Publisher's Synopsis
Predicative possession may be realized in various ways cross-linguistically. The two major types of possessive sentence are termed HAVE-possessives and BE-possessives as theyuse either HAVE or BE as their main predicate.
This monograph investigates Hungarian BE-possessives and BE-existentials in a cartographic model. It diverges from mainstream syntactic analyses insofar as it radically segregates existential and possessive BE-sentences from copular BE-sentences. It surveys some properties found both in existential BE-sentences and possessive BE-sentences but not in copular BE-sentences (Definiteness Restriction, argument structure, sentences prosody and the segregation of clausal negation vs. focus negation). The author takes a comparative approach by relating the facts of Hungarian to the corresponding data in some Slavic, Celtic and Finno-Ugric languages.
Adopting the cartographic model, Existence and Possession. A Cartographic Approach to Possessive BE-sentences in Hungarian offers a new approach to Hungarian BE-possessives and their cross-linguistic correlates. It relates possessive BE to dyadic unaccusative psych-predicates, and thus opens a new perspective on the syntax of possession and existence cross-linguistically.
