In the
Hungarian language
Hungarian, or Magyar (, ), is an Ugric language of the Uralic language family spoken in Hungary and parts of several neighboring countries. It is the official language of Hungary and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union. Out ...
the essive-formal case or formative case
[Referred to as ''formativus'' b]
É. Kiss, Katalin
su
(profile)
/sup>â
su
/sup>–Siptár, Péter. ''Új magyar nyelvtan.''
p. 202 (204 in the online PDF)
/ref>[Referred to as ''formativus'' b]
su
/sup>
3.9.3. Az esetragok
(‘Case Suffixes’). In: Kiefer, Ferenc (ed.), ''Magyar nyelv'' ‘Hungarian Language’. Akadémiai Kiadó. Online publication: 2015. Print publication: 2006. [Referred to as ''formativus'' by Kiefer, Ferenc: A ragozás (‘Suffixation’ or ‘Inflection’ or ‘Conjugation and Declension’)]
10.3.1. Az esetragok (‘Case Suffixes’)
In: Kiefer, Ferenc (ed.). ''Strukturális magyar nyelvtan'' (‘Structural Grammar of Hungarian’) Vol. 3. ''Morfológia'' (‘Morphology’). Akadémiai Kiadó. Online publication: 2018. can be viewed as combining an essive case and a formal case, and it can express the position, task, state (e.g. "as a tourist"), or the manner (e.g. "like a hunted animal").
Grammatical status: case vs. adverb-forming suffix
Some earlier analyses of the Hungarian case system, such as László Antal's (1961) did not consider the essive-formal to be a case, and disputed the status of the suffix in the declension
In linguistics, declension (verb: ''to decline'') is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence by way of an inflection. Declension may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and det ...
system. One reason for this was that while Hungarian case suffixes are absolute word-final, permits further suffixation by the locative
In grammar, the locative case ( ; abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which indicates a location. In languages using it, the locative case may perform a function which in English would be expressed with such prepositions as "in", "on", "at", and " ...
suffix . However, this is not unique to the essive-formal; can follow other case suffixes, for example in , though it has become less common since the early 20th century (e.g. ). Another reason was that most Hungarian case endings participate in vowel harmony
In phonology, vowel harmony is a phonological rule in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – must share certain distinctive features (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, meaning tha ...
, while does not, possibly due to its later development.
However, the essive-formal case complies with the criterion for Hungarian cases set by modern descriptive grammars,[Referred to as ''essivus,'' the same term as the one for the suffix of the essive-modal case, ending in , though listed as a distinct item. Balogh, Judit. A névszóragozás (‘Declension’). In: Balogh et al., ''Magyar grammatika'' (‘Hungarian Grammar’), Műszaki Könyvkiadó, Piliscsév & Budapest, 2017 (), pp. 197 and 201.] namely that it can appear as the argument of a verb, specified in its form, such as in (’treat, handle as ...’), (’behave as ...’), (’graduate as ...’), (’find employment as ...’) etc. Therefore, it is today considered as one of the 18 established and acknowledged cases in Hungarian, rather than being one of the adverb-forming suffixes, which do not comply with the criterion.
References
Grammatical cases
{{Ling-morph-stub