Seite 114 [114]
OCR
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- sertesveal 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 corresponding 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 number 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 hierarchical 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. * 112 +
