Nyelvművelés
Translation and term creation in the European Union
The paper aims at analysing EU-level translation and term creation from the point of view of corpus planning, the translators' role and the impact translations may have on Hungarian at both the textual and lexical levels. First, the peculiarities of EU-level status and corpus planning are presented. In an EU context, corpus planning is closely related to status planning since the official EU-status implies a constant obligation to create the language's "EU function". However, translation and term creation are carried out in the EU institutions, making national level involvement in corpus planning rather limited. With this in mind, the paper presents the unique framework that EU institutions have created for translation and terminology work. Starting with the textual level, it analyses the impact of this framework on EU-translated texts and gives an overview of research in this field.
Turning to the lexical level, it is argued that for smaller languages, such as Hungarian, EU terminology is created through a secondary activity, that is, translation. Moreover, while in a national context terminology is created and documented by experts, linguists, terminologists and translators, in the EU domain translators are the main carriers of this process. Their role is crucial as – contrary to other translations – their solutions automatically become part of the terminological system. Finally, it is argued that the peculiarities of EU-level corpus planning, the role of EUtranslators and the impact of EU-translations all call for an enhanced coordination at national level. Furthermore, these aspects provide an excellent basis for research in corpus linguistics, translation studies and terminology as well.
On changes in Hungarian orthography Upper and lower case initials I. Proper nouns
This paper discusses two chapters of the rules of Hungarian orthography: those on upper vs. lower case initials and on proper nouns, respectively. It presents five years of work of a committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences devoted to the regulation of spelling, the finished proposal, the essence of proposed changes, and compares the latter with earlier regulations. It covers contributions and suggestions coming from external experts, too. Briefly, it can be said that the regulation of writing proper nouns is planned to be modified in very minor ways only, hence tradition and permanence continue to be the guiding principles there. Contributors have suggested that the revised handbook of orthography should be simple in its formulation and easy to comprehend, the interests of general education should be taken into account more than before, and methodological considerations should also be observed.
Nyelv és stílus
A contribution to the rules of writing proper nouns in the proposed modification of the Rules of Hungarian Orthography
This paper analyses the portions of the proposed new edition of the academic rulebook of spelling having to do with the spelling of proper nouns, in the perspective of onomatology. As a point of departure, the author discusses theoretical issues in proper name research, characteristics of present-day naming and name use, and requirements of clear and expedient formulation. He lists missing types and subtypes of names that are not treated as proper nouns (that is, not spelt with a capital initial) in the present rulebook, even though they would deserve that treatment. He makes suggestions with respect to the appropriate revision of the sets of examples accompanying the relevant entries. He recommends a cutback in the number of exceptions, as well as a more accurate reformulation of the individual rules. In addition, he covers issues arising in other sections of the rulebook that also touch upon the spelling of proper nouns.
Issues in the spelling of proper nouns and the proposed new edition of the rules of orthography
This paper discusses the chapter on proper nouns of the proposed new edition of the Rules of Hungarian Orthography. It is not the author's intention to give an overall critique of the whole chapter; rather, he discusses problems of detail. The author first gives sets of examples of types of proper nouns that are not covered either by the current regulations or by the new proposal, trying to fit them into the system of rules. Then he points out that, in the case of names of cultural events, spelling practice does not in general follow the rules, and proposes changing the current regulations. Finally he discusses problems of the spelling of adjectival forms of names of institutions. The final conclusion of the paper is that, although the proposal exhibits certain changes in the desirable direction, further modifications will be required in several cases.
Who will finally dot our i's?
In the practice of Hungarian spelling, the way of writing i-final geographical names suffixed in -i arises again and again. This issue is especially burning at present since the relevant arguments and counter-arguments have recently been raised anew during the preparation of the proposal for a 12th edition of the current handbook of orthography. This paper argues for the present spelling that follows the principle of simplicity, and against the proposed modification.
