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HUNGARIAN-ENGLISH LINGUISTIC CONTRASTS. A PRACTICAL APPROACH
Adjectives derived from nouns may correspond to two words in English: a
noun used as a premodifier and an adjective derived from a Latin stem:
varosi emberek — town people
városi lakosság — urban population
napolaj — suntan oil
naptelep — solar battery
5.7 PARTICIPLE ATTRIBUTES
In Hungarian, participle attributes precede the head noun. In English, if a
participle modifies a noun and has no complement, it may precede the head
noun if it expresses a permanent guality, i.e. it has adjectival force. However,
if it retains verbal force, it will follow the head noun. Consider these examples:
A sérült játékosok hétfőn orvosi ellenőrzésre mentek.
The injured players went to a medical check-up on Monday.
Az 1. táblázatban bemutatjuk a kapott eredményeket.
Table 1 presents the results obtained.
These contrasts often lead to error in the written production of Hungarian
learners of English, even at proficiency level (e.g. in master’s theses), and in
translations from Hungarian into English. The cause, apparently, is deceptive
transferability.
Both in Hungarian and English, past participles from transitive verbs tend
to have a passive meaning:
lopott pénz — (pénz, amelyet valaki lopott")
stolen money — (money that has been stolen)
Participles from intransitive verbs cannot have a passive meaning, and there
are restrictions on their use in premodification:
"a zokogott majom — a majom, amelyik zokogott
"the sobbed monkey — the monkey, which sobbed/was sobbing
However, there are many exceptions, both in English and Hungarian:
bukott angyal — a fallen angel
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