The Composition of (Dis)Continuous Predicates: Lexical or Syntactic?

Recent lexicalist analyses of predicates expressed by syntactically independent elements, raise central questions concerning the domain in which such complex predicates are composed. Should they be composed in phrase structure or within the lexicon? We will argue that a demonstration of syntactic separability for pieces of complex predicates is independent of whether such predicates should be viewed as being composed in the lexicon or phrase structure. We examine Hungarian complex predicates consisting of a syntactically separable preverb, inflectable for person/number features, and a verbal stem. We suggest that the interpretation of the person/number features as oblique pronominals governed by the complex predicate provides an argument for the assumption that predicates expressed by a several syntactically independent elements are better analyzed as associated with lexical representations than as composed in phrase structure.