THE AIM OF OUR INQUIRY is to explore some linguistic variables listed below as well as to elicit continuous spontaneous speech from every informant, which would also allow for the investigation of several questions that are not included in the present discussion. The first aim is to be achieved through various tests while the latter through guided conversation.
A LINGUISTIC VARIABLE is a linguistic element that has variants. The variants can be related to the speech style and the social position (socio-economic status) of the speakers. The variables are amenable to quantitative description and probably play a key role in language change. Language variables can be described in rules - such rules define the socio-regional conditions under which the variants appear. To take a simple example, it is not known today how the use of -ba forms in -ban functions relates to various speech styles, whether educated speakers use this variable in a different way than uneducated ones (irrespective of style and/or as a function of it), nor is it known whether the use of alternants is affected by linguistic context. Intuitively, one could presume, for example that ``inconsistencies'' like ebbe a házban `into-this the house-in' do not occur, however, there is evidence for the occurrence of such forms (cf. Váradi 1990 and 1994). The two types of data collected in the Survey (roughly: the test data and the guided conversation) complement each other: without the test results we could not make COMPARATIVE analysis across informants, whereas without continuous speech data we could not analyse such characteristics of particular elements in speech as their frequency, contextual dependency etc.
The fact that some research questions are listed explicitely and others are not does not mean the latter are neglected. For example, it is important to find out in what contexts Hungarian sentences with so called flat and eradicating intonation are used (cf. Komlósy 1987). The answer to this question requires the prosodic analysis of a sizeable spoken corpus - but no specific data gathering is needed. Obviously, the spoken corpus makes it possible to investigate several problems not listed here or not even thought of today.
(1) Term'eszet-es-en igazad van. `Nature-al-ly you are right' (2) Term'eszet-es, hogy igazad van. `Nature-al that you are right' but (3) is incorrect: (3) Term'eszet-es-en, hogy igazad van. `Nature-al-ly that you are right'
SPG (II:803) holds that such structural blends are considered ``not very serious mistakes''. However, informal evidence suggests that a syntactic change is going on here. (For relevant findings in the Hungarian National Sociolinguistic Survey see Kontra 1992.)
Research tools: cards and the entire corpus, that is, a concordance of the word hogy of all guided conversations will give us all of the instances of such blends as well as all instances of the traditionally correct structures.
Van valami ebben a dologban, amely nem vil'agos `is something in-this thing-in which not clear'SPG (I:206) also says that ami is ``increasingly more frequently'' used in sentences like
Meg'erkeztek a k"onyvek, amiket/amelyeket megrendeltünk `arrived the books what/which we ordered'Research tools: cards and the entire corpus. A concordance analysis of ami/amely in the guided conversations, together with the test results is expected to yield reliable evidence that can make more precise, or indeed understandable at all, the qualification ``increasingly more frequent'' in SPG.
Mari kimosott/kimosta egy ingemet , `Mary washed-indef./washed-def. a my-shirt'(SPG II:960), and (b) next to the determiner minden + an object with possessive suffix, e.g.
Pista minden k"onyvemet elvitt/elvitte. `Steve all my-books took-indef./took-def.'The use of definite conjugation verbs in such cases is ``more frequent'', SPG states (II:961), but it is not known what exactly this increased frequency actually means. Cf. Komlósy 1987:16-17.
Research tools: cards.
Research tool: reporter's test.
Demográfiát akarunk? Meg kell adóztatni a gyerekteleneket `Do we want demography? Childless couples should be taxed then.' - a speaker on a live TV program said on 10 December 1986. The speech of more or less uneducated speakers often shows the use of certain fashionable words with transferred meaning, e.g. Nincs egyetértés a politika és az írók között, `There is no agreement between the policy and writers' i.e. between politicians and writers. It may be presumed that the spread of such ``inaccuracies'' correlates with the educational background and/or socio-economic status of speakers in that the more educated speakers interpret the word in its literal sense whereas less educated speakers allow transferred senses as well.
Research tool: cards.
