Kubitsch Rebeka – Szeverényi Sándor: Az evidencialitás fogalma uralisztikai szempontból [Evidentiality from a Uralic perspective] ⟨absztrakt/abstract͒⟩
The paper discusses the category of evidentiality from the perspective of the Uralic languages. We focus on problems related to the typological definitions of evidentiality and its characterization in connection with the Uralic languages. Our aims are twofold: on the one hand, we point out through the revision of evidentiality in Uralic that the definitions of typology are too restrictive when it comes to describing individual languages; on the other hand, we show what is known and what is unknown about evidentiality in Uralic in order to set out new directions of research. We propose that the questions of grammaticality and obligatoriness require a more flexible approach, and a scalar perspective should be applied when discussing these features of evidential markers. Considering the individual languages, it is necessary to widen the scope of research from morphological markers to other elements as well as to attempt to account for the connection of evidential elements with other semantic categories and for their use in discourse.
Keywords: evidentiality, Uralic languages, typology, epistemic modality
Kulcsszavak: evidencialitás, uráli nyelvek, tipológia, episztemikus modalitás ⟨full text/teljes szöveg⟩ https://doi.org/10.15776/NyK.2023.119.1

Antal M. Gergely: Szófejtések. Nyolc magyar szó lehetséges uráli kapcsolatai [Etymologies. Possible Uralic connections of eight Hungarian words] ⟨absztrakt/abstract͒⟩
Eight Hungarian words – most of them previously classified as of unknown or uncertain etymology – are presented with their possible cognates in three categories: material names, zoonyms and words related to beliefs & abstract concepts. These words can have Uralic or Finno-Ugric roots with a varying level of certainty. Kén ‘sulphur’ could be regarded as originating from FU *kipe-ńɜ ‘spark’ with Finnic, Saamic and Komi-Zyrian cognates where the original meaning reflects the combustible property of sulphur. The word réz ‘copper’ might be related to Udmurt and Mari words meaning ‘nice, pretty’ or ‘good’ etc. from FU *rećɜ ‘pretty, good’ instead of the debatable Northeast Caucasian origin. Semantic change in Hungarian may be due to a clipping of the presumed compound réz vas ‘pretty, glittering or ornamental iron’. The final -z (FU *-ć- > Hungarian -z-) represents a somewhat uncertain phenomenon, with some rare examples in other cases. Evet ‘squirrel’, a now rarely used word has two rival etymologies (one Uralic and one Ugric). With additional Saamic, Mari and Komi-Zyrian cognates, its Uralic origin seems more reasonable. Thus, evet originates from U *säpɜ ‘(omnivorous) pest or rodent mammal’ – the potential cognates can be well explained phonetically and have different meanings, but related to ‘pest’ or ‘rodent’ (North Saami ‘mouse’; Mari ‘sable’, Komi-Zyrian ‘wolverine’, Mansi ‘mouse’ or ‘mole’, Selkup ’squirrel’). The zoonym hiúz ‘lynx’ seems to be related to Permic and Samoyedic words, the former meaning ‘squirrel’ or ‘cat’, the latter meaning ‘dog’ or ‘puppy’ etc. – all of them having remarkable coat. One of the obstacles in this etymology is the issue of the word-final -z in hiúz which could be from a nominal suffix (Ugric *-tɜ). The common reconstructed word could have been U *kȣŋɜ ‘animal that is furry or has a remarkable coat’. This etymology redefines the Selkup word as having a different etymology, not originating from PS *wën ‘dog’. Hungarian eb ‘dog’ is of clearly Ugric origin, but a very questionable connection can be made with Finnish impi ‘virgin, maiden’ and Udmurt эбек ‘frog’. While the phonetic correspondences are more acceptable, the semantic connection could only be explained from a common ‘dirty, impure’ meaning for the newly reconstructed word ?FU *impɜ. In the case of imád ‘worship; adore’, Iranian origin is not supported, but we can try to find its Finno-Ugric roots by returning to its previously suggested Komi parallels and comparing them to cognates under the reconstructed word FW *wajmɜ ‘heart’. Through the potential sound changes and changes in meaning, we can propose FU *wojmɜ ~ *wajmɜ ‘soul, spirit; heart; do magic, be in trance’ as the common ancestor. Another word vajákol- ‘do magic; heal’ is from vaj ~ vah ‘oh (involuntary burst of sound)’. We argue that vaj could be connected to U *wajŋe ‘soul; breath’ as it could be an invocation of a kind of spirit (or simply associated with ‘breath’). The original spiritual meaning might have been preserved in the meanings ‘do magic’ etc. Finally, remény ‘hope’ or its older form reménység and the verb remél- ‘hope’ are very likely to originate from a FU *remɜ (*rēmɜ) ‘joy, hope; sunrise’, a reinforcement of a Finno-Permic root with additional Finnic cognates.
Keywords: etymology, words of unknown origin, Hungarian, Uralic, Finno-Ugric, Finno-Permic, Proto-Permic, Ugric
Kulcsszavak: etimológia, ismeretlen eredetű szavak, magyar, uráli, finn-ugor, finn-permi, őspermi, ugor ⟨full text/teljes szöveg⟩ https://doi.org/10.15776/NyK.2023.119.2

