The Hungarian verb fekszik ‘lie’ with inanimate subjects in locative sentences
English
journal number:
Journal’s Subject Headings:
Philology
About author:
М. Sipos Hungarian Research Center for Linguistics, Budapest, Hungary, [email protected]
Zs. Várnai Hungarian Research Center for Linguistics, Budapest, Hungary, [email protected]
Zs. Várnai Hungarian Research Center for Linguistics, Budapest, Hungary, [email protected]
ABSTRACT
Introduction: in the Hungarian languauge, there are two posture verbs that can serve as a verbal element in a locative sentence, i. e. áll ‘stand’ and fekszik ‘lie’. In the world’s languages, there have been observed various rules governing the choice of quasi-copulas, which can be defined in terms of various features of the Figure and the Ground, the relation between them, and some further aspects like, e. g. having a base.
Objective: to describe the conditions of the use of the quasi-copula ‘to lie’ in the Hungarian language.
Research materials: the sentences of which our corpus was made up were collected with the “Mazsola” Verb Argument Browser from the 187-million-word first version of the Hungarian National Corpus.
Results and novelty of the research: basically, in locative sentences, fekszik describes the position of an object with a horizontal orientation when supported from below. Its geotopographic use is prominent. It also frequently appears in sentences describing the location of mobile objects. It is also involved in giving the location of points, lines, plane objects, etc., i. e. figures that are not separated from the background plane from dimensional point of view. If the object has a functional base, but is in an orientation in which it cannot fulfil its role, the verb ‘lie’ should be used, although the verb ‘lie’
by itself does not express the meaning of abandonment. but this semantics is composed of the sum of the meanings of the Figure, the Ground, and the verbal element. The importance of our paper lies in that it gives the first, preliminary survey of the principles that can be observed in the quasi-copula use of the verb fekszik.
Key words: posture verbs, quasi-copula, locative sentence, Hungarian language, verb fekszik ‘to lie’
Acknowledgements: the research is carried out with the financial support of the RFBR within the framework of the scientific project No. 21-512-23006\22 “Ways of expressing spatial relations on the material of the Russian and Ugric languages”. The authors express gratitude to Vitaliy Sigiljetov as well as the anonymous reviewers.
For citation: Sipos M., Várnai Zs. The Hungarian verb fekszik ‘to lie’ with inanimate subjects in locative sentences // Vestnik ugrovedenia = Bulletin of Ugric Studies. 2022; 12 (4/51): 755–762.
Introduction: in the Hungarian languauge, there are two posture verbs that can serve as a verbal element in a locative sentence, i. e. áll ‘stand’ and fekszik ‘lie’. In the world’s languages, there have been observed various rules governing the choice of quasi-copulas, which can be defined in terms of various features of the Figure and the Ground, the relation between them, and some further aspects like, e. g. having a base.
Objective: to describe the conditions of the use of the quasi-copula ‘to lie’ in the Hungarian language.
Research materials: the sentences of which our corpus was made up were collected with the “Mazsola” Verb Argument Browser from the 187-million-word first version of the Hungarian National Corpus.
Results and novelty of the research: basically, in locative sentences, fekszik describes the position of an object with a horizontal orientation when supported from below. Its geotopographic use is prominent. It also frequently appears in sentences describing the location of mobile objects. It is also involved in giving the location of points, lines, plane objects, etc., i. e. figures that are not separated from the background plane from dimensional point of view. If the object has a functional base, but is in an orientation in which it cannot fulfil its role, the verb ‘lie’ should be used, although the verb ‘lie’
by itself does not express the meaning of abandonment. but this semantics is composed of the sum of the meanings of the Figure, the Ground, and the verbal element. The importance of our paper lies in that it gives the first, preliminary survey of the principles that can be observed in the quasi-copula use of the verb fekszik.
Key words: posture verbs, quasi-copula, locative sentence, Hungarian language, verb fekszik ‘to lie’
Acknowledgements: the research is carried out with the financial support of the RFBR within the framework of the scientific project No. 21-512-23006\22 “Ways of expressing spatial relations on the material of the Russian and Ugric languages”. The authors express gratitude to Vitaliy Sigiljetov as well as the anonymous reviewers.
For citation: Sipos M., Várnai Zs. The Hungarian verb fekszik ‘to lie’ with inanimate subjects in locative sentences // Vestnik ugrovedenia = Bulletin of Ugric Studies. 2022; 12 (4/51): 755–762.
