The Hungarian Language, A Short Descriptive Grammar.pdf

The Hungarian Language

A Short Descriptive Grammar

Beáta Megyesi

Hungarian, also called Magyar, traditionally belongs to the Ob-Ugric languages (e.g. Khanty and

Mansi) of the Finno-Ugric branch of Uralic. Hungarian is the official language of the Republic of

Hungary, and has approximately fifteen million speakers, of which four million reside outside of

Hungary.

In this paper a description of Hungarian phonology, morphology and syntax follows. The sections are

based on Benk ö & Imre (1972), Rácz (1968), Olsson (1992) and Abondolo (1992).

1.1 Phonology

Hungarian has a rich system of vowels and consonants.

The vowel inventory consists of 14 phonemes of which one can distinguish 5 pairs, consisting of

short and long counterparts; these are i - í, o - ó, ö - ö, u - ú, ü - ü . The remaining four are e - é and a -

á. Short vowels, if they are marked, take an umlaut (¨), while long vowels are indicated by an acute (´)

or with a double acute accent (´´) which is a diacritic unique to Hungarian. Long vowels are usually

somewhat tenser than their short counterparts with two exceptions; e is low while é is higher mid and á

is low whereas a is lower mid and slightly rounded (Abondolo, 1992). Vowel length is independent of

prosodic factors such as stress.

The vowels may be interconnected through the laws of vowel harmony which means that suffixes,

which may assume two or three different forms, usually agree in backness with the last vowel of the

stem. In other words, front vs. back alternatives of suffixes are selected according to which vowel(s)

the stem contain(s) (Benk ö & Imre, 1972). The vocalism of stems, classified by Abondolo (1992), is

inherently back for all stems containing at least one back vowel and for most verbs with the sole vowel

i or í. For all other stems the vocalism is front. In regard to vowel harmony, i and í are neutral and can

be used with either front (high) or back (low) vowels. Harmony causes the following alternations

among suffix combinations: a/e (-ban/-ben - 'in'), á/é (-nál/-nél - 'at'), ó/ ö (-ból/-b ö l - 'from'), u/ü (-ul/-

ül - 'for, by') and o/e/ö (-hoz/-hez/-höz - 'to').

The vowels may show even paradigmatic alternations as long and short vowels (é vs. e and á vs. a,

see the example below) alternate in some stems (Benk ö & Imre, 1972).

Example 1

teh é n

teh e n-et

f a

f á -t

cow:NOM

cow-ACC

tree:NOM

tree-ACC

’cow’

’tree’

When building a Hungarian corpus it is usual to delete the accent and the umlaut from the vowel and

mark vowel length as well as the umlaut by numerals which follow the vowel: 1 denotes the acute

accent (e.g. ó -> o1), 2 the umlaut ( ü -> u2) and 3 the double acute accent (e.g. ö -> o3) . This notation

can be useful when automatically deriving rules from a corpus because of the paradigmatic alternations

of the long vs. short vowels.

There are totally 25 consonants, which can be determined according to the manner and the place of

articulation, voicing and quantity. The consonants are shown in the table below.

Table 1. The Hungarian consonant chart, given with regular orthographic symbols. Phonetic values

are given in square brackets.

Labial/labiodental dental/alveolar

pal a tal

v e lar

g lottal

-voice

+voice -voice +voice -voice +voice -voice +voice -voice

S tops

t y [t’]

g y [d’]

Affricates

c [ts]

dz cs [c’] dzs [j’]

F ricatives

sz [s]

s [s’]

z s [z’]

Nasals

n y [n’]

L aterals

Tremulants

Glides

j , ly 1

Consonant length is distinctive and is independent of vowel length and of prosodic factors such as

stress. Each consonant can be pronounced short or long, where the last mentioned has almost double

the length of short consonants and is written by doubling the letter (gg), or the first element of a

digraph (ggy) (Benk ö & Imre, 1972). Many of the long consonants occur at morpheme boundaries or

root-finally in foreign vocabulary (Abondolo, 1992).

Assimilation is either full or partial and can be indicated by orthography. In the next section, the most

important morpheme specific assimilation rules will be presented.

1.2 Morphology

Hungarian is basically agglutinative, i.e. grammatical relations are expressed by means of affixes. For

understanding the function of different affixes and how they interact the following section will give an

overview of these for different parts of speech. The types of homography will also be described under

the main categories.

1.2.1 Articles

The articles [DET] 2 are invariable for number, person, gender and case. The indefinite article is egy ,

while the definite article has two forms a and az , where the first is used before consonants and the

latter before vowels, similar to English indefinite articles.

With regard to homography, the form of the definite article az can also be a demonstrative pronoun

and the indefinite article can be homonymous to the numeral ’one’ (Pajzs, 1996).

