Re: Questions about Hungarian

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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