Acta Linguistica Hungarica
Volume/Issue:
Volume 51: Issue 3-4
Morphopragmatic phenomena in Hungarian
Author:
Ferenc Kiefer Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Research Institute for Linguistics Benczúr utca 33. H--1068 Budapest Hungary

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Pages:
325–349
Online Publication Date:
19 Jul 2005
Publication Date:
01 Nov 2004
Article Category:
Research Article
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1556/aling.51.2004.3-4.5
Keywords:
morphology; morphology; modality; pragmatics; diminutives; the expressive
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Morphopragmatics is defined as the relationship between morphology and pragmatics, in other words, it investigates pragmatic aspects of patterns created by morphological rules. The paper discusses three morphopragmatic phenomena in Hungarian. The first one concerns the use of the excessive which does not add semantic information to the superlative and carries purely pragmatic information. It is used to express the highest possible degree of some property and it carries the conversational implicature that the speaker wants to draw the listener's attention to the importance of what he is saying. The second problem discussed has to do with the pragmatics of the diminutive suffix. The semantic meaning of the diminutive suffix is `small' or `a little' (the latter occurs with mass nouns), which, however, is often overridden by the pragmatic meaning. In most cases, the use of the diminutive signals a positive emotional attitude, but it may carry a pejorative meaning, too. Finally, the third phenomenon concerns the pragmatics of the possibility suffix -hat/-het. From among the various pragmatic meanings the deontic speech acts are well known from other languages. There are, however, several other uses which seem to be typical of Hungarian. Two of these are particularly interesting: (a) the context may turn possibility into necessity, (b) the verb mond `say, tell' suffixed by the possibility suffix may carry the pragmatic meaning `say/tell in vain'. In addition to these two uses, several others will be discussed.

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Cover Acta Linguistica Hungarica
Acta Linguistica Hungarica
Print ISSN:
1216-8076
Online ISSN:
1588-2624

Editors

Editor(s)-in-Chief: Katalin É. Kiss,
Ferenc Kiefer

Editor: Éva Dékány

Technical Editor: Zoltán G. Kiss

Review Editor: Beáta Gyuris

Editorial Board

  • Anne Abeillé
  • Željko Bošković
  • Marcel den Dikken
  • Hans-Martin Gärtner
  • Elly van Gelderen
  • Anders Holmberg
  • Katarzyna Jaszczolt
  • István Kenesei
  • Anikó Lipták
  • Katalin Mády
  • Gereon Müller
  • Csaba Pléh
  • Giampaolo Salvi
  • Irina Sekerina
  • Péter Siptár
  • Gregory Stump
  • Peter Svenonius
  • Anne Tamm
  • Akira Watanabe
  • Jeroen van de Weijer

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Acta Linguistica Hungarica
Language English
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Foundation		 1951
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Programme		 changed title
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Founder Magyar Tudományos Akadémia  
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Address		 H-1051 Budapest, Hungary, Széchenyi István tér 9.
Publisher Akadémiai Kiadó
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ISSN 1216-8076 (Print)
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