SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE HUNGARIAN ADVERBIAL PARTICLEMAJD

The Hungarian particlemajdhas both a descriptive and an expressive meaning. Semantically it expresses futurity; at the same time it may also carry various pragmatic meanings, of which the most salient is the delaying function. The referential function ofmajdis foregrounded if it is the only element in the sentence with temporal meaning. It will be shown that there is also a parasitic use ofmajdin which case it can be omitted without loss of meaning. In some other cases the particle is used to reinforce the illocutionary meaning of the utterance.