Tamás Halm | Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
The present paper is a corpus-based study of the Voice Cycle in Hungarian. Based on data from the Old Hungarian
Corpus and the Hungarian Historical Corpus, I will argue that while in Old Hungarian, middle voice was encoded through a separate
inflectional paradigm (contextual allomorphy in the subject agreement suffix conditional on the feature content of a silent Voice
head), in Modern Hungarian, middle voice is encoded through dedicated middle voice suffixes (i.e., the Voice head is spelled out
overtly). I will claim that the underlying grammaticalization process involved the reanalysis of frequentative suffixes (v heads)
as middle voice suffixes (Voice heads). I will show that this reinterpretation was not based on shared abstract features, but
rather, on a principled correlation between middle voice and frequentative aspect: since some types of middles (antipassives and
dispositional middles) were more likely to be associated with a frequentative or habitual reading than actives, frequentative
suffixes were susceptible to reanalysis as middle suffixes in the course of language acquisition. I will thus claim that in
addition to Feature Economy (van Gelderen 2011), reinterpretation based on correlation
between featurally independent grammatical markers should also be regarded as a mechanism of grammaticalization.
2014Roots in transitivity alternations: afto/auto reflexives. In Artemis Alexiadou, Hagit Borer & Florian Schäfer (eds.), The syntax of roots and the roots of syntax, 57–80. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Alexiadou, Artemis & Edit Doron
2012The syntactic construction of two non-active Voices: Passive and middle. Journal of Linguistics 481. 1–34.
Alexiadou, Artemis, Elena Anagnostopoulou & Florian Schäfer
2015External arguments in alternations: A layering approach. Vol. 551. Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Arregi, Karlos & Andrew Nevins
2012Morphotactics: Basque auxiliaries and the structure of spellout. Dordrecht: Springer.
Austin, Peter
1981A grammar of Diyari, South Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Baker, Mark
1985The mirror principle and morphosyntactic explanation. Linguistic Inquiry 161. 373–415.
Baker, Mark
1988Incorporation: A theory of grammatical function changing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bárány, András
2017Person, case, and agreement: The morphosyntax of inverse agreement and global case splits. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bartos, Huba
1999Morfoszintaxis és interpretáció. A magyar inflexiós jelenségek szintaktikai háttere. [Morphosyntax and interpretation. The syntactic background of inflectional phenomena in Hungarian.] PhD dissertation, Eötvös Loránd University.
Benkő, Loránd
1967A magyar nyelv történeti-etimológiai szótára. [A Historical-Etymological Dictionary of Hungarian.] Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.
Bickel, Balthasar, Bernard Comrie & Martin Haspelmath
2008The Leipzig glossing rules: Conventions for interlinear morpheme by morpheme glosses. Department of Linguistics of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology & Department of Linguistics of the University of Leipzig. Retrieved January, 28, 2010.
Bobaljik, Jonathan
2000The ins and outs of contextual allomorphy. In Kleanthes K. Grohmann & Caro Struijke (eds.), University of Maryland working papers in linguistics, vol. 101. 35–71. College Park: University of Maryland, Department of Linguistics.
Bobaljik, Jonathan
2012Universals in comparative morphology. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Bobaljik, Jonathan & Heidi Harley
2017Suppletion is local: Evidence from Hiaki. In Heather Newell, Maire Noonan, Glyne Piggott & Lisa Travis (eds.), The structure of words at the interfaces, 141–159. Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bok-Bennema, Reineke
1991Case and agreement in Inuit. Berlin and New York: Foris.
Budenz, József
1884Az ugor nyelvek összehasonlító alaktana. [The comparative morphology of Uralic Languages.] Nyelvtudományi Közlemények (18)2. 161–319.
Chomsky, Noam
1995The Minimalist program. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.
Cinque, Guglielmo
1999Adverbs and functional heads: A cross-linguistic perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Clark, Robin & Ian Roberts
1993A computational model of language learnability and language change. Linguistic Inquiry 24(2). 299–345.
Comrie, Bernard
1979Degrees of ergativity: Some Chukchee evidence. In Frans Plank (ed.), Ergativity: Towards a theory of grammatical relations, 219–240. London: Academic Press.
1991Az igeképzés. [The derivation of verbs.] In Loránd Benkő (ed.), A magyar nyelv történeti nyelvtana – A korai ómagyar kor és előzményei. [A historical grammar of Hungarian: Early Old Hungarian and before.], 60–103. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.
D. Bartha, Katalin
1992Az igeképzés. [The derivation of verbs.] In Loránd Benkő (ed.), A magyar nyelv történeti nyelvtana: A kései ómagyar kor: Morfematika [A historical grammar of Hungarian: The morphology of Late Old Hungarian], 55–119. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.
Deme, László & Samu Imre
1968–77A magyar nyelvjárások atlasza I-VI. [Dialect atlas of Hungarian I-VI.] Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.