1.2.2 Nouns

Every Hungarian noun [FN] may be analysed as a stem followed by three positions in which

inflectional suffixes can occur. Thus, nouns are inflected for number, person (possessor) and case, with

the relevant suffixes attached in that order (Abondolo, 1992). Any or all of the three inflectional

suffixes may be occupied by a zero suffix which denotes either singular number (first position),

absence of possessor (second position) or nominative case (third position) (Abondolo, 1987). Thus we

have:

Example 2

gyereke-Ø-m-en

gyereke-k-Ø-en

gyereke-i-m-Ø

child-Ø-1POSS-SUPESS

child-PL-Ø-SUPESS

child-PL-1POSS-Ø

'on my child'

'on children'

'my children'

There is no grammatical gender. The personal pronoun ö means both 'he' and 'she'.

1 j and ly are pronounced alike.

Within brackets [] are those PoS tags that are used in the Hungarian corpus.

Describing Hungarian, many authors, not without reason, ’forget’ to mention something about the

complicated system of noun stem alternation. Here, an outline of this system based on the summary by

Abondolo (1987) is presented.

Noun stems may end in either a consonant or a vowel. All stems with final a or e are lengthened ( á

vs. é ) before most suffixes, whether derivational or declensional.

Example 3

lámp a => lámp á -m

kef e =>

kef é -m

lamp:NOM lamp-1POSS

brush:NOM

brush-1POSS

’lamp’ ’my lamp’

’brush’

’my brush’

There also exists a very special stem form, called ’oblique stem’, which occurs with several nouns.

This oblique stem form differs from the nominative singular in a way that there is present a stem-final

a or e , or there is absent the stem-penultimate o , ö or e , or both. The example below illustrates this

where fal ’wall’, dal ’song’, gyomor ’stomach’, nyomor ’misery’, sátor ’tent’ and mámor ’rapture’

(Abondolo, 1987).

Example 4 Different nouns have different inflectional patterns based on their oblique stems

S tem

present a normal Absent o

n ormal

a bsent o and present a

n ormal

Nominative

fal

dal

gyomor

nyomor

sátor

mámor

Oblique

fal-a

dal-

gyomr

nyomor-

sátr-a

mámor-

Accusative

f ala-t

d al-t

g yomr-ot

n yomor-t

s átra-t

mámor-t

There are words whose oblique stems not only have final a or e but also v instead of u , e.g. falu

'village' whose oblique stem is falva -, as in the form falva-k 'villages'.

Nominative stems with the long vowels á and é also change to short a vs. e in the penultimate

position when becoming oblique stem, e.g. madár ’bird’, oblique stem madara -, thus madara-k ’birds’.

This phenomenon may cause problem when automatically identifying stems.

1.2.2.1 Number

The category number is realised as singular and plural. There are two plural suffixes. The suffix -k is

preceded by an epenthetic vowel after a consonant final stem (Olsson, 1992).

Example 5

SINGULAR

PLURAL

’university’

egyetem

egyetemek

’student’

diák

diákok

The other plural suffix is -i , which is used only when person suffixes are present.

Example 6

gyereke-i-nke-t

child-PL-1PL-ACC

'our children'

1.2.2.2 Person/Possession

Possession is usually indicated with a personal suffix on the possessed noun. The forms vary for

number and person, as shown in Appendix A under possessives. If there is a chain of possessors, the

last possessor, closest to the head, takes a dative case marker -nak/-nek in addition to the possessive

suffix. Consider the following example.

Example 7

az apá-m barát- já - nak a könyv- e

the father-1SG.POSS friend-3SG.POSS-DAT/GEN the book-3.SG.POSS

'my father's friend's book'

The suffix - já - marks possession by apám ’my father’ and -nak signals the pending possessive ending -e

(Campbell, 1991).

Nouns consisting of a stem with a possessive ending followed by a cases suffix are in most cases

homonymous. For example, the word fej+é+nek with the suffix - é- as a possessive suffix means ’to the

possession of his head’, while the same word with - é - as a paradigmatic alternation to the vowel e

means ’to his head’ (Pajzs, 1996).

1.2.2.3 Case

Hungarian has a complex case system involving 16 to 24 distinct forms to mark that an NP bears

some identifiable grammatical or semantic relation to the rest of the sentence. The case suffixes may be

classified into two groups, non-local and local. The non-local cases express primary syntactic or

adverbial functions, such as subject, direct and indirect object, possessor or instrument. The local cases

show concrete spatial and kinetic conditions such as interior vs. exterior, stationary vs. moving

(Abondolo, 1987).

There are different assumptions about the exact number of case suffixes. I count 19 and the names of

the cases and the forms (allomorph) of the suffixes are given in the Appendix with examples ( ház

’house’, öt ’five’). Unfortunately, there is no space for explaining the function of each case but hopefully

the examples illustrate their functions.

Case suffixes are the same both in singular and in plural. The plural suffix always precedes the case

suffix, as the examples below show:

Example 8

a háza-k-ban

a háza-i-m-ban

the house-PL-INESS

the house-PL-1SG-INESS

'in the houses'

'in my houses'

Assimilation at juncture takes place in instrumental and translative case which may cause problems in

automatic tagging systems. The initial -v- in the instrumental suffix -val/-vel and the translative suffix -

vá/vé is assimilated to a preceding consonant (Olsson, 1992).

