CREATION, PASSIVE
CONSTRUCTIONS AND NON-IE LANGUAGES
B. Lukács
CRIP RMKI, H-1525 Bp. 114. Pf. 49.
ABSTRACT
A recent book argues for the
Intelligent Creator and uses Hawking & Ellis for (reluctant) supporters
because they speak about “creation” at the start of the Universe. They, indeed,
used this term, in English. But, while I do not feel myself sufficiently well
informed or even interested in the theory of Intelligent Planning/Creation, I
feel myself able to show that English, or, I think, any Indo-European language
is too simplified grammatically for transcendental argumentations. The
distinction among only Active, Median and Passive aspects of verbs does not
seem enough to discuss “the creation”.
INTRODUCTION
There is a study at the HomePage of my colleague Péter Csizmadia [1] about a book of a Hungarian information
engineer Tibor Tóth [2]. The study analyses the book, and criticizes it.
While I did not read the book, I have been informed that it prefers Intelligent
Planning, Creation and such ideas. I am not shocked at all; anybody has the
right to believe in Intelligent Planning, Creatio ex nihilo, Infinite Cycles of the Ur-Egg of Brahma, genetic
engineering by benign aliens on Neanderthals (or Australopithecinae)
for causing Homo sapiens and such. Anyways, the Big Bang of Orthodox General
Relativity is philosophically indistinguishable from Creatio
ex nihilo, and the recent genetic results about a 118
bp DNA segment (HAR1) with 18 differences compared to
the chimp sequence while with 0, 1 or 2 differences between chimps and any other mammals may indeed explain
Man's separated position amongst mammals, but at this moment Divine Influence
or genetic engineering by aliens seem the simplest "explanation" for the 18 differences. (The quotation marks
stand to state that according to the rules of the game Divine Interaction or
Superior Aliens are not scientific
explanations. It is too easy to refer to Something Above
Us when we cannot understand
something. If we follow this habit, we cannot understand lots of things. If there is somewhere something Supernatural, then
It will be more and more explicit if
we follow the rules of Science and
still we are unsuccessful. But let us stop to philosophize.)
You can reach Csizmadia's study if you want
and can read if you understand Magyar (a non-Indo-European, moderately
polysynthetic language erroneously referred as Hungarian, but Hungarian is the
political nation, not the majority language there). Here I reflect only a
sentence in Csizmadia's study. There he refuted some
argument of the first author for Divine Creation, but he did not reacted to a linguistically nontrivial problem. You may ask
what was this problem and why to react in English. In
the next two Chapters I answer these 2 very natural questions, and then comes the main part of this study.
THE PROBLEM
Tóth's book is written in Magyar. Generally Hungarian
physicists like to believe that they can one-to-one translate Magyar sentences
into English or vice versa. In most cases this is true, but not always.
In our case the problem is in one argument of T. Tóth
about Creator and creatio. (in
Latin, as proper in Final Questions, but the formally English Creator/creation
would not be too different.) The book is Magyar, so the sentence under discussion
is Magyar too, telling that
“…hanem azért is, mert a “teremtés” szót használja, amely közvetve az Intelligens
Teremtő –ha úgy tetszik, Isten- szerepére utal.”
Now, a mirror translation to English is
“…but also because it uses the word “creation” which
indirectly implies the Intelligent Creator, if you like, God.”
The referred text is, ultimately, the end paragraph of the main part of
Hawking & Ellis’ very important book [3]. Here I omit citations therein;
otherwise the paragraph goes as:
“The creation of the Universe out of nothing has been argued,
indecisively, from early times… The results we have obtained support the idea
that the universe began a finite time ago. However the actual point of
creation, the singularity, is outside the scope of presently known laws of
physics.”
Tóth’s argumentation looks convincing enough. However the problem is that the argumentation is sound enough in English (or in Latin), but not in Magyar. And answers to
Final Questions should not be too language-dependent.
WHY IN ENGLISH?
Indeed, why to discuss the linguistic problems of a Magyar text in
English. Briefly, 1) IU have reasons, and 2) you may
become interested. Point 2) should be self-explanatory (if you do not become
interested, then I have been unsuccessful), but Point 1) is not.
Magyar-speaking people generally think Magyar, but, being European (a
European power since 1000 AD, although in Latin, and a member of the European
Union since 2004 AD, in Magyar) they believe that they think just as the
neighbours. In most cases it is true; in a few cases, it is not.