Dékány, Éva
2011A profile of the Hungarian DP. PhD dissertation, University of Tromsø.
Déprez, Viviane
2000Parallel (a)symmetries and the internal structure of negative expressions. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 181. 253–342.
Dikken, Marcel den
1999On the structural representation of possession and agreement: The case of (anti-)agreement in Hungarian possessed nominal phrases. Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science Series 41. 137–178.
Dixon, R. M. W.
1972The Dyirbal language of North Queensland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dixon, R. M. W.
1977A grammar of Yidiny. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dömötör, Adrienne
2013Az ó- és középmagyar kori magánéleti nyelvhasználat morfológiailag elemzett adatbázisa. [A morphologically annotated database of vernacular language use in Old and Middle Hungarian.] In Fazakas, Emese, Dezső Juhász, Csilla T. Szabó, Erika Terbe & Borbála Zsemlyei (eds.), Tér, idő és kultúra metszéspontjai a magyar nyelvben. [The intersection of space, time and culture in Hungarian], 11–121. Budapest-Cluj. Nemzetközi Magyarságtudományi Társaság – ELTE Magyar Nyelvtörténeti, Szociolingvisztikai és Dialektológiai Tanszék.
Embick, David
2010Localism versus globalism in morphology and phonology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
E. Abaffy, Erzsébet
1978A mediális igékről. [On middle verbs.] Magyar Nyelv 741, 280–293.
E. Abaffy, Erzsébet
1992Az igei személyragozás. [Verbal conjugation.] In Loránd Benkő (ed.), A magyar nyelv történeti nyelvtana: A kései ómagyar kor: Morfematika [A historical grammar of Hungarian: The morphology of Late Old Hungarian]. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. 184–238.
É. Kiss, Katalin
2002The Syntax of Hungarian. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
2011The linguistic cycle. Language change and the language faculty. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gelderen, Elly van
2018The diachrony of verb meaning: Aspect and argument structure. New York: Routledge.
Gerdts, Donna B. & Hukari, Thomas E.
2005Multiple antipassives in Halkomelem Salish. In Kratzer, A., Conathan, L. J., Good, J., Kavitskaya, D., Wulf, A., & Alan, C. L. (eds.), Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 261. 51–62.
Gerdts, Donna B., & Hukari, Thomas E.
2006The Halkomelem middle: A complex network of constructions. Anthropological Linguistics, 44–81.
Grestenberger, Laura
2014Feature mismatch: Deponency in Indo-European languages. PhD dissertation, Harvard University.
Grestenberger, Laura
2018Deponency in finite and nonfinite contexts. Language 94(3). 487–526.
Halle, Morris
1990An approach to morphology. In Juli Carter, Rose-Marie Déchaine, Bill Philip & Tim Sherer (eds.) Proceedings of the 20th Conference of the North East Linguistic Society, 150–184. Amherst (MA): Graduate Linguistic Student Association of the University of Massachusetts.
Halle, Morris & Alec Marantz
1993Distributed morphology and the pieces of inflection. In Kenneth Hale & Samuel Jay Keyser (eds.), The view from building 20, 111–176. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.
Harley, Heidi
1995Subjects, events, and licensing. Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Harley, Heidi & Rolf Noyer
2000Formal versus encyclopedic properties of vocabulary: Evidence from nominalisations. In Bert Peeters (ed.), The lexicon/encyclopedia interface, 349–374. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Heine, Bernd & Tania Kuteva
2002World lexicon of grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1991Grammatical voice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Komlósy, András
2000A műveltetés [Causativization]. In Ferenc Kiefer (ed.) Strukturális Magyar Nyelvtan 3. Morfológia [A Structural Grammar of Hungarian 3: Morphology], 215–292. Budapest, Akadémiai Kiadó.
Kozinsky, Isaac, Vladimir Nedjalkov & Maria Polinskaja
1988Antipassive in Chukchee. In Masayoshi Shibatani (ed.), Passive and voice, 651–706. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Kroch, Anthony
1990Reflexes of grammar in patterns of language change. Language Variation and Change 11. 199–244.
Lasersohn, Peter
1995Plurality, conjunction and events. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Marantz, Alec
1997No escape from syntax: Don’t try morphological analysis in the privacy of your own lexicon. In A. Dimitriadis, L. Siegel, C. Surek-Clark & A. Williams (eds.), Proceedings of the 21st Annual Penn Linguistics Colloquium, Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 4(2). 201–225. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, Penn Linguistics Club.
Márkus, Andrea
2015Taming the Hungarian (in)transitivity zoo. Undiagnosed species and a complete derivation of the morphosyntactic patterns. PhD dissertation, University of Tromsø.
Merchant, Jason
2015How much context is enough? Two cases of span-conditioned stem allomorphy. Linguistic Inquiry 461. 273–303.