Example 9

Instrumental

Translative

ház 'house'

ház-zal

ház-zá

öt 'five'

öt-tel

öt-té

The case suffixes may also occur as stems and take personal suffixes if not postposed to a noun. They

are then usually regarded as pronouns or adverbs in traditional Hungarian grammar.

Table 2. The Hungarian case system, listed with each allomorph of the case suffix in singular and

plural and exemplified by the words ház 'day', and öt 'five'

Case [Tag]

Suffixes

Examples

Nominative [NOM]

Ház

house

Accusative 3 [ACC]

-t, -ot, -et, -öt

Házat

house

Dative-genitive 4 DAT]

-nak, -nek

Háznak

of the house

Instrumental [INS]

-(V)al, -(V)el

Házzal

with the house

Essive-modal

[SOC] -stul, -stül

házastul

with the house and its parts

Translative

[FAC]

-(V)á, (V)é

házzá

into a house

Causal-final

[CAU]

-ért

házért

for the house

Illative [ILL]

-ba, -be

házba

into the house

Sublative [SUB]

-ra, -re

házra

onto the house

Allative [ALL]

-hoz, -hez, höz

házhoz

to the house

3 The accusative case ending in certain constructions may be zero (-Ø-) if the object is a noun with a

possessive personal endig, e.g. eladom a házam/házamat ’I sell my house.’.

4 The reason for marking the genitive and the dative cases as the same is, that dative may mark not only

the indirect object but also the possessor.

Inessive [INE]

-ban, -ben

házban

in the house

Superessive [SUP]

-n, -on, -en, -ön

házon

on the house

Adessive [ADE]

-nál, nél

háznál

at the house

Elative [ELA]

-ból, -b ö l

házból

out of the house

Delative [DEL]

-ról, r ö l

házról

from (top of) the house

Ablative [ABL]

-tól, t ö l

háztól

from (nearby) the house

Terminative [TER]

-ig

házig

as far as the house

Formal [FOR]

-ként

házként

as a house

Temporal [TEM]

- kor

ö tkor

a t five

1.2.3 Pronouns

The use of personal pronouns [NM] is not frequent in Hungarian because it is a pro-drop language.

They basically have two cases: nominative and accusative. The singular forms in nominative are én (I),

te ('you'), and ö('he', 'she'). Third person plural in the nominative case can be derived from the

corresponding singular by adding the plural suffix - k (the same as the plural suffix for nouns) to the

singular stem, e.g. ö+ k. For the other plural forms there is no such simple connection ( mi ’we’ and ti

’you’).

The personal pronouns in first and second person singular in accusative occur usually without the

accusative suffix - t . ( engem ’me’, téged ’you’). The first and second plural forms in accusative are, on

the other hand, constructed as nominative form + corresponding possessive suffix + accusative marker

-t, i.e. the same marker for possessive suffixes and for the accusative for nouns, e.g. mi+nk+et ’us’ and

ti+tek+et ’you’. The third person in accusative can be derived as nominative + (plural ending) +

accusative ending, thus ö+t ’her/him’ ö+k+et ’them’.

By adding the enclitic (personal) markers to the case endings of nouns, oblique forms are made.

These correspond to prepositional phrases in English, and are often regarded as pronouns in different

cases, or as adverbs because of their adverbial function in the sentence. The enclitic markers with

examples are shown in Table 3.

Table 3. The enclitic markers for Hungarian pronouns

S ingular

P lural

E xamples - SG

E xamples - PL

1 - m

- unk, -ünk

n ek-em 'to me'

n ek-ünk 'to us'

2 - d

- tok, -tek

n ek-ed 'to you'

n ek-tek 'to you'

3 - i, -e

- ik, -ük

n ek-i 'to him/her'

n ek-ik 'to them'

Reflexive pronouns [NM] consist of the word mag 'pit, nucleus' and a possessive personal suffix,

listed in Appendix A. Besides the reflexive function they also have a non-reflexive function to

emphasise the personal pronouns. In reflexive function the accusative ending - at is 'obligatory', except

the first and second person where the nominative form is common.

Possessive pronouns [NM] which serve to express possession have the following forms:

enyém 'mine'

miénk 'ours'

tied 'yours'

tietek 'yours'

övé 'his/hers'

övék 'theirs'

Possessive pronouns cannot stand together with the noun head (the possessed entity). When the noun

head is present a personal pronoun is used. Thus, the use of double markers on the pronoun and the

noun head at the same time is not allowed in Hungarian.

Example 10

eny:ém volt a könyv a(z) (én) könyv-em

POSSPRON:1SG COP:PAST the book the I book-POSS1SG

'It was my book.' 'my book'

The system of demonstrative pronouns [NM] consists of two categories; pronouns with front vowel

mean 'near' in contrast to pronouns with back vowel which mean 'far', e.g. ez/az 'this/that'. Case endings

are usually added to the pronouns and show both regressive (ez-nek => en-nek) and progressive (az-val

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