Nagy elődök nyomában…

Author(s): Anna Kollath / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 4/2016

This paper aims to give an account of (socio)dialectology researches that have been carried out at or connected to the Department of Hungarian Language and Literature of the University of Maribor’s Faculty of Arts. Based on the works of great predecessors (the Atlas researchers, Olga Penavin, members of the Szombathely dialectological workshop, local collectors, linguists and non-linguists) it presents the dialectal collections and their processing in recent years. As the only department that teaches Hungarian linguistics and literature in Hungarian language in Slovenia, we consider it very important to get our students involved in dialectal researches. The empirical material of this paper is made up of two recent lexical collections (Szentlaszlo, Dobronak) carried out by students that allow us to make comparisons (real time analyses) between the dialect set and the existing material and analyses. Passing on the lexis of dialects, keeping the local dialects and bi- or multilingualism within the mother tongue is a crucial segment of mother tongue conservation, and one of the most prominent features of identity development.

Grammaticalization, (Inter)subjectification, and Sequencing of Actions: the Estonian Epistemic (Question) ­Particle ega

Author(s): Leelo Keevallik,Külli Habicht / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2017

The paper studies the semantic-pragmatic and syntactic development of the negation verb/word ei + the adverb kaas ’together, also’ into an ­epistemic marker and particle ega. Ega has been described as a coordinating conjunction, a marker of negation and a question word in Estonian grammars and we will show how these diverse usages come together on a timeline from the earliest written sources to present-day conversation. Ega has first been grammaticalized into a conjunction and then into an emphatic epistemic marker indicating speaker certainty as well as opposition with prior discourse. It is now being reanalyzed as a question word in cases where the negative proposition concerns matters that belong to the interlocutor’s area of competence. The study shows that interactional sequencing of actions may provide a crucial clue for the process of (inter)subjectification. It also proposes a novel cline of grammaticalization for a question word, and thus illustrates the benefits of combining the methods of conversation analysis and historical linguistics.

Areal Distribution of Veps ­Topographical Vocabulary

Author(s): Irma Ivanovna Mullonen,Nina Grigorievna Zaitseva / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2017

The paper is based on data provided by the Linguistic Atlas of the Veps Language, which is currently under preparation at the Institute of Linguistics, Literature and History of the Karelian Research Centre, Russian Academy of Sciences. It analyzes five linguistic maps representing the areas of some items of Veps topographical vocabulary which are etymologically closely related to the Finnic languages. Nowadays the vocabulary is rapidly disappearing due to the loss of the indigenous lifestyle and the mother tongue of the people. Therefore, our study includes not only proper lexical data, but also some place names as well as some items of the Veps lexical substrate observed in Russian dialects. This has helped us to more accurately define the historical areas of some Veps terms. Mapping has revealed many details of the lexemes areal distribution, obviously caused by ­different reasons from geographical to administrative and political ones. The study has established several etymological layers of words with topographic semantics. A few proper Veps terms (e.g. purde) are considered to be of special value as they show the ­lexical potential of the Veps language. Also, some lexemes of unclear etymology (uhring, poźe) were found, which might have existed in the pre-Veps substrate. The paper describes some possible ways to interpret their ­etymology.

У истоков коми топонимической науки

Author(s): Aleksej Musanov / Language(s): Russian Issue: 2/2017

Systematic research of Komi place names has its origin in the 1970s, when special studies were published by V. Lytkin, B. Serebrennikov, etc. A special role belongs to A. Turkin, who spent 20 years travelling on expeditions through all important centres of the Komi land, collecting field material for his candidate’s dissertation (1971), his doctoral thesis (1989) and several dictionaries of place names.

Estų kalbos politikos gairės: strateginis planas ir jo įgyvendinimas

Author(s): Birutė Klass-Lang / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 89/2016

Замечания по лексикологии коми-пермяцкого языка (с этимологиями)

Author(s): Jelena Fedosejeva / Language(s): Russian Issue: 3/2017

This article is devoted to the etymology of some words of the Komi-Permyak language, which have been noticed during collecting dialect material. These lexemes are widespread only in the Komi-Permyak dialects and are not used (or are met but in a very limited territory) in the Komi-Zyrian language. They are not attributable to more early periods of the language history, but it is not impossible that they have appeared in the language in the period of its separate development.

