Chapter 6. Perceived formal and functional equivalence

Hungarian prefers indirect insertion of copied verbal stems. The few counterexamples of directly inserted verbal stems indicate a high degree of intimacy due to intensive contact or relatedness. András Róna-Tas and Árpád Berta’s work West Old Turkic published in 2011 gives a list of over thirty Turkic verb stems that were inserted directly into Hungarian during the historical period from the sixth to the tenth centuries when Hungarians lived in close contact with Turkic-speaking tribes. The paper discusses the role of perceived formal and functional equivalence in copying and discusses the question of how the evolvement and the irregular pattern of the Hungarian ik-conjugation can be seen in relation with credible copying processes between West Old Turkic and Ancient Hungarian.