Ágnes Kalivoda

Morphological change as systemically motivated bricolage: Hungarian impulsative constructions

Sat, 12 Dec 2026 21:21:48 +0200

PrevHist: A dataset of Old and Middle Hungarian preverb constructions

Sat, 12 Dec 2026 21:21:48 +0200

Mapping the meaning of Hungarian impulsative constructions

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 21:17:33 +0200

Affixation, back-formation, or both? A corpus-based study on the multiple motivation of Hungarian compound verbs

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 21:21:48 +0200

Expressivity and productivity in the Hungarian -hAtnék construction

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 21:21:48 +0200

Téri viszonyt jelölő vonzatok korpuszalapú vizsgálata [A corpus-based study of arguments referring to spatial relations]

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 21:21:48 +0200

Mapping the meaning of Hungarian impulsative constructions

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 21:18:23 +0200

PrevHist: A dataset of Old and Middle Hungarian preverb constructions

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 21:17:33 +0200

Magyar szerkezettár demó [Hungarian Constructicon demo]

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 21:21:48 +0200

Magyar szerkezettár demó [Hungarian Constructicon demo]

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 21:21:48 +0200

The unusual diachronic development of a typologically uncommon desiderative construction

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 21:21:48 +0200

MoMa – Moldvai magyar beszélt nyelvi, nyelvjárási korpusz [MoMa – An oral corpus of Moldavian Hungarian dialects]

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 21:20:47 +0200

Beszélhetnékem van – a hirtelen késztetést kifejező -⁠hatnék/hetnék konstrukció [Beszélhetnékem van 'I have an urge to talk' – the impulsative -hatnék/hetnék construction]

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 21:00:43 +0200

Hungarian auxiliaries revisited

Thu, 12 Dec 2024 21:21:48 +0200

„A fatens felelt pedig…” – A Történeti Magánéleti Korpusz igei szerkezeteinek mozaik n-gram alapú feldolgozása [„And the witness answered…” – Mosaic n-gram-based processing of the verb constructions found in the Old and Middle Hungarian corpus of informal language use]

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 21:21:48 +0200

„A fatens felelt pedig…” – A Történeti Magánéleti Korpusz igei szerkezeteinek mozaik n-gram alapú feldolgozása [„And the witness answered…” – Mosaic n-gram-based processing of the verb constructions found in the Old and Middle Hungarian corpus of informal language use]

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 21:21:48 +0200

A corpus-based investigation of the unification of wordformation schemas in Hungarian

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 21:21:48 +0200

Melléknévi és igei régensek szemantikai hasonlóságának korpuszalapú vizsgálata konstrukciós keretben [A corpus-based study of the semantic similarity of adjective and verb regents in a constructional framework]

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 21:21:48 +0200

The origin and development of Hungarian desiderative constructions

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 21:21:48 +0200

A magmondat szerepű, passzív jelentésű sémák produktivitásának kvantitatív vizsgálata [Quantitative productivity analysis of Hungarian passive predicative constructions]

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 21:20:47 +0200

Beférkőző igék kollostrukciós vizsgálata. Az igekötő és főnévi igenév közé ékelődő igék kolexémaelemzése az MNSZ2-UD korpuszban [Collostructional analysis of Hungarian verbs in intervening position]

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 21:20:47 +0200

Szimultán igekötőzés és igeképzés – konstrukcióegyesítés a magyarban [Simultaneous use of preverbs and verb formation suffixes – construction unification in Hungarian]

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 21:20:47 +0200

Hogyan készült és mit tud a MoMa? Online kereshető moldvai magyar hangzó nyelvjárási szövegtár [How was the MoMa corpus created and what can it be used for? An online spoken corpus of Moldavian Hungarian dialects]

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 21:00:43 +0200

Infinitívuszi szerkezetek a magyarban: adatvezérelt megközelítés [Infinitive constructions in Hungarian: a data-driven approach]

