Derived adjectives in Hungarian

As an agglutinating language, Hungarian uses several suffixes to derive adjectives from nouns, verbs and other parts of speech. This post summarises the main suffixes.

I will look in a future post at suffixes that form verbs and nouns.

Hungarian has a pervasive system of vowel harmony. Leaving aside many details:
– vowels are classified as either back (a, á, o, ó) or non-back (ö, ő, ü ű) or neutral (i, í, e, é).
– many suffixes surface with back vowels if they attach to a stem containing back vowels, but with a non-back vowel if they attach to a stem containing back vowels.
– a few suffixes surface with [o] after noun stems containing a back vowel, with [ö] if the vowel preceding the ending is itself rounded (ö or ü), and with the front unrounded vowel [e] after other noun stems.

The suffix -i

The suffix -i forms adjectives from nouns, place names and adverbs, and even from some postpositions (table 1).

Table 1. Suffix -i, relating to nouns, places, adverbs and postpositions

a ház Anna általi felépítés (‘the construction of the house by Anna’)

a Péter mögötti ház (the house behind Peter)

Although -i can attach to postpositions expressing location (eg mögött, ‘[located] behind’) or directed motion from somewhere (eg mögül, ‘from behind’), it cannot attach to postpositions expressing directed motion towards somewhere, such as to mögé (‘to behind’).

The suffix -beli

The locative adjectival suffix -beli (from bel, ‘inside’) attaches to:

• common nouns
• noun phrases with a locative sense
• complex place names, which cannot take the suffix -i

Table 2. -beli. Nouns, locatives, complex place names

The suffix -s

The suffix -s forms adjectives:

• from nouns (table 3)
• from other adjectives to express the meaning ‘-ish’ (table 4)
• from some postpositions (table 5)
• from adjectives ending in -i (table 6).

Table 3. -s deriving adjectives from nouns

This suffix can also attach to:

• a noun modified by a single preceding adjective or numeral:
  rövid függönyös (with short (‘rövid)curtains (‘függöny’)
• expressions of time, producing prenominal attributes:
  a harminc-öt éves háború (‘the 35-year war’)

Table 4. -s meaning ‘ish’

Table 5. -s attached to some postpositions

Table 6. -as, -es suffixed to adjective ending in -i

The negative of these adjectives is formed with the suffix -tlan / -tlet (table 7).

Table 7 -tlan / -tlen. Lack of a property, negative from adjectives formed in -i

The suffix -ú / -ű

The suffix -ú / -ű (table 8) can be used, unlike -s:

• on inalienable possessions (eg parts of the body)
• on possessions (even alienable possessions) modified by more than a single adjective, or by an adjective phrase (including intensifiers or comparative phrases)
  Anna-é-nál     keves-ebb hajú
  Anna-’s-than short-er hair.ed
  ‘having hair shorter than Anna’s’
  [hyphens added to show morpheme boundaries]

After vowels, this suffix is -jú / -jű .

Table 8. -ú / -ű. Possessions: inalienable or complex

Other qualities

Szer means ‘tool’. The suffix -szerű forms adjectives meaning ‘like’ something (table 9), and the compound suffix -szerű-tlen forms their negative (table 10).

Table 9. -szerű / -szerű-tlen

Other suffixes forming adjectives that refer to qualities are -ánk, -énk  (table 11) and ékony, ékeny (table 12).

Table 10. suffix -ánk, -énk

Table 11. suffix ékony, ékeny

Ability and inability

Table 12 -ható / -hető. Ability

This suffix can attach to any transitive verb. The verb’s object becomes the subject of the adjective.

Apparently, some lexicalised adjectives ending in -ható / -hető come from intransitive verbs. I haven’t yet looked for an example.

Kenesei, Vago and Fenyvesi (1998 ) analyse -ható / -hető as a separate -suffix, not as a combination of -hat / -het with ó/ő. They say this partly because both -hat / -het and ó/ő can attach to intransitive verbs, not just to transitive verbs.

The negatives of adjectives with the suffix -ható / -hető express inability and are formed with the suffix -hatatlan / -hetetlen (table 13).

Table 13 -hatatlan / -hetetlen. Inability

Some adjectives ending in -hatatlan / ethetlen have no positive counterparts, eg élhetetlen (‘helpless’, from él ‘live’) and nyughatatlan (‘restless’, from nyug ‘rest’).

Negatives

The main negative suffix is  –(a)t(a)lan, -(e)t(e)len (table 14).

Table 14. suffix –(a)tlan, -(e)tlen

Note the difference between, for example, érdeketelen (‘uninteresting’) and nem érdekes (‘not interesting’).

Other instances of this negative suffix in specific contexts are in tables 7 (negative of adjectives formed with -ias / -ies), 13 (inability) and 16 (participles).

Participles

Table 15 shows some adjectives that are also (or were originally) participles and table 16 shows some corresponding negative forms.

 Table 15. Some participle forms

Table 16 -atlan / -etlen.

This is the negative form of the passive (or past) participle. It is a true adjective, whereas the participle cannot be used with intensifiers (like ‘very’) or predicatively.

It applies mainly to transitive verb bases, but apparently some lexicalised forms are formed from intransitive bases. I haven’t yet looked for an example.

Note: nem le-írt / le nem írt (not written down)

I haven’t seen a clear description of the suffix -ós / ős (table 17). It may be a derivative of the present participles

Table 17. -ós / ős

Size

Table 18. -nyi. Measures

This suffix forms units of measure

Numbers

Adjectival suffixes used with numbers include:

• -s
  a hétes szoba (room 7).
• -szori
  hatszori kisérlet (‘6th time attempt’)
• -szörös
  ötszörös élnök (‘5-time president’)
• -ötödik / -otodik / -etedik
  ötödik (‘5^th’ [in order]), hatodik (‘6^th’), (hetedik (7^th), see also ötöd (‘one fifth’), hatod (‘one sixth’), heted (‘one seventh’)

Sources

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

The Phonology of Hungarian, Péter Siptár and Miklós Törkenczy (2000)

A Practical Hungarian Grammar, László Keresztes (1992)