Talk:Uralic languages/Archive 1

message: Could this page be archived? It is quite huge and most questions are already replied to. --Hippophaë 11:52, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Archive

message: Quick translation from the Hungarian page: :hu:Esetek a magyar nyelvben. 
It references the books Gyakorlati magyar nyelvtan (Practical Hungarian Grammar) and
Új magyar nyelvtan (New Hungarian Grammar). I can't check the books personally, since I'm not in Hungary right now, although it would save a lot of time.
# nominativus: tó lake
# accusativus: tavat lake (accusative)
# dativus: tónak to (the) lake
# instrumentalis-comitativus: tóval with (the) lake
# causalis-finalis: tóért for (the) lake
# translativus(-factivus): tóvá into (a) lake  (as in "change into a lake")
# inessivus: tóban in (the) lake
# superessivus: tavon on (the) lake
# adessivus: tónál at (the) lake
# illativus: tóba into (the) lake
# sublativus: tóra onto (the) lake
# allativus: tóhoz to (the) lake
# elativus: tóból from within the lake
# delativus: tóról from on top of the lake
# ablativus: tótól away from the lake
# terminativus: tóig up to the lake  (As in "we go up to the point where the lake is but no further")
# essivus-formalis: tóként (as a lake) (As in "we treat it as a lake")
# essivus-modalis: tóul (like a lake) (As in "it behaves like a lake")
Further cases:
# genitivus: tónak (a …je) – same as dativus
# distributivus: tavanként for each lake
# distributivus-temporalis: naponta every day (nap = day)
# formalis: emberképpen as a man (ember = man) 
# sociativus: ruhástul with clothes on (ruha = cloth)
# locativus: Pécsett in Pécs (Pécs is a city)
# temporalis: órakor at ... o'clock   (óra = hour)
# (modalis-essivus: világosan, hárman, sokan) – clearly (világos = clear), three (as in "three of us came", three = három), many (as in "many of us came", sok = many)
# (multiplicativus: ötször) – five times (öt = five)
Hope this helps. Nyenyec 21:44, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of cases in Hungarian 

message: My problems with Antifinnugor's latest additions (Antifinnugor's addititons in italics, my comments right below):
* a lack of grammatical gender
** Like English
*** It is irrelevant whether English has or doesn't have grammatical gender.  It is still a common feature of this language group.
* no separate possessive pronouns
** Hungarian has separate possessive pronouns (enyém, tied, ...)
*** The word enyém means mine, tiéd is yours.  IIUC, however, posessive pronouns are my, your, etc., which truly don't exist in Hungarian, we use the regular pronoun and agglutinate the object of posession instead.  (I don't know about the other languages in the group, would someone enlighten me?)
Therefore I suggest these additions to be removed.
--Dhanak 22:37, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: However, „en” is not a separate posessive pronoun, since it is the regular pronoun used also for other purposes.  Maybe the problem is that the word „separate” is ambiguous here, whether it means a pronoun standing by itself, separated from other words, or a dedicated pronoun for expressing posession.  In the former sense, Hungarian does have separate posessive pronouns, in the latter sense, it does not. --Dhanak 21:22, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: An addition: you say az én kabátom only when you want to emphasize that the coat (kabát) belongs to me, as opposed to someone else.  On the other hand, when the purpose of the sentence is to state something about the coat itself, we only say a kabátom piszkos (my coat is dirty), without any separate pronouns. --Dhanak 21:56, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Typology problems 

message: Honestly, I find it simply outrageous that Antifinnugor, while s/he calls it unacceptable when someone removes one or two debated sentences and rephrases others added by him/her, deletes an entire section of the page without discussing it here and coming to an agreement with other editors first.  He also added an external link to Dr. Marácz's article a second time, so now it appears twice on the page.  I cannot accept this kind of behavior, and the only reasons I'm not reverting this modification immediately are that (1) I want to avoid edit wars at all cost, and no doubt s/he would put the changes back soon enough, (2) I'm desperately trying to avoid accusations of deletionism.  --Dhanak 21:34, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: You, who simply deleted anonymously, from ther Vanderbilt University my page without argumentation, have, of course the right to cry like that. Antifinnugor 06:58, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

text: See below the reason. Antifinnugor 06:46, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

