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HUNGARIAN-ENGLISH GRAMMATICAL CONTRASTS: THE VERB PHRASE Measurements of the consumption were made daily. Daily measurements were made of the consumption. A fogyasztást naponta mértük. Naponta végeztünk méréseket a fogyasztásról. (?) A fogyasztás naponta mérésre került. (?) 4.5 STATIVE VERBS AND PREDICATIVE ADJECTIVES Consider the following sentences: Mit csinálsz? — Unatkozom. What are you doing? — "Tm bored. Mit csinál János? — What is John doing? Csak hallgat. — "Hes only silent. Why cant we translate these sentences literally? Obviously because bored and silent are adjectives, and they cannot be referred to by the verb do. In Hungarian there is no problem: both unatkozni and hallgatni are verbs, so they can answer a guestion with mit csinál(sz). Although they do not express actions, grammatically they are verbs. There are verbs both in English and Hungarian that do not express actions or events but states or relations. Thus, we can divide verbs into two broad categories: dynamic verbs (e.g., jump, dance, eat) and stative verbs (e.g., sleep, resemble, consist of). States can also be expressed by adjectives. In English there is a large number of so-called predicative adjectives that are only used as part of the predicate. Thus, we can say She is asleep, but we cannot say *The asleep beauty. Predicative adjectives are sometimes paralleled by stative verbs: She was sleeping. She was asleep. In Hungarian the use of verbs to express states is more common. Table 4 shows some English predicative adjectives and stative verbs and their Hungarian correspondents. + 57 +
