In his foundational article on the history of research on Moldavian Hungarians in 1959, drawing on linguistic geographic research projects carried out at the department in Cluj-Napoca, Attila Szabó T. concludes that three dialect groups can be discerned within the dialect region of Moldavian Hungarian: székelyes ‘Szekler-type’, északi ‘Northern’, and déli ‘Southern’. This final conclusion of his differs from the opinion of many previous authors who claimed that there are two types of Moldavian Hungarians: székely and magyar ‘Hungarian’. The terminology had also been confusing previously because the name Csángó was used to denote the original (Hungarian) group by some authors, while it was also used generally for all Moldavian Hungarians. The author of the present

paper argues that later linguistic geographic research shows the above tripartite classification to be incorrect, and the previously assumed duality is proven to be justified in terms of origin, dialect type, and territorial distribution. However, the two dialects continuously undergo dialect mixing, and are influenced even more by the dominant local Romanian dialect and the standard dialect of Romanian. Thus, the author proposes to use the names mezoségi ‘Grassland’ and székely ‘Szekler’ to express this duality.

Keywords: Moldavian Hungarian, Csángó, internal distribution, type, origin, székely, mezoségi.

PéntekJános
Babeo–Bolyai Tudományegyetem

The present review article provides a critical assessment of the first cognitively-based, comprehensive, largely corpus-based survey of the major grammatical phenomena of present-day Hungarian. Central issues in the approach are the schema-based nature of each of the levels, components of grammatical representation, with special emphasis devoted to discussing and interpreting the overall functional role of meaning construction as well as that of the complexity of interface relations. The latter relations act on the operation of the whole of the functional system, the makeup of the grammar, the phenomena of the representation of which are coherently described and discussed in this handbook of seminal importance for the historiography of Hungarian grammatology.

Keywords: cognitive grammar, functional, interface relations, meaning construction, schema-based.

Andor József
Pécsi Tudományegyetem

The paper examines the functional, stylistic, formal and regional variability of the discourse marker mondván ‘having said’ in contemporary Hungarian language use. A detailed corpus analysis of the National Hungarian Corpus (MNSz2) reveals that mondván is a typical element of written and spoken press and written spoken internet language, marking quotation and explanation (comment, evaluation, evidence, reformulation, etc.) at the same time. Regional and formal differences are less explicit than functional and stylistic ones, suggesting that mondván is a full-fledged discourse marker with stable functions.

Keywords: variational pragmatics, discourse variation analysis, discourse marker, quotation, subjectification.

Dér Csilla Ilona – Csontos Nóra – Furkó Péter
Károli Gáspár Református Egyetem

The criteria of belonging to the group (or groups) of the Roma are traditionally manifold: language, ethnicity, sociocultural characteristics, historical particularities, etc. Nevertheless, the categorizations are constantly divided into dualities: Gypsy and not Gypsy, Boyash and not Boyash, Hungarian Roma and Vlah Roma, Romani and not Romani, or even monolingual and bilingual. This logic, which invokes the imagery of stable groups, was called groupism by Rogers Brubaker (2002, 2004). Drawing on fieldwork experiences, my paper introduces the idea that the categories of groupism are only restrictedly valid in the locus of our research, and the Romani participating in this research speak about language and ethnicity partially differently. I examine to what extent the concept of superdiversity (Blackledge–Creese eds. 2018) is capable to adapt this alternative approach into scientific inquiry, and how it could contribute to the investigation and the management of linguistic and social issues associated with the Roma.

Keywords: Roma, groupism, translanguaging, superdiversity.

Heltai János Imre
Károli Gáspár Református Egyetem

The competition between the forms of relative pronouns with and without a prefix is a process that has been going on from the Old Hungarian era up to the present day. The innovative variant emerged by reanalysis from sequences of a demonstrative pronoun and a relative pronoun. We can observe successive processes of grammaticalisation in the emergence of the Hungarian relative pronouns of today. The prefixed variant can be documented since Late Old Hungarian. The spread of forms with a prefix gathers momentum in the first decades of the Middle Hungarian era. The paper addresses the question of which register had the leading role in that development. Was it a kind of language use close to spoken living language, the primary terrain for initiating linguistic changes? Or did written language shaped by book printing let the innovation develop more readily? I studied the behaviour of the pairs ki ~ a(z)ki ‘who’, mi ~ a(z)mi ‘that’, and mely ~ a(z)mely ‘which’ on a sample of about 4000 data points. I demonstrate the findings by means of diagrams showing percentage distribution. I also tested the significance of the statements on the size of deviations. In addition, I also touch upon general questions on the spread of linguistic change. A major result of the paper is that in the case of two out of the three pairs of pronouns book language has priority over spoken language. However, the idiom of Bible translations holds the first place over both registers. Thus, it can be claimed that more sophisticated language use and polished style appear to be more open to innovation with respect to the phenomenon examined.

Keywords: relative pronoun, linguistic variation and change, conservative and innovative forms, historical sociolinguistics, linguistic registers, spoken living language of Middle Hungarian.

Dömötör Adrienne
MTA Nyelvtudományi Intézet

The article discusses seven features of the Hungarian language: the distinction of the two conjugations, their functions and their use – the confrontation of the focus-based approach and the object-centered approach; personal suffixes going back to personal pronouns and those going back to participles; Samoyedic–Hungarian correspondences in the verbal paradigms; tense and aspect marking; the emergence of dual and plural suffixes from determiners/connective elements; the marking of object by a locative suffix; the predicative declination of nominals and the -t past tense. These phenomena suggest a (Paleo-)Siberian background of the Hungarian language.

Keywords: Hungarian, conjugation, verbal personal suffixes, Samoyedic–Hungarian correspondences, emergence of number suffixes, object marking, predicative declination of nominals.

Pusztay János
ELTE Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem

Questions of the use of toponyms have been giving researchers food for thought for a long time, so it is not surprising that a new subdiscipline has emerged which is called the sociology of toponyms. In this paper I aim to introduce a new case study in order to extend the range of empirical examinations on the sociology of toponyms. I analyse the toponyms of Szentpéterszeg, a village in Hajdú-Bihar County, Hungary, in terms of the following aspects: I explore the impact of gender and age on the knowledge of toponyms, and I classify some elements of the toponym system by their level of familiarity. Finally, I conduct a name community examination, too, by which we can get closer to the definition of the concept of name community.

Keywords: sociology of toponyms, age, gender, name system, name community, knowledge of toponyms.

E. Nagy Katalin
Debreceni Egyetem