Hungarian particle reduplication as local doubling

Abstract

This paper provides a morphosyntactic account of particle reduplication in Hungarian, a case of reduplication whose function is to express repetition of events. The most conspicuous property of this process is that it can only apply when the particle is strictly left adjacent to an overt verb. We develop an analysis in terms of a syntactic process that yields a string of doubled particles that do not form a constituent, following the insight of Piñon (1991), and we propose that reduplication targets subwords and derives the facts via a local doubling process.