In this paper, we investigated the acoustic patterns (formant structures) of three Hungarian vowels, /a:/, /?/, /?/, in spontaneous narratives of young vs. old speakers. The aim was to find out whether some difference can be confirmed to exist in the pronunciation of these three vowels across age groups. Furthermore, we wanted to see if the vowel /a:/ did in fact vary across age groups as a kind of confirmation of the ongoing change that has been suggested in previous papers. The results show that the speech of old speakers of both genders is characterised by a slightly higher tongue position in all three vowels under investigation than that of young speakers. In addition, young female speakers articulate /a:/ in the palatal area of the oral cavity, while old female speakers articulate it in the medial area. In the case of male speakers, there is practically no difference in the articulation of that vowel: speakers of both age groups pronounce that vowel medially. From the data we can conclude that there is indeed an articulatory change going on at present in the pronunciation of /a:/, traces of which can be attested in the speech of old speakers, too.

Keywords: pronunciation of vowels, age, formant structure.

Gósy Mária

MTA Nyelvtudományi Intézet

Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem

Bóna Judit

Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem

The study explores the relationship between rhetorical structure and functional equivalence in translation. Applying Mann and Thompson’s (1986) Rhetorical Structure Theory, it generates initial hypotheses regarding the recreation of rhetorical structure in Hungarian—English news translation and demonstrates the way in which rhetorical and discourse structure interact as functionally adequate translations are created. Results show that quantitatively the rhetorical structure of translations do not differ significantly from their sources. However, the coprus provides evidence for considerable shifts in the quality and the place of particular relational propositions within the rhetorical structure of translations. These shifts influence not only the discourse structure of the target text, but also the actual message (the news content) communicated by the text.

Keywords: Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST), relational propositions, coherence, shift of translation, news translation.

Károly Krisztina

Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem

The paper investigates the etymology of two words which many authors have regarded as polysemes: OPol. bantowaa ‘to punish (with exile)’ (attested four times in decrees of punishment, from 1475 to 1500, and there is one attestation from 1519 the meaning of which remains uncertain) and MPol. ~ Pol. dial. bantowaa which, generally speaking, means ‘to torment’ (attested since 1614). Interpreted as polysemes, they were both explained as a single loan word from Hung. bánt ‘to torment.’ However, the semantics of the Hungarian word speaks against this interpretation: Hung. bánt was never used as a legal term meaning ‘to punish with exile.’ It seems possible that the Old Polish word is a loan word from MHG bannen ‘to punish with exile, to banish’ even though the issue of -t- and the lack of the expected g- in the Polish form remains, for the time being, open. The medial -t- may be a remnant of the final -t in the MHG past participle *gebannt, as was suggested by de Vincenz – Hentschel (2010), or a result of a blend with OPol. ochtowan ‘exiled, banished’. The latter was only attested once in 1500 in the exactly same sentence that also contains OPol. bantowan ‘punished with exile’ (see SStp I 60). It does not seem groundless, then, to claim that OPol. bantowaa ‘to punish (with exile)’ and MPol. bantowaa ‘to torment, etc.’ (the latter being still in use in the contemporary dialects of southern Lesser Poland) are neither polysemes as they have different roots, nor homonyms as they have never been used at the same time and place.

Keywords: Hungarian etymology, Polish etymology, German etymology.

Németh Micha3

Uniwersytet Jagiellonski w Krakowie

This paper presents the bilingual and multilingual Rovash inscriptions of the Golden Treasure of Nagyszentmiklós, including inscriptions No. 9 and 10 on the No. 5 Jug, the inscriptions No. 4, No. 5, and No. 6 on the bottom of the No. 6 Jug, and the inscriptions No. 2/5 and 3 on the bottom of the No. 23 Cup. This paper introduces the archaeological data of the Treasure and the most significant attempts at deciphering it. Based on palaeographical reasons, one of the transcriptions is selected for further analysis, the one best fitting the probable function of the cup and jugs. Then improvements to the transcriptions of the Hungarian-Ogur, Hungarian-Slavic bilingual, and the Ogur-Hungarian-Slavic-Alan quadrilingual inscriptions are detailed. The deciphered texts fully fit the results of historical linguistics, which largely improves the reliability of the transcriptions. Moreover, the glyphs of the Carpathian Basin Rovash alphabet used for transcribing the rovash inscriptions are analysed based on the topological relations among the graphemes. As a result of the calculations, descent lines of rovash graphemes originated from the Phoenician letters are also generated.

Keywords: Carpathian Basin Rovash script, Golden Treasure of Nagyszentmiklós, computational palaeography, Szekely-Hungarian Rovash script, bilingual and multilingual inscriptions.

Hosszú Gábor

Budapesti Muszaki és Gazdaságtudományi Egyetem

Zelliger Erzsébet

Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem