Some things I like about Hungarian

Hungarian differs from most European languages in several ways, partly because it is not a member of the Indo-European family of languages. Hungarian is a member of the Ugric branch of the Uralic language family. https://languagemiscellany.com/2024/01/the-uralic-languages/

This post covers some fascinating features of Hungarian:

• vowel harmony
• front and back vowels in deictic words
• possessive
• word order: topic and focus
• verbal prefixes
• cases
• postpositions
• lack of grammatical gender
• agglutination
• vocabulary

Vowel harmony

In general all the vowels in a Hungarian word must be alike in some phonological feature. For example:

• native Hungarian words do not contain a mixture of front vowels (/ü/ and /ö/) and back vowels (/a/, /o/ /u/). The vowels /i/ and /e/ are phonetically front vowels, but for vowel harmony they are neutral (they can combine with front or back vowels).
• the form of some Hungarian suffixes depends on whether the word contains a back vowel or a front vowel. For instance, the case suffix meaning ‘in’ is –ben for words with front vowels and –ban for words with back vowels: könyv-ben (‘book in’) vs bolt-ban (‘shop in’).

These requirements are known as vowel harmony. For more on vowel harmony:

• in Hungarian, please see Kenesei et al (1998) and Abondolo (1987)
• in general, please see van der Hulst and de Weijer (1995), and https://languagemiscellany.com/tag/vowel-harmony/

Front and back vowels in deictic words

Many deictic words (words referring to location) come in 2 series, one containing a front vowel and the other containing a back vowel. Deictic words in the front vowel series refer to something near the speaker (proximal). Those in the back vowel series refer to something far from the speaker (distal).

Table 1 gives some examples.

Definite / indefinite

The form of inflectional suffixes attached to verbs depends:

• partly on the person (1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd) and number (singular, plural) of the verb’s subject; and
• also partly on whether the verb has a definite direct object (rather than an indefinite direct object or no direct object at all).

Table 2 summarises the indefinite and definite endings in the present tense.

Notes to table 2:

1. The suffixes have 2 variants (front / back) or 3 variants (front/ back unrounded/back rounded):  Their selection is determined by vowel harmony.
2. 1^st person singular: the suffix -(a)lak/-(e)lek is used if the object is 2^nd person.
3. Indefinite 2^nd person singular: -ol/-el/-öl are used after sibilant consonants <sz, z,s,zs>. This outcome, called dissimilation, avoids a sequence of 2 successive sibilants.
4. Indefinite 2^nd person singular and plural and 3^rd person plural: the vowel-initial variants occur after most clusters of consonants and after the stem ending -ít.
5. Indefinite 3^rd person singular. For most verbs, there is no ending. But for a large class of verbs, the ending -ik is used. For those verbs, the 1^st person singular definite (-em/-om/-öm) can optionally be used for the 1^st person singular indefinite as well.
6. 1^st person plural: there are rounded (-ü) and unrounded (-u) versions.
7. Definite, plural and 3^rd person singular: if the stem ends in a sibilant, -j causes doubling (gemination) of the sibilant.
8. These suffixes are for the present tense only. Slightly different suffixes exist for other tenses, and in the subjunctive, imperative and conditional.

Composition of the definite suffixes

Trommer (2008) suggests that the definite suffixes are made up of:

• an object agreement (surfacing as -i with front vowel and as -ja with back vowel stems, but zero [Ø] in the 1^st and 2^nd person singular), followed by
• a subject agreement marker (which is zero [Ø] in the 3^rd person singular).

Table 3 illustrates this analysis for a back vowel stem (ad-), a front vowel stem (fej-) and a rounded vowel stem (öl-).

Indefinite or definite?

Indefinite objects include:

• non-reflexive 1^st and 2^nd person objects;
• nouns with an indefinite article;
• nouns with no article and with no possessive suffix;
• question (interrogative) words—other than melyik (‘which one’) and hanyadik (‘which one of a sequence’);

Definite objects include:

• nouns with a definite article or with a possessive suffix;
• proper nouns (eg names);
• explicit or implicit 3^rd person personal pronouns;
• reflexive pronouns, reciprocal pronouns;
• the demonstratives azt (‘that’) or ezt (‘this’);
• interrogative, definite partitive or universal pronouns with the suffix -ik denoting unique identification: melyik (‘which one’); hanyadik (‘which one of a sequence’), definite part; valamelyik (any/either one’); egyik (‘one’); semelyik(‘not one’); mindegyik (‘every one’).
• the universal pronouns mind (‘all’) and valamennyi (‘each one’)
• clauses, eg látom, hogy ott áll (‘I see that he/she/it is standing there’).

Possessive

To report that one item possesses another item:

• Hungarian typically marks the possessed item with a personal (possessive) suffix, whereas English typically marks the possessor.
• the possessor appears in the nominative case (example 1a) or the dative case (example 1b), depending on the circumstances, and typically precedes the possessed item (not necessarily directly).
• if the possessor is in the dative case, the definite article a (az) appears after the possessor and before the possessed item. if the possessor is in the nominative case, no definite article a (az) appears between the possessor and the possessed item.
• if the possessor is a pronoun, the personal pronoun is optional (example 2)

(1a) a     fiú    könyv.e
        the boy.NOM  book-POSS.3SGL
       ‘the boy’s book’
(1b) a     fiúnak   a    könyv.e
        the boy.DAT the book-POSS.3SGL
       ‘his book’

In this and other examples, I have added a full stop to separate a word’s constituent morphemes.  

(2) az   ő  könyv.e                       / a    könyv.e                      
        the he book-POSS.3SGL      / the book-POSS.3SGL     
       ‘his book’

Possessive suffixes

Table 4 shows the personal endings that attach to the possessed item.

Strikingly, for a singular possessed item, the possessive suffixes are:

• for the singular, almost identical to the definite forms of the present tense verbal suffixes. (in the 3^rd person singular, the front vowel suffix is –(j)e instead of -i)
• for the 1^st and 2^nd person plural, identical to the indefinite forms of the present tense verbal suffixes.
• for some nouns in the 2^nd person (singular and plural) and 3^rd person plural, the vowel is -e-/-a (not shown in table 4), rather than -e-/-o-/-ö-.
• for the 3^rd person plural, -(ju/jü)nk instead of -ik/-ják (definite) or -(e)nek/-(a)nak (indefinite).

When the possessed item is plural:

• the possessor’s personal suffix is the same as for a singular possessed item, except that in the 2^nd person plural, the only forms are -tek/-tok, not -tök;
• a plural suffix -i- appears before the possessor’s personal suffix;
• if a vowel is needed, it appears before the plural suffix -i-. The vowel is -e/-a,  sometimes preceded by -j-. The other vowels used in the singular (-e/-o/-ö; -(j)u/-ü) are not available.

Marking the possessor

Usually, the possessor is referred to attributively and Hungarian marks the possessed item for the person and number of the possessor.

If the possessor is referred to predicatively (rather than attributively), the possessor is marked by the suffix -é (singular possessed item, examples 3a and 3b) or -éi (plural possessed item).

(3a) Ki.é               ez   a     könvy?
       Who-POSS this the book
      ‘Whose is this book?’

(3b) [A     könvy] János.é.
       [the  book]  János.POSS
       ‘[the book is] János’s’

Surprising uses of possessive

Possessive forms crop up surprisingly in some expressions such as igazad van (‘you are right’, literally you have right, cf German du hast Recht or French tu as raison).

‘Have’

Hungarian has no transitive verb meaning ‘have’. Instead, it uses possessive constructions like example 4:

(4)  a      fiú-nak van pénz-e
      the boy.DAT is    money-his
      ‘the boy has money’

Word order: topic and focus

Hungarian uses word order to 2 encode important pieces of information that many sentences convey:

• the sentence’s topic: what the sentence is about. The rest of the sentence (the predicate) says something about the topic.
• the sentence’s focus: the emphasised part of what the predicate says about the topic.

In Hungarian, the topic (if there is one) appears at the start of the sentence, and the focus (if there is one) appears immediately before the verb. Example 5a is a neutral sentence with its subject in the topic position, and with no focus. That sentence makes a statement about János: that he reads the book.

(5a) János olvassa a    könyvet
       János reads    the book

Example 5b also makes a statement about János (the topic), but emphasises that what he is reading is the book. The focus is könyvet (‘book’).

(5b) János a    könyvet olvassa
       János the book    reads
       ‘what Janos does is read THE BOOK’ 

In examples 5c and 5d, the topic is ‘the book’. These sentences say something about the book: that it is being read by Janos. Example 5c has no focus, but in example 5d the focus is János.

(5c) a    könyvet olvassa János
       the book     reads    János
       ‘the book is read by János’.

(5d) a     könyvet János olvassa
       the  book     János reads
      ‘it is JÁNOS that the book is read by’

Example 5e makes a statement about the reading of the book: that it is János who is reading it. The topic is olvassa a könyvet.

(5e) olvassa a  könyvet János
        reads       the book János
       ‘the person reading the book is János’

Example 5f makes a statement about the reading by János: what he is reading is the book. The topic is olvassa János.

(5f) olvassa János a    könyvet
      reads    János the book
     ‘what János reads is the book’

English cannot use word order in the same way as Hungarian to identify a sentence’s topic and focus. As the translations of the above examples show, English needs to use other methods (sometimes cumbersome) to pick out the topic and focus.

Verbal prefixes

Hungarian has a set of verbal prefixes that change the meaning of the verb. They have some similarities to separable verb prefixes in German, but play a more important role than their German counterparts.

• often, the verbal prefix immediately precedes the verb, and the prefix and verb are written as a single word (example 6a).  
• if the verb is in a clause containing a focus or a negator, the focus or negator occupies the place immediately before the verb, and the verbal prefix goes later in the clause (example 6b)
• the verbal prefix usually changes the verb’s meaning. For example, olvas means ‘read’ and felolvas (‘up.read’) means ‘read out loud’
• the verbal prefix often acts as a marker of perfective aspect, showing that the action denoted by the verb is completed. One verbal prefix (meg) acts mainly just as an aspectual marker, without adding any lexical meaning (examples 6c and 6d).
• the verbal prefix can appear as a one-word answer to some questions (example 6f, answering example 6e).
• prefixes do not undergo vowel harmony.

(6a) János felolvasta a verseit
       János up.read    the poems
      ‘János read the poems out’

(6b) János nem olvasta fel a verseit
        János not  read     up the poems
       ‘János did not read the poems out’

(6c) István írta a levelet
       István was writing the letter

(6d) István megírta a levelet
        István wrote the letter

(6e) Felolvasta János a verseit?
        up.read    János the poems
       ‘Did János read the poems out’
(6f) Fel
       up
       ‘Yes’

Cases

Hungarian has between 17 and 27 grammatical cases, depending on how some items are analysed. https://languagemiscellany.com/2022/03/how-many-cases-are-there-in-hungarian-and-finnish/

In contrast, looking only at some examples in languages of the Indo-European family, Latin had 6 cases, Russian has 6 cases, German has 4 cases, French makes no case distinctions at all. English has minor remnants of distinctions between 3 cases. Does English really have case? – Language Miscellany

The cases include:

• some cases familiar to people who know some German, Russian or Latin (nominative, accusative, dative). https://languagemiscellany.com/2022/03/how-many-cases-are-there-in-hungarian-and-finnish/
• some local or spatial cases expressing such concepts as location, movement to or from a place. https://languagemiscellany.com/2022/05/how-many-cases-are-there-in-hungarian-and-finnish-2/
• some minor cases mostly conveying a narrow meaning. https://languagemiscellany.com/2022/08/how-many-cases-are-there-in-hungarian-and-finnish-3/

Many case endings developed from postpositions or from other separate words, such as nouns.

