Re: Hungarian tense, aspect, mood...

On 24 Apr 2004 Trebor Young wrote:

> future tense with an auxiliary verb fogni(?)
  Stricly speaking there's no future tense in Hungarian. The form
_fog_ + infinitive -- which is referensed in grammars as future
tense -- is highly optional: some authors found that in a literary
corpus future actions were expressed by present tense forms in
90.5% and only 9,5% of the instances was explicite future (_fog_ +
inf.). This is true also for my usage.

  You needn't use future forms when there's an adverb of time in
the sentence. Even you may use a semantically dummy adverb of
future _majd_ 'then, later on'. Or, you may use a perfect verb
(useally formed by verbal prefixes _meg-_, _el-_ etc. from
imperfect ones): the present of a perfect verb expresses a
resultative future action as in Slavic languages. But a simple
present form  of an inperfect verb (without any adverb) can refer
to the future, if the action can't be perceived as present action:
e.g. when I'm sitting at my desk, and my colleague asks me:
_Jo:ssz?_ 'lit. Do you come?', it's clear that I'm not coming at
present, thus this can happen only in the future.

  Thus, the phrase 'I will come' can be translated by the following
forms (without significant difference in sense): _jo:nni fogok_ 'I
will come', _holnap jo:vo:k_ 'I *come tomorrow', _majd jo:vo:k_ 'I
*come later', _megjo:vo:k_ 'I *arrive', _jo:v:ok_ 'I *come'...

  Until the end of the 18th century there was an additional,
synthetic future form in Hungarian formed by the marker _-and-/end-
_ (plus personal suffixes), e.g. _jo:vendek_ 'I will come'. It's
lost because of its superfluity. But its participe -ando'/endo_ is
still used, even substantivized, as _halando'_ 'deathling, mortal
man; lit. who will die', _jo:vendo"_ 'future; lit. what will come'.

  (Etymological notes: _fog_ + infinitive was originally an
inchoative construction, cf. English 'begin to do sth.'. The marker
_-and-/end-_ is a contracted form of the still existing [but
improductive] inchoative derivational verbal suffix: _-
amod(ik)/emed(ik)_.)

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