Obviation in Hungarian: what is its scope, and is it due to competition?

Abstract

According to the classical description of obviation, the subject of a subjunctive is disjoint in reference from the attitude-holder subject of the immediately higher clause. *Je veux que  je  parte.  I   want  that I   leave.SUBJ  ‘I want for me to leave’ Inspired by Ruwet (1984/1991) and Farkas (1988; 1992), I present data from Hungarian where obviation in certain subjunctives is plainly lifted, and data where obviation occurs in indicatives. I argue that obviation is not the result of competition with another construction, and point to promising potential accounts in terms of a clash in semantics or pragmatics. My aim is to contribute desiderata for a theory of obviation and exemptions from obviation in fairly informal terms.