Antal M. Gergely – Czentnár András – Németh Dániel: Nyelvi és nyelvjárási kölcsönhatások kutatásának lehetőségei és korlátai az etimológiában: a serke, csíra, sarjú, (gyógy)ír szavak etimológiája [Possibilities and limitations of etymological research on mutual influences across languages and dialects: The etymology of serke ‘nit’, csíra ‘germ’, sarjú ‘aftercrop’, and (gyógy)ír ‘balm’] ⟨abstract/absztrakt⟩
This paper discusses the history of the Hungarian word serke ‘nit’. Despite later claims to the contrary, this word has been said to be of Old Turkic origin in our etymological dictionaries ever since Gombocz. However, among the words of Ob-Ugric and Finno-Permic languages, we can find ones that make a Uralic origin of serke possible. In view of those assumed correspondents in related languages, we also discuss csíra ‘germ’ (uncertain origin) and sarjú ‘aftercrop’ (unknown origin), two Hungarian words that also have attested data that can contribute to our understanding of the form and meaning of serke. Due to the related uncertainties in the literature and the possible Finno-Permic connections, we reconsider the etymology of ír ‘medicine’, too. The analysis is hampered by the fact that, in principle, formal and semantic irradiation may have occurred across members of several possible families of proto-language words. Therefore, the Hungarian forms are more thoroughly analysed in dialectological and language geographical terms, in order for the possible contacts across word families to be arranged in a more accurate chain of temporal and territorial relationships. We think that serke may, ultimately, be of Uralic origin; a (probably Finno-Permic) member of the family of words, with the meaning ‘head-louse’, may have got into Old Turkic, and from there it may have been reborrowed into Proto-Hungarian in the form serke, while the rest of the word family may have branched off due to formal changes.
Keywords: dialectology, etymology, Old Turkic, Finno-Permic, Ugric, Proto-Hungarian, Uralic, Altaic
Kulcsszavak: dialektológia, etimológia, ótörök, finn-permi, ugor, ősmagyar, uráli nyelvek, altaji nyelvek
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https://doi.org/10.15776/NyK.2022.118.1
Antal M. Gergely: Szófejtések Rédei Károly tiszteletére [Etymologies in honour of Károly Rédei] ⟨abstract/absztrakt⟩
In this brief article, we commemorate the late Károly Rédei, who was born 90 years ago, in 1932. His publications entitled ‘Szófejtések’ and his other works inspired the author to turn to etymologies and etymological research. Six Hungarian words, particularly those of disputed or unknown origin are presented: húg ‘younger sister’, irigy ‘envious’, kösöntyű ‘jewel’, sima ‘smooth’, szigony ‘harpoon’, and vidék ‘country-side’, alongside their varying historical and dialectal equivalents and their possible Uralic cognates. Each word can be explained as having Uralic/Finno-Ugric roots with both phonetic and semantic interpretations, providing possible solutions for not just Hungarian, but other Uralic words.
Keywords: etymology, words of unknown origin, Hungarian, Uralic, Finno-Permic, Proto-Permic, Ugric
Kulcsszavak: etimológia, ismeretlen eredetű szavak, magyar, uráli, finn-permi, őspermi, ugor
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https://doi.org/10.15776/NyK.2022.118.2
Schön, Zsófia: The locative-marked agent in Yugan Khanty active sentences: a data-driven pilot study [A lokatívuszragos ágens korpuszalapú vizsgálata jugаni hanti aktív mondatokban] ⟨abstract/absztrakt⟩
Az aktív ragozású igei állítmányok mellett megjelenő jelölt ágens (locAg) a hanti érdekes jelensége, hiszen nominatív nyelvekben az alany következetesen nominatívusszal jelölt. A szurguti nyelvjárásban, főleg a jugáni alnyelvjárásban mégis ettől eltérően, lokatívusszal kódolva is megjelenik. Ennek szociolingvisztikai és nyelvtani okait járja körül ez a korpusz-alapú tanulmány. Rámutat arra, hogy a jelenség ugyanúgy független az adatközlők idiolektusától vagy szociológiai státuszától, mint az ige szemantikájától, ragozásától, a mondatok szórendjétől vagy a locAg és a tárgy szófajától. Bár a példák információszerkezeti szempontból is lényegesen sokszínűbbek, mint azt az eddigi szakirodalom bemutatta, mégis ez tűnik az egyetlen olyan szempontnak, amely motiválhatja a locAg megjelenését. A jelölt ágensű aktív mondatokban szembetűnő az alany hangsúlyozásának fontossága, valószínűleg szalienciájának jelölése iránti igény. Ugyanakkor a lokatívuszragos ágens nem csak topikális jellegű lehet, és nem kizárólag két konkuráló topik esetén jelenik meg, hanem topikfolytonosság, topikváltás esetén is, valamint kerülhet fókuszpozícióba is.