A nyelvtudomány műhelyéből
Fragments of communication as basic units of language use
This paper is a sequel to "The notion of 'language' in actual language use" by the same author (Magyar Nyelvőr, 2008/2: 129–150). It constitutes an attempt to describe the real process of language use, albeit in gross terms. The author comes to the conclusion that in that linguistic process, regulated by thinking, the role of primary linguistic units is performed by fragments of communication (FCs). In a speech act, and on the basis of concrete prototypical patterns, FCs can amalgamate into holistic linguistic expressions. However, this does not imply that the notion of 'word' loses its coherence in that process. Words are to be taken as secondary end products of numerous associative comparisons and of the amalgamation of FCs known primarily and directly for speakers.
FCs and their complexes may elicit various reactions in the mind of the speaker. An expression coming into being via linguistic images and from their amalgamations either undergoes the interpretative operation of thinking, or else thinking is directed at a thought being embodied in the given linguistic expression. In that way, that expression is compared with other FCs and, contributing its own fields of association, widens it own potential, and melts into the conglomerate of linguistic memory. Thoughts may proceed in various directions simultaneously and those multidirectional paths then come together at a certain point and get integrated into something that the listener perceives as the sense of what is being spoken. When images coming from distinct expressions come into contact with one another as communication unfolds, they immediately get adapted to each other, changing their original contours, and amalgamate into a synthetic and general image. Speakers can manipulate components of mental images in various ways, mixing them with one another and with components of other images, swap them, etc.
Irregular early activation of upcoming words in spontaneous speech
In speech, linguistic signs that the speaker wants to convey have to be produced in an order that is both appropriate to the intended content and formally acceptable. Therefore, speech planning has to proceed ahead of actual articulation. If this were not the case, speech could not be fluent. However, due to that asynchronicity of planning and execution, the speaker may inadvertently anticipate a linguistic sign that was intended to come later and pronounce it at an earlier point (that is, commit an ordering error known as anticipation). In the present paper, we have studied a total of 650 instances of anticipation taken from two corpora: a speech material consisting of slips of the tongue reduced to transcription on-line, and a 13.5-hour-long tape recording of spontaneous speech. We have analysed the properties of the utterances containing anticipation errors, as well as the distance of anticipation in each case.
Misplaced linguistic items are mostly speech sounds or sequences (fragments of words); also, to a lesser extent, whole words or affixes; differences between the two corpora are significant in that respect. The distance of anticipation is 900 ms on average (ranging between 50 and 8,100 ms); the actual value is partly determined by the type of item misplaced (sound, fragment, word), the part of speech involved, self-monitoring processes, as well as the method of data collection. The speaker is capable of planning a higher number of linguistic signs ahead of pronouncing them than the listener is capable of recalling when recording the error in writing.
Atomism and holism in linguistics
László Kálmán (2007) claims that linguistics has been characterized by atomism for several thousands of years and suggests adopting a holistic approach instead. (The term holism first appeared in 1926 in Holism and Evolution by Jan Christian Smuts.) Kálmán makes an attempt to demonstrate the benefits of holism by giving examples involving the Romanian past participle, as well as argument structure and unifixes (connective vowels) in Hungarian. In our opinion, Kálmán's suggested patterns can help too little in the description of participles, arguments and unifixes. In linguistics, atomism and holism, induction and deduction are inseparable. Nevertheless, everything is possible in theory-dependent metalinguistics.
Who was the author of a 16th-century romance on King Telamon?
This paper discusses the authorship of a sixteenth-century epic poem featuring King Telamon. Two versions of that poem are known: a printed and a manuscript version. The former is currently taken to be the basic text version. As to the author of the poem, researchers agree that it is an unknown person, except for Farkas Széll who claims, actually not quite on the basis of solid evidence, that the author is that of 'Volter and Griseldis': Pál Istvánfi. It has to be noted that people have extensively studied the mutual influence between this poem and the folk ballad 'Kata Kádár', on the basis of their similarities in content and motifs. Given that the romance on Fortunatus includes the story of King Telamon and his son Diomedes, and given that the two poems make the same kind of impact on their readers, the present author thinks that the same person may have written both. After a thorough comparison of the two poems in terms of phonology, morphology, syntax and orthography, and taking other circumstances into consideration, he concludes that the two poems may indeed have been written by the same person: probably a 16th century Protestant priest or perhaps a schoolmaster, possibly living in Kolozsvár.
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