Competing relative pronouns with and without a prefix in the first half century of the Middle Hungarian era,

Abstract

The competition between the forms of relative pronouns with and without a prefix is a process that has been going on from the Old Hungarian era up to the present day. The innovative variant emerged by reanalysis from sequences of a demonstrative pronoun and a relative pronoun. We can observe successive processes of grammaticalisation in the emergence of the Hungarian relative pronouns of today. The prefixed variant can be documented since Late Old Hungarian. The spread of forms with a prefix gathers momentum in the first decades of the Middle Hungarian era. The paper addresses the question of which register had the leading role in that development. Was it a kind of language use close to spoken living language, the primary terrain for initiating linguistic changes? Or did written language shaped by book printing let the innovation develop more readily? I studied the behaviour of the pairs ki ~ a(z)ki ‘who’, mi ~ a(z)mi ‘that’, and mely ~ a(z)mely ‘which’ on a sample of about 4000 data points. I demonstrate the findings by means of diagrams showing percentage distribution. I also tested the significance of the statements on the size of deviations. In addition, I also touch upon general questions on the spread of linguistic change. A major result of the paper is that in the case of two out of the three pairs of pronouns book language has priority over spoken language. However, the idiom of Bible translations holds the first place over both registers. Thus, it can be claimed that more sophisticated language use and polished style appear to be more open to innovation with respect to the phenomenon examined.