Cser András – Oszkó Beatrix – Várnai Zsuzsa: A magyar kerekségi harmónia kialakulásáról [On the emergence of rounding harmony in Hungarian] ⟨absztrakt/abstract͒⟩
Hungarian is a language that shows both palatovelar harmony and rounding harmony. The former was inherited from Proto-Uralic, whereas the latter developed later, in the Old Hungarian period. The spreading of the feature [labial] from the Late Old Hungarian period onwards was progressive, but it appears that the same feature had earlier spread in the opposite direction, i.e., regressively. The question addressed here is what caused the change in the direction of the spreading. The hypothesis advanced in this paper is that the Early Old Hungarian regressive spreading of labiality did not affect lexical cues, since [labial] was a redundant feature; the spreading was motivated by coarticulatory mechanisms. However, as [labial] became a robust contrastive feature in the Old Hungarian period, it aligned with backness in its spreading direction to enhance lexical recognisability. The argument also implies that while labial harmony owes its origin to a pattern rooted in coarticulatory mechanisms, in its mature form it was and is primarily perceptually motivated.
Keywords: Old Hungarian, labial harmony, rounding, regressive spreading, phonological contrast
Kulcsszavak: ómagyar, labiális harmónia, kerekség, regresszív terjedés, fonológiai kontraszt ⟨full text/teljes szöveg⟩ https://doi.org/10.15776/NyK.2023.119.3

Hrenek Éva: A tulajdonképpeni (elsődleges) jelentés fogalmának újradefiniálása [Redefining the concept of primary meaning] ⟨absztrakt/abstract͒⟩
It is a fundamental issue for linguistic description, grammars, dictionary- making and the linguistic intuition of the lay speaker that, within the meaning system of polysemous linguistic units, one meaning is considered primary in relation to others. However, how to grasp the notion of primary meaning, or what criteria are used to identify a meaning as primary, is a much debated issue.
In this paper, I attempt to define the concept of primary meaning by drawing on the framework of organic linguistic theory (cf., e.g., Zsilka 1975) and relevant findings from functional cognitive linguistics (cf., e.g., Dancygier (ed.) 2017; Tolcsvai Nagy (ed.) 2017). I outline an approach that, by focusing on dynamic interactions of verb meanings in terms of both polysemy and synonymy, can provide a theoretical and methodological basis for lexicographic work that can systematically capture the complex relationships between polysemous meaning systems and synonymous meaning networks.
Keywords: verbal meanings, primary meaning, metaphorical meaning, polysemy, synonymy
Kulcsszavak: igei jelentések, elsődleges jelentés, metaforikus jelentés, poliszémia, szinonímia ⟨full text/teljes szöveg⟩ https://doi.org/10.15776/NyK.2023.119.4

Nemesi Attila László: Implicit igei predikátumok a magyarban: beszédaktusok, helyzetmondatok, szólások és közmondások [Implicit verbal predicates in Hungarian: Speech acts, situational sentences, idioms and proverbs] ⟨absztrakt/abstract͒⟩
Recent research on the occurrence and identification of implicit arguments in Hungarian, of which a brief introductory sketch is given in this paper, has revealed two types of secondary implicit predicates. However, verbal predicates in language use quite often remain unexpressed not only in Hungarian, but also in other languages. By looking at a wide range of illocutionary acts, situation-bound utterances, idioms, and proverbs, we can observe how highly conventionalized or even formulaic, ritualized expressions permit the omission of the verb. A refinement of the definition of implicit arguments and implicit predicates is proposed to encompass the whole gamut of examples, making a distinction between implicit and elliptical constituents which are explained by the least effort side of the principle of relevance. Finally, a number of interesting morphosyntactic phenomena are discussed, including verbal particles as main predicates with their own argument, situation-bound utterances condensed to a single word, and the role of implicit verbs in lexical fossilization and grammaticalization processes.
Keywords: implicit arguments, implicit predicates, relevance theory, situation-bound utterances, idioms, proverbs
Kulcsszavak: implicit argumentumok, implicit predikátumok, relevanciaelmélet, helyzetmondatok, szólások, közmondások ⟨full text/teljes szöveg⟩ https://doi.org/10.15776/NyK.2023.119.5