Postpositions

Hungarian has postpositions (immediately following a noun), rather than prepositions (preceding a noun). The noun preceding a postposition takes no suffix (or, some say, it is the nominative case with a zero suffix).

Case suffixes and postpositions are similar: both immediately follow the noun. In fact, most case suffixes were postpositions until the Middle Ages.

The main differences between case suffixes and postpositions are that:

• case suffixes are more tightly integrated with the noun they modify, forming a single morphological word (example 7a), whereas a noun and a postposition form separate phonological words (example 7b).  
• unlike case suffixes, postpositions do not undergo vowel harmony with the noun.
• case suffixes are typically monosyllables whereas postpositions are typically disyllables.

(7a) a     ház.ban
        the  house.in
       ‘in the house’

(7b) a     ház      mellett
       the house beside
       ‘beside the house’

Some grammarians classify the following as postpositions, but É. Kiss (2002) treats them as adverbs and participles respectively:

• adverbs following a noun bearing a case suffix.
  János.sal   együtt
  János.with together
  ‘together with János’
• participles following a noun bearing a case governed by the verb.
  termet.é.re          néz.ve
  stature.his.onto  look.ing
  ‘regarding his stature’

Trommer (2008) proposes that so-called ‘postpositions’ and ‘case suffixes’ are of the same morphosyntactic category, but have different phonological status:

• postpositions are disyllabic, forming phonological words on their own
• case suffixes are monosyllabic and integrated with their head noun forming a single phonological word.

Trommer suggests calling this category Kase (intended, I assume, to sound like ‘case’).

Morphosyntactic category

Supporting the proposal that postpositions and case suffixes are of the same morphosyntactic category, Trommer says that both case suffixes and postpositions:

• combine with bare nouns that have no other case marking.
• appear immediately after the related noun.
• agree in person and number with pronominal heads (examples 8a and 8b), but not with noun heads (examples 8c and 8d) For both case suffixes and postpositions, the pronoun may be omitted.
• trigger demonstrative concord: demonstratives such as a(z) (‘that’) or e(z) (‘this’) bear a copy of the case suffix (example 8e) / are followed by a copy of the postposition (example 8f).

(8a) (te)    vel.ed
       (you) with.2SING
       ‘with you’
(8b) (te)   mellet.ed
       (you) beside.2SING
       ‘beside you’

(8c) a    ház.ban
       the house.in
       ‘in the house’
(8d) a    ház    mellet
       the house beside
      ‘beside the house’

(8e) ab.ban a   haz.ban etc
       that.in the house.in
      ‘in that house’
(8f) az allat a fa allat
      that under the tree under
      ‘under that tree’

How many words?

Trommer (2008) points to the following evidence that (a) a noun and its case suffix form a single phonological word, but (b) a noun and a postposition form 2 separate phonological words:

• case suffixes undergo vowel harmony with the related noun, but postpositions do not
• when noun phrases are conjoined, a repeated head noun can be omitted (undergo ellipsis) before a postposition (example 9a), but not before a case suffix (example 9b).
  Similarly, it is possible to omit a repeated postposition (example 10a), but not a repeated case suffix (example 10b). In the examples, I show omitted material in strikethrough within [square brackets].

(9a) a    ház     előtt    és    [a ház]        mögött
       the house before and [the house] behind
      ‘before and behind the house’

(9b) a    haztól                      és    a    házból
       the house.from.outside and the house.from.inside
      ‘from outside and from inside the house’

(10a) a    ház      [előtt]    és   a    garázs  előtt       
         the house [before] and the garage before
         ‘before the house and garage’

(10b) a    haznál    és    a    garázsnál
         the house.at and the garage.at
        ‘at the house and the garage’

Locational postpositions

Some locational postpositions come in 3 series, for: location (suffix: -tt); movement from a location (suffix: -ól/-ől); and movement towards a location (suffix: -é). (table 5). These 3 series remind me of the 3 series of local or spatial cases in Hungarian How many cases are there in Hungarian and Finnish? (2) – Language Miscellany

Other postpositions are: helyett (‘instead of’); miatt (‘because of’); nélkül (‘without’); szerint (‘acording to’) and iránt (‘towards’).

