Hungarian Language - Grammar and Syntax

Grammar and Syntax

Hungarian is an agglutinative language. It uses various affixes, including suffixes, prefixes and a circumfix to define a word's meaning and grammatical function. Unlike English, Hungarian has no prepositions, only postpositions.

There are two types of articles in Hungarian:

• definite: a before words beginning with consonants and az before vowels (behaving just like the indefinite article ’a(n)’ in English)
• indefinite: egy, literally ‘one’.

Nouns can have up to eighteen cases. Some cases are grammatical, such as the unmarked nominative (as in az alma ‘the apple’) and the accusative, marked with the suffix –t (as in az almát). Hungarian does not have a genitive case. The dative case serves the function of the genitive. Unlike English, Hungarian uses postpositions, as in az alma mellett ‘next to the apple’. Noun plurals are formed using the suffix –k (az almák ‘the apples’).

Adjectives precede nouns, as in a piros alma ‘the red apple’. They have three degrees, including positive (piros ‘red’), comparative (pirosabb ‘redder’), and superlative ( a legpirosabb ‘the reddest’). If the noun takes the plural or a case, the adjective, used attributively, does not agree with it: a piros almák ‘the red apples’. However, when the adjective is used in a predicative sense, it must agree with the noun: az almák pirosak ‘the apples are red’. Adjectives take cases when they are used without nouns: Melyik almát kéred? – A pirosat. 'Which apple would you like? – The red one.'

Verbs developed a complex conjugation system over many centuries. Every Hungarian verb has two conjugations (definite and indefinite), at least two tenses (past and present-future), and three moods (indicative, conditional and imperative), two numbers (singular or plural), and three persons (first, second and third). Two different conjugations are the most characteristic: the "definite" conjugation is used for a transitive verb with a definite direct object. The "indefinite" conjugation is used for an intransitive verb or for a transitive verb with an indefinite direct object. These rules, however, do not apply everywhere. The following examples demonstrate this system:

Present tense is unmarked, while past is formed using the suffix –t or sometimes –tt: lát 'sees'; látott 'saw', past. Futurity may be expressed in either of two ways: with the present tense, most commonly used when the sentence also defines the time of the future event, for example János pénteken moziba megy – literally ‘John on Friday into cinema goes’, i.e. ‘On Friday, John will go to the cinema’; or using the auxiliary verb fog (En:‘will’) together with the verb’s infinitive (formed using –ni): János moziba fog menni – ‘John will go to the cinema.’ This is sometimes counted as a tense, especially by non-specialist publications.

The indicative mood is used in all tenses and is always unmarked. The conditional mood is used only with present and past tenses. The imperative mood is used only with the present tense.

Verbs have verbal prefixes. Most of them define direction of movement (as lemegy "goes down", felmegy "goes up"). Some verbal prefixes give an aspect to the verb, such as the prefix meg-, which defines a finite action.

Hungarian word order is free, but more semantical than syntactical. Because the object is indicated with a suffix and not its place in a phrase, it and the subject can appear before or after the verb, depending on emphasis. Whichever word directly precedes the conjugated verb generally receives the emphasis.