Papers by Miklós Törkenczy
Acta linguistica academica, May 21, 2024
Proceedings of the Annual Meetings on Phonology
There is a significant degree of phonological indeterminacy in front/back harmony in Hungarian (H... more There is a significant degree of phonological indeterminacy in front/back harmony in Hungarian (HVH), which manifests itself in lexical variation and/or vacillation. Harmonic behaviour in the zone of variation strongly supports the hypothesis that harmonic classes which individual roots belong to are organized as a paradigmatic system, very similar to inflectional classes. Such lexically determined declension classes are required independently of vowel harmony to account for various other lexically conditioned alternations in Hungarian, e.g., the alternations involving linking vowels in suffixes and yod in 3rd person possessives. A further evidence for the morphologisation of HVH is a paradigm uniformity effect, Harmonic Uniformity, which reduces harmonic uncertainty by making a stem’s harmonic behaviour predictable from that of its root. Thus, HVH is determined by morphology (paradigmatic classes and paradigm uniformity) in addition to (and sometimes overriding) phonology.
University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers in Linguistics, 2002
1 word-based morphology 2 defectiveness 3 harmony 4 schemas 5 schema relations * This work has be... more 1 word-based morphology 2 defectiveness 3 harmony 4 schemas 5 schema relations * This work has been supported by National Scientific Grant NKFI-119863 'Experimental and theoretical investigations of vowel harmony patterns'.
In this paper we examine whether complex constituents have to be recognised at the edges of sylla... more In this paper we examine whether complex constituents have to be recognised at the edges of syllables in Hungarian, i.e. whether it is necessary to refer to complex onsets and/or codas in order to account for Hungarian syllable structure-related phonological phenomena. As the main tlmist of the paper is analytical rather than theoretical, i.e. its main purpose is to identify phenomena that have to be accounted for by everyone of any theoretical position who analyses Hungarian phonotactics or syllable structure, we will take a very permissive stance initially, and assume that in principle branching onset and coda constituents are possible.1 Given this assumption, it is interesting to ask whether a given language allows these branching constituents or not, since languages can and do differ in the setting of the complexity parameter (cf. Blevins 1995). Notice however, that the mere existence of consonant clusters at the beginning or end of words is best not to be taken as surefire proof that complex onsets/codas exist in the language examined. Most current research does not accept the assumption that all members of all consonant clusters at the edges of domains necessarily belong to a single (complex) syllable constituent (cf. for instance Kaye, Lowenstamm & Vergnaud (1990), Harris (1994), Steriade (1982), Rubach & Booij (1990), Davis (1990), etc.) The differences in behaviour of different consonant clusters at the edges of morphological domains that are attributed to differences in their syllabic constituency are usually referred to as "edge effects" and are analysed in various ways. Usually, the argument follows this pattern: there is a phonological phenomenon PP which is assumed to be related to syllable structure. The consonant clusters C«Cp and CyCb occur at the edge of a morphological domain M but only C«Cp displays PP. C«Cp and CyC& are analysed as different in terms of syllabic constituency and PP is taken to be sensitive to this difference. Typical phenomena that have been analysed in this way include Ancient Greek *The first author was supported in part by the Research Support Scheme, Central European University under Grant No. 1904/94. We would like to thank László Kálmán for valuable comments. Naturally, all remaining errors and flaws are our own. 'Although in many-perhaps most-theories recognising the syllable (or its equivalent of some kind) this is not a risque assumption (Blevins (1995)), we are well aware of the fact that there are frameworks that reject it, cf. for instance the lack of a branching coda (in fact, a coda constituent of any complexity) in Government Phonology (henceforward GP); see, e.g. Kaye, Lowenstamm & Vergnaud (1990), Harris (1994). and Sanskrit reduplication (Steriade (1982)), the distribution of the masculine definite articles iJ/lo in Italian (Davis (1990), Kaye (1992)), Portuguese vowel nasalisation (Kaye (1992)), final devoicing in Polish (Rubach & Booij (1990)), the distribution of consonants in wordinitial clusters in Polish (Rubach & Booij (1990), Cyran & Gussmann (1996)), English wordinitial and word-final clusters (Fudge (1969), Giegerich (1992), Borowsky (1989)), Hungarian word-initial and word-final clusters (Törkenczy (1994)), etc.2 The actual constituency asymmetries between C«Cp clusters ("normal" clusters with respect to PP) and CY Cs clusters ("special"3 clusters with respect to PP) vary from analysis to analysis. Perhaps it is useful to review some solutions that have been proposed. For the sake of simplicity all the illustrations show the left edge of domains (the onset side as it were)-naturally, the mirror image of a given analysis is always possible at the right edge (the coda side), too. To simplify matters further, we concentrate on analyses that make use of hierarchical syllable structure and X positions; however, it is not difficult to extend most of the analyses to flat syllable structure (cf. Kahn (1976), Clements & Keyser (1982)) or moraic syllable structure (cf. Hyman (1985) and Hayes (1989)). Let us assume that the consonant cluster in question (C1C2) is wordinitial (#C1C2). As is usual, triangles abbreviate a structure of any complexity.
