The historic wave of refugees reaching Europe in 2015 was met with a volatile mixture of ethno-na... more The historic wave of refugees reaching Europe in 2015 was met with a volatile mixture of ethno-nationalist, anti-Muslim fearmongering and political infighting within the European Union (EU). Perhaps no one was more influential in promulgating fear and anti-refugee sentiment than Viktor Orbán, the Prime Minister of Hungary, whose inflammatory rhetoric and uncompromising, illiberal political stance helped escalate the refugee-crisis in a discursive battle of political wills, ideologies, and identity politics within the EU. This paper explores how Orbán employs political discourse practices and strategies to enact his right-wing populist (RWP) ideology and anti-immigrant ‘politics of fear’ (Wodak 2015) vis-à-vis EU politicians’ pro-migration discourses. Adopting a broad critical discourse-analytic approach, we demonstrate Orbán’s iterative production of discourses of threat and defense underlying discourses of fear (law and order, cultural/religious difference), and discourses of oppos...
An important goal in linguistic research is to explore the organization of the mental lexicon and... more An important goal in linguistic research is to explore the organization of the mental lexicon and the role of morphological representations in language competence and production. The central questions of what features of lexical entries are relevant in language production and ...
This study examines the integration of English verbs in Hungarian-English language contact. While... more This study examines the integration of English verbs in Hungarian-English language contact. While previous research indicates that codeswitching (CS) of verbs does not occur as readily as that of nouns, the conditioning factors that determine by what means and in what forms verbs can be
This paper examines structural consequences of intensive language contact on simultaneous L1 and ... more This paper examines structural consequences of intensive language contact on simultaneous L1 and L2 child language development in an L2-dominant environment. Based on the assumption that structural processes in language contact are operating at and determined by abstract complex lexical structure, various structural configurations in bilingual speech (e.g., codeswitching, convergence, and a Composite Matrix Language) are explained in terms of three levels of abstract lexical structure: the lexical-conceptual structure, predicate-argument structure, and morphological realization patterns. Empirical evidence from Hungarian/English bilingual speech demonstrates that as a result of a turnover in the Matrix Language abstract lexical structure can be “split” and “recombined” in such a way that surface structure is projected by an underlying grammatical system which is a composite. Prevalent changes and patterns of linguistic structure are interpreted in relation to ongoing language shift ...
Although the methodologies for describing many types of linguistic variation have been well devel... more Although the methodologies for describing many types of linguistic variation have been well developed, satisfactory theoretical links between data and explanation – especially links that include causal mechanisms – remain lacking. This article argues, somewhat paradoxically, that even though most choices reflect some societal pattern, speakers make linguistic choices as individuals. That is, choices ultimately lie with the individual and are rationally based. Rational Choice Models (e.g. Elster 1979, 1989, 1997) provide explanatory mechanisms for the ways actors in society select from alternative structures and available options. The Rational Choice approach taken here is enhanced by diverse theories of human action (e.g. Damasio 1996, Klein 1998, Lessig 1995). Analysis of codeswitching examples within a recasting of the Markedness Model (Myers-Scotton, e.g. 1993, 1998) suggests how a rationally based model offers better explanations for linguistic variation than do other approaches.
This paper examines how pre-adolescent bilingual girls employ linguistic choices to construct rel... more This paper examines how pre-adolescent bilingual girls employ linguistic choices to construct relations of dominance and subordination in a competitive exchange of knowledge and expertise in a pretend-school activity. Quantitative and qualitative analyses demonstrate that code choices used by the girls to constitute and exploit di¡erent sources of power are systematically related to the construction of currently salient identities, prevailing structural constraints, and individual goals and desires. It is argued that even young children act as rational, social actors who actively make strategic and meaningful linguistic choices with the overall aim to achieve optimal outcomes in a given interaction.
This study investigates morphological vulnerability in incomplete bilingual L1 acquisition. It ex... more This study investigates morphological vulnerability in incomplete bilingual L1 acquisition. It examines the production of L1 inflections by L2-dominant bilingual children, with the aim of exploring causes of difficulty in agreement marking. Spontaneous data (18 hours) from six Hungarian-English bilingual children, aged seven to nine, is used to compare the production of possessive inflections and verbal inflections, which are expressed by identical surface morphology in Hungarian. Drawing on recent analysis of Hungarian (Alberti, 1995; Szabolcsi, 1994), the paper asks where and why agreement morphology is susceptible to variability in bilingual children's weaker L1. Results indicate significant differences in the accuracy of agreement morphology. Inflections are almost error-free in possessive nominals and subject-verb agreement. However, they are frequently omitted in possessive be-clauses, which can be attributed to a combination of factors: (i) influence of semantic-syntactic...
