Dynamism in the Hungarian prefix

A cognitive linguistic approach

Abstract

The paper gives a cognitive semantic analysis of the Hungarian prefix fel‘up’. The prefix fel‘up’ expresses a dynamic upward direction in real space in its primary meaning, with simulational subjectivetemporality (as Hungarian prefixes in general denote dynamic directionality). This prefix, as all the others, forms a composite structure with the main verb. The paper discusses (i) the general features of the prefix fel‘up’, (ii) it argues that the directional meaning of Hungarian prefixes is processed by mental simulation, whith this imaginative simulation as subjective motion including backgrounded temporality, closely related to the inner section of the path, (iii) gives some basic details of the spatial variants of the prefix fel‘up’ with self-motion verbs, focusing on the verb felmegy‘go up’, in particular.