IS THERE SUCH A THING AS HUNGARIAN SEMANTICS?

The author's answer to the question asked in the title is that Hungarian semantics does exist, just like Hungarian phonology, Hungarian morphology, and Hungarian syntax do. Following Zoltán Gombocz, one can say that the task of Hungarian semantics is to explore whatever is characteristic of Hungarian among general semantic considerations and to account for the specific linguistic devices that implement those general features. The author dwells on the morphology-semantics interface and on the syntax-semantics interface at some length since, as far as we know today, it is in these areas that generalizations can be drawn more safely. But this does not mean that research on Hungarian semantics should be restricted to those two areas: with an appropriate typological background, the structure of semantic fields or the lexicalization patterns attested in that language can be explored, too; another rational problem for semantics could be the study of the way the mental image of the world is reflected in linguistic expressions, and so forth. However, beyond morphosemantics and syntactic semantics, we do not as yet possess reliable knowledge in the area of Hungarian semantics.