The Phonology of Hungarian

by Siptár, Péter; Törkenczy, Miklós

• ISBN13: 9780199228904
• ISBN10: 0199228906
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-09-06
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This is the first comprehensive account of the segmental phonology of Hungarian in English. Part I introduces the general features of the language. Part II examines its vowel and consonant systems, and its phonotactics (syllable structure constraints, tra

Author Biography

Peter Siptar is Associate Professor of Theoretical Linguistics at Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest. He is the author (with Jacques Durand) of Bevezetes a fonologiaba [An Introduction to Phonology]R (Osiris, 1997) and (with Katalin E. Kiss and Ferenc Kiefer) Uj magyar nyelvtan [A New Hungarian Grammar]R (Osiris, 1998), and is currently Associate Editor of Acta Linguistica HungaricaR. In 1998 he won the Hungarian Academy Award in Linguistics.
Miklos Torkenczy is Associate Professor at the English Linguistics Department and the Theoretical Linguistics Department at Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest. He is the author of Hungarian Verbs and Essentials of Grammar: A Practical Guide to the Mastery of HungarianR (Corvina/Passport Books, 1997).

Table of Contents

List of Tables	p. x
Abbreviations and Symbols	p. xi
Background
Introduction	p. 3
Aims, scope, and coverage	p. 3
Overview of previous literature	p. 4
Framework and theoretical assumptions	p. 5
Chapter layout	p. 12
Preliminaries	p. 13
The Hungarian language	p. 13
Orthography and sound system	p. 15
The vowel inventory	p. 15
The consonant inventory	p. 18
Dialect variation	p. 20
Stress and intonation	p. 21
Morphology and syntax	p. 26
Derivation and compounding	p. 28
Verbal inflection	p. 35
Nominal inflection	p. 38
Word order	p. 43
Systems
The Vowel System	p. 51
Vowel length alternations	p. 56
Low vowel lengthening	p. 56
Stem vowel shortening	p. 58
Final stem vowel shortening	p. 58
Internal stem vowel shortening	p. 61
Vowel harmony	p. 63
Suffix harmony	p. 64
Stem classes	p. 66
The behaviour of neutral vowels	p. 69
Mixed vacillating stems	p. 69
Mixed disharmonic stems	p. 70
Rounding harmony	p. 72
The Consonant System	p. 75
Obstruents	p. 76
Obstruent clusters, voicing, and the status of /x/ and /v/	p. 76
Stops	p. 82
Fricatives	p. 84
Affricates	p. 87
Sonorants	p. 89
The underlying consonant system	p. 92
Phonotactics: Syllable Structure	p. 95
Introduction	p. 95
Syllable structure: SSCs	p. 96
The Hungarian syllable template: the basic syllable types	p. 96
Onsets-word-initial clusters	p. 98
Rhymes	p. 103
Codas-word-final consonant clusters	p. 105
Non-branching codas	p. 105
Branching codas	p. 105
Appendices	p. 115
Transyllabic constraints	p. 123
Hiatus	p. 123
Intervocalic consonant clusters	p. 128
Two-member clusters	p. 128
Clusters consisting of more than two members	p. 141
Morpheme structure: MSCs	p. 143
Domain-final open syllables and the minimal word/stem	p. 143
VVCC: the complexity of the rhyme	p. 150
Processes
Processes Involving Vowels	p. 157
Vowel harmony	p. 157
Lengthening and shortening processes	p. 170
Low vowel lengthening	p. 170
Stem vowel shortening	p. 173
Processes Involving Consonants	p. 176
Palatalization	p. 177
Lexical palatalization	p. 177
Postlexical palatalization	p. 180
Sibilant rules	p. 183
The imperative of t-final verbs	p. 183
Postlexical sibilant rules	p. 188
Palatalization revisited	p. 194
Voicing assimilation and devoicing processes	p. 198
Processes involving nasals and liquids	p. 207
Nasal place assimilation and related processes	p. 207
Liquid deletion	p. 212
Processes Conditioned by Syllable Structure	p. 214
Vowel [tilde] zero alternations	p. 214
Stem-internal unstable vowels: 'epenthetic' stems	p. 214
Stem-external vowel [tilde] zero alternations: stem-final unstable vowels and 'linking' vowels	p. 218
Stem-final vowel [tilde] zero alternations	p. 218
Suffix-initial vowel [tilde] zero alternation	p. 219
Lowering	p. 224
Analysis	p. 231
Syllabification-full vowels and defective vowels	p. 231
Major stems and 'epenthetic' stems-Type A and Type B suffixes	p. 234
Syllabification and lowering	p. 238
The past suffix	p. 244
Analytic suffixes	p. 256
OCP effects, residual problems	p. 262
'Epenthetic' stems	p. 262
/t/-final stems	p. 264
Alternations involving consonants	p. 269
Alternating v-suffixes: -val/-vel, -va/-ve	p. 269
h-alternations	p. 274
Surface Processes	p. 278
The surface vacillation of vowel duration	p. 278
Compensatory lengthening	p. 281
Hiatus filling	p. 282
Degemination	p. 286
Fast cluster simplification	p. 293
Suggested Reading	p. 297
References	p. 301
Index	p. 317
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