Két nézőpont találkozása: magyartanítás más anyanyelvűeknek … és a magyar nyelvtörténet

Abstract

The meeting of perspectives suggested in the title (When two perspectives meet: teaching Hungarian as a foreign language and the historical study of Hungarian) may seem highly unusual. It either occurs when a Hungarian historical linguist ventures into the practice of teaching her native language to foreigners (this was the case with the present author who formerly worked at Bordeaux 3 and Paris 3 Universities as a guest lecturer in Hungarian studies), or when a language teacher takes the opposite route in search of illuminating explanations for her students. Teaching in a different linguistic environment brings to the surface several hidden regularities of the native language, ones that frequently go unnoticed in reference grammars. And as no appeal can be made to the instinctive knowledge of students, it becomes a daily challenge for the teacher to set up new rules and improve them as necessary. In this paper, I investigate the regularities of the two Hungarian verbal paradigms known as ’general’ (általános) and ’definite’ (határozott), with special regard to interrogative and relative pronouns functioning as objects. Of particular interest will be the fact that relative pronouns typically go with the general paradigm, which is as surprising from a synchronic perspective as it is natural from the diachronic viewpoint. The unique behaviour of certain pronouns (melyik ’which (interr.)’, amelyik ’(that) which’) also invites a historical approach; even more to the point, though, it raises some puzzling questions about current language use.