ON THE LINGUISTIC REPRESENTATIONS OF THE SZEKLER DIALECT

Abstract

Author's coordinates: Babeș-Bolyai Tudományegyetem, Magyar és Általános Nyelvészeti Intézet, Kolozsvár/Cluj-Napoca, str. Horea 31

Email: boglarka.nemeth@ubbcluj.ro

The paper aims at creating a panoramic view on the linguistic representations of the so-calledSzekler dialect of Hungarian through presenting a synthesis of the main observations made in thelinguistic literature on this dialect. The research summarized in the article represents an important phase of a long-term research on the processes of enregisterment related to Szekler, i.e. the various ways and factors of profiling this register and its speakers. The social domain that has direct access to the literature reviewed here is, at first sight, relatively small, as it is mostly made up by linguists and other scholars with an interest in linguistics, at the same time, some of the claims made in the literature have been shared in wider circles by means of public education, different media platforms and common talk, thus they must be considered as having a considerable impact on the metalinguistic discourses and attitudes of everyday speakers as well. The article gathers the main observations made in the linguistic literature on the delimitation and the internal division of the dialect area, the phonological/phonetic, morphological, syntactic, lexical, semantic and pragmatic/discourse-level phenomena attributed to Szekler, as well as its sociolinguistic status, the speakers’ attitudes and dialect consciousness. The linguistic works concentrating on specific Szekler subregions are not included in the discussion per se, however,the most important findings of these tend to be incorporated in the monographic, synthetizing works focused here.
 
Keywords: Szekler dialect, dialectological research, dialect representations, history of Hungarian linguistics, enregisterment.


 
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