The study raises several problems and questions in the field of categorizing texts, introducing the other papers in this issue on the one hand, and initiating further research on the other. The main aims of the primarily theoretical approach are to make the basic notions, models and terms of text categorization clear, to reinterpret these theoretical devices where necessary, as well as to relate them to one another. Thus, the emphasis of the study is on the concepts of genre and text type.

In the paper texts are considered to be usage events, and their categorization to be an intersubjective cognitive process embedded in a sociocultural context. Seen from this vantage point, the classification of texts is a process of categorizing linguistic knowledge arranged in schemas. Investigating these schemas, as well as examining the relationships across them, requires an interdisciplinary approach and methodology, and the paper highlights the most important aspects of this interdisciplinary endeavour. In addition, it initiates defining the terms genre and text type, proposing a distinction between them based on the notion of complementarity, and emphasizing the importance of a consistent application of these terms. The results of the study may deserve attention not only in text linguistics but also in the fields of first and second language teaching.

Keywords: genre, text type, categorization, schema.

Kuna Ágnes
Magyar Tudományos Akadémia
Pázmány Péter Katolikus Egyetem
Károli Gáspár Református Egyetem

Simon Gábor
Magyar Tudományos Akadémia
Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem

The paper discusses the theoretical and methodological issues of discourse typology from a linguistic perspective. It argues that discourse typology is dependent on the factors of linguistic theory, ways of linguistic text description, and categorization. The functional cognitive theoretical framework offers a complex approach towards text types, starting out from the features of the on-line structure (musical “score”) of the text, from the viewpoint of the interlocutors.

Keywords: categorization, linguistic theory, discourse, on-line structure, text linguistics, discourse typology.

Tolcsvai Nagy Gábor
Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem
Konstantin Filozófus Egyetem, Nyitra

This paper, in which text type and genre are taken to be essentially synonymous, endorses the perspective of functional cognitive pragmatics with respect to genre. It does not only wish to point out that considerations and notions of functional cognitive pragmatics can be successfully made use of in the study of text typology. Reflecting on Bakhtin’s (1988) conception of speech genres, it also wants to emphasise that genre might be an essential notion for pragmatic research, too. The paper interprets genres (text types) in terms of construal aiming at adaptively satisfying communicative needs, and based on the mutual relationship of schema/type and instantiation, as discursive categories on the one hand, and as discursive schemas, on the other. The adequacy of the interpretation is argued for with the help of two case studies: one concerns the genre-related specifics of Kornél Esti by Kosztolányi, while the other discusses those of narratives taken from the internet topic called The story of my embarrassment.

Keywords: text type, genre, speech genres, discursive categories, discursive schemas, functional cognitive pragmatics.

Tátrai Szilárd
Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem
Jagelló Egyetem

In the first part of this commentary on the relations between text type and textual genre, a type–token-based classification of textual formations is adumbrated in set theoretical terms, wherein the major formatives identified and circumscribed are text type, textual form, textual subtype and textual token. In the second part the concept of textual genre is outlined and its formative notions are merged with those of text-typological forms of representation. In the final section, the functional role and relevance of register are discussed from the point of view of text-typological research.

Keywords: token, register, text, text kind, text type, textual genre, type.

Andor József
Pécsi Tudományegyetem

The paper analyses the discourse genre of “joke” in a sociolinguistic and socio-cognitive linguistic perspective. First, on the basis of empirical analyses, it presents the structure and major components of the cognitive schema of the genre of “joke”, then it surveys the process whereby that schema (and script) is acquired as part of the child’s linguistic/sociocultural knowledge. In analyses of child-language discourse excerpts the reader can observe the main steps of the development of that schema, the role of previous patterns and of social interaction. The child-language examples presented also reflect the fact that the acquisition of the genre of “joke”, the recognition and arrangement of the various components is a long and demanding task in which the processing of linguistic, emotional, social, cultural, and cognitive characteristics is equally important.

Keywords: discourse genre, joke, schema, script, social cognitive processes, child language.

Hámori Ágnes
MTA Nyelvtudományi Intézet

By analyzing discourse markers in spoken language text types the present paper demonstrates how the formality and style of text types affects the frequency and function of discourse markers used in them. The analysis of spontaneous conversation, spontaneous sounding but in fact planned stand-up comedy speech, semi-institutional interviews, institutional text types, and courtroom discourse demonstrates that discourse markers are used in patterns characteristic of the various text types, according to their core function. Both individually and collectively, discourse markers act like semaphores, i.e. they provide information regarding the intentional character of the utterance as well as regarding the text type itself, that is, about their proportion, role, coherence relations expressed by them, their place in the sequence, and the speech act chains occurring in their immediate context.

Keywords: discourse markers, text types, spoken language, core pragmatic instruction.

Schirm Anita
Szegedi Tudományegyetem

This paper categorizes and takes stock of Hungarian compounds whose first and second constituents are synonymous nouns like búbánat ‘woe’, perpatvar ‘quarrel’, or hadsereg ‘army’. As an introduction, the authors survey earlier views on the synonymy of two or more words. They explore compounds whose meaning can be computed from the two synonymous constituents (búbánat ‘woe’, kőszikla ‘cliff’, özönvíz ‘flood’) and ones in which the meaning of the compound is further away from that/those of the constituents (szóbeszéd ‘rumour’, lit. ‘word-talk’, szólásmondás ‘set phrase’, lit. ‘saying-telling’). They also explore what are called self-defining or nativizing compounds in which one constituent explains the meaning of the other one (préripuszta ‘prairie’, lit. ‘prairie-wasteland’, baconszalonna ‘bacon’, lit. ‘bacon-speck’, sampinyongomba ‘mushroom’, lit. ‘champignon-mushroom’) in which the first constituent is a loanword and the relevant notion is little understood or known superficially at best. They point out that the speaker applies a kind of over-insurance in cases like dróthuzal ‘wire’, tényadat ‘piece of fact’ or precedenspélda ‘precedent’ where both constituents are widely known and mean roughly the same thing.

Keywords: word semantics, coordinating compound, synonym, related meanings, interchangeability, hyponym, hyperonym, co-hyponyms, semantic compositionality, contamination, symmetry, nativization by compounding.

E. Bártfai László
MTVA Sajtó- és fotóarchívum

Kiss Gábor
TINTA Könyvkiadó

The Hungarian words komor ‘gloomy’ and komoly ‘serious’ are of unknown origin. The present study aims to elucidate this question from various angles: it gives an overview of what the Hungarian etymological dictionaries say on this topic, shows that komoly is a relatively late development out of komor, spread by the language reformers (and especially by Ferenc Kazinczy) at the end of the 18th century, and presents the attempts to prove the Turkic origin of komor. Finally, it offers a Slavic 356 Szó- és szólásmagyarázatok

etymology based on the Slavic stem *chmur-, demonstrating that semantically the two words match perfectly, and dissolving the phonological doubts that may arise at first sight.

Keywords: komor, komoly, etymology, Slavic, Turkic, loanwords.

Galac Ádám
Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem