Abstract
The paper describes the specific features of indirect and direct reports in Hungarian. One of these features is the use of a proximal and/or distal demonstrative in the reporting clause, another one is the obligatory or optional use of a complementizer to introduce the reported clause. Relatively free word order is yet another feature of Hungarian which affects the way in which the original utterance is presented. It will be shown that there is a close relationship between these features and the information structure of indirect reports. Finally, − given the fact that in Hungarian a great variety of verbs can be used as reporting verbs – it will also be examined under what conditions can a verb of sound emission (or even any other verb) function as a reporting verb. Finally, since the verb of saying meaning and transitivity seem to be interrelated, a brief section will be devoted to the role of transitivity as well.
For commenting on earlier versions of this paper thanks should go to István Kenesei, Mária Ladányi, Boglárka Németh and Ádám Nádasdy.
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Notes
- 1.
For Hungarian a detailed description of this grammaticalization process can be found in Haader (2003).
- 2.
To take a very simple example, (i) illustrates indirect discourse, (ii) direct discourse and (iii) free indirect discourse:
-
(i)
She looked at the hotel room. She thought it would be nice to stay there the next day.
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(ii)
She looked at the hotel room and she thought, "It will be nice to stay here tomorrow."
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(iii)
She looked at the hotel room. She would stay here tomorrow.
Free indirect discourse (iii) combines the person and tense of indirect discourse (she would stay) with the indications of time and place appropriate to direct discourse (here tomorrow) which yields the sentence: She would stay here tomorrow. This form of statement allows a third-person narrative to exploit a first person point of view.
-
(i)
- 3.
AP represents the anticipatory pronoun which serves as a reference marker. It is obligatory when the reporting clause precedes the reported clause, but it can be ommitted in the case of so-called quotative inversion. In Hungarian quotative inversion is obligatory when the reported clause precedes or is enclosed by the reporting clause: Gyere haza vacsorára! – mondta nekem Péter’Come home for dinner! – said Peter to me’, or Gyere haza – mondta nekem Péter – vacsorára!’Come home – said Peter to me – for dinner’ (for details cf. Gärtner – Gyuris 2014). In direct speech the demonstrative pronoun ezt’this’ can also be used which has a foregrounding function: it empasizes the verbatim rendering of the original utterance: Péter ezt mondta neki: „„Gyere haza vacsorára!”. This function explains why the demonstrative can never be omitted.
- 4.
The brackets indicate the presupposed parts of the utterance, which are necessary for the correct interpretation of the utterance.
- 5.
Of course, variations are possible here, too. In the neutral setting such variations are restricted to the choice of the reporting verb, however. For example, we may use the verb kér’ask’ instead of mond’say’ as a reporting verb but, of course, this entails a change in meaning.
- 6.
For the details see Section 4.
- 7.
It is often claimed that in indirect speech the speaker summarizes the propositional content of the original message. Though this may sometimes be the case, indirect speech, as we shall see further below, may also contain pragmatic particles or attitudinal markers which are not part of the propositional content.
- 8.
For the notion of perspectivization cf. Sanders and Spooren (1997: 86–95).
- 9.
Cf. Allan (2015) with respect to the notion of pragmatic enrichment.
- 10.
- 11.
The conditions under which the conjunction can be omitted was discussed in more detail by István Kenesei (Kenesei 1992: 673–679). Cf. also Kenesei (1994).
- 12.
The constituent in bold means heavy stress. It should be noted that not only the reporting clause but also the reported message can appear in various forms depending on the information structure of the original message. Formal properties of the original message will not be our concern in the present paper, however.
- 13.
The terms foregrounding/backgrounding come from Paul Hopper’s seminal work (Hopper 1979). According to Hopper, the most salient information in each genre is considered to be the “foreground” of the discourse, that which moves it forward. The less-salient information, that which does not advance the discourse, is called the “background.”
- 14.
