Hodinka Antal Research Centre for Philology

hodinka

History of the Research Centre’s Establishment

The Hodinka Antal Research Centre for Philology was founded in 2001 as the Ukrainian branch of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences’ (MTA) cross-border network of Hungarian linguistics research centers. It is a member of the Termini Research Network, which brings together Hungarian language research institutions operating beyond Hungary’s borders. The Hodinka Research Centre maintains close cooperation with its partner institutions, including the Gramma Language Office in Slovakia, the Attila T. Szabó Language Institute in Romania, the Hungarian Studies Institute in Serbia (Vojvodina), and the Samu Imre Language Institute, which encompasses researchers from Slovenia, Croatia, and Austria. It also collaborates with additional research workshops active in other cross-border Hungarian regions.

Since its establishment, the centre has signed cooperation agreements with the MTA Research Centre for Ethnic and National Minorities, the MTA Research Institute for Linguistics, the Institute of Hungarian Linguistics and Finno-Ugric Studies at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), the Gramma Language Office in Dunajská Streda, the Attila T. Szabó Language Institute in Cluj-Napoca, and the Department of Applied Linguistics at the University of Pannonia in Veszprém, among others.

The research center operates within the framework and building of the Ferenc Rakoczi II Transcarpathian Hungarian University, based in Berehove. The center receives financial support from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the University of Rakoczi. The institute’s primary research areas include: the analysis of Ukraine’s language policy. multilingualism in Transcarpathia, and the linguistic landscape of Transcarpathia

Namesake: Antal Hodinka

The research center was named after Antal Hodinka, who (Ladomér, Jan. 13, 1864 – Budapest, Jul. 15, 1946) was a full member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (corresponding member 1910, full member 1933), a historian, linguist, the first rector of the University of Pécs, and a university professor in Pécs and Bratislava. He was a research fellow at the Hungarian National Museum, where he was mainly involved in arranging and processing Slavic-language manuscripts, and collecting and translating Ruthenian folk songs.

Staff

  • Prof. István Csernicskó (professional advisor)
  • Anita Márku (head of the institute)
  • Dr. Kornélia Hires-László (researcher)
  • Zoltán Karmacsi (researcher)
  • Réka Máté (junior researcher)
  • Enikő Tóth-Orosz (junior researcher)
  • Krisztina Kiss (junior researcher)

Cross-border Collaborations

Through cooperation among the research stations, we have taken part in numerous research programs extending across the entire Carpathian Basin.

Corpus Works

(http://corpus.nytud.hu/mnsz/) Modern dictionaries, lexicological and lexicographical studies, as well as descriptive linguistic analyses, increasingly rely on language-technology background. Work on the Hungarian National Corpus (MNSZ) began in early 1998 at the Department of Corpus Linguistics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences’ Research Institute for Linguistics, led by Tamás Váradi. The objective was to build a 100-million-word text corpus that would represent the characteristic forms of contemporary Hungarian as comprehensively as possible. In 2002, within the framework of the Carpathian Basin Hungarian Language Corpus project, the initiative was expanded to include materials representing Hungarian language use across the entire Carpathian Basin. The target was to create a cross-border corpus of 15 million words. The task of the Hodinka Antal Research Centre was to contribute 3 million words to the MNSZ database. The collected texts had to cover five categories: newspapers and press materials, popular science literature, literary texts, official language documents, and spoken language samples. The project was completed in November 2005. With the inclusion of language varieties from Slovakia, Transcarpathia, Transylvania, and Vojvodina—alongside those from Hungary—the Hungarian National Corpus became truly national in scope. Thanks to the collaboration between cross-border language offices and the Department of Corpus Linguistics, this was the first Hungarian corpus to incorporate Hungarian language variants from beyond Hungary’s borders.