Keywords: agent, locative, Khanty, Surgut Khanty, Yugan Khanty, information structure
Kulcsszavak: ágens, lokatívusz, hanti, szurguti hanti, jugáni hanti, információszerkezet
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https://doi.org/10.15776/NyK.2022.118.3
Szabó Ditta: A komi-permják evidencialitás vizsgálata elicitált adatokon keresztül [Analysing evidentiality in Komi-Permyak by questionnaire] ⟨abstract/absztrakt⟩
The study aims at presenting the first results of ongoing research. Until now, there has been no independent study on Komi-Permyak (Uralic, Permic) evidentiality, and the topic is discussed by a few papers. Its structure and properties are typically mentioned together with the Komi-Zyrian evidential system. Among the reasons for this are the facts that the Komi-Permyak language is often treated as a dialect, as well as the small number of the available written materials. In the following I will present the relevant statements of the literature on the subject. Then I will detail the method, material and results of the questionnaire research conducted in 2022, during which I basically focused on two questions: is there a real evidential opposition between the first and second past tenses in Komi-Permyak, and is there a word order variation between the components of the analytic past tenses. At the end of the study I will discuss the conclusions that can be drawn from the elicited data, and the further progress of the research.
Keywords: Komi-Permyak, evidentiality, past tenses, evidential opposition, word order variation
Kulcsszavak: komi-permják, evidencialitás, múlt idők, evidenciális szembenállás, szórendi ingadozás
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https://doi.org/10.15776/NyK.2022.118.4
Fejes László: Újfent a permi–magyar érintkezések lehetőségének kérdéséről [Once more on the issue of the possibility of Permic–Hungarian contacts] ⟨abstract/absztrakt⟩
Sándor Csúcs has recently committed himself to the possibility of Permic–Hungarian language contacts again: he sees the main proof of that possibility in typological parallels. In this paper, I argue that there are no signs of such contacts to speak of. Some recent research efforts, containing far more parameters than Csúcs takes into consideration, show that Hungarian and the Permic languages do not stand particularly close to one another among Uralic languages on the one hand, and that the distances found between languages highly depend on the parameters chosen, on the other. The etymologies of the three Hungarian words that Csúcs claims are certainly of Permic origin are not particularly convincing: albeit not necessarily wrong, they can by no means be said to be incontrovertible. The voicing processes that he claims were parallel in Hungarian and Permic cannot have taken place before the disintegration of Proto-Permic even on the basis of Csúcs’s earlier studies. The typological parallels he established are often not parallels at all, and in other cases it can be excluded that the relevant developments took place at the presumed time of the contacts. Even if we cannot exclude contacts as the source of certain typological similarities, no case can be considered to constitute compelling evidence.
Keywords: Permic languages, Hungarian, typology, language contact, historical linguistics, etymology
Kulcsszavak: permi nyelvek, magyar, tipológia, nyelvi érintkezés, nyelvtörténet, etimológia
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https://doi.org/10.15776/NyK.2022.118.5
Mohay Zsuzsanna: A regiszter szerepe a múlt idők variációjában Wathay Ferenc emlékirata és egykorú úriszéki perek alapján [The role of register in the variation of past tense forms, on the basis of Ferenc Wathay’s memoir and contemporaneous hallmoot court rolls] ⟨abstract/absztrakt⟩
All four past tense types (-t type, -á/é type, Ø + vala/volt type, -t + vala/volt type) were used in the Middle Hungarian, albeit their occurrence shows a great degree of heterogeneity both in terms of region and function. The study discusses whether besides these two factors, register also plays a role in their use. Hence, the functions of the past tense types in two sources of different genres from the same dialectal region were examined: in hallmoot court rolls (1582–1596), and in the memoir of Ferenc Wathay (1605). In terms of register, the former source reflects more spoken language, while the latter is a formal text. In the court rolls, the -t type is dominantly used in narratives, and the rarer -á/é type shows a greater functional variability. In the memoir, the -á/é type is primarily used in subjective narratives, while the -t type is much less frequently used. The functions of the periphrastic past tenses are well definable, however, these exhibit a certain degree of variability. The study supports the hypothesis that the distribution of examined variables is more homogenous in the sources reflecting spoken language, while it is more varied in the memoir. Supposedly, the latter facilitates the spread of the different types. In terms of function, significantly different trends are discernible.
Keywords: past tenses, Middle Hungarian, variability, register, hallmoot court rolls, memoir
Kulcsszavak: múlt idők, középmagyar kor, variáció, regiszter, úriszéki perek, emlékirat
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https://doi.org/10.15776/NyK.2022.118.6
Varga Mónika: Boszorkányos lelemények: 18. századi tanúvallomás-kéziratok írásos, lejegyzői, valamint nyelvjárás-történeti kontextusa [The scribal and dialectal context of Hungarian witness depositions’ manuscripts from 18th century witchcraft records] ⟨abstract/absztrakt⟩
Variability turned out to be an inherent feature of the witness depositions of witch trials as a text type. This is motivated by the circumstances of the hearings, the characteristics of the accusation of witchcraft and the nature of the recordings themselves. The present paper studies (as far as we know) unpublished manuscripts of witchcraft records. Considering the diversity of this text type, it is reasonable to reveal documents that were lately found in the archives. This analysis explores the phonological and morpho-phonological variations preserved during the recording, using letter-perfect transcriptions of the manuscripts. The results are compared to other records of the period as well, thus trying to capture the regional, sociological and historical context of the depositions.
