The evolution of the description of the case system and of the concept of case in 18th-century Hungarian language books for Germans

Abstract

This paper examines the evolution of the description of present-day Hungarian nominal case suffixes and the terminology used for naming cases in eighteenth-century Hungarian language textbooks for native speakers of German. The analysis focuses on four definitive textbooks: Der Ungarische Sprachmeister (1729) by Mátyás Bél, Ausführliche und neuerläuterte ungarische Sprachkunst (1763) by Mihály Adámi, Grundlinien (1792) by András Vályi, and Ungarische Sprachlehre (1793) by György Szaller. The study highlights that, although the authors described the Hungarian case system in terms of the Latin grammatical tradition, they had
already recognized the distinctive Hungarian nature of these linguistic elements in many respects, thereby laying the groundwork for the shift in perspective that led to the development of a multi-case system tailored to the Hungarian language in the early 19th century.