This holds true for the neutral case but other possibilities do exist, as well. For example with clause intonation: …Péter ezt mondta; with focus on’Péter’: …ezt Péter mondta, …. Péter mondta ezt, etc.
- 15.
- 16.
If an utterance is propositional or not can be checked by the usual tests: a proposition can be negated, questioned, it can be a premise of a conclusion, etc.
- 17.
Hungarian is related to German in this respect not only because it has a considerable number of particles but also because their frequent use. Typologically, Hungarian is one of the so-called’particle languages’.
- 18.
The examples are taken from Keszler (2000: 280). It goes without saying that shading particles are difficult to translate, which is in part due to their polysemous meaning, in part to the fact that they are not propositional.
- 19.
Note that (20b) with an AP and objective conjugation, too, would be unacceptable: Anna azt sirákozta/sóhajtozta/jajgatta, hogy…’Ann AP complainedobj /sighedobj / moanedobj that…’
- 20.
Note that even the presence of a quantifier may render (20b) grammatical (István Kenesei, p.c.): Anna sokszor siránkozott/sóhajtozott/jajgatott, hogy…’Ann complained/sighed/moaned often that…’.
- 21.
These verbs exhibit a complex morphological structure: sir-ánkozik’lament’ is derived from sír’weep’, sóhaj-t-ozik’sigh’ from the noun sóhaj’sigh’ and jaj-gat’lament’ from the interjection jaj’oh’ by means of diverse derivational suffixes. Fónagy (1986: 261) observes that some basically non-transitive verbs may occur with the objective conjugation. Such a verb is sóhajt’sigh’ which may follow both the objective ((azt) sóhajtotta’sighed’) and the subjective conjugation (sóhajtott’sighed’). He points out that „„the verb in objective conjugation creates closer links between the reporting and the reported sentence, and suggests indeed a similarity with object clauses”. Note, however, that even if a verb such as sóhajt’sigh’ follows the objective conjugation, the reporting clause cannot occur at the beginning of the sentence: *Sóhajtotta/*azt sóhajtotta…
- 22.
We will return to the problem of transitivity further below.
- 23.
Syntacticians are not interested in lexical matters, i.e. in syntax the question to what extent quotative inversion depends on verbal semantics is never asked. In view of the fact that so many verbs can only be used in postponed reporting clauses raises the question whether it makes sense at all to consider the noninverted quotation as being more basic as the inverted one since inversion is possible in a few cases only (see further below). Fónagy (ibidem) points out that Hungarian makes use of a wide variety of verbs denoting non-verbal activities in indirect reports. „„In spite of their impressive diversity, all of these expressions are genuinly related to communication.” In addition, he remarks that „„secondary verbs of saying are metaphors”.
- 24.
The pragmatic process at stake is not mentioned in Recanati’s taxonomy of pragmatic processes (Recanati 2010: 293). It certainly requires extralinguistic information and it is a top-down process, but – in contradistinction to what Recanati calls modulation – it is not optional.
- 25.
Cited by Fonagy (1986: 268).
- 26.
It may be interesting to note that this transitivity cline had been proposed much before the rise of grammaticalization research. Molnár points out that the cline (29) cannot be attested for all verbs of saying of the type discussed above yet the historical development of the verb of saying meaning can be characterized by that cline for a considerable number of verbs.
- 27.
In Hungarian transitive verbs exhibit two paradigms. Roughly speaking, the subjective conjugation is used with indefinite object phrases and the objective conjugation with definite object phrases. The examples Péter ír egy könyvet’Peter is writing a book’ – Péter írja a könyvet’Peter is writing the book’ show the contrast. Intransitive verbs follow the subjective pattern. See also fn.18.
- 28.
The superscript’subj’ refers to the subjective, the superscript’obj’ to the objective conjugation.
- 29.
Corpus examples from Fónagy (1986: 264–265).
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Kiefer, F. (2016). Indirect and Direct Reports in Hungarian. In: Capone, A., Kiefer, F., Lo Piparo, F. (eds) Indirect Reports and Pragmatics. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21395-8_5
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