Lack of grammatical gender

Hungarian does not have grammatical gender.

Agglutination

Hungarian is an agglutinative language. Words are formed by stringing together sequences of components (morphemes). Sometimes, these sequences are very long. Here is an example given by Kenesei, Vago and Fenyvesi (1998): háztartásigépjavítás ‘house equipment repair’.

This word is made up of the following 8 components:

ház      tart             – ás     -i         gép         jav     -ít       -ás
house  hold (verb) -NML -ATTR  machine good -CAUS -NML

In this word:

• ház and gép are nouns;
• tart is a verb;
• jav is a form related to the adjective jo (good). The causative suffix -ít converts it into the verb ‘repair’;
• –as is a nominalising suffix that turns the verbs tart and javít into nouns.
• -i is an attributive suffix that converts the noun tartás (holding) into an adjective.        

Vocabulary

Hungarian vocabulary comes from various sources, particularly:

• the ancestral language of the Finno-Ugric language family. Examples are: fiú (‘son’); öcs (‘younger brother); fej; (‘head’); szem (‘eye); nyelv (‘tongue’, ‘language’); hal (‘fish); jön (‘come’); eszik (‘eat’).
• Iranian languages during the earliest stages of the Hungarian migration, for example: tehén (‘cow’); tej (‘milk’); híd (bridge); asszony (‘woman’); száz (‘one hundred’).
• Turkic languages during the Hungarian migration westward across western Russia toward the Carpathian basin between the 5^th and 9^th centuries. Examples: dél (south); idő (‘time’); szám (‘number’); ír– (‘write’); sátor/ sátra (‘tent’); szék (‘chair’); gyümölcs (‘fruit’); szőlő (‘grape’); bor (‘wine’); disznó (‘pig’).  A few Turkic words were borrowed in the 10^th to 13^th centuries after the Hungarians arrived in modern Hungary—eg orosz (‘Russian’)—or during the Ottoman occupation of the 16^th and 17^th centuries, including zseb (‘pocket’) and kávé (coffee’).
• Germanic languages since about 1200 CE, including herceg (‘duke’), kastély (castle); copf (‘braid’, ‘pigtail’), vigec (slang for ‘commercial traveller’, from German wie geht’s? ‘how are things going?), tucat (‘dozen’).
• Slavonic languages after around 1200 CE. Examples include pók (‘spider’), puszta (‘bare’, ‘deserted’), pecsenye ‘roast’), kereszt (‘cross’). In some cases, borrowings from different Slavonic languages led to doublets within Hungarian. Examples: vacsora (‘evening meal’) / vecsernye (‘vespers’); rozsda (‘rust’) / ragya (‘mildew’); megye (‘county’) / mezsgye (‘boundary mark between ploughed fields’); család (‘family)/ cseléd (‘servant’).
• Latin, as well as modern pan-Europeanisms, such as atléta (‘athlete’).

Sources

Hungarian, Daniel Abondolo (1987), in Comrie (editor, 1990)

Hungarian (Routledge Descriptive Grammars Series), by István Kenesei, Robert M. Vago and Anna Fenyvesi (1998)

Hungarian Verbs & Essentials of Grammar, Miklós Törkenczy (1997)

The Syntax of Hungarian (2002), by Katalin É. Kiss

“Case suffixes”, postpositions and the Phonological Word in Hungarian, Jochen Trommer (2008) https://home.uni-leipzig.de/jtrommer/papers/words7.pdf

Uralic, Ferenc Kiefer and Johanna Laakso, in The Oxford Handbook of Derivational Morphology, edited by Rochelle Lieber and Pavol Štekauer (2014)

Uralic Languages, Robert Austerlitz (1987), in Comrie (editor, 1990)

The Major Languages of Eastern Europe, edited by Bernard Comrie (1990)

Vowel Harmony, by Harry van der Hulst and Jeroen de Weijer, in The Handbook of Phonological Theory (Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics), edited by John A Goldsmith (1995)