Tue, 12 Dec 2023 21:21:48 +0200

Az agyon igekötővé válása – egy kvantitatív, adatvezérelt kutatás tanulságai [The preverbification of agyon 'to death' – a quantitative, data-driven study]

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 21:21:48 +0200

„Csánjuk meg, hogy legyen megcsánva.” Beszélgetések Moldvából: egy számítógéppel feldolgozható, nyelvileg elemzett gyűjtemény ["Let's do it so it gets done." Conversations from Moldova: a machine-readable, linguistically analyzed collection of texts]

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 21:00:43 +0200

Moldvai magyar korpusz – részletek Tánczos Vilmos gyűjtéséből [Corpus of Moldavian Hungarian dialects – recordings from Vilmos Tánczos' collection]

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 21:00:43 +0200

MoMa: egy beszéltnyelvi, nyelvjárási korpusz építésének lépései és érdekességei. Műhelyfoglalkozás [MoMa: the steps and points of interest in building a dialectal spoken corpus. Workshop session]

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 21:00:43 +0200

PrevDistro: An open-access dataset of Hungarian preverb constructions

Mon, 12 Dec 2022 21:21:48 +0200

A magyar igekötős szerkezetek korpuszvezérelt vizsgálata [Corpus-driven studies of Hungarian preverb constructions]

Tue, 15 Nov 2022 21:00:43 +0200

Building a dependency treebank from the Hungarian Gigaword Corpus

Sat, 10 Sep 2022 21:17:33 +0200

Always far from perfect, yet always good enough

Fri, 02 Sep 2022 21:17:33 +0200

Periphrastic constructions and inflection internal to derivation

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 21:17:33 +0200

Igekötő-kapcsolás [Connecting preverbs and their associated verbs]

Sat, 01 Jan 2022 21:21:48 +0200

Igekötő-kapcsolás [Connecting preverbs and their associated verbs]

Sat, 01 Jan 2022 20:52:25 +0200

Igekötős szerkezetek a magyarban [Preverb constructions in Hungarian]

Fri, 15 Oct 2021 21:21:29 +0200

Preverb constructions in Hungarian

Fri, 15 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Dedicated to László Kálmán (1957-2021)

The thesis investigates Hungarian preverbs – also called verbal particles, verbal prefixes – and preverb constructions by a corpus-driven method. Its main research questions are as follows: (1) Which lexical items can be regarded as preverbs, and what are the grounds of their classification? (2) What kinds of clausal orders do preverb constructions show, when and to what extent can a preverb be separated from a finite/non-finite verb or a deverbal element? (3) How can we describe the productive preverb–verb patterns, and – based on this – what conclusions can be made about the semantics of preverbs?

As for the first question, I assume that there is a fuzzy boundary between preverbs and other bare nominal verb modifiers. The prototype-theory seems to be suited for the graded categorization needed here. With this in mind, I collect morphological and frequency-related features of preverbs, measuring the value of each feature in the case of 235 preverb-like lexical items. Considering the correlations of each feature-pair as well as the standpoints made in a range of relevant literature, I set up a continuum ranging from the standard preverbs to the least preverbish elements. Finally, I decide to split the continuum into four categories: prototypical, central, semi-peripheral and peripheral preverbs.

Regarding the second question, I first perform a synchronic corpus study, putting emphasis on the finite constructions. I show that in inverted order constructions (finite verb – preverb), the distance of the finite verb and its preverb can be influenced by phonological factors and by an ‘oral versus written’ distinction. I also examine the distribution of preverbs in the case of non-finite verbs and deverbal elements. Doing so, I present some constructions rarely discussed in linguistic literature. I also conduct a diachronic study which aims to quantify the changes of the prototypical preverbs’ positions, from the Old Hungarian period to the present day. This study shows a monotonous increase in the proportion of sentences containing a focused constituent. Moreover, it shows how the negative sentences having ‘verb – negative particle – preverb’ order make headway against the ones having ‘preverb – negative particle – verb’ order.

