Re: Hungarian tense, aspect, mood...

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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