Skolem Functions for Hungarian Focus and for Accommodation
In the first part of the talk it will be shown that there is a class of Focused sentences in Hungarian which is best analysed with the help of Skolem functions. These are sentences that answer functional questions (Whom does every student revere? His supervisor.), and where the Focus-marked expression appears to be in the scope of a postverbal operator (A TÉMAVEZETŐJÉ_i-T tiszteli minden diák_i , ``It is his_i supervisor that every student_i respects.) In such sentences the Focus-marked expression is best analysed as a Skolem term, in order to capture so-called Connectivity Effects. (The example above is an instance of Binding Connectivity: the possessive suffix in the Focus-marked expression appears to be "bound" by the postverbal universal quantifier, even though the quantifier is not in a surface position that could enable "proper" binding).
The second part of the talk reports a spinoff of the analysis in Part I. It will be shown that analysing the Focus-marked expression as a Skolem term has the added benefit of capturing the meaning effects that accompany a certain kind of of presupposition accommodation, without having to resort to accommodation at all. (This is intermediate accommodation, which appears to be responsible for one reading of sentences like "Every student respects HIS SUPERVISOR" / "Minden diák A TÉMAVEZETŐ-JÉ-T tiszteli".)