[#DuolingoForumGems originally posted on 2020-02-29 on the Duolingo Hungarian for English speakers forum by dualinga15 ] 

Neutral word order

Hello everyone! I thought about posting this in a discussion of some lesson, but I thought this way will, perhaps, be more efficient, since it can relate to any lesson I've passed so far. There is a big fuss about word order in Hungarian, and, when I thought I figured it out, one of my answers was marked incorrect. Why? According to comments on that answer, my word order was too weird, and I thought it was the most natural, neutral word order. I used Subject + Verb + Object (can't remember the exact sentence). So, my question is, which word order is the most neutral word order? The word order in which you don't want to emphasize anything particularly, but just want to state something, like Süt a nap (where Subject + Verb is used, and in many more similar, "neutral" cases).

Comments

Comment by MrtonPolgr  

Unpopular opinion here - the best thing is not to rely on the concept of "neutral word order". I know it's hard when Duolingo doesn't give you context and you have to rely on a kind of common sense that can even be counter-intuitive for you at times - still, there is no such thing as "explicitly neutral word order".

Trust me, I'm just afraid you get a "simple enough" answer here, you think "hm, makes sense, thank you" and later return, much more frustrated, that you were told it doesn't apply in a certain situation and then you wouldn't even know how to move on and whom to trust.

Now that I made this clear, I'm gonna try to set up some guidelines.

The main principles of word order still apply - you can put the focus on the part of speech in front of the verb. Now the question is, how can you retain the focus and keep it for the verb? The thing is, this depends on the verb quite heavily - mainly its cohesion with its arguments. Informally, I could say: if a verb comes with a "trivial" mandatory argument that's not likely to make the difference in the sentence, it probably won't get emphasized. Now let's see what I mean by a trivial mandatory argument.

For example, "to play the guitar" wouldn't feel like a complete action without "the guitar". ("The guitar", in the English phrase, is exactly a trivial mandatory detail.) In Hungarian, it's the other way around: "to play the guitar" is expressed with a single word: "gitározik". This verb isn't very cohesive, it doesn't really require any extra detail to feel complete. I couldn't say whether "Péter kint gitározik" or "Péter gitározik kint" feels more neutral.

The next, more cohesive category could be: transitive verbs with an article-less, "mass" object. Just like "almát eszik", "filmet néz", "zenét hallgat". They are almost phrasal. The action requires an object and the given object is very unspecific. (It's quite important that the object is unspecific, otherwise it could sound like a difference-making important detail and steal the focus. See the comment of Zsuzsi.) This actually works with adverbs as well, "moziba megy" for example. The same things apply.

An almost completely phrasal structure is location + "van". "Van" really demands a place, if it's present, it's typically treated as a mandatory detail, that's why you can see a lot of "itt van", "ott van" sentences.

And then there are completely phrasal structures - phrasal verbs like "(az) agyára megy", "teret hódít", "színre lép", "részt vesz" and so on - and also prefixed verbs: "elmegy, kimegy, bemegy, felmegy, rámegy" and a million others. I think it's important to point out that the word order of prefixed verbs is exactly like phrasal verbs, the only difference is: when the prefix is in front of the verb, it's written as one word. "az agyára megy" - "Elmegy", "Nem megy az agyára" - "Nem megy el".

I hope that now you can see why SOV can work so well for simple sentences - most simple verbs demand some kind of "object" (either a direct object or typically some adverb of place) that you can safely put in front of them.

Comment by MrtonPolgr  

Oh and I forgot to add something we don't seem to emphasize enough - word order isn't omnipotent. (After all, it can hardly deal with the modality of a sentence.) Actual intonation can make a word order sound more neutral or more "focused". So when I say I can't decide whether "Péter kint gitározik" or "Péter gitározik kint" is more neutral, I ignore an important part - actual intonation. You can stress "kint" in "kint gitározik", so can you stress "Péter" in "Péter gitározik", in these cases, you make the sentence sound not neutral. The less phrasal the verb is, the more custom and important the argument looks, the more space for intonation there is.

Comment by jzsuzsi

Some simple sentences for the early skills:

1. If you are stating something about yourself, put this new information before the verb.

Magyar vagyok. I am Hungarian.
Tanár vagyok. I am a teacher.
Magas vagyok. I am tall.
Zsuzsa vagyok. I am Zsuzsa.

Now, negating these sentences, usually put "nem" before the verb. Nem vagyok magyar. Nem vagyok tanár. Nem vagyok magas. Nem vagyok Zsuzsa.

2. Somebody is doing something somewhere. A good word order here is Subject Place Verb. Péter a parkban sétál.

Especially when it is about Somebody is somewhere. Péter a parkban van. We want to put the place in the focus, not "being".

3. With direct object:

Kávét iszom. I am drinking coffee.
Teát iszom. I am drinking tea.
Eszem egy almát. I am eating an apple.
Látom a házat. I see the house.

So, with no article, object verb is more natural. But with article, verb object is more natural.
Egy almát eszem. A házat látom. These are possible, but "A házat látom." is more like "it is the house that I see."

see also these Sentence Discussions
 https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/36777661 = https://archive.ph/Z4tRO
and here: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/30460433 = https://archive.ph/zw2vH

Ok, but here again, this falls under what Márton mentioned here: "The next, more cohesive category could be: transitive verbs with an article-less, "mass" object. Just like "almát eszik", "filmet néz", "zenét hallgat". They are almost phrasal. "

comment by peter.kristof.hu

This is an endless debate. The Tip & Notes writes (Preverbs - Word order):

As mentioned before, Hungarian word order is fairly free in a certain respect: the subject does not have to precede the verb and the object, as it mostly does in English.

However, Hungarian word order is very strict in another respect: the order of topic, focus and the verb. Focus, as we have just seen, often conveys new information in a sentence. The topic of a sentence is what the sentence is about. Now, while English generally has

• subject — verb — object

word order, Hungarian generally has

• topic - focus - verb - others

Hungarian is a topic-prominent language, similar to other Asian languages such as Chinese, Japanese or Korean, unlike English, which is a subject-prominent one.

It often happens that a model cannot be applied to something, so the concept has to be changed. This is the case here. Obviously, rules are not prescribed by linguists, but language evolves according to its inner rules, with the participation of native speakers. Therefore, it doesn't make much sense to talk about the subject - verb - object word order in Hungarian.

The structure of a Hungarian sentence (on the first level) is

topic - comment

Sometimes called theme-rheme, or topic-predicate in Hungarian. I've written about it myself, too: here.

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See also this forum post:

Translating SOV or SVO and Duo's accepted answers in cases of "obvious novelty".

https://duolingo.hobune.stream/comment/52568166