[#DuolingoForumGems originally posted on 2020-12-16 on the Duolingo Hungarian for English speakers forum by peter.kristof.hu ] 

Topic, focus and others

Let's face it the Hungarian word order is an inexhaustible topic. In my previous post, my example sentence was:

János stole a book from the library last week as a translation of
János ellopott egy könyvet a múlt héten a könyvtárból.

There are five parts of this sentence:
Subject: János
Verb: ellopott
Object: egy könyvet
Adverbial of time: a múlt héten
Adverbial of place: a könyvtárból

So for the above sentence 5x4x3x2x1 = 120 is the number of the possible variants of the word order (permutations), and essentially every sentence is about the same thing. I don’t envy contributors who write and correct translations!

I claim that each is a correct and meaningful sentence, but I do not undertake to list this. However, I have to mention two things. First, the order of the postverbal constituents is irrelevant actually. Second, the separation of the preverb may result in additional variations, but not all variations are possible, e.g. "Lopott el egy könyvet..." is wrong. (Preverb is also called verbal prefix.)

However, I can describe a shortened version:
János ellopott egy könyvet.

Here, there are 3x2x1 = 6 variations.

Topic	Focus pos.	Verb	Others
János	el-	lopott	egy könyvet.
János egy könyvet	el-	lopott.
	El-	lopott	János egy könyvet.
	El-	lopott	egy könyvet János.
Egy könyvet János	el-	lopott.
Egy könyvet	el-	lopott	János.

I should note, the two sentences beginning with "ellopott", without topic are so-called thetic sentences.

It's worth a look if we place the constituents in the focus position, then we get more four versions. As a result, the preverbs move in postverbal position.

Topic	Focus pos.	Verb	Others
	János	lopott	el egy könyvet.
János	egy könyvet	lopott	el.
Egy könyvet	János	lopott	el.
	Egy könyvet	lopott el	János.

Here I refer only briefly to the fact that the bare nominal behaves like a preverb, e.g. János levelet ír. (János is writing a letter). Preverbs and bare nominals form the verb modifiers together. If we use a verb without a verb modifier, we can only distinguish the topic from the focus by the emphasis.

What is focus? The focus is on new, not supposed information that cannot be inferred or predicted from the previous discourse. We can distinguish two types of focus:

Non-contrastive focus
Q: Hol találkozott Péter és Kati tegnap, a moziban vagy az étteremben?
Where did Peter and Kati meet yesterday, in the cinema or the restaurant?
A: Az étteremben találkoztak.
They met in the restaurant. / It was the restaurant where they met.

Contrastive focus
Q: Mit rendelt Kati?
What did Kati order?
A: Levest rendelt, nem főzeléket.
She ordered soup, not vegetable. / It was soup, not vegetable he ordered.