This paper aims to analyze the syntactic structure of the Hungarian negative sentences, which show some grammatical aspects in their word order as opposed to affirmative sentences, within the framework of the X-bar theory of Alberti Gábor and Medve Anna (2005). In Hungarian, which is rich in the system of morphology, the Negative Phrase(=NegP) is not a functional category, but free lexical adjunct to X’ structure. We examine the syntactic category of the NegP, and its relation with non-lexical functional categories such as topic, quantification and focus. We also analyze the syntactic structure of negative sentences realized in the negative word “sem” and in Negative Concord sentences. In conclusion, we confirm that negative sentences in Hungarian are generated by the same syntactic categories and principles as affirmative sentences.
