Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 107. kötet (2010-2011)
Tanulmányok - Honti László: Personae ingratissimae? A 2. személyek jelölése az uráliban (Personae ingratissimae? The marking of second person in Uralic) 7
HONTI LÁSZLÓ Personae ingratissimae? A 2. személyek jelölése az uráliban1 In Ob-Ugric languages second person pronouns are «-initial, while in all other Uralic languages they are /-initial, and it is these latter that represent the original forms: Ostyák V nörj, Kaz närj, Vogul T näw, So narj ’you (1)’ etc., cf. Finnish sinä, Hungarian te ’id.’ stb., Ostyák V nin, Kaz nin, Vogul So пёп ’you (2)’ etc., Ostyák V пёг], Kaz när\, Vogul T nän, So nan ’you (<»)’ etc., cf. Finnish te, Hungarian ti ’id.’ etc. However, in Ostyák vestiges of the original /-initial personal pronoun are preserved in soem of the dual and plural person-marking morphemes: V kutS- t5n ’(you 2/°°) house’, V tulä-t3n ’(you 2) bring’, tul-tSy ’(you °°) bring’, Kaz тӓл-tdn ’(you 2) give’, тӓл-ti ’(you °°) give’. Previous research has mostly explained this odd phenomenon with the hypothesis that the proto-language included a t- as well as a «-initial second person pronoun. While Hajdú did not regard this as the oldest reconstructible stage, he dated this bifurcation to the Proto-Uralic era and derived it from an original t-initial pronoun *ton (or *tVn), in which the oral consonant assimilated to the nasal. The two variants coexisted in the Proto-Uralic era in the Eastern territories (*tVn > *nVn) but were preserved as personal pronouns only in Ob-Ugric, though remnants can be found in the neighbouring Samoyedic languages and sporadically in Permic too. The present study assumes that this is a plausible claim and goes on to add further possible sources of (paradigmatic) assimilation between pronouns to explain the emergence of the «-initial Ob-Ugric pronouns: a) sg. 1. *mün -> sg. 2. *tm > sg. 2. *nisn (paradigmatic assimilation); b) sg. 1. *miin -> sg. 2. *tün > sg. 2. *nisn (paradigmatic assimilation); c) sg. 2. *tm > sg. 2. *niin (word-internal regressive assimilation). What is meant here by paradigmatic assimilation is phonological and/or morphological interactions between lexemes belonging to the same conceptual field, which are very frequent e.g. between numerals and the names of months and are evidenced between pronouns in Germanic and some Romance languages too. It is argued here that the second person morphemes consisting of,or including, « in Permic and Samoyedic languages emerged in such ways, but in all these related languages the changes took place independently. 1A Magyar Tudományos Akadémián 2011. március 21-én elhangzott rendes tagi székfoglaló előadás bővített változata. Ezúton is köszönetét mondok Csúcs Sándornak és Keresztes Lászlónak, tanulmányom lektorainak értékes megjegyzéseikért. - Lábjegyzetben közlöm a finn, a holland és az olasz idézetek magyar fordítását. Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 107. 7-57.
