Passive-like structures in Hungarian

Dudás Ágnes

Szűcs Péter

Syntax and Morphology

05. 12. 2018

“Hereby, I certify that the essay conforms to international copyright and plagiarism rules and
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1. Introduction

In my paper, I would like to present the passive-like structures in the Hungarian language.

Firstly, I am going to present passivization in general, specifically focusing on the English

and the Hungarian language, but for comparison I am going to use example sentences from

other languages as well. Thereafter, I am going to present the methods and limits of the

passive operations in Hungarian, mainly based on Alberti Gábor’s work: “Passzivizálási

művelet a magyarban” (1996) [A Passive Operation in Hungarian] in which Hungarian

passive structures are examined in detail 1. For further information I am also going to use the

study of Tibor Laczkó: “Nominalization, Participle Formation, Typology and Lexical

Mapping Theory” (2005) and Haspelmath & Smith: Understanding Morphology (2010).

2. The passivization in general

2.1. Passive structures in English

The passive structure is a grammatical structure which is used to highlight the person or

the object that experiences an action rather than the person or the object that performs the

action. As a result, the object or the person becomes the subject of the sentence. In other

words, the passive structure demotes the agent and promotes the patient. In the passive voice

the focus is on the action, and it is not very important or not (surely) known who or what was

performing the action itself. As an example sentence in English shows: “My car was stolen.”

In this sentence, it is not known who stole the car, but the focus is on the fact, that now the car

is missing.

The passive in English has a complicated form, however. As Haspelsmath & Sims

(2011:237) describe: “It is the best-known function-changing operation which involves both

1
When I quoted from Alberti, I have translated the Hungarian sentences to English.
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an auxiliary and a participle.” This paper provides an example sentence from the Chichewa

passive, which is more clearly morphological.

a. Naphiri a-na-lemba kalata.    

Naphiri  3sg-pst-write  letter    

‘Naphiri wrote a letter.’

b. Kalata i-na-lemb-edwa (ndi Naphiri).    

letter  3sg-pst-write-pass  by  Naphiri    

‘The letter was written (by Naphiri).’

(Dubinsky and Simango 1996: 751–2)

These examples show that in Chichewa, the passive is marked by a suffix (-idw/-edw), which

is attached directly to the verb stem and its syntactic effect lies on the fact that the patient is

linked to the function of the subject and the agent is linked to the oblique (ndi) function. Even

when the oblique agent is omitted, it is still present in an implicit way: the sentence kalata

inalembedwa means that some unspecified agent wrote the letter.

2.2. Passive structures in Hungarian

Some may think that passive structures are not present in Hungarian language at all, or

it is used very rarely, but the truth is that it does exist and it is used in everyday conversation

as well. As example of this fact could be demonstrated by the sentence: “Értve vagyok?”

Grammatically, it may not sound perfect, but it is still used and acceptable. Moreover, on the

one hand, it is definitely ungrammatical to say a sentence like “A macska fel van ugorva az

ágyra.” On the other hand, it is definitely grammatical to say “Az ablak be van zárva.” As it

can be seen, there are certain limits related to Hungarian passive structures. Comparing the

English and the Hungarian language for example, the main difference lies in this fact: in
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Hungarian, passive structures cannot be created from every intransitive verb and in English,

only transitive verbs can be passivized.

3. The process of passivization in Hungarian

3.1. Passive structures with transitive and intransitive verbs

In his study, Gábor Alberti notes that “a passive-like structure can be formed from both

transitive and intransitive verbs. However, some structures –from both types- appear to be

grammatically unacceptable or at least susceptible.” (Alberti 1996:7) He also provides both

grammatical and ungrammatical sentences for demonstrating the above-mentioned facts.

a. Transitive: grammatical sentence

Péter ki van rúgva a munkahelyéről. 'A főnöke kirúgta.'

Az egyik lap teljesen össze van gyűrve. 'Összegyűrtük.'

b. Transitive: ungrammatical sentence

*Péter már messziről meg van látva. 'Már messziről megláttuk őt.'

??Ez a könyv is már ki van olvasva. 'Kiolvastam.'

c. Intransitive: grammatical sentence

Péter ki van merülve a rengeteg túlórázástól. 'Péter kimerült.'

Ez a rózsa itt a vázában már el van hervadva. 'A rózsa elhervadt.'

d. Intransitive: ungrammatical sentence

*Péter ki van ülve a teraszra. 'Péter kiült a teraszra.'

?Szerencsére már meg vagyok gyógyulva.

In his work, Alberti’s main goal is to describe these structures as a result of a single

unified passivization process. However, as it was illustrated with the sentences above and as

he also admits, it is a complicated situation, because this process should work with

intransitive verbs as well. At this point of his research, Alberti refers to a Norwegian author
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named Tor Anders Åfarli, whose study (The Syntax of Norwegian Passive Construction,

1989) shows that in the Norwegian language, a process which is not based on only transitive

verbs can also be regarded as passivization. Moreover, as Alberti (1996:10) adds, this

grammatical operation is identical with the English passivization. He illustrates it with

examples in which he compares Norwegian sentences to their English and Hungarian

translation.

a. *Det vart snodd.

*There was snowed.

*Havazva volt.

b. *Det vart falle eit blad.

*There was fallen a leaf.

Le volt esve/hullva egy levél.

c. Det vart sunge.

*There was sung.

*Énekelve volt.

d. Ein bil vart kjept.

A car was bought.

Egy autó (meg) volt véve.

