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SOCIOLINGUISTIC RESEARCH ON HUNGARIAN-AMERICAN IMMIGRANT COMMUNITIES
been subject to externally induced changes, such as interference, transfer,
convergence as well as to internally induced changes, such as analogical
leveling, overgeneralization, and category switch. Although internally and
externally induced changes influence the speech of both first- and second¬
generation speakers, in the former group’s language use lexical changes are
predominant, while the internally induced ones are more typical of second¬
generation speakers.
The permanent influence of the analytical English language strengthens
the analytical attributes (the tendency to replace suffixes with analytic or
periphrastic constructions or the overwhelming use of Hungarian personal
pronouns) of the agglutinative Hungarian. This process of attrition emerging
with the second-generation gradually results in complete language loss.
Fenyvesi conducted research (20 interviews, 13 hours of recordings) on the
linguistic changes that Hungarian spoken by a Hungarian-American immigrant
community (in McKeesport, Pennsylvania) undergoes in a language contact
situation in 1993'°8. Her study is a comprehensive analysis of the structural
changes that Hungarian as an agglutinative language undergoes due to English
interference, changes induced by the language contact situation, as well as to the
natural simplification tendencies of the Hungarian language, that is, internally
induced language changes. The contact-induced linguistic interference
tendencies emerging in the Hungarian-American language in McKeesport
have been demonstrated on the levels of phonology, (e.g. the presence of
aspiration, the lengthening of stressed short vowels, etc.), morphology (e.g.
disharmonic inflections, replacement of pre-verb constructions, the loss of the
case marking system, etc.), syntax (e.g. presence of overt personal pronouns,
lack of agreement between subject and verb, the overt use of the passive, etc.),
lexicon (e.g. borrowings, the address system, code-switching, etc.).
Going along the same theoretical line, Fenyvesi in her study on the language
use characteristics of the Hungarian-American language in Toledo has focused
on the different linguistic tendencies emerging in this community other than
in standard Hungarian-Hungarian. She has concluded that the most noticeable
differences are word order, the use of redundant personal pronouns, analytical
structures, the overt use of past participles with a passive meaning, the loss
of the possessive marking, singular and plural forms of nouns, and lack of
agreements".
Kovács conducted research on the expression of dual Hungarian-American
identities, and the written language skills of second-generation speakers of
8 Anna Fenyvesi, Language contact and language death in an immigrant language: The case of
Hungarian, Working Papers in Linguistics, 3, Fall: 1-117 (1995), University of Pittsburgh
19 Anna Fenyvesi, Hungarian in the USA, in: Anna Fenyvesi (ed.), Hungarian Language Contact
Outside Hungary. Studies on Hungarian as a Minority Language, Amsterdam / Philadelphia,
John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2005, 265-318
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