1 Chapter 1. Introduction: status and definition of compounding ...

Chapter 29. Uralic, Finno-Ugric: Hungarian 1
Ferenc Kiefer
29.1. Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the data of compounding in
Hungarian and to point out some controversial issues concerning both the empirical data and the
analysis of some types of compounds. In establishing the types of compounds we are going to
restrict ourselves to the discussion of productive root compounds. This survey will be followed
by a discussion of deverbal compounds concentrating on features which are typical of
Hungarian. A separate section will be devoted to the discussion of particle verbs, which have
some features in common with compounds. The chapter concludes with a brief dicussion of
some residual problems such as inflection and compounding, derivation outside compounding,
exocentric compounds and coordinative compounds.
As in many other languages, in Hungarian compounding is one of the main ways by
which new words are formed. Compounds appeared very early in the history of Hungarian but a
large number of compounds in present-day Hungarian were artificially coined during the
language reform movement in the second half of the 18th century and in the beginning of the
19th century. German influence is quite apparent as testified by the huge number of loan
translations: eső+kabát ‘raincoat‘, G. Regenmantel, állás+pont ‘point of view‘, lit. standpoint,
G. Standpunkt, tükör-tojás ‘fried egg‘, lit. mirror egg, G. Spiegelei, which gives a Germanic
touch to Hungarian compounding.
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