A sem szinkrón és diakrón szerepéről

Abstract

It is argued that the seemingly idiosyncratic syntactic behavior of sem ’either/neither’ can be understood on the basis of its history. The paper fi rst summarizes the descriptive problems raised by sem, which sometimes requires the company of the negative particle and acts as a negative polarity item, or occurs on its own, apparently carrying negation, or is not licensed at all, depending on its structural position. The paper surveys the traditional and generative analyses of sem, and points out their weaknesses. The 2nd part of the paper presents the history of sem in the Old Hungarian period. Sem evolved by the fusion of the additive particle es and the negative particle nem. Later it lost its negative force, and negation had to be reinforced – fi rst optionally, later obligatorily – by another negative particle spelled out adjacent to the verb. Owing to a word order change affecting the position of the negated verb, and another one turning sem, a proclitic, into an enclitic, the sem modifyer of a preverbal constituent assumed a linear position identical with that of the negative particle. This revived its status as the carrier of negation. Eventually, sem split into a minimizer licensed by a preceding negative particle, and a minimizer to be reanalyzed as the Neg head, licensed in a position left-adjacent to NegP. The paper also discusses the history and the present status of sem…sem… ’either…or…’.