This handbook is the first of its genre, given that this type of compendium of Hungarian historical linguistics had never been published before. The book under review is a synthesis that is also unprecedented in its perspective, reflecting a conception of historical linguistics that was born after the sociolinguistic-pragmatic revolution of that discipline. It takes the history of a language to be that of language varieties and of individual language uses, it reckons with the heterogeneity of language use and with the social and pragmatic factors determining the processes of the history of a language. The volume discusses complex problems of historical linguistics in an appropriately concise manner, and addresses the non-professional reader in an easy-to-access style, yet it also presents the most recent results of relevant research. Some portions fill in gaps, both scholarly and disseminational ones, and settle debts of several decades.

Keywords: handbook, history of Hungarian, history of varieties of Hungarian, system history, history of the Hungarian language community.

Németh Miklós
Szegedi Tudományegyetem

The paper surveys toponymic data in the deed of foundation of the episcopate of Pécs in an etymological perspective, with special regard to the possible continuity of names. Most toponymic data in the document are probably continuations of their pre-conquest antecedents; however, this does not necessarily entail a continuity of population in each and every case. The probability of name continuity differs across the various types of names. River names occurring in the document in their Latin form (as well as the parallel vulgar versions like Duna or Száva) must have been continuous. The same may be true of toponyms like Pécs, a vulgar name that only occurred later on in a written form but must have been hidden behind the Latin name occurring in the document, or perhaps also of the German form Raab. Names of the latter type refer to contacts across the subsequent groups of population more clearly and in a geographically more anchored manner than river names do. Of the toponyms of the document, the settlement names Győr and Tápé, as well as the river name Kapos, were definitely coined after the Hungarian conquest. With respect to the other names, the issue of continuity cannot be settled at the moment.

Keywords: early history of Hungary, place name continuity, etymology of place names, remnants, deed of foundation of the episcopate of Pécs.

Póczos Rita
Debreceni Egyetem

The paper studies the context of communicative strategies in Middle Hungarian witchcraft trials, including the roles in court trials against witches and the linguistic behaviour associated with them, in interrogation protocols and via a detailed analysis of a complex process of taking evidence. The cultural role of a witch includes a characteristic pattern of linguistic behaviour. On the basis of the Salem witch trials of 1692–93 an inventory of the diverse types of defendants has been set up, together with the communicative strategies they tended to follow. However, on the basis of the extant verdicts and the literature of legal history, we can draw the conclusion that, during the Hungarian legal procedures, what was more successful in most cases was denial, rather than admission. The analysis of the texts highlights the ways a communicative strategy that would count as aggressive in any other situation can be reinterpreted in the context of Hungarian interrogations.

Keywords: witchcraft documents, trials, communicative context, pragmatics, Middle Hungarian period.

Varga Mónika
ELTE Nyelvtudományi Doktori Iskola, MTA Nyelvtudományi Intézet

This paper provides a historical sociopragmatic analysis of witchcraft trials against married couples with Grice’s maxims and various approaches to them as a point of departure. In analysing documents of trials with special regard to joint handling of the culprits, I arranged the material in terms of what deviations from the maxims can be observed in the documents, especially from the point of view of the present-day reader. Due to peculiarities of the Hungarian material, a method of arrangement similar to that of the Anglo-American material, an analysis in terms of neighbourhood pairs and dynamic court communication, can be employed to a very limted degree. On the other hand, I have included in the material of investigation parts of the transcripts of the statements from which the present-day reader can suspect the presence of maxim violations or where explicit metalinguistic reflection on such violations occurred. I found it useful to emphasise the communication between the Middle Hungarian actuary and the present-day reader; in this perspective, the whole of the trial document may contradict the Cooperative Priciple, given that the reader expects the document to clearly state whether each culprit is guilty or not guilty. In the analysis I reckoned with the possibility that the content of the maxims may change over time (especially that of the second maxim of quality, and – due to the joint handling of accomplices – of the maxim of relevance); this is emphasised by the approach foregrounding the present-day reader.

Keywords: historical sociopragmatics, historical discourse analysis, Gricean maxims, witchcraft trials, documents in a case, courtroom discourse, language and gender.

Havasi Zsuzsanna
ELTE Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem