Re: Questions about Hungarian

On 2 May 2004 vehke <vaksje@...> wrote:

> *-ti is actually mentioned as PU's partitive suffix
  I think that partitive is not a common cathegory in FU languages, it
can be found only in Baltic-Finnic branch (I think it's missing even in
Lappish). Moreover, it would be the only exception to the vowel harmony
rules of the PU. My sources reconstuct the partitive suffix as *-ta/tä
in the Proto-Baltic-Finnish (PF). We may see that it's the same as the
PU/PFU ablative suffix. It's a quite common to use ablative instead of
partitive, e.g. Hungarian uses elative (a subtype of ablative) in this
sense, the partitive articles du/de la/des in French are the same as
preposition de 'from' etc. Therefore I'm sure that neither PU nor PFU
had patitive: it developed only in PF from the ablative by semantic
split.

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 Maybe it's not useless to sketch the PU/PFU verbal system:

The verb has the following structure in the Proto-Uralic:
   stem + MTx + Px + Pl

Pl = plural marker: zero morpheme if the subject is singular,
     or *-k if it's plural (same as plural marker of nominals)

Px = personal marker: the same as the personal pronouns, i.e. *m3 in
case of 1st person subject, *t3 in case of 2nd person. In 3rd person
there were two variants: (1) zero morpheme it there was no direct
object or it was indirect; (2) *s3 if there was a direct object
(originally 3rd person object only).

MTx = mood/tense marker: it can be one (but only one) of the following:
o zero morpheme: aorist (present-future indicative) and imperative
o *-k : present-future indicative and imperative
o *-j : past indicative I (cf. suffix *-ja/jä)
o *-s': past indicative II (cf. suffix *-s'a/s'ä)
o *-ne: optative

Negation: PU used a special auxiliary to negate the verbs, called
"negative verb". It has two dialectal variants: *a- and *e-. The
negative verb was inflected by tense, mood and person and the main
verb, and the main verb followed it in radical form. This is common in
every FU languages except Hungarian and Selkup (the latters use IE-
style negative particle), e.g. Finnish elää 'to live' ~
en/et/ei/emme/ette/eivät elä 'I/thou/he~she~it/we/you/they-don't live'

Non-finite verbal suffixes. We can reconstruct a number of deverbal
derivative suffixes that can be found as participle or gerund suffixes,
as well as personal markers in the present-day FU languages. It's
supposed that they formed various non-finite verbal forms in PFU or in
later proto-languages. Some of them are the following:

*-ja/jä : past participle (and nomen agentis) suffix in Proto-Finno-
  Volgaic; maybe the same as PU past tense marker *-j (earlier
  momentanous verb suffix)
*-kk : deverbal noun-forming suffix in PFU; 1sg marker in Hungarian
*-l : deverbal suffix (nomen agentis/instrumenti) in PFU; 2nd person
  marker in Hungarian
*-ma/mä :  past participle in PFU; continues as "ma"-type infinitive in
  Baltic-Finnic and as adverbial particle in Hungarian
*-n : 3rd person in Hungarian, past participle in Cheremiss; part of
  the Baltic-Finnic past participle suffix *-nut/nüt; part of the
  Hungarian infinitive suffix -ni
*-pa/pä : 3rd person marker and present participle suffix in Baltic-
  Finnic, possible part of 1pl person marker in Hungarian
*-s'a/s'ä : deverbal suffix in *PU, possibly to form frequentatives;
  2nd person marker in Hungarian, gerund suffix in Ob-Ugric and Permic
  languages; it's likely that it's the same as past tense marker *-s'
*-t : present participle or gerund in Ob-Ugric and Permic languages;
  suffix for past and past particple in Hungarian (earlier formed also
  gerund/nomen acti); element of the Proto-Baltic-Finnic infinitive
  suffix *-tak/täk (> present-day Finnish -a/ä); possible element of
  Proto-Baltic-Finnic impersonal mood (~passive) suffix *-(t)ta/(t)tä.
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Note: "3" in reconstructed FU words denote a vowel of uncertain
quality.

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