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HUNGARIAN-ENGLISH LINGUISTIC CONTRASTS. A PRACTICAL APPROACH
Table 12. Preference in English for single-word hyponyms, preference in Hungarian for
compounds
MEAT HÚS
beef mutton | pork marha- | borjü- birka- sertes¬
veal hús hús hús hús
KIND FAJTA
race | breed variety rassz | állatfajta | növeny-fajta
Most of these differences will work out as one-to-two/many correspondences
(divergence), contributing to learning difficulty or interference. In some cases,
L1 interference results in fossilisation of the error (asztal — "table, instead of
desk).
7.5.2.1 Convergent meanings
Sometimes we have the opposite case, with two or more L1 words correspond¬
ing to one L2 word. A well-known example is túró and sajt, which usually
correspond to cheese. Convergence may cause misunderstanding both in speech
and in translating: Hungarians may want to distinguish between túró and sajt
where unnecessary, since the context will disambiguate the word cheese, or
may be misled in translating from English and will translate cheese as sajt in
a context where it means turd. Consider this sentence:
In Slovakia, look for bryndzové halusky, a tasty Slovak noodle dish with sheep’s
cheese.
Szlovákiában keresse a bryndzové halusky-t, azaz a juhtúrós galuskát.
7.5.2.1 Motivation
Word meaning can be unmotivated or motivated. Meaning may be motivated
by onomatopoeia /,pna(u)meets pi:a/, e.g., cock-a-doodle-do, by derivation (teach
— teacher) or compounding (bellflower). In general, English has a higher num¬
ber of unmotivated lexical items than Hungarian. Hungarian uses mainly
morphological motivation (derivation and compounding) while English tends
to use word combination (collocation) which is often elliptic and tends to afford
a greater role to semantic (metaphorical) motivation. Differences in hierarchi¬
cal structure are often linked to differences in motivation: unmotivated lexical
items tend to be perceived as basic-level (specific) items, while motivated items
tend to be perceived as subspecific or generic items.
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