Magyar-speaking people generally argue in Magyar, but also generally
they have a minority complex compared to the Indo-European majority of
Magyar-speaking people generally regard their first language as
provincial. In addition, in the present case the original book criticised by P.
Csizmadia, is considered, according to rumours,
positively by a Church being on the side of the present (2007) government
coalition. (Sorry for the obscure formulation; it is caused partly by the
insane Hungarian internal politics, but partly it is deliberate.) Now, if I
criticise the book in Magyar, I may collect embers on my head. On the other
hand, in an English argumentation I am above internal conflicts.
If you think I am paranoid, please remember 2 precedents. When Paul (or
Saul) of
Some experts believe that the negative opinion of the Church about
Galileo's book On the Two Great Systems of the World was mainly provoked by the
fact that it was written on the local lingo, Italian. and
it would have made much less problems in Latin. I think indeed so.
CREATION AND CREATOR
Book [2] believes that Creation presupposes (or: proves) the
pre-existence of a Creator. It is indeed so in English; and also in Latin,
whence the terminology has been borrowed. Indeed, the deep structure
of the two languages are very similar.
As far back as we can reconstruct, Indo-European languages did not have
more than 3 aspects: Active, Median
and Passive. Some remnants of Median can be found in Classical Greek; however
both English and Latin have only Active and Passive.
He washes
is active, while
He is washed
is Passive. Generally an Active sentence can
be translated into Passive too:
The mother washes the clothes ≈ The clothes are washed by the mother.
The difference
here is emphasis, style or such.
So
The Creator created the Universe ≈ The Universe
was created by the Creator.
In addition there
is a nice Biblical style of the repeated word-stem here. The Creator creates,
so if something is created, there is (or at least, was) a Creator. Trivial, is
it not?
Now, let us see the problem in Magyar. The very first substantial
extant Magyar litterary text is a sermon for a deceased
[4] from 1195. Earlier extant Magyar texts are simply isolated locality or
personal names in legal documents written in Latin or Greek.
The sermon may be a mirror translation from Latin, but not from a
classical or canonical Latin text. So there is nothing to compare with; you may
take it as something formulated in Magyar.
The text starts with the usual Medieval idea
that Man is dust and ash. And the second sentence tells:
In how much graces (God) created originally our
ancestors Adam; and gave him
(Interestingly
enough, the sentence does not have a subject. This is not a problem in Magyar grammar, still God would be natural to be mentioned here. In
a later sentence he is mentioned: Isten, so God. For
the origin of the word there are 3 major theories among Hungarian linguists: 1)
unknown origin, say Khazarian or such; 2) the name of
the Hatti (not Hittite!) solar goddess Estan; 3)
the name of the father of the first Western Turkish Khagan,
Yabgu Istemi (or Istämi). I think the third is not impossible, but the
origin of the God-name is of secondary importance
here.)
In the codex this sentence is written as:
Menyi milostben
terumteve eleve miv isemucut adamut
es odutta vola neki paradisumut
hazoa.
While the text
does not show length or Umlaut, and do not distinguish "s" and "sh", there is little doubt that according to the 1195
pronunciation but present Hungarian orthography it would be:
Mennyi milosztben terümtevé eleve miü isemüküt Adamut
és adotta vola neki Paradisumut
házzá,
which in Modern Magyar would be
Mennyi malasztban teremté eleve a mi ősünket Ádámot és adta vala
neki Paradicsomot házul (or: házzá).
Two verbal forms,
the Simple Past "teremté" and the Past
Perfect "adta vala"
is Archaic now, but within almost
everybody's passive language (and a living form somewhere in
So, continuously for 8 centuries, in Church texts:
creates = teremt
So
Creator = Teremtő.
THE CREATOR CREATES, THE EARTH YIELDS...
Now we are at the hearth of the problem mentioned at the beginning of
this study. Does from the Creation a Creator follow automatically?
I told that there is no Subject in the second sentence of the very
oldest
However I do not want to argue in this way. Although the Magyar
sentence is quite grammatical, the Being who created Adam should be named
somewhere and it is a kind of mystery why He is not named, at least according
to the present usage. My argumentation will go more deeply.
"Teremt" is clearly a theologic terminus technicus,
meaning "creo" in Latin. (The vocabulary
form is Sg1 in Latin and Sg3 in Magyar.) The verb is not exclusively
theological; e.g. the formula “lehetőséget teremt arra, hogy…” is quite frequent in
Magyar, meaning cca. “creates
the proper circumstances for the possibility of…”; but, as we showed it in the
previous Chapter, the verb with the above theological meaning is well
established in Magyar.
