Some observations on the Hungarian adverbial particle majd

Abstract

The Hungarian particle majd has 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 of majd is foregrounded if it is the only element in the sentence with temporal meaning. It will be shown that there is also a parasitic use of majd in 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.