The Hungarian equivalent of stapler is fuzogép or tuzogép . The Comprehensive English-Hungarian Dictionary by Országh lists staples as fuzo(gép)-kapocs , papírfuzo/könyvfuzo drótkapocs or simply kapocs . Staple removers, the handy devices that serve to remove the staples easily and without damaging the hand or the paper, were unknown in Hungary in 1986. They made their first appearance in stationery stores in early 1987 selling at around 20-30 forints. In June 1987 shop assistants in the stationery store in Felszabadulás tér, Budapest put down the name of the article on the receipt as tuzogép or fuzokapocskiszedo . This term was used only on the receipt as the goods themselves were sold unpacked, without any brand name and description of the article. In short: we are currently witnessing the spread of a new device at a time when the object practically is without a name. Even those who have been using it for years (because they got it from abroad) are at a loss to name it, as shown by the following two conversations:
- This is what you've brought everyone from America.
- What's its name?
- I don't know. Some [pause] remover. [pause] Are you testing me?
- Clipremover.
- But it's not clips this thing handles ...
- What is it called, [pause] gee, what IS it called?
At this point the man in the second conversation took out his own stapler, looked at the package (which was Czechoslovakian, without any Hungarian script) and then said: It's got no Hungarian name, interesting ...
Apart from the official register of goods, we can claim that in 1987 the item in question has no received name, or it may have too many names, because a name is only in the making these days, a name that in a few years' time will uniquely serve to identify what people cannot name at the moment. In short: we have a unique opportunity here to catch the birth of a word in statu nascendi .
Recommended research procedure:
After the planning phase of this research, when the resarch topics had been finalized, we realized that a number of variable items which were not listed originally (see 2.2, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3) could also be collected. The following list contains such items, as they have also been coded and arereadily retrievable from the BSI database.
pénze - péndze
fel- - föl-
l + j
ezben (=ebben)
se - sem
ablaka - ablakja
kell mennem - kell menni
szoloje - szoleje
egyed - edd
odébb - odább
pettyest - pettyeset
olvashatók - olvashatóak
nála - nálánál
kinlódjanak - killódjanak
javitással - javitásal
lom(b)talanít - lom(b)tanít
klozet - klozett
ajánlkozik - ajálkozik
kom(m)unisták - kom(m)onisták
mozga:mban
borból - borbul
hutoben - hüttoben
csöndben - csendben
állította - álította
ezért - ezér - ezé (and other lenition)
elküld-ték
pénzért - pézért
utoljára - utóljára
posta - pósta
Ball, Martin J. 1986. The reporter's test as a sociolinguistic tool. Language in Society 15:375-386.
Kassai, Ilona. 1995. Prescription and reality: the case of the interrogative particle in Hungarian. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 111:21-30.
Komlósy, András. 1987. Mondattani kérdések. Ajánlások a budapesti köznyelvi vizsgálatok adatfelvételéhez. (Syntactic questions. Recommendations on data collection for the Survey of Spoken Hungarian.) Manuscript, 1987.
Kontra, Miklós. 1992. On an ongoing syntactic merger in Hugarian. In: Kenesei, István & Csaba Pléh (eds.) Approaches to Hungarian, Volume Four: The Structure of Hungarian, 227-245. Szeged: JATE.
Pléh Csaba. 1995. On the dynamics of stigmatization and hypercorrection in a normatively oriented language community. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 111:31-45.
Váradi, Tamás. 1990. Ba vagy ban : problémavázlat.(Ba 'into' or ban 'in': an outline of the problem). In: Szabó G., (ed.) II. Dialektológiai Szimpozion. Veszprém: VEAB, pp. 143-155.
-- 1994. Hesitations between Inessive and Illative Forms in Hungarian (-ba and -ban ). Studies in Applied Linguistics 1:123-140. [Debrecen]
-- and Miklós Kontra. 1995. Degrees of Stigmatization: -t -final Verbs in Hungarian. In: ZDL-Beiheft 77: Verhandlungen des Internationalen Dialektologenkongresses Bamberg 1990. Band 4, 132-142. Wolfgang Viereck (Hrsg.), Franz Steiner Verlag Stuttgart.