’I think I have a question’ – A study of two verbal constructions used in Hungarian to express opinion: AZT/ÚGY HISZ… (HOGY) and AZT/ÚGY GONDOL… (HOGY) (’I think (that)’)

Abstract

Expressing opinion is an important and frequent language function; and learners of Hungarian are presented with
several ways of expressing it from the beginning of their studies (e.g., szerintem, azt hiszem, úgy gondolom; ‘I
think’). It is argued in this paper, however, that there are several kinds of opinion, and the respective expressions of
opinion are not always interchangeable with each other. If learners are only given lists of undifferentiated items to
express ‘opinion’, they do not receive sufficient guidance to adequately use the given phrases. The paper presents
a cognitive taxonomy of opinion based on research on the discourse particle SZERINT (‘in sy’s opinion’) and examines two of the most frequent Hungarian verbal expressions for ‘I think’ (cf. title) in the light of the earlier findings, using introspective and intersubjective analysis. It is demonstrated that while SZERINT is the prototypical
expression of opinion in general in today’s spoken Hungarian, the two verbal expressions show a more intricate distribution across the four subcategories of opinion: personal values, evidence and inference, advice, and citation – especially in regard to conjugation, mood and tense. It is argued that learners of Hungarian need to be gradually presented with a more analytical approach to expressing opinion, whereby they learn about the different sorts of opinion and the respective language items (constructions, prefabs etc.) that represent each sort in different contexts.