In this article, we provide a framework of bilingual grammar that offers a theoretical understand... more In this article, we provide a framework of bilingual grammar that offers a theoretical understanding of the socio-cognitive bases of code-switching in terms of five general principles that, individually or through interaction with each other, explain how and why specific instances of code-switching arise. We provide cross-linguistic empirical evidence to claim that these general sociolinguistic principles, stated as socio-cognitive constraints on code-switching, characterize multi-linguistic competence in so far as they are able to show how “local” functions of code-switching arise as specific instantiations of these “global” principles, or (products of) their interactions.
This study examines the integration of English verbs in Hungarian-English language contact. While... more This study examines the integration of English verbs in Hungarian-English language contact. While previous research indicates that codeswitching (CS) of verbs does not occur as readily as that of nouns, the conditioning factors that determine by what means and in what forms verbs can be incorporated into another language are not yet fully understood (e.g. Muysken 2000, Myers-Scotton 2002). The aim of this paper is to address two questions. First, I investigate why Hungarian employs a strategy of morphological integration in verb borrowing. Drawing on a corpus of adult bilinguals’ naturalistic CS (Bolonyai 1997) and examples published in the literature (e.g. Kontra 1995), this paper specifically explores why English verbs need to be adapted with a derivational, denominal verbalizer (VBZ) suffix –l (-ol, -el, -öl) in Hungarian, as in (1). The second question concerns the status of the verbalizer in the grammar of the bilingual child. At issue is whether English verbs occur with the Hu...
ABSTRACT. This study examined effects of language contact and attrition on the Hungarian morpholo... more ABSTRACT. This study examined effects of language contact and attrition on the Hungarian morphological case system in Hungarian-English bilingual children's speech production. To discover whether lexico-semantic and grammatical features are equally vulnerable in bilingual contact, the study compared patterns of change in case morphemes that express semantic relations with patterns of change in one that expresses a syntactic relation. Drawing on a lexically-based approach to production, an analysis of naturally-occurring data showed clear differences in both relative accuracy and pre-dominant error types between case morphemes that mark lexico-semantic information (local cases) and the case marker of the syntactic object (accusative). Overall, local-cases are less accurate than syntactic case; moreover, they tend to show substitution errors rather than omission, which is the pre-dominant error in application of syntactic case. These asymmetries are explained in terms of (a) how a...
In Europe and the US, xenophobic discourses against immigrants have been elaborated by populist m... more In Europe and the US, xenophobic discourses against immigrants have been elaborated by populist movements, with far-reaching effects on election campaigns, on referenda and on the relationship of the public with governing elites, not least through the use of social media. Such discourses have been linked with claims of ‘regained’ national, cultural or ethnic identity and ‘liberation’ on the part of the anti-immigration ‘we-group’ that have fostered demands, and sometimes near-triumphalist assertions, of ‘taking’ one’s (own) country ‘back’ from an unspecified alien occupier. The immigrant is seen as an aggressor who threatens to take away one’s identity, and the projected national Self feels entitled to defend and reconstitute itself through asserting its own supremacy, wholeness and faultlessness. Conversely, it feels entitled to deny such qualities to immigrants (or also to further ‘Others’, such as current or historical ‘enemy’ collectives who are implicated in dealing with migrat...
The historic wave of refugees reaching Europe in 2015 was met with a volatile mixture of ethno-na... more The historic wave of refugees reaching Europe in 2015 was met with a volatile mixture of ethno-nationalist, anti-Muslim fearmongering and political infighting within the European Union (EU). Perhaps no one was more influential in promulgating fear and anti-refugee sentiment than Viktor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary, whose inflammatory rhetoric and uncompromising, illiberal political stance helped escalate the refugee-crisis in a discursive battle of political wills, ideologies, and identity politics within the EU. This paper explores how Orban employs political discourse practices and strategies to enact his right-wing populist (RWP) ideology and anti-immigrant ‘politics of fear’ ( Wodak 2015 ) vis-a-vis EU politicians’ pro-migration discourses. Adopting a broad critical discourse-analytic approach, we demonstrate Orban’s iterative production of discourses of threat and defense underlying discourses of fear (law and order, cultural/religious difference), and discourses of oppositional political identities and ideologies through fractal recursion . We argue that recursive performance of RWP stances creates a recognizable political style characteristic of Orban’s RWP political persona or type.
