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Article published In: Approaches to Hungarian 19:
Edited by Edgar Onea and Balázs Surányi
[Journal of Uralic Linguistics 4:1] 2025
► pp. 79–114

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Accusative case, possessive structure and grammaticalization

Reflexives and object pronouns in Hungarian

ORCiD logo with link | University of Debrecen
Published online: 10 July 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jul.00036.rak
Abstract
Hungarian reflexives and 1sg and 2sg object pronouns have a possessive origin, and, together with 1sg and 2sg possessive noun phrases, they exhibit accusative case drop to varying degrees in object positions in a language that is otherwise consistently accusative marking. This paper argues that there is a systematic correlation between the frequency of accusative drop and the degree of grammaticalization in the possessive domain: the more grammaticalized possessive structure a reflexive or an object pronoun has, the less likely accusative case is to be spelled out. Following É. Kiss, Katalin & Nikolett Mus. 2022. The reflexive cycle: From reflexive to personal pronoun in Uralic. Journal of Uralic Linguistics 1 (1). 43–66. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar, accusative drop is analysed as an instance of exaptation, that is, a case of repurposing possessive morphology as accusative marking. The paper presents evidence from diachronic and synchronic corpora to argue that this analysis makes the right predictions both for the historical changes that have taken place in this domain, and for the fine-grained variation in accusative use on reflexives in the synchronic system.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.On the possessive traits of reflexives and object pronouns
    • 2.1An overview of the data
    • 2.2The possessive features of reflexives
    • 2.3One note on the diachronic development of reflexives and object pronouns
  • 3.The decline of accusative case use in the possessive domain: A corpus study
    • 3.1Introduction
    • 3.21sg and 2sg object pronouns: engem(-et) and téged(-et)
    • 3.31sg and 2sg object reflexives: magam(-at) and magad(-at)
    • 3.41sg and 2sg possessive nouns phrase objects
    • 3.5Diachronic changes: A summary overview
  • 4.Reflexives and accusative case in contemporary Hungarian
    • 4.1Önmagam ‘myself’ and accusative case in contemporary Hungarian
    • 4.2Magam ‘myself’ and magamat ‘myself’ qua objects in contemporary Hungarian
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
References (42)
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