text: I do not deny that I reverted the article, nor did I wish to conceal my identity. My reasons were manyfold. First, the removed content contained very much debated claims (such as Hungarian has no cases – so far only Antifinnugor has this claim), and its style and formulation did not match the requirements of Wikipedia. Two, it was him/her who repeatedly put these claims back in the article, although the debate here had been far from finished and he had not (yet) succeeded in convincing the editors that this content should be there. I will, however, refrain from repeating it, because I wouldn't like to start an(other) edit war. --David Hanak
Let me also point out, that the current version of the article contains debate-like sentences, which obviously should not be there.  Again, I do not remove them lest Antifinnugor accuse me of deleting parts of „his page” (which of course he has no right whatsoever to claim ownership of). --Dhanak 16:21, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Antifinnugor's deletions 

message: * extensive use of independent suffixes, a.k.a. agglutination
OK, Also there in all agglutinating languages
* a large set of grammatical cases (13 - 14 cases on average)
Not true for Hungarian
* unique Uralic case system, which the case system of all modern Uralic languages are derived from
o nominative singular has no case suffix (a feature also found in languages such as German)
o three-way distinction in the local case system  
NOT True for Hungarian
Modern makes no sense. Modern means not keeping traditions?
All features not present in Hungarian
* vowel harmony (recently lost in standard Estonian, but exists in dialects. Also exists in Turkish)
* a lack of grammatical gender (a feature found in many languages around the world, including English)
* negative verb, which exists in all Uralic languages, e.g. Nganasan, Enets, Nenets, Kamassian, Komi, Meadow Mari, North Sami (and other Samic languages), Finnish, Estonian, Karelian, etc. (Some innovative languages have lost personal suffixes, e.g. Hungarian.)
Not in Hungarian
Word innovative wrong
* palatalization (a widespread feature worldwide, notably common in the neighboring Slavic languages)
Irrelevant
* basic vocabulary, including body parts (e.g. eye, heart, head, foot, mouth), family members (e.g. father, mother-in-law), animals (e.g. viper, partridge, fish), nature objects (e.g. tree, stone, nest, water), basic verbs (e.g. live, fall, run, suck, go, die, swim, know), basic pronouns (e.g. who, what, we, you, I), numerals (e.g. two, five)
Very few common words, also these not common in all languages
* possessive suffixes
In all agglutinating languages
* no separate possessive pronouns
In all agglutinating languages 
* dual, which exists e.g. in Samoyedic, Ob Ugrian and Samic languages, although not in Hungarian.
* plural markers -j (i) and -t have the same origin (e.g. in Finnish, Estonian, Erzya, Samic languages, Samoyedic languages). Hungarian, however, has -i and -k. In the old orthographies, the plural marker -k was also used in the Samic languages.
Different suffixes, no common feature
* no verb "have"
Not true for Hungarian
Therefore this list is full of not common features and confusing.
The only really common feature is still agglutination, that is common in all agglutinating languages, like Turlish, Persian, Armenuan, Sumerian, Basque, Etruscian, etc... Antifinnugor 06:46, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  typology

message: I noticed above an argument about whether Hungarian has possessive pronouns.  To quote:
:User:Antifinnugor says "Hungarian has separate possessive pronouns (enyém, tied, ...)"
:Dhanak responds "The word enyém means mine, tiéd is yours.  [If I recall correctly], however, posessive pronouns are my, your, etc., which truly don't exist in Hungarian, we use the regular pronoun and agglutinate the object of posession instead.  (I don't know about the other languages in the group, would someone enlighten me?)
Well, according to the article on possessive pronouns, mine and yours are independent possessive pronouns, while my and your are determinative possessive pronouns.
Question: in the Typology section of the article, is it correct to say that Uralic languages have no possessive pronouns of either type?  Or do you mean simply that Uralic languages don't have independent possessive pronouns?
Dbenbenn 22:23, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Dbenbenn, thanks for the clarification.  Naturally I withdraw my objection. --Dhanak 23:16, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

text: Maybe I misunderstand something, since I'm not a linguist.  But in Hungarian the (for the lack of a better word) possessive pronoun enyém (mine) is declined.  Thus nom. enyém, acc. enyémet, dat. enyémnek, gen. enyémé, etc.  However, enyém, tiéd (yours), etc. are independent possessive pronouns, unlike mein in german.  Hungarian lacks determinative possessive pronouns, as discussed above, we say az én kutyám (the I dog-my) or simply a kutyám (the dog-my).  Hippophaë, what do you think? --Dhanak 20:37, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possessive pronouns 

