Hungarian Studies Newsletter, 1974 (2. évfolyam, 3-5. szám)
1974 / 5. szám
Szeged counterrevolutionary groups, in the White Army of Admiral Horthy and in its officers’ detachments that were most responsible for the White Terror, and in the counterrevolutionary governments and National Assemblies of 1919-1922 period. With the victory of he Right the refugees became a major political factor in Hungary’s political life. They became one of the principal pillars of the right wing regime of the interwar years. Through firm commitment to counterrevolutionary causes a majority of the refugees were able to secure positions within Hungary that were similar to the posts they had left behind. The domestic cost of the assimilation of the refugees, however, was very high. The refugee problem forced an expansion of the state bureaucracy and the higher educational system beyond the needs of the country, which in turn created a major problem in the form of an unemployed intelligentsia. The financial burden strained the country’s economic resources. Anti- Semitism intensified and finally the refugees’ insistence upon a complete revision of the terms of the Treaty of Trianon, made reconciliation with the Successor States virtually impossible. For two decades, therefore, Hungary was economically and diplomatically isolated due to the commitment of her elite to the restoration of the past, says Mocsy. MacWhinney, Brian J. (U. of California, Berkeley) “How Hungarian Children Learn to Speak.” 812 pages. Xerox and microfilm order no 74-11,777. Previous research in the acquisition of Hungarian as a first language has been based upon traditional or descriptive linguistics. This study attempts to look at Hungarian language acquisition from the viewpoint of a transformational-generative model of grammar. The model was modified to increase its capacity to account for acquisition in a language with a complex morphonemic system and “free” word order. Three types of data were collected in order to evaluate this model. First, literature on Hungarian language acquisition was reviewed and digested so that observations relating to a specific feature of the language such as suffix reduplication, as in the child form rámomra, were collected in one geographical location. Second, the development of morphonemic patterns was studied by asking a group of Budapest nursery school children to form plurals of nonsense words. Third, the speech of one child between the ages of 1.5 and 2.2 was examined in detail in accord with an analytic methodology also used by Roger Brown and others at Harvard in the examination of data from English-learning children. The reader specializing in linguistics, education, or psychology may find the particular application of generative grammar interesting and the observations on the details of Hungarian language learning useful. The general readerwith a knowledge of Hungarian will probably find the digest of the literature on Hungarian child language of the most value. The author conducted his field research in Hungary during 1970-7T___________________________________________________ RENEWAL OF SUBSCRIPTIONS Notices of subscription renewals are being mailed. All subscriptions, henceforth, will be payable for the calendar year; and therefore, some subscribers will be notified presently to include payment for more than three issues published in one calendar year. This adjustment to the calendar year will aid our record keeping. Hungarian Research Center DISSERATIONS (Continued from page 5) Dr. Linda Degh, Prof, of Folklore, Indiana U. is preparing a book based on four Hungarian life histories collected in the southern part of Ontario Province of Canada. Degh is developing a methodology using life histories for a specific folkloric purpose, a process which will undoubtedly have theoretical implications. Dr. Victor E. Hanzeli, Assoc. Prof, of Romance Linguistics, U. of Washington is preparing a bilingual (Latin-English) critical edition of Gyarmathi’s Affinitás (1799). Dr. Marida Hollos, Asst. Prof, of Anthropology at Brown U. is writing up the results of her research on comprehension and use of social rules in pronoun selection by Hungarian children. Dr. Hollos spent two summers in Hungary under a National Institute of Mental Health postdoctoral fellowship. Edmund Vasvary, the most knowledgeable historian of Hungarian immigrants in America, and a recipient of the AHSF’s Abraham Lincoln Award (see report elsewhere in this issue) is preparing a study of Colonel Michael Kova'ts, who was second in command of the Pulaski Legion during the Revolutionary War, and the first Hungarian officer to give his life in the cause of American independence. Vasvary, author of Lincoln’s Hungarian Heroes, collected nearly 400 volumes of manuscripts, clippings, documents, and notes as well as a catalogue of bio- and bibliographical data containing some 12,000 entries. Since Vasvary donated his entire collection to the U. of Szeged, efforts are being made to microfilm the material before it leaves the U.S. Dr. Andrew Vazsony of the Research Center for the Language Sciences, Indiana U. has about completed his research on Hungarian language usage in the industrial regions of northern Indiana. Results of his work will appear under the title “The Language of Hungarians in Northern Indiana: Some Social and Cultural Perspectives” in a volume on Current Trends in Hungarian Language Studies, edited by A. Kerek and I. Batori in the Current Trends in Language Sciences. The HSN will report on the volume after publication. Dr. Robert E. Ward, editor of the German-American Studies is preparing a Handbook of German-American Creative Literature which will contain the names of about 3,000 authors and 30,000 works between 1675 and 1975. Many of the authors and entries are of Hungarian descent or nationality. Dr. Ward, who is also preparing an article on German literature produced by Hungarian authors in the U.S., would appreciate receiving information on such writings from the readers of HSN. His address is 7204 Langerford Drive, Cleveland, OH 44129. Dr. Daniel E. Weinberg, Asst. Prof, of History, Case Western Reserve U. is planning an oral history study of early twentieth century Hungarian settlers in the Buckeye section of Cleveland, and some Hungarian immigrants residing in Cleveland but not in Buckeye. His interest lies in immigrant expectation and function(s), primary and secondary relationships, socialization and value transmission in the larger context of the development of a multi-ethnic American society. RESEARCH IN PROGRESS 6 No. 5, 1974, HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER
