Re: Questions about Hungarian

On 4 May 2004 Rob Haden <magwich78@...> wrote:

> Why does it preserve the 1sg (definite) ending -m, but not the Uralic
> accusative ending -m?  One would think that Hungarian would have
> preserved the latter if it had the former.  Final -n in Hungarian seems
> to have disappeared, cf. genitive in -a/e (?).  So was the 1sg definite
> ending borrowed from some other language, e.g. Turkic, after a supposed
> loss of all word-final nasals?  Or did Magyar's ancestor(s) not inherit
> the Common Uralic accusative ending?
  The latter is true. Neither accusative *-m nor genitive *-n were
inherited by Proto-Ugric. In fact Hungarian has no genitive until now
(the dative case suffix -nAk is used instead _optionally_), and
there're still examples when accusitive is not used (e.g. accusative is
usually omitted after 1sg possessive suffix).
  Proto-Ugric extended the determinative conjugation to 1st and 2nd
persons and had possessive suffixes. Therefore the accusative and
genitive suffixes became redundant. (N.B. It's supposed that the usage
of the accusative [and maybe also the genitive] was resticted in PFU; a
number of FU languages has no indefinite accusative until now.)
  Moreover, PFU had _two_ accusative suffixes: the *-m for nouns, the
*-t for (personal) pronouns, cf. Finnish minu.t 'me', Ostiak man@.t
'me'. In Proto-Ugric the accusative was marked only on pronouns,
therefore this *-t "survived" and later became a general accusative
suffix in Hungarian (in the first phase in denoted only definite
accusative).

  Final nasals were well preserved in Hungarian, and even unvoiced
stops remained unchanged sometimes in suffixes (due to their
morphosyntactical role).

  Note that suffix -a/e is _not_ genitive. Genitive appears on the
possessor, while -a/e is attached to the possessed. It comes directly
from the PFU 3sg possessive suffix (=personal pronoun) *sV. In
Hungarian PFU /s/ and /S/ was lost (only /s'/ survived), thus -a/e is
the vocalic part of the old *sV (cf. Finnish säppä ~ Hungarian epe
'bile')

> Quick question: From where does the 1sg (indefinite) ending -k derive?
  I've mention this already in my posting on 3 May 2004 19:15:23 +0100.
There was a deverbal noun-forming suffix *-kk in PFU (cf. Hungarian
játék 'game' ~ ját(szik) 'to play', Finnish menekki 'saleability' ~
men(nä) 'to go'), and it seems to be part of verbal system in various
languages, e.g. it's an archaic gerund suffix in Estonian (mine.k
'starting, going away' < mine.ma 'to go (away)'), or an archaic present
participle suffix in Mordvin (e.g. er'ak 'living' < er'a.ms 'to live').
This *-kk is supposed to be the origin of the Hungarian 1sg indefinite
ending.

> From I have read, PFU did not have a partitive.
  It's exactly what I know in contrast to vehke's source.

> Is there a sound change in Erzya Mordvin such that final /a/ became /o/
> and final /ä/ became /e/?
  I'm not a Volgaic specialist, but I have a number of examples of this
change in suffixes, e.g. infinitive -mo/me < PFU *-ma/mä, elative
-sto/ste ~ PF *-sta/stä, inessive -so/se < PF *-sna/snä, abessive
-(v)tomo/(v)t'eme < *PU -ptak/ptäk etc. In Moksha, these suffixes are
inharmonic: a schwa /@/ stands for both Erza /o/ and /e/.
  This process is faily common, e.g. the same happed in Old Hungarian
before the disappering of word-final vowels: first they became closer,
later became reduced. A similar process caused word-final e > i in
Finnish.

> What are the examples?  And what would cause such a change?
  Finnish 3pl personal marker on verbs is -vat/vät, where -t is a
plural suffix. The 3sg marker is the lengthening of the stem vowel,
however it derived form an earlier -va/vä (< PFU *-pa/pä). Since
there's a dialectal 3sg marker -pi, we can deduct the following
sequence for 3sg marker: V < u < B < v < vi ~ pi < va/vä ~ *pa/pä (v ~
p alternation is due to consonant gradation). The suffix of the
comparative is -mpi, but its stem is -mpa- (e.g. nom. iso.mpi
'great.er' ~ part. iso.mpa.a), other examples kaksi '2' < PFU *kakta,
talvi 'winter' < PFU *tälwä, järwi 'lake' < PFU *järwä.
  The cause would be the following: in PF period there was a sytemic
word-final neutral *e > i change. Due to this process /i/ became
neutral and frequent in the word endings. This could have an analogous
effect on other lemmas.

> Sammallahti reconstructs the following vowel inventory for PU: back
> (/a/, /o/, /u/, /ď/ [high back unrounded]), front (/ä/, /e/, /i/, /y/).
  It's the same as the inventory of my sources, however, I used X-SAMPA
notation (e.g. /E/ instead of ä) because it's more familiar to the non-
Uralist list members. The only difference is that my sources
reconstruct a mid back unrounded vowel /3/ (in Uralist notation: e with
breve below) not a high back unrounded one /1/ (in Uralist notation: i
with breve below).

  It's not a significant difference but refers to a different strategic
approach between Sammallahti and the Hungarian Uralist school. We think
that open vocalism is more archaic than close vowels. Especially in non-
stressed final syllables, where we have a number of examples of open >
close changes.

> According to Sammallahti, PU could have the following vowels in
> non-initial root syllables: /a/, /ä/, /i/, /ď/.  With palatal harmony
> in place, it seems obvious that non-initial vowels also collapsed to a
> simple low-high distinction.
  And how does reconstruct Sammallahti the PFU optative (potential)
suffix *-ne? It has inharmonic, homomorphic derivations in many
languages: e.g. Norther Vogul -nuw (< *ne.G), Southern Vogul -nee/-ni,
Cheremiss -ne, Finnish -ne (even Hungarian has inharmonic -nék, -nél
conditional suffixes; i.e. vocal harmony of this mood is secondary also
in this language). And what reconstructs for *was'ke 'iron'? It's vaski
'copper' in Finnish but has a genetive stem vaske-. Do you think that
it's prossible that in unstressed vowels regularly became opener, i.e.
a variant that requires more articulation power to pronounce?
  So, this discrepancy between you and me :) result from the different
approach of the schools I mentioned earlier.