Transitivity in Hungarian and Turkic

Abstract

  1. I have discussed some morphological and syntactical parallels that are common both in Hungarian and Turkic. Afraid of becoming the target of criticism, there has been a hesitancy in the Hungarian and Uralic literatures to discuss the similarities between Hungarian and Turkic. There leaves no room for doubt that the Hungarian language is an Uralic language. However, the indefinite and definite conjugations, passive-causative voices and case structures in Ob-Ugric are typologically different from those in Hungarian. It is impossible to explain the Hungarian examples as internal innovations of Proto-Hungarian.

  2. The verbs in Uralic were of intransitive nature. Therefore the passive expressions in Uralic were unproductive. The decisive historical structural changes in Proto-Hungarian took place during the ages of Hungarian-Turkic contact. The verb pair like tanul- “to learn” and tanít- “to teach” in Hungarian is suggestive. The verbal root in Hungarian was ^* tuna- “to know, to learn” in Proto-Uralic or in Proto-Finno-Ugric. The pair in Hungarian can’t be explained as a direct descendant of the Proto-Uralic or Finno-Ugric pair. The Ancient Turkic verbs like tanï- or tanu- “to know”, tanï-n-or tanï-l- “to be known”, tanï-t- “to cause to know” had influenced upon the unstable Uralic verb pair in Proto-Hungarian. The passive voice in Proto-Hungarian was not productive, although the distinction of voices in Turkic was grammatically rigid. The transitive-causative morpheme in -t- and the intransitive-passive morpheme in -l- in Uralic are similar in form to those in Turkic. The coincidence of the two languages made the grammar of the Proto-Hungarian language more simple and grammatical. We can say that a near neighbor (i.e. Turkic) was better than a distant cousin (i.e. Ob-Ugric). By the help of Turkic calqued expressions Hungarian became an accusative-nominative type of language. Here are the topics that I have discussed in my article, (1) Causative and Passive Forms and Some Verb Pairs, (2) Similarities of Personal Endings, and Conversion of Voices, (3) Appearance of Rigid or Grammatical Case Structures, (4) Relativizations, and (5) Compound Past Tenses.

  3. A strong influence was exercized by some Ancient Turkic languages as donor languages upon Proto-Hungarian as a recipient language. Our best solution is to use the holistic lingusitic method.