PART I: BACKGROUND Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Preliminaries PART II: SYSTEMS Chapter 3: T... more PART I: BACKGROUND Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Preliminaries PART II: SYSTEMS Chapter 3: The Vowel System Chapter 4: The Consonant System Chapter 5: Phonotactics: Syllable structure PART III: PROCESSES Chapter 6: Processes Involving Vowels Chapter 7: Processes Involving Consonants Chapter 8: Processes Conditioned by Syllable Structure Chapter 9: Surface Processes
This compact volume offers an integrated guide to both Hungarian verbs and the basics of grammar.... more This compact volume offers an integrated guide to both Hungarian verbs and the basics of grammar. All of the major verbal and grammatical concepts of the language are presented.
The neutral vowels in Hungarian front/back harmony a gradience in neutrality (from most neutral t... more The neutral vowels in Hungarian front/back harmony a gradience in neutrality (from most neutral to least neutral) known as the Height Effect. In this paper we examine the relationship between two aspects of the Height Effect: disharmony associated with invariance in suffixes and the gradience in transparency in roots (the only aspect of the Height Effect that is usually analysed in the literature). We will show that there is a parallelism between the differences in the distribution of the various neutral vowels in invariant suffixes and the Height Effect as manifested in the gradience of transparency in roots and will argue that the latter is in fact motivated by the former due to an independently motivated general constraint, Harmonic Consistency, which regulates the harmonic behaviour suffixes in morphologically complex contexts.
The all-in-one resource to sharpen your Hungarian verb and grammar skills In addition to providin... more The all-in-one resource to sharpen your Hungarian verb and grammar skills In addition to providing essential concepts regarding verbs and grammar, this new edition of theHungarian Verbs & Essentials of Grammar includes a brand-new feature: an index of the 300 mostpopular verbs, which can be cross-referenced with the numerous verb tables appearing throughoutthe book. This all-in-one language tutorial contains lotsof examples employing contemporary language to give you a taste of real-life situations.Each unit focuses on a single verbal or grammatical concept, providing concise yet comprehensiveexplanations.
The problem is that there are cases when we cannot tell whether a certain syllable is stressed or... more The problem is that there are cases when we cannot tell whether a certain syllable is stressed or unstressed unless we refer to the vowel of that syllable, which leads to an unacceptable circularity. For example, the last vowel of the adjective separate [ sepərət ˈ ] is reduced and its last syllable unstressed, the last vowel of the verb separate [ sepəre t ˈ ɪ ] is full and its last syllable stressed. The first syllable of both of these words is undoubtedly stressed, but of the last syllable of the verb it is not immediately obvious whether it contains a full vowel because it is stressed, or the other way around.
Ágnes Benkő 4 Fanni Patay Ágnes Lukács Katalin Mády Péter Rebrus 2 Miklós Törkenczy 2 4 1 Researc... more Ágnes Benkő 4 Fanni Patay Ágnes Lukács Katalin Mády Péter Rebrus 2 Miklós Törkenczy 2 4 1 Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA) 2 Theoretical Linguistics Programme, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest (ELTE–MTA) 3 Department of Cognitive Science, Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME) 4 Department of English Linguistics, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest (ELTE)
Ms. Budapest: Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2004
... The Phonotactics of Hungarian Miklós Törkenczy Budapest 2004 Page 2. ... Kiefer Ferenc, Kiss ... more ... The Phonotactics of Hungarian Miklós Törkenczy Budapest 2004 Page 2. ... Kiefer Ferenc, Kiss Zoltán, Komlósy András, Kornai András, Kürti (Hamp) Anna, Jean Lowenstamm, Lukács Ágnes, Marosán Lajos, Nádasdy Ádám, Novák Attila, Oravecz Csaba, ...
poster presented at the 12th Mediterranean Morphology Meeting in Ljubljana, Slovenia (27-30 June ... more poster presented at the 12th Mediterranean Morphology Meeting in Ljubljana, Slovenia (27-30 June 2019).
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Papers by Miklós Törkenczy