Review

Author(s): Natalia Kuznetsova / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2017

Review of: Eva Liina Asu, Pärtel Lippus, Karl Pajusalu, Pire Teras, Eesti keele hääldus, Tartu: Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus, 2016 (Eesti keele varamu II)

Review

Author(s): Jaan Õispuu / Language(s): Russian Issue: 3/2017

Review of: Miikul Pahomov, Lyydiläiskysymys: Kansa vai heimo, kieli vai murre? Väitöskirja (monografia), Helsinki: Hel­singin yliopisto & Lyydiläinen Seura, 2017

Corrigendum

Author(s): Galina Punegova,Rimma Popova / Language(s): Russian Issue: 3/2017

Corrigendum

К вопросу об отражении тюркских анлаутных аффрикат в волжско-булгарских заимствованиях марийского языка

Author(s): Klára Agyagási / Language(s): Russian Issue: 4/2017

The etymology of three Mari words (činče ’perl’, šaman < šam-an ’tasty’ and šü¸ar ’grave’) are reconsidered by the author. She argues for the Volga ­Bulgarian origin of all of them in the light of the new results of research on affricates in West Old Turkic varieties of the Oguric type (named formerly as Bulgar Turkic). In the case of činče ’pearl’ the donor Volga Bulgarian dialectal forms of non-Chuvash type can be reconstructed as *činčü ~ *čünčü ~ *činči and the ­borrowing can be interpreted as a direct one. In the other two words the Volga Bulgarian donor forms had an initial *ś (Volga Bulgarian *śam, *śükär) but its Mari equivalents with š refer to Kazan Tatar (in the Middle Kipchak period) as the intermediary language.

VÁLTOZÓ SZÓKINCS – PENAVIN OLGA NYOMÁBAN

Author(s): Beatrix Oszkó / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 2/2017

This paper gives an account of the first phase of a research project whose aim is to investigate linguistic changes of Hungarian dialects in the Barania and Slavonia region (Croatia). In this phase of the research lexemes were examined based on the linguistic map drawn by Olga Penavin (1916–2001). The data were collected in five villages of the region. In presenting and evaluating the data, the paper examines the extent to which the results obtained support the assumption that the indigenous dialect of the region is fading away, mainly due to generation gap.

CSANTAVÉRI HIEDELEMKÖZLÉSEK

Author(s): Irén Láncz / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 2/2017

In Olga Penavin’s legacy there are 480 folk beliefs compiled in Csantavér. They were collected from 85 informants by 28 primary school pupils in 1960. These beliefs are presented from the aspect of ethnography, semiotics and lingvistics in this presentation. Some of them are regulations and advices about magical processes, but most of them are connected to procedures in everday life. They can also appear in form of prohibitions. These refer to the things one must not do because of certain consequences. Prohibitions can also be grouped. Some convey ominous signs of death and other prophecy signs. The messages reflect the beliefs of a community. A semiotic approach can show the correlation between the relevant elements (for example: witch – whirlwind, witch – threshold, rubbish), their opposition (woman – man, right – left) and their semiotic web. These statements and prohibitions have specific forms of sentence structure. The linguistic analysis takes account of the specific sentence structures, the morphological characteristics of the words and the semantic markers.

The Orographic Lexicon in the Kildin Saami Language

Author(s): Olga N. Ivanishcheva / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

This article presents an analysis of the orographic lexicon in the Kildin Saami language. The structure of the language is described; a componential and culturological analysis of this particular lexical set is performed, and a comparison is made between the lexical meanings of Kildin Saami orographic lexemes as interpreted by the lexicographic and ethnographic sources from the late 19th - early 20th centuries and by the field materials collected in the early 21st century. The anthropocentricity of the Kildin Saami language material is demonstrated as apparent in the way the names of negative and positive topographic landforms are structured and particular features of the geographical environment are emphasised, as well as in the presence of metaphorical terms.

Особенности падежного маркирования v определенноm склонениi западнogo диалектa мокшанского языка (лингвогеографический аспект)

Author(s): Maria Levina / Language(s): Russian Issue: 1/2018

The studying of dialectal features by the methods of linguistic geography to enable a better description of the dialects and subdialects of the Mordvin (Moksha and Erzya) languages is one of the relevant objectives of Mordvin and Finno-Ugric linguistics. The importance of the problem is defined by the specificity and insufficient study of the research materials, as well as by the necessity to emphasize the originality of the Moksha language. This article considers not only the definite declension of nouns, but also the use of variant morphemes and their isoglosses in Moksha dialects. The absence of a single system, ­resulting in a diversity of case forms, is indicative of the incompleteness of the formation process of the definite declension.

Possessive Constructions in the Obdorsk Dialect of the Khanty Language

Author(s): Victoria Vorobeva,Irina Novitskaya / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2018

The paper presents an analysis of the structural types of possessive constructions in the Obdorsk dialect of Khanty. It is shown that in this dialect the concept of possession is encoded by means of adnominal and predicative possessive constructions of differing structural types. Adnominal possessive constructions can be built according to five structural models with an explicit or implicit possessor, in four of which the head is marked with a possessive suffix. Predicative possessive constructions can be built with the verbs ’have’, ’be’, ’not to be’ and ’remain’. The canonical possessive construction is transitive, with both the possessor and possessed uncoded. Predicative esse-constructions are less frequent and may incorporate a marked possessed.

