Structural Features
- An original ablative case marked by -l
- A series of original locative cases, formed from postpositions derived from a pronoun root *nä
- Possessive suffixes are placed before case suffixes, not after them as in the other Uralic languages
- A class of "instable" verb stems, in which alternation between CV and CVC stem variants occurs. E.g. "to take": Hungarian vë- ~ vëv- ~ vësz-, Mansi *wi- ~ *wæj-, Khanty *wĕ- ~ *wĕj-.
- Distinct attributive and nominal forms of the numeral "2": Hungarian két vs. kettő, Mansi кит vs. китиг, Khanty кат vs. катән
- Found in Hungarian and Mansi, an extended form of the caritive suffix containing -l.
- Distinct verb conjugations according to the transitivity of the verb. It is sometimes termed as “definite” versus “indefinite” conjugation, because also the definiteness of the object can play a role when selecting between the two. This feature is within the Uralic family also found in the Mordvinic languages, and it is likely to not represent a common Ugric innovation; the particular details of the construction are different in all three Ugric languages.
- Verbal Prefixes – modify the meaning of the verb in both concrete and abstract ways
- Examples from Mansi
ēl(a) – 'forwards, onwards, away'
| jōm- 'to go, to stride' | ēl-jōm- 'to go away/on' |
| tinal- 'to sell' | ēl-tinal- 'to sell off' |
xot – 'direction away from something and other nuances of action intensity'
| min- 'to go' | xot-min- 'to go away, to stop' |
| roxt- 'to be frightened' | xot-roxt- 'to take fright suddenly' |
- Examples from Hungarian
el – 'away, off'
| ugrik 'to jump' | elugrik 'to jump away' |
| mosolyog 'to smile' | elmosolyodik 'to start to smile' (implying a lack of control) |
ki – 'out (of)'
| ugrik 'to jump' | kiugrik 'to jump out' |
| néz 'to look' | kinéz 'to choose/pick out' |
In Hungarian, the citation form of verbs is the present tense of the 3rd person singular form, which is given here, which doesn't have any suffixes.
Read more about this topic: Ugric Languages
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