Page:Simplified grammar of the Hungarian language.djvu/99

Rh

Syntax teaches us how to put words together so as to form sentences.

The meanings of the different forms of the noun and verb having been fully explained in the Accidence, there remains but little to say about this part of the subject. The following rules will, however, be found useful:—

The elements of the sentence are the agent, the predicate, and the object.

Nouns and verbs, having in each case a significant termination, are independent of their place in the sentence, and therefore the construction of Hungarian is very free. As a principal and leading rule it may be given, that the words follow the same order as the ideas occur.

In the sentence—János szereti Marít, John loves Mary—the words might be placed in any order without altering the meaning of the sentence.

The emphasis rests chiefly on the first word; and accordingly as we want to impress upon the hearer the person who loves, or the person (object) that is loved, or the fact that the person we speak of is in love, the respective word would be put in the first place. Thus the example given above would admit of six different arrangements: 123, 132, 213, 312, 321, 231, all of which would be equally grammatical and of the same meaning, although the emphasis would differ in each case.