Kazinczy és kora
The paper discusses the role and linguistic-theoretical meaning of metaphors appearing in the 18th-century Hungarian language reform movement. The corpus is mainly provided by Ferenc Kazinczy’s contemporary study “Orthologist and neologist [i.e., conservatives and moderns from the aspect of language use] in Hungary and abroad” and his correspondence, besides other documents of the period (studies and pamphlets). Of the metaphors pertaining to language and language reform, the study interprets the conceptual metaphors “language is an organism” and “language is a river” and their variations in detail. As far as the debates surrounding the language reform are concerned, the study discusses the metaphors “debate is war” and “debate is a lawsuit.” As the interpretation of these metaphors reveal, the following presumptions of the functional concept of language are crucial in Kazinczy’s and the neologists’ view: language is a historical phenomenon, changing in the course of time; the dynamic possibilities of language use simultaneously allow for the stability of the system and its transformation if necessary; language operates in communal and individual variations, that is, language is communal and individual or personal at the same time.
Hungarian language reform movement, language theory, conceptual metaphor, language as a living organism vs. language as an artifact, functional linguistics
The study discusses Ferenc Kazinczy’s (1759–1831) relationship to languages by examining his memoir on his own seven-year imprisonment. The analysis is not based on his theoretical commentaries on languages: it interprets, in a mental history framework, in what way and in what function Kazinczy used the various foreign languages. For instance: What communicative role did Kazinczy attribute to the Latin language? What sociolinguistic status was assigned by him to the Slovak and Serbian languages, which he was able to use but did not consider that ability to reflect real language skills? Therefore, his relationship to the Slovak and Serbian languages was merely of practical importance and belonged to the world of orality. The examples of Fogságom naplója (Diary of My Captivity) allow us to consider them not only as instances of Kazinczy’s individual judgement, but as the understanding of a typical Hungarian nobleman.
Ferenc Kazinczy, Fogságom naplója, German, Latinity, Slovak, Serbian, language use, mental history, sociolinguistics, feudal estate system in Hungary
The paper discusses the methods of subjectification (in Langacker’s term) in the written memoirs of the Hungarian poet and writer Ferenc Kazinczy entitled Pályám emlékezete, published in 1828. This volume has an intermediate character between the classical memoirs focusing on fate, history and those presenting individual, subjective processes and episodes of feelings, emotional reactions to events. Kazinczy worked out a particular way of linguistic construal, resulting in a complex structure. On the one hand, his life episodes are described from an objectivizing perspective, with the narrator as one participant of the events, although in first person singular. On the other hand, the events and the other characters are introduced via subjectified constructions. In this sense the paper analyses the functional use of the two Hungarian past tenses: the simple past and the imperfective past, the latter expressing epistemic immediacy, i.e. the narrator recounts a past episode as if it happened at the time of the narration. Also, objective and subjective methods of person evaluation by the narrator is demonstrated. It is pointed out that subjectified expressions contribute not only to perspectivizing narration, but to the implicit albeit fundamental construal of the narrating subject as an individual, as a personality, in particular. Objectification and subjectification are harmonized in the complex semantic and deictic instantiations of the first person singular forms, in the course of Kazinczy’s discourse.
construal, imperfective past, memoir, objectification, personality, subjectification
In the literary journals edited by János Arany, I examine the reception of Kazinczy’s language renewal concerning folklore, popular language and literary translations. The publication of the folk poetry and literature of other peoples inspired numerous questions, contemporary debates based on the importance of the language that embodies the “folk character” of a people/nation. The creation of the Hungarian literary language as an idealized mix of folk and elite literary style, and the reception of folk poetry and foreign literature were linked in many ways. The central issues of translation were “what should be translated?” and “should close translation, authentic interpretation, aesthetic interest, or educational intent be emphasized?”. The adaptation of folk poetry to the literary tastes of that social environment, its correspondence with the needs of public education, and the practice of free rewriting in the mid-nineteenth century fit into a much broader, partly classicist and partly national discourse.
