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Re: Hungarian tense, aspect, mood...

From:Racsko Tamas <tracsko@...>
Date:Friday, April 30, 2004, 20:19
On 29 Apr 2004 <Rob Haden <magwich78@...>> wrote:

> Did Hungarian (or its ancestor) have a medio-passive -u suffix?
The formants resembling *-u were originally short velar or bilabial consonants *-k (*-G), *-N, *-p, *-m in PFU, e.g. modern present participle suffix -ó/o" < -au/äu/eu diphtongues < root vowel + *-G < PFU root vowel + *-k. I'm aware of a medio-passive formant (derivational suffix) -v. It became archaic in the early Proto-Hungarian and survived only in a few words, e.g. "nyam-v-adt" 'sickly, originally: pressed [by an evil being]' < "nyom" 'push'. The functionality of this -v was replaced by the "ik"-type verbs. My sources tell that its form in the Proto- Hungarian was *-B (i.e. voiced bilabial fricative) and it comes from the proto-language (PFU or Proto-Ugric). But I don't know its reconstructed form (I suppose it could be *-m- or *-p-), nor its parallelisms in other FU languages. [N.B. The *-i seems to be the only suffix in PFU that was a single vowel. Therefore some authors think that all suffix had at least one consonant, thus the "original" form of *-i was rather *-j and it later vocalized in various languagues (such as Finnish). (It was never syllabic in Hungarian.)]
> What caused the older long formant to be treated as the definite > suffix, and the short variant as the indefinite one? Or was it simply > ad hoc?
It was simply ad hoc. But a tendentious ad hoc process :)) Every phonological change have a time dimension, therefore old and new variants are used at the same time for a while. These doublets can be resolved in two ways: (1) one of the parallel forms disappears (usually the older one); (2) there will be a semantic split: the elements of the doublets are associated to different morphosemantical entities. In this case the latter happened, the simultaneous split of the indetermined and determined conjugations "raised a claim" to a new set of personal suffixes and this claim was "fulfilled" by the splitting of -á/é ~ -a/e. The process above is a common linguistic event but the reason of the actual distribution (older - definite, newer - indefinite) seems to be rather ad hoc. However, the same happened with the suffix of the conditional *-ná/né in 3rd person: we can find the older long form in the definite paradigm "látná" 'he/she would see [it/him/her]', while the newer shorter one belongs to the definite conjugation "látna" 'he/she would see'. It's conceivable that the definite conjugation was separated from the indefinite one, therefore it had no "inherited" suffixes, and it had to put in use again the archaizes older variants.
> Is that opinion shared by Sammallahti et al.?
I'm sorry I'm not a professional Finno-Ugrist, I don't know much of the foreign references. Therefore I don't know even Sammallahti.
> I've read elsewhere that there was only a perfect-imperfect distinction > in PFU, and it seems reasonable to me.
I wrote nearly the same. My sources (Gábor Bereczky, Károly Rédei) suppose that there was at least two period of the PFU: in the early PFU period there was a neutral tense (aorist) with perfect-imperfect distinction. But in the late period -- when the unity was about to dissolve -- two tenses developed, preterite vs. present-future by the revaluation of the former perfect-imperfect contrast.
> Why is the "common FU past marker *-s' /s"/" a present marker in > Hungarian?
It's supposed that the perfect-imperfect contrast didn't resemble to the IE-type perfect-imperfect distinction. PFU verbs had no separate perfect and imperfect form: a certain verb was inherently perfect or imperfect (similarly as in present-day Slavic languages or in Hungarian "lát" 'see' ~ "meglát" 'see, catch sight of'). There was a set of derivational suffixes to form perfect (e.g. inchoative, momentaneous) or imperfect (e.g. frequentative) verbs. It seems that *-j was a perfective suffix, while *-s' and -*k were imperfective suffixes. We can see that -- where the respective formant survived -- *-k is a present tense marker throughout the FU languages, while *-j and *-s' is a past tense parker _except_ Hungarian where *-s' is a present marker. My solution of the riddle is the following: when the tenses began to develop, the suffix *-k was reallocated as a present-future marker, while *-s' as imperfect (or frequentative preterite) and *-j as a perfect (or momentaneous preterite) marker. The Hungarian was the very first language that separated from the PFU and it has always the most southern position. The above new developments couldn't entirely reach the distant and just separating Hungarian, therefore it used *-s' as a frequentative formant referring to the present-future and not to the past. Later in the "mainframe", the distinction between the supposed imperfect *-s' and perfect *-j was lost, they became variants. This is reflected in Erza Mordvin 1st and 2nd persons of preterite I uses -i < *-j (cf. kort.i.n' 'I speek', kort.i.t' 'thou speek') but 3rd person uses -s' < *-s' (korta.s' 'he/she speeks'). In Cheremiss the two past markers are used to distinguish the two types of conjugation in past.
> Is this suffix the origin of the Finnish conditional suffix -i.si? > (Note: I assume here that the initial i of the suffix is the past (< > perfect) marker, and with Germanic influence on the Finnish language > (formation of auxiliary perfect tense, etc.), modality came to conform > more with the Germanic model (i.e. modal + perfect = past modal, such as > English "I would have gone").)