Keywords: witness depositions of witch trials, scribal context, spelling variations, regional and sociological embeddedness, register
Kulcsszavak: boszorkányperes tanúvallomások, lejegyzői kontextus, ejtésvariációk, területi és társadalmi beágyazottság, regiszter
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https://doi.org/10.15776/NyK.2022.118.7
Dömötör Éva: Demonstratívumok pragmatikai és pragmatikalizálódott használatai konstrukciós megközelítésben: az azért konstrukciói [A pragmatic approach to demonstratives involving pragmaticalized constructions of use: Constructions of azért ‘for that’] ⟨abstract/absztrakt⟩
The basic function of demonstratives is deixis, which is traditionally treated as a key issue in pragmatics. However, demonstratives also provide a frequent source for discourse markers having textual or expressive function. The different functions of demonstratives can be explained and described in terms of the different structural and pragmatic environments which define recurring patterns, i.e. constructions. This paper focuses on the adverbial demonstrative azért and describes its both deictic and discourse marker uses as constructions. In accordance with the model proposed in Furkó (2007), which takes the functional class of discourse markers as a graded category and individual members of this class as being on different stages of pragmaticalization, the constructions of azért are presented by outlining a process of pragmaticalization whereby it moves along the propositional < textual < expressive cline.
Keywords: demonstrative, deixis, discourse marker, construction, pragmaticalization
Kulcsszavak: demonstratívum, deixis, diskurzusjelölő, konstrukció, pragmatikalizáció
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https://doi.org/10.15776/NyK.2022.118.8
Deme Andrea – Bartók Márton – Gráczi Tekla Etelka – Csapó Tamás Gábor – Juhász Kornélia – Markó Alexandra: A koartikulációs ellenállás és agresszió hangsúlyos helyzetű magánhangzókban: artikulációs és akusztikai adatok [Coarticulatory resistance and aggression in pitch-accented vowels: articulatory and acoustic data] ⟨abstract/absztrakt⟩
Vowels interact in running speech even across an intervening consonant; this is termed vowel-to-vowel coarticulation. Prosodic prominence is claimed to bring about segmental strengthening that leads to increased coarticulatory resistance and aggression: vowels in accented syllables are assumed to resist coarticulatory effects more efficiently, and to exert a stronger influence on their neighbour. Previous results (mainly for English and for acoustics or articulation, but not for both) are inconclusive: they show increased resistance, but they vary regarding they findings for aggression. For Hungarian, previous studies showed increased resistance in real words both in acoustics and articulation. In the present study, we tested if pitch-accent increases coarticulatory resistance and aggression in Hungarian vowels in nonsense words, and analysed simultaneously recorded acoustic and articulatory data. We did not find increased resistance or aggression in any of the domains of production, and in any of the measures we tested. Results are explained by differences in methods and language specific effects in vowel-to-vowel coarticulation.
Keywords: vowel-to-vowel coarticulation, segmental variation, pitch-accent, coarticulatory agression, coarticulatory resistance, articulation
Kulcsszavak: magánhangzók közötti koartikuláció, változatosság, hangsúly, koartikulációs agresszió, koartikulációs ellenállás, artikuláció
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https://doi.org/10.15776/NyK.2022.118.9
Borbély Anna: Nyelvi tájkép pozitív nyelvészeti aspektusból [Linguistic landscape from a positive linguistic aspect] ⟨abstract/absztrakt⟩
Linguistic landscape research refers to linguistic objects that mark the public space (e.g., Bartha et al. 2013a). The present study aims to investigate how the positive linguistic design can be applied to explain the linguistic landscape. In a longitudinal pilot study on Romanian–Hungarian community positive linguistics being a positive social science (cf. positive psychology, see Seligman 1999), the author demonstrates the usefulness of shifting the emphasis from the perfectionist to the enjoyable aspect of speaking languages (Borbély 2016). The study is based on data of previous linguistic landscape investigations on the nationalities in Hungary and especially on the Romanians in that country. The paper concludes that positive linguistic methods used for the (re)interpretation of linguistic landscapes are particularly suitable for providing analyses about creativity and positivity in the construction of linguistic landscape of nationalities.
Keywords: linguistic landscape, positive linguistics, multilingualism, nationalities in Hungary
Kulcsszavak: nyelvi tájkép, pozitív nyelvészet, többnyelvűség, magyarországi nemzetiségek
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https://doi.org/10.15776/NyK.2022.118.10