Языки малочисленных народов России: устное vs. письменное

Author(s): Heinike Heinsoo / Language(s): Russian Issue: 2/2018

Conference ”Minority Languages ​​of Russia: oral vs. written”

Linguistic pathway to multiplication

Author(s): Katalin É. Kiss,Tamás Zétényi / Language(s): English Issue: 2-3/2018

Whereas it is a well-established fact that young children can perform intuitive addition and subtraction, it is an open question whether they are capable of multiplicative operations on sets before receiving formal training. Earlier studies devoted to the study of intuitive arithmetic sought for evidence of intuitive multiplication in children’s ability to distinguish proportional relations between quantities and numerosities. This paper claims that multiplication operations are present in children’s everyday communication, in their understanding and producing sentences with two numerical quantifiers and a distributivity marker such as the Hungarian Mindhárom gyerek két autóval játszik ’Every one of three kids is playing with two cars’, and Három gyerek két-két autóval játszik ’Three kids are playing with two cars apiece’. The paper gives account of an experiment testing how 5–7-year-old Hungarian children with no training in arithmetic operations interpret such sentences. The experiment shows that they have access to the multiplicative readings of distributive constructions; they not only accept them as true but at the age of 6–7 they can also actively compute the product of multiplication. The results also outline the acquisition path of multiplication, showing that children first multiply sets of concrete objects, then they represent the objects by their fingers, before they learn to manipulate sets mentally. Our results highlight the fact that language and mathematics are intertwined not only on the lexical level. Grammatical operations involving quantified expressions, among others, encode logical or mathematical operations on sets. Even if linguistic encoding is often ambiguous, grammatically encoded mathematical operations pave the way for abstract mathematics.

The Expression of Volition in Meadow Mari

Author(s): Bogáta Timár / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2018

The study of the Meadow Mari (Cheremis) language has a lengthy tradition: since 1775, many linguists have produced thorough descriptions of both Hill and Meadow Mari (Sebeok, Raun 1956). Those descriptive grammars, however, have been written in a strictly formal framework, with foundations in the Latin-Greek terminological tradition. In this paper, I examine two markers that code desire and intention, particularly the desiderative suffix -ne and the periphrastic construction with an allegedly very similar meaning -mE (+ Px) + šuaš ’to arrive’. The research investigates the distribution and usage of both. The hypothesis was that the speaker’s choice between the two markers in a given situation is motivated, and therefore one marker cannot at all times be substituted with the other. The pragmatic aim of the study is to grasp the semantic differences between the two markers.

Frazémák, frazémaváltozatok és frazémaismeret

Author(s): Irén Láncz / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 1/2018

Olga Penavin’s legacy is among others also rich in phrasemas, i.e. phraseological units. The digitizing of the corpus is presently in progress. The paper first gives a brief overview of the corpus and the research carried out, and the characteristics of three studies on phraseological units written in Vojvodina. The next section deals with phraseological variants, and then presents the types of variants in the corpus of the phrasemas. The third section presents the results of a survey on the familiarity with phraseological units among Hungarian students in Vojvodina. The author compares the data of the knowledge of proverbs with data obtained in Hungary and also, illustrates how has familiarity with idiomatic phrases and proverbial comparisons developed.

Norma és szabadság a netnyelv talaján

Author(s): Zoltán Szűts,Márta Törteli Telek / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 1/2018

This paper focuses on the issue of written language in internet communication. It examines how this new linguistic subculture influences the use of language, and through it, the development of language. The language of the Internet essentially follows the logic of „linguistic economy”, which results in the formation of a special written slang. The paper emphasizes the forms of communication one may encounter on the Internet. Reading the paper one can get an answer to the question of how „spontaneous” internet spelling is manifested. As a result of the deficiencies of the online written text, the absence of traditional meta-language and mimics, the emotional part of one’s discourse is expressed by smileys and emojis. One can witness more and more often that the texts of emails and chats try to depict the phonetic appearance of the spoken language. One witnesses the development of a new pictorial net language, which has its own meaning and grammatical features. A new kind of metaphorical language is being born. The literacy of our age is characterized by the disappearance of the usual image of the text, and ultimately the birth of a new, universal language. It is a question whether linguistic vitality, linguistic diversity, and creative language use can be applied in a creative manner in following the new language norms, or whether net language has a negative impact on language development and causes a loss of values.