Category talk:Hungarian adjectives

Relational adjectives
I've noticed that a few languages use a xx tag and there is a Category:Relational adjectives by language that includes "adjectives that stand in place of a noun when modifying another noun", although it does not have a subcategory for Hungarian entries. Do you think we could (and should) add such tags to adjectives like, etc.? There is at least one problem: the corresponding term viszonyító melléknév is generally used in a wider sense and includes words such as, etc. (which are not derived from nouns). – Einstein2 (talk) 14:53, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * : I usually add the attributive label if a Hungarian adjective is translated to an English noun as in case of . Are these two (attributive and relational) the same? Panda10 (talk) 16:26, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Luckily the Hungarian grammar system appears to align well with the system used here: Magyar grammatika (Nemzeti Tankönyvkiadó, Bp. 2000) uses viszonyító melléknév (pp. 142–143) and it may be a relevant category as these adjectives are not comparable. First I was thinking if we could categorize words like here, which is already categorized as an adjective, but when I read this part in the article adjective, I realized it may not fit here:
 * In many languages (including English) it is possible for nouns to modify other nouns. Unlike adjectives, nouns acting as modifiers (called attributive nouns or noun adjuncts) usually are not predicative; a beautiful park is beautiful, but a car park is not "car".

It may be similar to what describes, although here the first element can be made into a predicate of the second, or especially, but it's much more specific (being restricted to materials). Anyway, tölgyfa may not match the scope of relational adjectives, though I'd like to improve its current categorization. We need to keep in mind that the primary device to express such adjectives in Hungarian is actually the compound prefix, like csirke- in csirkeleves (which is actually equivalent to tölgyfa asztal), so it becomes harder to distinguish relational adjectives from attributive nouns. Anyway, I don't think the fact that tavalyi and hármas don't derive from nouns could be a reason for their exclusion, as long as we observe what aim and function we'd like to assign to this category of adjectives in the Hungarian section of Wiktionary. What would be the use of this label? Only to indicate that they're not comparable, or there's some other end?

, I think relational implies that they're not comparable and attributive implies that they cannot be used as a predicate. Many of the adjectives mentioned in MGr. at viszonyító melléknév are not attributive, e.g. ez a lakás kábeltévés, ez a szoba padlószőnyeges, so attributive must be a much narrower term, which doesn't apply to nyári and tavalyi, even though they are relational adjectives. On the other hand, tölgyfa is definitely attributive. Honestly, I think there's only a fairly small set of Hungarian nouns (nouns, not adjectives) where attributive as a term will qualify (namely, names of materials, and also numerals as in the phrase öt kilométeres, tizenöt perces). I've been at a loss about this label concerning Hungarian adjectives and at the moment I tend to think that relational might apply here better. Attributive might apply to the first element of phrases like ajándék autó, ajándék bor, ajándék kard, ajándék kendő, ajándék kézimunka, ajándék könyv; történelem szak, férfi mellúszás, négyzet alakú, babszem nagyságú. In general, attributive nouns are not really characteristic of Hungarian because they are normally written as prefixes in compounds, whereas relational adjectives are pretty widespread (in my opinion). Maybe we could change the existing label to the latter, but we should still specify the aim and function of this label. Adam78 (talk) 16:41, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

The main reason I would find this label useful is the fact that it might help readers understand the apparent contradiction in entries such as and  between the part of speech (adjective) and the English translation in the definition line (most frequently a noun). – Einstein2 (talk) 17:17, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * As for the hu label, I would rather not use it in Hungarian adjective entries, as it indeed seems to imply a syntactic role rather than a semantic property (see attributive adjective, as opposed to a predicative adjective). According to this definition, most adjectives can be both attributive and predicative (a piros alma; az alma piros).
 * However, the hu tag might be useful in marking noun senses which the R:ErtSz labels as attributive usage (jelzői használat). For example: gavallér sense 3; játszma sense 4.
 * The names of materials are an interesting subset. R:ErtSz handles them the same way as the attributive nouns in the earlier point, for example: tölgyfa sense 2a. Because of this, I would rather follow the same pattern here and move the adjective sense of to the noun section. On the other hand, funnily enough, my Kis magyar grammatika (NTK, 2002) gives műanyag pohár as an example of a tipikusan viszonyító jelentésű melléknév.