Comparing these examples, it can be realized that there are cases when the Norwegian

sentence is grammatically correct, however neither the English nor the Hungarian sentence

can be acceptable, or when both the Norwegian and English sentence are correct but their

Hungarian translations are ungrammatical. Beyond these, there are also cases when all the

three examples are correct or all of them are ungrammatical. All in all, Åfarli has come to the

conclusion that the application of this Norwegian passivization-type is not restricted only on

transitive verbs; it can be also used with a definable group of intransitive verbs. Using
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Perlmutter’s (1978) Unaccusative Hypothesis, Alberti names two different group of verbs

related to their roles in the passivized sentence: one group is called the unaccusative

intransitive verbs, whose subjects have patient role, and the other group is called the

unergative intransitive verbs, whose subjects have agent roles.

3.2. Two ways of the passivization process

After presenting some grammatical limits and the complexity of the Hungarian

passivization process, I would like to focus on its rules based on Alberti’s study. In his basic

idea, he (1996:26) notes that passivization can be defined in two grammatical ways:

I. Demotion of the agent: preventing the most prestigious thematic role (the agent)

from obtaining the most prestigious syntactic function (the subjective).

II. Promotion of the patient: the “patient-like” character is given the most prestigious

syntactic function.

In Alberti’s view, these two grammatical ways explain the differences of the passive

structures that are present in the languages of the world. Nevertheless, he claims that these

two processes are equivalents in the sense that the demotion of the patient implies the

promotion of the patient and vice versa.

In Hungarian, the second process takes place and this explains the fact that it is

possible to passivize verbs which are intransitive but the subjects have patient roles. It can be

illustrated with an example sentence such as: “A bátyám berúgott. -> A bátyám be van

rúgva.” Here, “a bátyám” (my brother) does not belong to the role of the agent, and it is

useful now to refer back to the so called unaccusative intransitive verbs, because the verb

“berúg” is also one of these. However, those intransitive verbs whose subjects belong to the

agent role, cannot be passivized; the second process does not apply to them. That is the reason
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why a sentence like “A macska fel van ugorva az ágyra” is ungrammatical in the Hungarian

language.

However, the limits are not so strict for example in German. It is completely

acceptable to say a sentence like Es wurde getanzt (which can be translated to English as “It

was danced” or translated to Hungarian “Táncolva volt” and its meaning is “There was

dancing.”) Neither in Hungary nor in England people would consider this sentence

grammatically correct, but in Germany it is completely acceptable. The reason is that in the

German language the first process takes place in passivization: the promotion of the patient.

As Laczkó (2005:211) summarizes it well: “In English, only transitive verbs can be

passivized, while German also allows the passivization of unergative verbs like ‘dance’.

Hungarian, however, is compatible with both transitive and unaccusative verb stems.” He

also provides a table for presenting the main differences in these languages.

Type A passivization of Vtr, Vunerg A: demote the agent from subject! German

Type B passivization of Vtr, Vunacc B: promote the patient to subject! Hungarian

Type C passivization of Vtr A+B English

Table 1 (Laczkó 2005:211)

3.3. Other passive-like structures

Beyond the above-mentioned cases, there are other structures in Hungarian which can be

also considered as products of passivization. Though a sentence like “A ruha mosatik” sounds

as an archaism, it still meets the requirements of a normal transitive passivization, as Alberti

(1996: 39-40) also draws attention to it. In his study he also refers to Laczkó (1993) who gave

a specific semantic description of structures such as:

a. A (Dóri) által főzőtt hús

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b. *A felnevetett fiú.

Laczkó (2005:209) clearly explains that “the patient argument of either an unaccusative or a

transitive input verb will be mapped onto the subject function and the agent of a transitive

verb will either be realized as an oblique or remain unexpressed.” Alberti rephrases the

explanation and he (1996:40) states that “structures can be formed from both transitive and

intransitive verbs, whose “subjects” will be the patient. However, with unergative intransive

verbs – whose subjects do not have patient roles- the presented structure cannot be created.”

4. Conclusion

In this paper I have discussed the Hungarian predicative verbal adverbial

constructions, namely the passive voice which does exist in this language and also used very

productively. I have concentrated on the main grammatical operations, based on Gábor

Alberti’s work in which he defines passivization in two ways: demotion of the agent and

promotion of the patient. These two types, however, are to be assigned a single passivization

rule. It can be stated that Hungarian passive structures can be formed from both transitive and

intransitive verbs, but there are also ungrammatical cases in both types As a conclusion, it is

realized that the process of passivization in the languages vary according to the special

features they have, so the grammatical transformations which lead to passive structures are

definitely language-specific.

References

 Laczkó, Tibor 2005. “Nominalization, Participle Formation, Typology and Lexical

Mapping Theory”. Christopher Piñón and Péter Siptár, eds. (2005), Papers from the

Düsseldorf Conference Approaches to Hungarian 9. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. pp

209-212.
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 Alberti, Gábor 1996. “Passziválási művelet a magyarban.[A Passive Operation in

Hungarian] A mai magyar nyelv leírásának újabb módszerei II [New Methods in the

Description of Hungarian 2] ed. by Márta Maleczki & László Büky. Szeged: Szegedi

Tudományegyetem. pp 7-8, 10-12, 26, 39-40.

 Haspelmath, Martin & Andrea D. Sims 2010. Understanding Morphology.

Understanding Language Series ed. by Bernard Comrie and Greville Corbett. London:

Hodder Education. pp. 251-252.