Both the diversity of case paradigms adopted in investigations of various morphological and syntactic aspects of Hungarian grammar and the state of affairs that the literature on Hungarian cases exhibits contribute to the apparent perplexity pervading the general perception of the Hungarian case system. Consequently, the discussion about the cases that belong to this system and about their number is still quite far away from reaching a clear and indisputable consensus. Case as a morphosyntactic and therefore inherently multiplex linguistic phenomenon requires an analysis that is based on multiple parallel perspectives. This thesis takes this into account by adopting the approach of applying four criteria through which it tries to reach the definitive delineation of the Hungarian case paradigm. These criteria focus on specific characteristics of individual inflectional suffixes that, based on the traditional understanding, realize supposed case forms in Hungarian. The analysis of the suffixes highlights their features with regard to their productivity and distribution within the language, defines their morphological properties and examines the effects that they display at the level of syntactic investigation. The productivity criterion turns out to be too inconsistent in terms of its implementation but it nevertheless prevents two suffixes from being acknowledged as case endings, while the distributional criterion is burdened by imprecision. The suffixes are then analyzed in the frame of morphological and syntactic criteria, which provide a higher degree of accuracy and clarity regarding the results they yield. Finally, the suffixes that meet both the morphological as well as the syntactic criterion can be analyzed as case endings. Hungarian comprises 17 suffixes of such kind. The status of those whose evaluation yields inconsistent results remains undetermined as is the case with the suffix -ként, which conforms only to the norms set by the syntactic criterion. Special attention is dedicated to the question of operativeness of Hungarian genitive case, which is assumed not to be a legitimate case due to the alleged existence of the dative-genitive case syncretism. Its operativeness is, however, confirmed by both morphological as well as syntactic analysis. The Hungarian genitive forms a unique case relation within a phrase and it is morphologically realized by means of the suffix -nak/-nek alongside the obligatory presence of the personal possessive suffix within the genitive construction. Hence it is possible to conclude that in Hungarian the genitive case form is realized by a discontinuative morpheme, which then represents the evidence for the distinctiveness of the genitive case. The existence of the dativegenitive case syncretism is therefore disproved, while the independent operativeness of the genitive is shown to be fully confirmed. The entire analysis shows that by enforcing the precise and well-defined criteria the case inventory of Hungarian can be fairly solidly determined. Regarding the results of the analysis carried out in the presented manner, the grammar of Hungarian exhibits 18 cases, while the question of the suffix -ként still requires a definitive answer.
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