message: First I corrected the page where it said Hungarian, however has -i and -k to denote plural, by removing the -i.  Then (thanks to Nyenyec for pointing it out) I realized that -i is indeed used for plural, more specifically as the plural form of the possessive declination.  I.e., kutyája = his dog, kutyái = his dogs, even though it is at the end of the word only in third person, i.e., kutyám = my dog, kutyáim = my dogs, etc.  Sorry for the confusion. --Dhanak 22:32, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  -i for plural in Hungarian 

message: * Wikipedia is not a dictionary, use Wiktionary instead
:: You may use wiktionary for any purpose, you like. In this case we are doing linguistic comparison, and word comparison is a tool for that, besides grammar comparison. You never heard about this?  Antifinnugor 09:25, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hippo, never heard of language comparison?

message: Hippo, if possible, please do not demonstrate your primitivness and wildness, and unability to think by reverting again. Especially leave the reference in to the critic of these groups. Then we can avoiding your primitive reverting orgias in the future. Thanks. Antifinnugor 08:46, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hippo, do not revert

message: Both the finnougric and the uralic page contain wrong word tables.
 
   English    Finnish   Hungarian
   vein       suoni     ér
   tendon     jennä     ín
   father     isä       apa
   ancestor   esi-isä   õs
This is how it looks correctly. If the words in the table do not match
the English ones, people are badly informed, and this is therefore a bad table.
Also the English words after the Hungarian ones suggest, these are Hungarian
words, which is absolutely confusing.
If a vikipedia editor believes, that suoni and ín are somehow relatid,
should try to prove that. Father and õs's relation is somewhat more believable 
by looking at the words, this can be also mentioned.
Thank for fixing that. Antifinnugor 20:10, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Antifinnugor, please familiarize yourself with the term cognate. The tables are not dictionaries but lists of cognates. --Hippophaë 03:14, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: hipo, I know what is cognate. The tables are Incorrect. It has nothing to do with cognate or not cognate. Even you should be able to understand this. Thanks, Antifinnugor 10:07, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Tables

message: "Three-way distinction in the local case system" means a case system which includes a set of three local cases, one of which indicates a location in a place, another of which indicates a motion to a place and the third of which indicates a motion from a place. For example, the interior local cases (inessive, elative, illative) form this kind of system in Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, Erzya, etc.
Language 	Inessive    	Elative       	Illative
Finnish  	talossa     	talosta       	taloon
Estonian 	majas       	majast        	majasse
Hungarian	házban      	házból        	házba
English  	in the house	from the house	to the house
In Finnish and Estonian, there are also exterior local cases (adessive, ablative, allative) and general local cases (essive, partitive, translative). In Hungarian, there are exterior local cases and also surface local cases (superessive, delative, sublative). --Hippophaë 01:14, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Three-way distinction in the local case system

message: The Finnish scientists K. Wiik, A. Künnap, K. Julku, Meinander also criticize the Finno-Ugric/Uralic dogma. Antifinnugor 09:01, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: [] For example this one. Antifinnugor 17:21, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

text: Not in the sense, as you do. He clearly sees the connection to the basque language, what you "forget" to mention. Antifinnugor 17:13, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  Uh, no.  He specifically emphasises that there are "three different major families of languages in Europe: the Indo-Europeans, the Finno-Ugrians and the Basques." - Mustafaa 18:32, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: If so, why are these references missing from your fu/u pages? Antifinnugor 20:17, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Finnish scientists

message: Since the criticism of the finno-ugric groups does not contain:
*The historical background of these groups (Joseph Budenz & Co)
*The typology of the Turanic languages
*The differences between the uralic languages
* Basic word list of the Uralic group
* Sample texts of these languages
* reference to Dr Marácz-s article about the unteniability of these groups
and 
* The cognate list contains erronous words
It cannot be considered as a useful information for those, who want to understand, why these groups are unteniable. 
Also this article criticizes both the finno-ugric and the uralic groups, which are in fact the same, therefore a redirection to the finno-ugric page is completely incorrect. The typology is one of the woundest point of the finno-ugric/uralic groups.
And also the so called critics text of the finno-ugric page is more critics of the critic, it is not sufficient as a real critic, and no good user information. If we merge the articles, and this text, exactly as it is here, can go into the uralic text, without reverting orgias and zynical deletions, then it is ok from me. If it works for 6 months satisfactory, then I agree with that. Otherwise, it makes no sense. Antifinnugor 16:57, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: About the "critics"