Back to restitutives (again): A syntactic account of restitutive and counterdirectional verbal particles in Hungarian

Abstract

This paper discusses two Hungarian verbal particles that belong to the semantic group of repetitive elements. The main focus is on the verbal particle újra ‘again’, which has primarily been discussed as an adverb with repetitive and restitutive meanings (with the exception of Csirmaz 2015) but can be a verbal particle, which is distinct both from the adverb and from most other verbal particles. The verbal particle vissza ‘back’, which expresses counterdirectionality will be claimed to be like typical, primarily directional verbal particles and to be a part of the result component of the argument structure. Újra ‘again’ as a verbal particle is analyzed on a par with some non-directional particles and idiomatic resultative phrases that are inserted into the structure in a functional projection below the external argument.