Mondloch, James L.
1982Voice in Quiche-Maya. PhD dissertation, State University of New York.
Neeleman, Ad & Kriszta Szendrői
2007Radical pro-drop and the morphology of pronouns. Linguistic Inquiry 381 41. 671–714.
Newson, Mark
2010Syntax first, words after: A possible consequence of doing Alignment Syntax without a lexicon. In Varga, László (ed.), The even yearbook 9. School of English and American studies working papers in linguistics, 1–46. Budapest: Eötvös Loránd University.
Niyogi, Partha & Robert C. Berwick
1997Evolutionary consequences of language learning. Linguistics and Philosophy 201. 697–719.
Novák, Attila, György Orosz & Nóra Wenszky
2013Morphological annotation of Old and Middle Hungarian corpora. In Piroska Lendvai and Kalliopi Zervanou (eds.), Proceedings of the 7th Workshop on Language Technology for Cultural Heritage, Social Sciences and Humanities, 43–48. Sofia, Bulgaria: Association for Computational Linguistics.
Noyer, Rolf
1992Features, positions and affixes in autonomous morphological structure. PhD dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.
Noyer, Rolf
1997Features, positions and affixes in autonomous morphological structure. New York: Garland Press.
Polinskaja, Maria & Vladimir Nedjalkov
1987Contrasting the absolutive in Chukchee: Syntax, semantics, pragmatics. Lingua 711. 239–270.
Polinsky, Maria
2013Antipassive. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds.), The world atlas of language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
Polinsky, Maria
2017Antipassive. In Jessica Coon, Diane Massam & Lisa deMena Travis (eds.), The Oxford handbook of ergativity, 308–331. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rákosi, György
2008The inherently reflexive and the inherently reciprocal predicate in Hungarian: Each to their own argument structure. In Ekkehard König and Volker Gast (eds.), Reciprocals and reflexives: Theoretical and typological explorations, 411–450. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Ramchand, Gillian
2008Lexical items in complex predications: Selection and underassociation. Nordlyd: Tromsø University Working Papers in Linguistics 351. 115–141.
R. Hutás, Magdolna
1972Az ikes ragozás állapota Révai Miklós korában. [The status of the ik verbal paradigm in the times of Miklós Révai.] Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.
Rebrus, Péter & Miklós Törkenczy
2015Monotonicity and the typology of front/back harmony. Theoretical Linguistics 41(1–2). 1–61.
Roberts, Ian and Anna Roussou
2003Syntactic change: A minimalist approach to grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
1987Reflexivization variation: Relations between syntax, semantics, and lexical structure. In Masayo Iida, Stephen Wechsler & Draga Zec (eds.), Working papers in grammatical theory and discourse structure. Volume I: Interactions of morphology, syntax, and discourse, 169–238. Stanford: CSLI Publications.
Simonyi, Zsigmond
1878A visszaható igének egy különös haszálata. [On a peculiar usage of the reflexive verb.] Magyar Nyelvőr 71. 481–493.
Simonyi, Zsigmond
1880A magyar gyakorító és mozzanatos igék képzése. [The derivation of frequentative and semelfactive verbs in Hungarian.] Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 181. 237–269.
Simonyi, Zsigmond
1905Az ikes ragozás története. [The history of the -ik conjugation.] Magyar Nyelvőr 341. 1–11, 113–119, 337–349, 393–401, 444–454, 495–501.
Simon, Eszter
2014Corpus building from Old Hungarian codices. In Katalin É. Kiss (ed.), The evolution of functional left peripheries in Hungarian syntax, 224–236. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Simon, Eszter & Bálint Sass
2012Nyelvtechnológia és kulturális örökség, avagy korpuszépítés ómagyar kódexekből. [Language technology and cultural heritage: Building corpora from Old Hungarian Codices.] Általános Nyelvészeti Tanulmányok 241. 243–264.
Spreng, Bettina
2012Viewpoint aspect in Inuktitut: The syntax and semantics of antipassives. PhD dissertation, University of Toronto.
Svenonius, Peter
2012Look both ways: Outward-looking allomorphy in Icelandic participles. LingBuzz. Available online at [URL] (accessed April 11, 2018).
Terrill, Angela
1997The development of antipassive constructions in Australian languages. Australian Journal of Linguistics 171. 71–88.
1984A grammar of Kiowa. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Weerman, Fred and Jacquelina Evers-Vermeul
2002Pronouns and case. Lingua 1121. 301–338.
Williams, Edwin
2003Representation theory. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.
Cited by
Cited by 1 other publications
Halm, Tamás
2021. Radically Truncated Clauses in Hungarian and Beyond: Evidence for the Fine Structure of the Minimal VP. Syntax 24:3 ► pp. 376 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 8 april 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.