Linguistic data of the record of evidence of the Punisher Committee set up after the 1764 massacre in the Transylvanian village Madéfalva

Part 2

Abstract

The study examines the language of the record of evidence of the Punisher Committee [Bűnfenyítő Bizottság] set up after the 1764 massacre in the Transylvanian village Madéfalva. The first language of the recorder Michael Conrad von Heidendorf certainly left its mark on the language of the record in Hungarian, but this study focuses on the Szeklers’ dialectal texts, the authentic texts of witnesses. For the background of the linguistic data, a broader presentation of the record can also provide useful information, as well as the data that relate to the language of the recorder of the interrogations, primarily from the point of view of his knowledge of Hungarian and the circumstances of the recording. Place-names, phraseologisms, and forms of address were also recorded in the text of the record, besides various dialect  words. Some of these data can be found in publications describing the dialect of Szeklers of Bukovina, but there are data that can only be found in the language of Moldavian Hungarians or in the Historical Dictionary of the Hungarian Language in Transylvania (SzT.). The linguistic data of the record can be examined in terms of phonetics, morphology and syntax, and examples collected from dialect texts of Szeklers of Bukovina can be used to supplement their presentation. The text of the record is a dialect history document and, according to the examples cited, the record is a proof of the already known fact that the Szeklers of Bukovina preserved their dialect even after their resettlement, and that this language is closely related to that of the Szeklers who gathered at the time of the carnage.