Kelemen Ivett: Anders Porsanger 1770-es jelentése a magyar helyesírás alkalmazhatóságáról az északi számi nyelvre [A 1770 report by Anders Porsanger on the applicability of Hungarian spelling to North Saami] ⟨absztrakt/abstract͒⟩
In addition to the fact that the linguistic affinity between Hungarian and Saami (Lappish) was first proved by János Sajnovics in 1770, the name of the Hungarian Jesuit scholar is also notable with respect to the history of the spelling of the North Saami language in Norway. Based on the literature he used for Demonstratio and his personal experience, Sajnovics believed that the Hungarian spelling of the time would be more suitable for use in Norwegian works on North Saami. The proposal was so well received in Danish-Norwegian academic circles that the printing of the dictionary entitled Lexicon Lapponicum compiled by Knud Leem, a renowned North Saami language professor of the time, was stopped, and Sajnovics began to ‘revise’ this work using Hungarian spelling. In accomplishing that task, he was assisted by a fairly competent person, Anders Porsanger, a native speaker of North Saami, who helped Sajnovics with his rewriting proposal. After the work was completed, in the summer of 1770, the Missionary College in Copenhagen asked Porsanger to report on Hungarian spelling, which could serve as a model for the development of the spelling of North Saami. Below I present this seven-page letter verbatim, and provide the necessary background information in footnotes.
Keywords: North Saami, orthography, Anders Porsanger, János Sajnovics, 1770, report
Kulcsszavak: északi számi, helyesírás, Anders Porsanger, Sajnovics János, 1770, jelentés ⟨full text/teljes szöveg⟩ https://doi.org/10.15776/NyK.2023.119.6

Heltai János Imre – Tarsoly Eszter – Jenei Kamilla – Turó Zoltán – Ábri Izabella – Kerekesné Lévai Erika – Lakatos Elisabeth – Lakatos Józsefné Balogh Róza – Lakatos Sára Zsanu – Lakatos Mária – Makula Attiláné Rostás Melinda – Opre Csabáné Ica – Tokár Zoltánné Katalin – Szabóné Balázs Beáta – Szántóné Erika: Sibbolethek: beszédünk sokfélesége és társadalmi helyzetünk. Egy részvételi etnográfiai kutatás eredményeiből [Shibboleths: The social stakes of speaking. Insights from a participatory ethnographic study] ⟨absztrakt/abstract͒⟩
This study was undertaken as part of a participatory research project which explores the potential of linguistic citizenship in Tiszavasvári, a town in North-East Hungary. The focus of the project is to identify ways in which citizens can successfully participate in society in settings that are fundamentally monolingual, while the citizens in question are either bi- or multilingual and their speech practices are inclusive of non-standard registers. As part of the project, members of the academic community joined Roma and non-Roma local participants to create a forum for the discussion of issues relating to language and society. The present study took the analytic concept of the Shibboleth as a starting point by asking participants to identify, in their own interactions, language features which are characterised by minor linguistic differences but point to significant social differentiation between groups. Participants explored dynamics of power in which their interactions are embedded, and the consequences of this dynamics, thus broadening the scope of their linguistic citizenship.
Keywords: linguistic ethnography, participatory research, linguistic citizenship, Shibboleth
Kulcsszavak: nyelvészeti etnográfia, részvételi kutatás, nyelvi részvétel, Sibboleth ⟨full text/teljes szöveg⟩ https://doi.org/10.15776/NyK.2023.119.7

Bánréti Zoltán: Szerkesztőségi bevezető [Editorial introduction] ⟨full text/teljes szöveg⟩

