INTERNATIONAL CONGRESSES ON HUNGARIAN LINGUISTICS: SOME HISTORIOGRAPHIC NOTES

The author discusses some aspects of the role that international congresses on Hungarian linguistics, initiated in 1966, have played in the history of Hungarian linguistics in general. He states that, due to the ideological and other barriers at the time of proletarian dictatorship and the socialist regime, the rejoining of Hungarian linguistics into international scholarly life had suffered some delay. That rejoining took place with political détente in the early sixties, a process in which the international congresses on Hungarian linguistics had an important share. On the one hand, this happened in the framework of a gradual opening of Hungarian linguistic scholarship towards Western linguistics, and on the other hand, in the possibility of establishing contacts with scholars from other countries, as well as in the gradually permitted cooperation between linguists living in Hungary and Hungarian linguists living in a minority situation in the surrounding countries. Some practical problems of the organization of these congresses are also discussed, with special reference to the Seventh International Congress on Hungarian Linguistics held in 2004.