language renewal, neologism, folk poetry, foreign literature, translation, folk text publishing, Hungarian literary language, standard
Works in linguistic theory or historical linguistics, understandably, hardly ever mention the way Kazinczy’s political thinking, and accordingly his critical views on society, developed over time, even though without analysing these, his language-centred concept of what a nation is cannot be made sense of, either. It is obvious that without his active participation in the debates on social, ethical, theological and historical-philosophical dilemmas of the strengthening of Hungarian middle classes and without the elaboration (and propagation!) of his views, taking sides with conservative modernization in a national setting, his writer’s oeuvre, as well as the language reform movement that unfolded around his work, would be seen today as a curious side-track of cultural history. What role did Kazinczy play at the “beginnings of Hungarian democratic culture”, what ideas did he have on moral virtues, and what values he followed in combatting Gergely Berzeviczy’s views on economic and social politics? In the wake of his activities, what changes did the structure of public life undergo in Hungary? These issues were not entirely shunned by studies on his life and work, but mainstream historical scholarship did not pay adequate attention to them before the publication of a recent fourvolume monograph written by Ambrus Miskolczy. That monograph, however, just like any significant scholarly achievement, is not only characterized by the actual results it presents, but also by the novel issues it brings to light.
Hungarian language reform, linguistic norm, language philosophies, metaphysics, unity in diversity, Kazinczy and Kölcsey
Nép és nyelv
The world and world view of nursery rhymes encompass the universe of nature and society, and constitute a kind of “miniverse”. Rhymes are live witnesses of the emergence of language and an integral part of language acquisition and foreign language learning today. They encapsulate ancient rites and primeval experience of mankind. Semiotic and anthropological linguistic analysis is able to reveal human history in a spiritual or magic sense that is hidden in nursery rhymes. The paper gives a detailed account of the tradition of folk lore collection that started in the wake of János Arany’s cult in Nagyszalonta and later in Bihar County. It shows possibilities of interpretation of nursery rhymes, their structural and functional traits, and the world view that emerges from them.
nursery rhyme, Bihar, Nagyszalonta, Zoltán Kodály, recital, repetition, zoomorphism, nonsense text
A nyelvtudomány műhelyéből
In this paper we deal with a number of theoretical questions of language variativity. Variativity shows the existence and functioning of variants that occur together in language use. Variants are defined as instances of linguistic variation that are similar in form, equivalent in denotative, lexical and grammatical meanings, but whose pragmatic meanings are different, so they are used in different real-life situations of communication. Our starting point was the phenomena of symmetry and asymmetry in connection with language change. We intended to clarify the differences between variativity and variability, and the relationship between variativity and language norm. Then we discussed the place of variant forms among language variables and the connection between variants and the invariant. Finally, we reviewed the types of variants at diverse levels of language based on the Hungarian and international literature. We are interested in this area because it is known by Hungarian and foreign linguists even if in the published literature it is analyzed from the aspect of sociolinguistics and not from a prescriptive viewpoint. Therefore, linguists tend to use different terminology in dealing with variativity, and that is the reason why there is overlapping and ambiguity between variativity and similar lexico-semantic relationships (synonymy, polysemy, paronymy) as well as other linguistic phenomena (word split, doublets, convergent development of form and meaning).
symmetry/asymmetry, language variability, language variativity, language change, language norm, invariant
Ferentz Miskóltzy is the author of the first known medical treatise in Hungary (Manuale chirurgicum, avagy chirurgiai uti-társ, 1742). The book was written shortly after the end of Turkish rule in this country when Hungarian scientific terminology was in fact rather poor. It shows the author’s struggle with the Hungarian language especially when he uses medical terms. Most of Miskóltzy’s work is a translation from German, but he writes the majority of medical terms in Latin (probably they were in that form in his sources, too). Sometimes, however, he gives, alongside the Latin term, the Hungarian equivalent that he coined himself. Those equivalents are sometimes apt but often artificial or poor and do not even match the intended concept. He also frequently uses circumscriptions. Yet there are a number of his medical terms that are still in use today (e.g. aranyér ‘gold vein’, fásli ‘bandage’, kéz bokája ‘wrist (lit. hand’s ankle)’, lepra ‘leprosy’, pörsenés ‘pimples’, vakbél ‘blind gut’). It is to be ascribed to Miskóltzy’s credit that “he took sides with the Hungarian language that had bogged down and been disdained, that scholars refused to use; he showed to the incredulous that this language was fit for everything […] fit for serious scholarship” (Fekete 1874: 657).
Ferentz Miskóltzy, forerunner of language reform, Hungarian translations of Latin medical terms, description of the pharmacy of the regimental infirmary
Szemle