Kalivoda Ágnes – Prószéky Gábor: Infinitívuszi szerkezetek a magyarban: adatvezérelt megközelítés [Infinitival constructions in Hungarian: A data-driven approach] ⟨absztrakt/abstract͒⟩
This paper describes Hungarian infinitive constructions using a data-driven approach. It aims to study these constructions along formal-distributional features, utilizing authentic corpus data and frequency counts. Our findings derive from an open-source dataset extracted from a 776.9-million-word treebank of Hungarian. The resource contains more than 9 million instances of infinitive constructions, annotated for a wide range of linguistic features and metadata. We discuss the following topics: inflected infinitives, verb clusters consisting of multiple infinitives, auxiliary-like lexical items, separable preverbs, the attested word orders of infinitives, finite verbs and their respective preverbs, and finally, detailed distributions of preverbs in infinitive constructions. Our study reveals some trends which would have remained unseen without a quantitative approach.
Keywords: infinitive construction, data-driven approach, corpus analysis, formal-distributional features, preverb, word order, Hungarian grammar
Kulcsszavak: infinitívuszi szerkezet, adatvezérelt megközelítés, korpusz-elemzés, formai és disztribúciós jegyek, igekötő, szórend, magyar nyelvtan ⟨full text/teljes szöveg⟩ https://doi.org/10.15776/NyK.2023.119.9

Kornai András: Kálmán László Frege-felfogása [László Kálmán’s interpretation of Frege] ⟨absztrakt/abstract͒⟩
In Gottlob Frege’s system of ideas, not only the principle of compositionality but also that of contextuality is of prime importance. In this paper, we attempt to reconstruct the late László Kálmán’s interpretation of how Frege reconciled these two principles.
Keywords: Frege, László Kálmán, compositionality, contextuality
Kulcsszavak: Frege, Kálmán László, kompozicionalitás, kontextualitás ⟨full text/teljes szöveg⟩ https://doi.org/10.15776/NyK.2023.119.10

Dömötör Éva: Az azért demonstratívum pragmatikalizálódott használatai konstrukciós megközelítésben II. [Pragmaticalized uses of demonstrative azért in a constructional approach II] ⟨absztrakt/abstract͒⟩
This paper presents analyses of three discourse-marker uses of the demonstrative azért (‘because of that/for that’) in a constructional approach. In one of the constructions under examination, azért usually enters into collocation with the particle na [(Na) azért!]), and is used as a reply to the discourse partner’s previous utterance or act, which is in compliance with the speaker’s expectations. In the next one, the form [nem azért de], standing usually in a sentence initial position, has a face-saving function. Finally, the one-word answer azért as a reply to a wh-question with miért ‘why’ ([A: Miért…? B: Azért.]) is not a congruous answer, but serves as an indication of the speaker’s intention to avoid answering. Each of these functions is associated with definable formal features, and can be characterized by their wider structural environment, hence the units targeted by the analyses are sentence constructions. The paper also proposes that the [Na azért!] and the [nem azért de] constructions developed from complex or compound-complex sentence constructions with main clauses including the first-person singular form of the verb mond ‘say’ (mondom) on the one hand, and with causal or final subordinate clauses on the other. The causal/final clauses can be accounted for by the original meaning of the adverbial demonstrative azért referring to reason or purpose, from which the DM functions have been pragmaticalized. The description of these discourse pragmatic functions completes the functional spectrum of azért presented in a previous study (Dömötör 2022).
Keywords: demonstrative, discourse marker, sentence type, sentence construction, reduced structure
Kulcsszavak: demonstratívum, diskurzusjelölő, mondatfajta, mondatkonstrukció, redukált szerkezet ⟨full text/teljes szöveg⟩ https://doi.org/10.15776/NyK.2023.119.11

Bánréti Zoltán: A beszélő nézőpontjai és kötőszavai. A többszörös kötőszók [Speaker’s perspective and conjunctions: Multiple conjunctions] ⟨absztrakt/abstract͒⟩
We argue that the so-called paired Hungarian coordinating conjunctions are actually multiple conjunctions, as they can be repeated without grammatical constraints to coordinate more than two elements. We analyse the syntactic and semantic features of the multiple vagy…, vagy…, vagy (‘either… or… or…’), multiple mind…, mind…, mind… (‘each of… and… and…’) and akár…, akár…, akár…, (‘whether… or… or…’) constructions. These function as operators from a position immediately preceding the conjuncts on the left side. They can also carry the main stress of the sentence. On the right side of the conjuncts, the multiple … is, …is, …is (‘…as well as … as well as …’) construction can be realized as a set of clitics, and its negative variant is the …sem, …sem, …sem (‘neither… nor… nor…’) construction (the latter can occur on both the left and right sides of the conjuncts, with different meanings). The particle sem is also realized as a clitic when it is on the right side of the conjuncts, but in the left-side position, it can optionally carry main stress. We describe how the multiple conjunctions can indicate the speaker’s perspective concerning the relationships between the alternatives described in the coordinated clauses or the members of event sequences or the members of lists of characters.
Keywords: coordination, multiple conjunctions, speaker’s perspective
Kulcsszavak: mellérendelés, többszörös kötőszók, a beszélő nézőpontja ⟨full text/teljes szöveg⟩ https://doi.org/10.15776/NyK.2023.119.12

