Augmentatives (morphological derivates with augmentative content) in Hungarian

Abstract

Evaluative morphology is a field of linguistics that studies the formation of morphological derivatives with evaluative content (augmentatives, diminutives, pejoratives and amelioratives). Although evaluative constructions in Hungarian are not always a matter of morphology (they cannot always be considered end-products of word formation processes), morphology plays a dominant role in the formation of Hungarian evaluatives; however, the role of pragmatics seems to be central too. Another central issue is the wide set of semantic nuances that usually accompany augmentatives, diminutives, pejoratives, and amelioratives. The aim of this paper is to investigate the augmentatives in Hungarian, which is a complex task considering the vast diversity of their pragmatic functions and nuances of their meanings. Nonetheless, the paper tries to demonstrate how and where the three disciplines of morphology, semantics and pragmatics meet in Hungarian evaluatives. The first part of the study is devoted to the examination of archaic, rare and non-productive -Ók suffix, while the second part focuses on the characterization of other suffixes (e.g., -sÁgOs, -(V)s, and -cskA) – derivational endings that express augmentation in various contexts.