To answer the third question, I develop a method based on the corpus-driven study of ‘preverb – derivational suffix – argument frame’ triplets. I present the three most common ways of word formation in Hungarian: verb formation from nouns and verbs, and thirdly, verb formation using sound patterns. After that, I present the PrevCons database containing 21038 preverb–verb hapaxes. This resource makes it possible to explore the productive preverb–verb patterns by the accessibility of the triplets mentioned above. Finally, I present an experiment which aims to represent the different meanings associated with preverbs and the relationships between these meanings in a network-like structure based on PrevCons, in the form of an ontology.

At the end of the thesis, I return to the concept which was my starting point, namely that the notion of preverb can be best captured by prototype-theoretical means. I check whether the original preverb continuum remains largely the same when considering distributional and semantic features of preverbs. The result shows that the two endpoints remain stable, while there is a considerable fluctuation in-between. The vagueness attested here leads to a viewpoint change from the study of lexical items to the study of constructions, largely based on László Kálmán’s review on the first version of this thesis. Beyond the introduction of this concept, a significant contribution of this short chapter is PrevDistro, an open-source database containing 41.5 million occurrences of 49 preverb construction types.

Dissertation title: Igekötős szerkezetek a magyarban [Preverb constructions in Hungarian]

Advisor: Gábor Prószéky

Committee: Balázs Surányi (chair), Katalin É. Kiss (opponent), László Kálmán (opponent), Tamás Halm, Mária Ladányi, Andrea Reményi

Read more:

Ph.D. dissertation
Dissertation defense slides
Thesis booklet in English and in Hungarian
Katalin É. Kiss’s opponent review and my response
László Kálmán’s opponent review and my response
Review given by the committee

Magyar hadifoglyok adatainak orosz-magyar átírása és helyreállítása, és a szabadszöveges adatbázisok tulajdonságai [Russian-Hungarian transcription and restoration of data about Hungarian prisoners of war – the characteristics of freestyle text databases]

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 21:21:43 +0200

Az igekötők produktív kapcsolódási mintái [Productive preverb-verb patterns in Hungarian]

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 21:21:35 +0200

A network analysis of Hungarian preverb constructions

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 21:17:33 +0200

A magyar igekötős szerkezetek adatvezérelt kutatása [Corpus-driven studies of Hungarian preverb constructions]

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 21:00:43 +0200

Magyar hadifoglyok adatainak orosz-magyar átírása és helyreállítása, és a szabadszöveges adatbázisok tulajdonságai [Russian-Hungarian transcription and restoration of data about Hungarian prisoners of war – the characteristics of freestyle text databases]

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 20:52:25 +0200

PrevDistro: Preverb Distributions

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 20:43:28 +0200

Újabb fejlemények az e-magyar háza táján [Recent developments of the e-magyar digital language processing system]

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 21:20:59 +0200

A Párhuzamos Bibliakorpusz és Bibliaolvasó fejlesztése [The Parallel Bible Corpus and Bible Reader]

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 21:20:47 +0200

PrevCons: Preverb Constructions

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 21:17:33 +0200

Az igekötők produktív kapcsolódási mintái [Productive preverb-verb patterns in Hungarian]

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 21:00:43 +0200

Az igekötők produktív kapcsolódási mintái [Productive preverb-verb patterns in Hungarian]

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 21:00:43 +0200

Újabb fejlemények az e-magyar háza táján [Recent developments of the e-magyar digital language processing system]

Wed, 01 Jan 2020 20:52:25 +0200

Creation of a corpus with semantic role labels for Hungarian

Tue, 01 Jan 2019 21:18:43 +0200

Véges erőforrás végtelen sok igekötős igére [A finite resource for an infinity of particle verbs]

Tue, 01 Jan 2019 21:18:25 +0200

Egy magyar nyelvű kérdezőrendszer [A questioning system for Hungarian]

Tue, 01 Jan 2019 21:18:23 +0200

A Sketch Engine korpuszlekérdező rendszer [The Sketch Engine corpus query system]