Loanword adaptation in Hungarian: unexpected vowel harmony in material of Latin and Slavic provenance

Abstract In a 1992 article, Eugen Helimski showed that the accented vowel of Old and Middle High German, Medieval Latin and Pannonian Slavic lexemes governed whether they acquired front-vowel or back-vowel harmony when entering Hungarian as loanwords. While the German material appears exceptionless, some words of Slavic and Latin provenance exhibit unexpected back-vowel harmony. The present article submits that if a labial sound follows the originally accented vowel, front-vowel harmony is blocked. This conditioned rule applies without exception to both Slavic and Latin loanwords; it is thus an economical solution. It follows that variation in Slavic loanwords in Hungarian cannot serve as a testimony of Old Slavic accent shifts, but merely of the place of the original (pitch) accent; and that the Slavic language that provided loanwords to Medieval Hungarian must have been fairly uniform. As for Latin loanwords, it likewise renders an appeal to late accent shifts unnecessary. Helimski also discovered that a subset of Latin words containing a medial cluster *-CiV- could trigger front-vowel harmony even if the original accent fell on a back vowel. Here, I argue that the distribution of front and back vocalism in this type is further governed by the vowel of the initial syllable. This minor rule possibly applies to Slavic as well.