Nyelvművelés
Nonverbal communication as a subject-matter of cognitive linguistic research
The author demonstrates that the emergence of the cognitive paradigm of science has also animated research on nonverbal communication and thrown a new light on it. Perceiving the world, human beings create new conceptual structures in their minds, based on sensual experience and physical activity. In order to access such structures we have to examine whatever it is that they are realised in. Our understanding of the world is not realised in language alone and it is not only language but also nonverbal codes, especially that of gestures, that reveal the way experience is conceptualised. The use of gestures is an initial way of representing thought. Nonverbal codes are to be studied together with language since they constitute communication jointly, complementing one another in semantic and pragmatic respects, too. It is highly relevant to study metaphorical gestures that serve an extremely important function – they convey thoughts and ideas whose semantic dimension is not present in verbal strings.
Orthography planning for special purposes
Research and development of fast changing professional terminologies is an important task of applied linguistics. Cooperation between linguists and representatives of the various professional areas has yielded remarkable results (in the form of specialised dictionaries and spelling dictionaries of the various fields). Such joint language planning process continues to be required by authors and translators of technical texts. The present paper discusses recent problems emerging in a subfield of language planning, i.e., orthography planning for special purposes. The major topics covered are (1) the proliferation of extremely complicated, multiply compounded terms, with the factors determinig whether marked vs. unmarked syntactic relationships are mirrored in spelling the terms solid or as several words; (2) the role of hyphenation in unambiguating multiple compounds; (3) the increased use of capitalisation due to the influence of foreign (especially English) terminologies; (4) further complications that foreignisms and loan translations introduce into Hungarian orthography. The author’s main question is whether, and to what extent, different spellings for special terms and general vocabulary are acceptable.
Hungarian punctuation and Europe
The European use of punctuation marks constitutes a relatively unitary system; the general punctuation habits of European languages show a similar relationship to the grammatical articulation of information, the mode of communication, and the degree of informativity of pieces of content as they do with respect to Hungarian. Obviously, the unitary character of European punctuation does not imply that there are no differences among groups of languages or even individual languages in this respect. For instance, the separation of clauses, as well as vocatives, quotations, or interruptions may be indicated in various distinct ways. Looking at the issue from the aspect of Hungarian orthography: there is hardly any rule in Hungarian punctuation for which no corresponding rule exists in other European orthographies (primarily in German, Russian, or English, obviously). A Hungarian-specific obligatory rule, however, is that adverbial phrases of comparison introduced by mint ‘than’ have to be preceded by a comma (Péter okosabb, mint a bátyja ‘Peter is cleverer than his brother’), and a partly Hungarian-specific facultative rule is that, in some cases, a colon separates the subject from the predicate (A cél: tanítva szórakoztatni ‘The aim is to entertain and educate at the same time’), especially after a nominal predicate that stands in topic posititon.
The length of high vowels
A paper in the first issue of the series Working Papers in Hungarian Sociolinguistics (1995) investigated the effect of the typewriter on spoken language: whether old keyboards lacking the letters í, ", ú standing for long high vowels did or did not influence pronunciation habits of speakers. The authors of that paper then concluded that such typewriters might in principle contribute to the shortening of long high vowels. The present paper discusses the fact that in an environment where typewriters lacking all long vowel letters are almost exclusively used even today, that is, where native speakers of Hungarian are maximally exposed to typed texts in which such letters are missing, or rather replaced by their short counterparts, the shortening of long vowels is as yet less widespread than it is in Standard Hungarian.