“Debordering” the Hungarian Language:

Development of the cross-border Hungarian word list (working title: ht-list, Termini database) The cross-border Hungarian word list was created in 2004 as a result of the coordinated work of the language offices and research centers that also function as the cross-border research stations of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The main goal of the joint work of the Termini Research Network is the continuous expansion and development of the cross-border vocabulary database (expanding and supplementing existing entries, ranking example sentences, adding new entries to the database), which allows for the versatile scientific processing of the data it contains, and is also suitable for drawing data for writing a wide variety of regional dictionaries, or for supplementing universal Hungarian dictionaries with cross-border Hungarian aspects. The word list also serves as a database of the specific lexical elements of Hungarian language variants across the border. In early 2018, the database was moved to a new host and is now available here: http://termini.nytud.hu/htonline/htlista.php?action=searchbox.

Preparation for the Codification of Hungarian Geographical Names in the Carpathian Basin,

creating an electronic geographical name identification dictionary Following the Treaty of Trianon, the codification of geographical names outside Hungary—both as a continuous professional duty and a function of state administration—became the responsibility of the successor states. The joint goal of the research stations was to compile a complete corpus of geographical names from across the Carpathian Basin, record the precise reference and official state-language equivalent of each name, standardize their forms and spelling, and establish uniform rules for name creation and use. In Transcarpathia, this work resulted in the creation of an electronic Carpathian Basin geographical name identification database between 2007 and 2009. The database includes both Hungarian and state-language variants of local geographical names, covering: administrative-territorial units larger than settlements, regional and landscape names, natural landform names, including topographical names and hydronyms.

This comprehensive resource contributes to the preservation, documentation, and harmonization of Hungarian geographical nomenclature across the Carpathian Basin.

The Language Policy Situation of Hungarian Communities in the Carpathian Basin (continuous monitoring)

Researchers emphasize that both minority and national policies must take all possible measures to create the legal, political, and linguistic conditions necessary for the free and full use of the mother tongue, as well as the right to language choice throughout the Carpathian Basin. Ensuring a mother tongue–dominant, additive form of bilingualism through education is an essential part of this process. Such a framework could be established if the Hungarian language were granted official status, at least at the regional level. However, in some countries, such as Ukraine, an education law was adopted in 2017 (on September 25, 2017) that significantly narrows existing rights and clearly makes the future of Hungarian-language education impossible, and the language law passed in the spring of 2019 proposes further disenfranchisement.

The constant monitoring of the ever-changing language policy and language rights environment, and a rapid, direct, and professionally-based reaction to changes and opportunities, is one of the most important joint, coordinated tasks of the institutes operating within the Termini Hungarian Linguistics Research Network, in which—of course—the Hodinka Antal Research Centre for Philology also actively participates, as language policy changes are currently most active in this region.

Linguistic Problems in Hungarian-speaking Communities Abroad

The analysis of linguistic problems has become one of the key research focuses within the institutes of the Termini Hungarian Linguistics Research Network. The Linguistic Problems in Hungarian-speaking Communities Abroad program aims to systematically identify, document, and address the linguistic challenges faced by Hungarian-speaking communities living outside Hungary. Currently, in 2021, we are in the data collection phase and in the process of developing the technical conditions that will make the collection uniform and the work with the data effective.

The Most Important Research Programs of the Hodinka Antal Research Centre for Philology

  • Continuous monitoring and analysis of language and minority rights in Ukraine
  • Scientific bibliography of Hungarian language use in Transcarpathia
  • The Hungarian Language in the Carpathian Basin research program
  • Audio archive of Hungarian language use in Transcarpathia
  • Hungarian-language education in minority regions
  • Language Policy in Pictures – multilingualism in Transcarpathia over the last 100 years
  • Language and language variety as an economic resource in the symbolic space of Transcarpathia
  • Development of a Hungarian–Ukrainian and Ukrainian–Hungarian small dictionary and a Ukrainian–Hungarian official dictionary
  • Hungarian Youth Research 2001, 2016, and 2020 (Transcarpathia)
  • Tandem2016: a questionnaire survey of Ukrainians and Hungarians in Transcarpathia