Lovas Anna: Függő esetű névmások és igekötős igék a déli centrális cigány dialektusokban [Oblique pronouns and particle verbs in South Central Romani] ⟨absztrakt/abstract͒⟩
The analysis of new data recorded by the author and previously collected material shows that there is a tendency in South Central Romani dialects to place oblique pronouns between the verbal particle and the lexical verb in neutral sentences. This is unexpected, given that Romani is traditionally said to have VO word order.
Despite the surface similarities this phenomenon shares with the modal / auxiliary + particle verb constructions, according to our analysis, their structures are different from each other.
However, the fronting of oblique pronouns seems to be in line with the behaviour of the infinitival particle te, which also appears in a position enclosed by the verbal particle and the lexical verb.
Although it was language contact that induced the appearance of verbal particles in Romani, the verbal particle – oblique pronoun – lexical verb word order is ungrammatical in all the languages South Central Romani has come into contact with. This indicates that the phenomenon is a language-internal process, in which the structure of this construction is aligned with other, morphologically or syntactically similar constructions, namely the infinitival one.
Keywords: South Central Romani, oblique pronouns, particle verbs
Kulcsszavak: déli centrális cigány, függő esetű névmások, igekötős igék ⟨full text/teljes szöveg⟩ https://doi.org/10.15776/NyK.2023.119.13

Fejes László: A prófán mókus, avagy a módszer védelmében [The profane chipmunk, or, in defence of the method] ⟨absztrakt/abstract͒⟩
This paper is a reply to some problems raised in Sándor Szilágyi N.’s paper The holy chipmunk, or, pitfalls of the method (1999). It points out that the vagueness of results and lack of their verifiability that Szilágyi N. objects to is not a characteristic trait of historical linguistics alone. Rather, it is typical of all historical studies, and indeed of scholarship in general. It is also pointed out that such vagueness is something that historical linguists – as well as researchers in other scholarly fields – are completely aware of. It is argued that the example of the holy chipmunk is rather unrealistic. On the other hand, Szilágyi N. does not level real criticism at the method – indeed, he applies it himself. It is true, however, that his results are at least as vague as the etymologies he impugns. The paper discusses why the example of the holy chipmunk could be effective after all, and finally it proposes a possible solution for the origin of Hungarian ezmókus ‘dragon’ that is, of course, also hard to verify.
Keywords: historical linguistics, etymology, methodology
Kulcsszavak: történeti nyelvészet, etimológia, módszertan ⟨full text/teljes szöveg⟩ https://doi.org/10.15776/NyK.2023.119.14

Kubínyi Kata – Simoncsics Péter: Tálos Endre [An obituary of Endre Tálos] ⟨full text/teljes szöveg⟩ https://doi.org/10.15776/NyK.2023.119.15

Holopainen, Sampsa: Klima László – Türk Attila (szerk.), Párhuzamos történetek: Interdiszciplináris őstörténeti konferencia a PPKE Régészettudományi Intézetének szervezésében, Budapest, 2020. november 11–13. Nyelvészet [Parallel stories. Interdisciplinary conference on Hungarian prehistory, organized by the Institute for Archeology, PPCU, Budapest, 11–13 November 2020. Linguistics] ⟨full text/teljes szöveg⟩ https://doi.org/10.15776/NyK.2023.119.16

Polgár Szabolcs: Klima László – Türk Attila (szerk.), Párhuzamos történetek: Interdiszciplináris őstörténeti konferencia a PPKE Régészettudományi Intézetének szervezésében, Budapest, 2020. november 11–13. Régészet, történelem, folklorisztika [Parallel stories. Interdisciplinary conference on Hungarian prehistory, organized by the Institute for Archeology, PPCU, Budapest, 11–13 November 2020. Archeology, history, folkloristics] ⟨full text/teljes szöveg⟩ https://doi.org/10.15776/NyK.2023.119.17

Lázár Lakatos Aliz: Román Ilona, A kétnyelvűség és a kognitív képességek fejlődésének összefüggései romániai magyar tanulóknál [How bilingualism and the development of cognitive abilities interact in Hungarian schoolchildren in Romania] ⟨full text/teljes szöveg⟩ https://doi.org/10.15776/NyK.2023.119.18

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