the projection of the speaker-related veridical inference from the scope of entailment-cancelling operators. Although a default pragmatic principle favours the co-occurrence of these properties, morpho-syntactic and contextual cues can signal non-speaker-veridical or non-projective readings. The lexical meaning of so-called factives does not entail the truth of the complement, only suggesting that the attitude is based on a certain type of evidence.

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2025-07-10
2026-06-07

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Variations on factivity in Hungarian
Journal of Uralic Linguistics 4, 4 (2025); https://doi.org/10.1075/jul.00038.abr
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): attitude verbs; factives; Hungarian; presuppositions; veridicality

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