szóalakot

Szóalakot is the accusative singular form of the Hungarian noun szóalak. Szóalak itself means the surface form a word takes in a specific grammatical context, including inflectional endings and any derivational affixes. In linguistic description, a distinction is made between a word’s lemma or lexeme (its canonical dictionary form) and its szóalakok (the concrete forms that occur in actual usage).

The concept is used to explain how a single word can appear in many different forms depending on grammatical role, number, possession, or definiteness. For example, the noun ház (house) has multiple szóalakok: ház (nominative singular), házat (definite accusative singular, used for “the house” as a direct object with a definite article), háza (his/her house), házak (nominative plural), házakban (in the houses). These forms all derive from the same lemma but encode different grammatical meanings. Verbal forms similarly vary by tense, mood, person, and number, producing a range of szóalakok for a given verb.

In Hungarian grammar, the term helps describe the relationship between a word’s form and its grammatical function. It is commonly used in linguistic analysis, language teaching, and lexicography to refer to any realized form of a word, while more precise terms such as “accusative form” or “plural nominative” are often preferred in everyday description. Szóalakot, as a specific case, is the form used when a word functions as the object in a sentence.