Nép és nyelv
Bitter plants – bitter names
The definition of keserűfű ‘knotweed’ in Magyar értelmez# kéziszótár [Concise Hungarian Defining Dictionary] is ‘weed with pink or white perigynous petals found in river flats and meadows; Polygonum’ (682). The family of persicaries (keserűfűfélék, Polygonaceae) consists of more than 800 species in 40 genera. The background to the names given to these plants (keserűfű literally means ‘bitter grass’) is the bitter taste of the weeds belonging here. Their healing power has always been a matter of common belief. The bitter stuff found in these plants is known to increase salivary secretion, some of them cure indigestion, and are processed into teas and tinctures affecting the liver, gall-bladder, and spleen. The paper discusses the origin of the name or names of several types of persicaries like madár keserűfű ‘knot-grass’ (Polygonum aviculare), szappanfű ‘soapwort’, ebgyökér ‘peachwort’, vasfű ‘vervain’ (Polygonum persicaria), vidrakeserűfű ‘buckbean’, vérfű ‘great burner’, paprikafű ‘water-pepper’ (Polygonum amphibium), etc.
Nyelv és iskola
Reflections on reading comprehension: a reply to Anna A. Jászó
It is the responsibility of primary school teachers, whether they teach Hungarian language and literature or some other subject, that their pupils should master the skill of reading and of understanding what they read. In order to serve that purpose, texts have to be perused and elaborated on very systematically. It is expedient to start with analysing tales, specimens of the text genre that is the simplest and the most familiar to schoolchildren, using the method of scheme activation. Reading comprehension is then to be further developed by dissecting informational texts taken from school textbooks. A higher level of text interpretation, critical reception, is preferably developed via an examination of non-literary texts (advertisements, slogans, etc.), as well as through the correction by pupils of texts that are inadequate in some respect. Systematic checking of the children’s reading comprehension by the teacher should never be abandoned.
Dialectology and education in Germany and Austria
It is an everyday experience of teachers of Hungarian language and literature that their pupils’ knowledge and use of dialectal phenomena (e.g. in oral communication, school papers, or spelling in general) is usually a source of grave problems. It is, on the other hand, regrettable that comparatively few instances of cooperation between dialectologists and teaching methodology experts can be found in Hungary. The present author therefore thinks that it is useful to discuss certain aspects of that problem area, both theoretical and practical ones, on the basis of investigations that have been going on in Germany and Austria for some time now and have, at least in part, been completed there. The paper gives an overview of those results.
A nyelvtudomány műhelyéből
The ‘tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon’ in German and Hungarian conversations. A linguistic investigation using the methods of conversation analysis
This paper explores some of the regularities of lexical access and, in particular, of what is known as the ‘tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon’, via an analysis of spontaneous everyday conversations, using standard methods of conversation analysis. Its aim is to compare ‘tip-of-the-tongue phenomena’ in various languages (as well as in speakers’ first vs. second languages), to identify and classify certain problem types underlying those phenomena, and to contrast the results of conversation analysis with those of neighbouring disciplines.
Text construction in incantational prayers
In her collection of archaic folk prayers entitled Hegyet hágék, l't't lépék [I traversed mountains, I went down slopes] (1976/1999), Zsuzsanna Erdélyi identified a group of texts that are closely related to incantations. However, the criteria she used for delimiting this group from other types of prayers were not clear-cut. The claim that such ‘incantational prayers’ in fact do constitute a separate group is clearly supported by morphological analysis. The first part of the present analysis is an enumeration of metaphorical and syntactic units of this group of texts. As a result, the following units can be discerned: (A) the origin of the trouble, enclosure, circumscription; (B) description of the magical procedure; (C) vocative; (D) imperative [(d) sending away]; (E) deception; (F) threatening; (G) statement of result; (H) analogy; (I) formal ending. The detailed text analysis reveals that not only the occurrence of those units but even their order is highly uniform. Twenty-four of the thirty incantational prayers studied exhibit the above structure in terms of the order of units (i.e., ABCDEFGHI). Even where some of the units are missing, or a text unit that is “alien” to incantational prayers is wedged in, this does not alter the order of units in any significant manner. Such strict regularity is not observable in any of the other groups found in the collection. The regularities of text linkage show that the texts falling within the category of incantational prayers do not simply differ from other groups in their “degree of magicalness” but also in terms of their strict logic of text construction. The analysis primarily intends to make a contribution to a textological approach to verbal magic.
Kisebb közlemények
Szó- és szólásmagyarázatok
Szemle
A nyelvőr hírei