Person-marking constructions in rewritten versions of a poem by Endre Ady

Abstract

Genres are characterized by specific patterns of person-marking constructions including pronouns, morphosyntactic elements and vocatives. The goal of this paper is to verify this hypothesis through an analysis of rewritten versions of a poem. The paper analyses various rewritten versions of Hawk Mating on the Fallen Leaves (Hu. Héja-nász az avaron) by Endre Ady and conducts software-assisted qualitative research on basic devices for person-marking in order to explore the features of person-marking constructions in the categories of “bad” poetry, 1 pop song lyrics, rap and prose (Domonkosi–Kuna 2018a). The analysis reveals that in speakers’ everyday, intuitive knowledge of genres, schemas related to various opportunities for person-marking play a fundamental role. This is suggested by the fact that the rewriting of the poem, its transposition into new genres went hand in hand with changes in the choice of person-marking constructions.