Bereczky reconstructs -isi- in PFU as *-N'c'i ~ *-N's'i. Before a consonant PFU *N (velar nasal) became *u in Proto-Finnish (FP) and *N' (palatalized velar nasal) became *i. According to this the middle element the format can't be the same as *-s past/frequentative marker because it has a variant *-c'. However your assumption is true regarding the existence of a past element, because the last i of -isi- is really the PFU *-i/j past marker. But I think it's not due to the Germanic influence, because this construction is quite common in FU languages, e.g. - in Hungarian it's very likely that the conditional marker *-ná/né comes from *-ne.j, where *-ne is PFU conditional marker and *-j is the common PFU past marker. We have a source from the 12th century that writes "eneyc" /enejk/ i.e. present-day "ik"-type "ennék" 'he/she would eat'. - in Erza Mordvin the personal markers are attached to the marker of the subjunctive (conditional) via a linking vowel -i- (korta.vl'.i.n' 'I would speak'). Etymologically this -i- is the PFU past marker *-i/j.
> Perhaps PFU did not have personal endings yet, but rather had verbs > that inflected for definiteness of subjects. Since first and second > persons are normally treated as always definite, there would be no need > to have indefinite inflections with those pronouns.
The 1st and 2nd persons can be treated if they were patients (i.e. object of the verbs). But this ergative behaviour in these persons has no traces in the FU languages at all. If 1st and 2nd persons are agents, the verb can be naturally indefinte 'I see [= I'm not blind]' or definite 'I see him/her'. Thus I don't think so. New complex cathegories doesn't develop deus ex machina: they begin with small changes that spread or regress later gradually. See Erza Mordvin: it has a full bipersonal system that's full of inconsequences, e.g. suffix -t(')adiz' refers to a Pl2 object with all persons (both singular and plurar) and to Sg2 object with plural subject. My scenario is the following: PFU had personal endings in 1st and 2nd persons but has no ending in 3rd person. This is typical even in present-day languages, e.g. Hungarian lát.ok 'I see', lát.sz 'thou see', lát 'he/she/it sees'. The 1st and 2nd personal markers were enclitic personal pronouns (they have antecedents in all FU languages!). In 3rd person the position of the enclitic subject was empty, therefore the direct object could follow the verb immediately. This may result in the phenomenon that in 3rd person, the personal pronoun of the direct object could attach to the verb as a clitic. All in all, it's likely that the personal markers referred to the subject in 1st and 2nd person and to the object in 3rd person (if there was an object). And this behaviour could be the core of the definite conjugation.
> It seems that a more literal and original translation would be "it was > seen by me," "it was seen by thee," etc.
I agree. There's an archaic -- but still understandable -- usage of this possessively suffixed past participle: "a láttam film" 'the movie that was seen by me'.
> Is the -na conditional suffix related to the potential suffix -ne of > Finnish?
Yes. PFU had a verbal mood indicated by the marker *-ne. It's supposed that this mood had no fixed function, because it continues as a conditional in Ugric languages, as a potential in Finnish and Lapponian and as a optative in Cheresmiss. Maybe the optative can be the "lowest common multiple".
> > Notes: This participle with personal possessive suffix (without > >copula) became later the "present-day" past. This is why there's > >still no separate suffix for the 1st person singular past in > >indefinite and definite paradigm. (In these forms the separation of > >the two paradigms was [is?] a quite modern process.) > > Whereabouts did the process begin?
Maybe on the steppe. This construction -- past participle + copula (that may be on the zero grade) -- is quite common in Turkic languages to express quotative (dubiative) past, e.g. Chuvash /v8l s'1r.n8/ ~ Hun. o" ír.t 'he/she seen[.pp]'. The Permic languages and the Cheremiss have similar, well-developed past tense system. The FU languages (including Hungarian) were in very close connection with Turkish tribes for centuries and it seems that they adopted the Turkic past system (to a language-specific degree).
> I have not heard of this interpretation. From what I know, the Finnish > participle suffix -vA comes from earlier *-pA via consonant gradation. > Cf. Estonian 3sg -b, Old Finnish 3sg -pi.
I've written my apologies yet in a previous paragraph, now I copy it here. I couldn't consult sources about the Finnish that time and my memory deceived me. APOLOGY. I was wrong in my previous posting when I stated that Finnish personal markers -vat/vät, *-va/vä is a cognate of the suffix of Hungarian adverbial participle -va/ve. This Finnish suffix comes from PFU *-pa/pä and it's the same as the modern Finnish present participle. However, it has another possible Hungarian cognate, namely the vovalic element of the 1st person plural definite personal marker -juk/jük (the vowel was originally *-B < *-pa/pä). I was _not_ mistaken when I wrote that Hungarian -va/ve shares a common ancestor with Estonian (and Finnish) "ma"-type infinitive.
> So the original form was then -vá/vé, from even earlier *-vA:.
I seems so. The vowel is also long in derivational suffix -vány/vény. But the etymological antecedent *-ma/mä has a short vowel, therefore I suppose, the long vowel in *-vá/vé comes from an illabial diphtongue *-vaj/väj. I think that this *-j element could be the PFU lative- prolative II case marker *-i/j. (This is the same development as in lative postpositions like "alá" 'into a position under ...', "elé" 'into a position in front of ...').

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Frank George Valoczy <valoczy@...>
Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>