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Re: Questions about Hungarian

From:Rob Haden <magwich78@...>
Date:Wednesday, May 5, 2004, 20:23
On Wed, 5 May 2004 20:08:06 +0100, Racsko Tamas <tracsko@...> wrote:

> 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).
Is it possible that the so-called pronominal accusative is really a reduced form of the ablative in -tA?
> 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.
I fail to see how a deverbal noun-forming suffix can become a 1sg personal indefinite verbal suffix. Also, Estonian minek does not derive from minema, but both derive from the root/stem mine-. Same with Mordvin, I bet.
> It's exactly what I know in contrast to vehke's source.
I wager that there was no partitive in Proto-Uralic.
> 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.
According to Sammallahti, Finnish underwent the reverse process: first /ï/ merged with /i/, and then medial unstressed /i/ became /e/.
> 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.
Perhaps the suffix had become -p and then, due to a change in phonotactics (namely, stops cannot exist in word-final position), it became -pi. I still fail to see how final /a/ can become /i/ in some cases and remain intact in others. According to Ante Aikio et al., Decsy's reconstructions are full of errors.
> 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.
> 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).
I thought X-SAMPA for /ä/ was /2/.
> 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.
> 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?
I don't know how Sammallahti reconstructs it. The Hungarian suffixes you mention appear to have come from earlier *-nejk and *-nejl, respectively. As for Finnish vaski, I would reconstruct *was'kï, gen. *was'kïn. These became vaski and vasken, respectively. - Rob

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Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>