Probleme der Wortartklassifizierung in der Ungarischen Gegenwartssprache

Abstract

The study surveys the criteria that are usually taken into account (either one by one or together) by European grammars in classifying parts of speech. They are the following: (a) the meaning of the word concerned, (b) its morphological behaviour, and (c) its function in the sentence (where the latter relates to the function of the word as a sentence constituent on the one hand and to what complements it can take on the other). This study takes into consideration the three crieteria together and, accordingly, it classifies Hungarian words into three large part-of-speech categories. (1) The basic parts of speech (noun, adjective, numeral, adverb, and pronoun). Their characteristic features are that they have an autosemantic meaning (except pronouns whose meaning is indirect denotative), they can be suffixed (except adverbs which can be suffixed with limitations only), they can be a sentence constituent independently. — (2) Function words. (A) Suffix-like function words, i.e., ones taking part in morphological structures (copula-like auxiliary verbs and auxiliary verbals, auxiliary verbs used in conjugational paradigms, postpositions, the word mint 'as' endowing adverbial function, adjectival postpositions, verbal prefixes). (B) Function words not taking part in morphological structures (conjunction, particle, article, negative particle). Function words are characterized by having relational or communicative, pragmatic meaning, they cannot be suffixed and cannot be used as a sentence constituent independently. — (3) Words used as a sentence (interjections, interactional words used as a sentence, modal words, onomatopoetic words used as a sentence). Their peculiarities are that they have only pragmatic or modal meaning, they cannot be suffixed, cannot function as a sentence constituent, but they are independent inarticulate sentences and can be interjected. The classification of parts of speech raises several questions. For example, the adequacy of some traditional part-of-speech categories is widely queried in the literature. This involves e.g., numerals and — according to some experts — pronouns, too. Hungarian grammars have not included some other groups of words in the system of parts of speech so far, for instance, auxiliary verbals, quasi-auxiliaries (e.g. kezd 'begin to', szokott 'do usually', talal 'happen to'), particles (which can be defined best by comparing them with the adverbs and modal words), and so-called functional verbs or verbs with unsubstantial meaning, e.g. (kolcson) vesz 'borrow', (engedelyt) ad 'grant permission', (gyanuba) fog 'throw suspicion', etc.). Although the classification outlined in this paper has been prepared on the basis of a consistent application of the classificational criteria listed, it does not intend to solve the problems of classification in every single case, sometimes it merely undertakes to present the broad outlines of the problem.