Concessive sentences in Hungarian

Abstract

The paper studies Hungarian complex sentences encoding a concessive relation: among them, non-conditional and conditional concessive sentences. It analyzes their asserted and presupposed meaning components. The asserted content of non-conditional concessive sentences is the conjunction of the subordinate proposition and the main proposition. The presupposition is that the conjunction of the two propositions is less likely for an epistemic validator than the joint holding of the subordinate proposition and a relevant alternative of the main proposition. The presupposition is encoded by the complementizers bár, noha, or jóllehet. The asserted content of conditional concessive sentences is that in case the condition formulated in the subordinate clause is met, the consequence encoded in the main clause is realized. The presupposition is that the realization of the consequence in the case of the given condition is less likely for the epistemic validator than its realization in the case of an alternative condition. The alternative condition is evoked by the particle is adjoined to the conditional clause, whereas the scalar element of the presupposition is lexicalized by the particle még.