The historic wave of refugees reaching Europe in 2015 was met with a volatile mixture of ethno-na... more The historic wave of refugees reaching Europe in 2015 was met with a volatile mixture of ethno-nationalist, anti-Muslim fearmongering and political infighting within the European Union (EU). Perhaps no one was more influential in promulgating fear and anti-refugee sentiment than Viktor Orbán, the Prime Minister of Hungary, whose inflammatory rhetoric and uncompromising, illiberal political stance helped escalate the refugee-crisis in a discursive battle of political wills, ideologies, and identity politics within the EU. This paper explores how Orbán employs political discourse practices and strategies to enact his right-wing populist (RWP) ideology and anti-immigrant ‘politics of fear’ (Wodak 2015) vis-à-vis EU politicians’ pro-migration discourses. Adopting a broad critical discourse-analytic approach, we demonstrate Orbán’s iterative production of discourses of threat and defense underlying discourses of fear (law and order, cultural/religious difference), and discourses of oppos...
An important goal in linguistic research is to explore the organization of the mental lexicon and... more An important goal in linguistic research is to explore the organization of the mental lexicon and the role of morphological representations in language competence and production. The central questions of what features of lexical entries are relevant in language production and ...
This study examines the integration of English verbs in Hungarian-English language contact. While... more This study examines the integration of English verbs in Hungarian-English language contact. While previous research indicates that codeswitching (CS) of verbs does not occur as readily as that of nouns, the conditioning factors that determine by what means and in what forms verbs can be
This paper examines structural consequences of intensive language contact on simultaneous L1 and ... more This paper examines structural consequences of intensive language contact on simultaneous L1 and L2 child language development in an L2-dominant environment. Based on the assumption that structural processes in language contact are operating at and determined by abstract complex lexical structure, various structural configurations in bilingual speech (e.g., codeswitching, convergence, and a Composite Matrix Language) are explained in terms of three levels of abstract lexical structure: the lexical-conceptual structure, predicate-argument structure, and morphological realization patterns. Empirical evidence from Hungarian/English bilingual speech demonstrates that as a result of a turnover in the Matrix Language abstract lexical structure can be “split” and “recombined” in such a way that surface structure is projected by an underlying grammatical system which is a composite. Prevalent changes and patterns of linguistic structure are interpreted in relation to ongoing language shift ...
Although the methodologies for describing many types of linguistic variation have been well devel... more Although the methodologies for describing many types of linguistic variation have been well developed, satisfactory theoretical links between data and explanation – especially links that include causal mechanisms – remain lacking. This article argues, somewhat paradoxically, that even though most choices reflect some societal pattern, speakers make linguistic choices as individuals. That is, choices ultimately lie with the individual and are rationally based. Rational Choice Models (e.g. Elster 1979, 1989, 1997) provide explanatory mechanisms for the ways actors in society select from alternative structures and available options. The Rational Choice approach taken here is enhanced by diverse theories of human action (e.g. Damasio 1996, Klein 1998, Lessig 1995). Analysis of codeswitching examples within a recasting of the Markedness Model (Myers-Scotton, e.g. 1993, 1998) suggests how a rationally based model offers better explanations for linguistic variation than do other approaches.
This paper examines how pre-adolescent bilingual girls employ linguistic choices to construct rel... more This paper examines how pre-adolescent bilingual girls employ linguistic choices to construct relations of dominance and subordination in a competitive exchange of knowledge and expertise in a pretend-school activity. Quantitative and qualitative analyses demonstrate that code choices used by the girls to constitute and exploit di¡erent sources of power are systematically related to the construction of currently salient identities, prevailing structural constraints, and individual goals and desires. It is argued that even young children act as rational, social actors who actively make strategic and meaningful linguistic choices with the overall aim to achieve optimal outcomes in a given interaction.
This study investigates morphological vulnerability in incomplete bilingual L1 acquisition. It ex... more This study investigates morphological vulnerability in incomplete bilingual L1 acquisition. It examines the production of L1 inflections by L2-dominant bilingual children, with the aim of exploring causes of difficulty in agreement marking. Spontaneous data (18 hours) from six Hungarian-English bilingual children, aged seven to nine, is used to compare the production of possessive inflections and verbal inflections, which are expressed by identical surface morphology in Hungarian. Drawing on recent analysis of Hungarian (Alberti, 1995; Szabolcsi, 1994), the paper asks where and why agreement morphology is susceptible to variability in bilingual children's weaker L1. Results indicate significant differences in the accuracy of agreement morphology. Inflections are almost error-free in possessive nominals and subject-verb agreement. However, they are frequently omitted in possessive be-clauses, which can be attributed to a combination of factors: (i) influence of semantic-syntactic...
