Éva Kardos, head of the Non-independent Department of English Linguistics of the Institute of English and American Studies (UD), published the results of her linguistic research in a prestigious journal, for which she won the Publication Award of the Count István Tisza Foundation for the University of Debrecen.
As a generative linguist, Éva Kardos is interested in syntax and semantics. She examines the structure of the verbal domain of the sentence and the (im)possible meanings of verbal predicates, primarily in the light of Hungarian and English data. The article entitled The syntax of inner aspect in Hungarian was published in the Journal of Linguistics.
“In recent years, I have worked with my co-author Imola-Ágnes Farkas, who is a lecturer at the Department of English Language and Literature at Babeş-Bolyai University (Cluj), and we tested the hypothesis that the structure of the verbal domain of the sentence is fundamantally determined by a grammatical category called inner aspect, and more specifically, the property whereby the situation expressed by the sentence has an endpoint” – explained Éva Kardos
She also added: the idea is that although languages are similar in that the (un)bounded nature of events fundamentally determines the structure of the verbal domain, the linguistic manifestation of boundedness also varies across languages
“Due to its morphosyntactic properties, see, for example, verbal particles like meg and le, Hungarian clearly shows event boundedness, and sentences expressing bounded events typically have only one meaning. In contrast, in English, it is often the direct object that is responsible for this interpretation, which can also often be cancelled” – Éva Kardos told unideb.hu. She also mentioned the Hungarian verbal predicate ‘lefest egy kerítést’ as an example, which – in contrast to the English expression ‘paint a fence‘ – clearly means that the fence was painted in its entirety by the end of the painting activity ; this meaning is not cancellable
In April 2023, the department organized an international workshop , where many renowned syntacticians and semanticists from the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, Germany, Spain and even Singapore gave talks. The researchers presented new empirical results based on the examination of languages such as Hungarian, English, Hebrew, Russian, Mandarin and many more.
“This research is important for theoretical linguists interested in syntax and semantics, and the results can also be used in applied areas such as language teaching,, including the teaching of Hungarian as a second or third language, since this knowledge is essential for people learning foreign languages” – said Éva Kardos.
The research will continue in cooperation with other members of the department.The goal is to examine the syntax and semantics of the verbal domain in languages other than English and Hungarian.
unideb.hu
