15.6.29.17:39: VAN MEN
What is the story behind the irregular conjugations of Hungarian van 'is' and megy 'goes'?
| Number/person | Ending(s) | 'to be' < Proto-Finno-Ugric* *wole- | 'to go' < Proto-Uralic *mene- |
| 1st singular | -ok/-ek | vagy-ok | megy-ek |
| 2nd singular | -sz [s] | vagy-Ø | mé-sz ~ mégy-Ø |
| 3rd singular | -Ø | van-Ø | megy-Ø |
| 1st plural | -unk/-ünk | vagy-unk | megy-ünk |
| 2nd plural | -tok/-tek | vagy-tok | men-tek |
| 3rd plural | -nak/-nek | van-nak | men-nek |
The list of endings is not exhaustive and only includes endings that would normally be expected for these two verbs.
1. Why do the two verbs have -gy [ɟ] even though their roots lack palatal consonants?
2, Why does that gy have different distributions in the paradigms of the two verbs: e.g., van and vagytok (not *vagy and *vantok) but megy and mentek (not *men and *megytek)?
3. Why do 'thou art' and one form of 'thou goest' have a zero ending?
4. Why do the forms of 'thou goest' have long vowels? Is length in mész compensating for a root-final consonant lost before -sz?
5. Why does 'to be' have a instead of o which is still in other forms like volt 'he/she/it was'?
6. Why does 'to be' have n instead of l which is still in other forms like volt 'he/she/it was'?
I could ask even more questions about the rest of the paradigms of those two verbs (e.g., why is the potential of 'to go' me-het with the stem reduced to an open syllable?), but I'll stop here.
*Although Proto-Finno-Ugric may not even exist (cf. Tibeto-Burman in Sino-Tibetan), I cite this form merely to indicate that the source of the Hungarian verb had *l which is still in some other forms of the verb (e.g., volt 'he/she/it was') as well as in related languages: Finnish olla and Estonian olema.