In this article, we provide a framework of bilingual grammar that offers a theoretical understand... more In this article, we provide a framework of bilingual grammar that offers a theoretical understanding of the socio-cognitive bases of code-switching in terms of five general principles that, individually or through interaction with each other, explain how and why specific instances of code-switching arise. We provide cross-linguistic empirical evidence to claim that these general sociolinguistic principles, stated as socio-cognitive constraints on code-switching, characterize multi-linguistic competence in so far as they are able to show how “local” functions of code-switching arise as specific instantiations of these “global” principles, or (products of) their interactions.
This study examines the integration of English verbs in Hungarian-English language contact. While... more This study examines the integration of English verbs in Hungarian-English language contact. While previous research indicates that codeswitching (CS) of verbs does not occur as readily as that of nouns, the conditioning factors that determine by what means and in what forms verbs can be incorporated into another language are not yet fully understood (e.g. Muysken 2000, Myers-Scotton 2002). The aim of this paper is to address two questions. First, I investigate why Hungarian employs a strategy of morphological integration in verb borrowing. Drawing on a corpus of adult bilinguals’ naturalistic CS (Bolonyai 1997) and examples published in the literature (e.g. Kontra 1995), this paper specifically explores why English verbs need to be adapted with a derivational, denominal verbalizer (VBZ) suffix –l (-ol, -el, -öl) in Hungarian, as in (1). The second question concerns the status of the verbalizer in the grammar of the bilingual child. At issue is whether English verbs occur with the Hu...
ABSTRACT. This study examined effects of language contact and attrition on the Hungarian morpholo... more ABSTRACT. This study examined effects of language contact and attrition on the Hungarian morphological case system in Hungarian-English bilingual children's speech production. To discover whether lexico-semantic and grammatical features are equally vulnerable in bilingual contact, the study compared patterns of change in case morphemes that express semantic relations with patterns of change in one that expresses a syntactic relation. Drawing on a lexically-based approach to production, an analysis of naturally-occurring data showed clear differences in both relative accuracy and pre-dominant error types between case morphemes that mark lexico-semantic information (local cases) and the case marker of the syntactic object (accusative). Overall, local-cases are less accurate than syntactic case; moreover, they tend to show substitution errors rather than omission, which is the pre-dominant error in application of syntactic case. These asymmetries are explained in terms of (a) how a...
In Europe and the US, xenophobic discourses against immigrants have been elaborated by populist m... more In Europe and the US, xenophobic discourses against immigrants have been elaborated by populist movements, with far-reaching effects on election campaigns, on referenda and on the relationship of the public with governing elites, not least through the use of social media. Such discourses have been linked with claims of ‘regained’ national, cultural or ethnic identity and ‘liberation’ on the part of the anti-immigration ‘we-group’ that have fostered demands, and sometimes near-triumphalist assertions, of ‘taking’ one’s (own) country ‘back’ from an unspecified alien occupier. The immigrant is seen as an aggressor who threatens to take away one’s identity, and the projected national Self feels entitled to defend and reconstitute itself through asserting its own supremacy, wholeness and faultlessness. Conversely, it feels entitled to deny such qualities to immigrants (or also to further ‘Others’, such as current or historical ‘enemy’ collectives who are implicated in dealing with migrat...
The historic wave of refugees reaching Europe in 2015 was met with a volatile mixture of ethno-na... more The historic wave of refugees reaching Europe in 2015 was met with a volatile mixture of ethno-nationalist, anti-Muslim fearmongering and political infighting within the European Union (EU). Perhaps no one was more influential in promulgating fear and anti-refugee sentiment than Viktor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary, whose inflammatory rhetoric and uncompromising, illiberal political stance helped escalate the refugee-crisis in a discursive battle of political wills, ideologies, and identity politics within the EU. This paper explores how Orban employs political discourse practices and strategies to enact his right-wing populist (RWP) ideology and anti-immigrant ‘politics of fear’ ( Wodak 2015 ) vis-a-vis EU politicians’ pro-migration discourses. Adopting a broad critical discourse-analytic approach, we demonstrate Orban’s iterative production of discourses of threat and defense underlying discourses of fear (law and order, cultural/religious difference), and discourses of oppositional political identities and ideologies through fractal recursion . We argue that recursive performance of RWP stances creates a recognizable political style characteristic of Orban’s RWP political persona or type.
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Papers by Agnes Bolonyai