Want, Hope, and Regret

The classical phenomenon of obviation is that the pronominal subject of a subjunctive clause must be disjoint from the attitude-holder subject of the immediately higher clause (# Je veux que je parte `I want for me to leave’). The effect has been attributed to a problem in Binding Theory or to blocking by competing infinitives. Invoking critical new data from Hungarian, I will argue that obviation is neither specific for subjunctives, nor due to competition. Instead, it belongs to a larger family of semantic or pragmatic clashes.
Please join us at 3:30 pm for coffee hour immediately preceding the talk.
This event is VIRTUAL. The Zoom link to join the coffee hour and talk is: https://yale.zoom.us/j/96662294335