However this Magyar verb is not the stem form, but suffixed. The most
elementary form in present Magyar is "terem".
More primitive stem forms as e.g. *ter belong to
hypotheses of language history and, as
In Magyar you can form whole families of verbs from a stem, and I will
show an example in the next Chapter. However in a preliminary way let us
explore the meanings about the verb "teremt".
The most primitive form is, as I told, "terem". It is difficult to
translate it without context. Anyways, the meaning is something "yields, produces". E.g.
A föld gabonát
terem = The land yields
corn.
A
quite everyday sentence without philosophy. Now,
teremt = terem + -t
where the suffix -t form a "causative"
"aspect". Circa
terem = yield
teremt = makes it yield, causes it to yield
As for Present
(really: Active) Participle (in English)
teremtő = who makes it yield
(This is not
theology, but the everyday meaning.) For the Past (but really Passive)
Participle:
teremtett = created
There are 2 very
much related -t suffices here; but this is not a problem in Magyar.
But, of course, you may start from the stem form as well (terem):
termő = who yields
(e.g. the yielding earth/soil = termő
föld, so termőföld, an
everyday agrarian terminus technicus, measurable in acres or hectares)
termett = what is (has been) yielded.
(The elision of
the second -e- is trivial and a product of the evolution of the last millenium, see e.g. Slov. malina = Magy. málna.)
Now we stop a while
and make a review of the family of the Magyar verb "forog"="rotates"
(or turns, revolves).
TURN IN, TURN OUT, TURN
AWAY...
Magyar is an agglutinative language. This term is a
remnant of XIX-early XXth century classifications
(where Magyar is agglutinative vs. flectating Latin
and isolating Chinese), but we can use it with some caution. Here the terms
stands to express the rather strong tendency and simple rules to form words
composed of one root but many prefixes/suffixes. The root remains practically
invariant in the process (vowel shortenings/lengthenings,
even elisions of vowels may happen, but they are rather automatic and do not hinder
understanding); this means that anybody can innovate using the
prefixes/suffixes in the linguistic community, and anybody else will understand
the new word. Indeed, it is difficult to count the number of different words in
Magyar: declension, conjugation, word formation etc. coalesce. Tremendous
numbers are reported if we use the Indo-European counting methods: I have seen
a number for the words of a (really great) Magyar poet in the million order of magnitude.
Agglutinative
languages are rare now in
Let us see a
counterexample. There is a Latin verb everto 3 everti eversus. The
one-to-one translation is cca. turns up/over, but it may mean
even "broken down in an earthquake", as the Ravenna Annals wrie that on
evertor = felfordulok
The Latin form is of the maximum complexity possible for a flectating language: one verbal prefix, the root, and the
suffix of Sg1PresInd, as
e-vert-or.
It is as regular as it can be in Latin, but neither the prefix, nor the
root, nor the suffix is really invariant.
In Magyar, formally we
may follow the Latin trial division, as
fel-fordul-ok,
but the middle part is not really the root. The
final partition is rather
fel-for-d-ul-ok
and the remainder of this Chapter will discuss
this.
There is an English
verb
turn
with the general meaning: performing a rotating
motion. Of course, it may appear also in similes, so "turns up" may
even mean "appears", but the basic meaning is that motion.
"Rotate" or "revolve" are synonyms, but from Latin
directly.
The Magyar root for rotating
motions must have been
*per-
but now survives in 3 variants as
for ~ per ~ pör
The Manyshi, closest kin to Magyar, has the
root as "peri". However the split of the
speakers must have happened before the Vth century
BC, the oldest extant record of Magyar is a Greek donation text with a few
Magyar words in it (names) from 997 AD, and the oldest Manyshi
record is from XIXth century AD. So sometimes we must
reconstruct.
However the ancient
hypothetic root
for ~ per ~ pör
is still alive in Magyar, with suffixes. For
example
forog ≈ pörög
both mean cca. "makes more than one full turn"; the difference between
the two verbs is almost, but not completely, stylistic. On the other hand,
pereg
is cca. "drops out from a turning perimeter", and its causative
form "perget" is a terminus technicus in this meaning of honey production. But in all
these verbs the -g ending is clearly
a suffix for repeated meaning. Now,
there is another "intermediate root", with the suffix -d:
ford- ~ perd- ~ pörd-
"For-d-ul" is: "makes/starts a
turn”; either not a 360° one, or only the start is emphasized and the result
may be mentioned later. "Perdül"="pördül" is "starting rotations/gyrations",
generally but not always full turns. So "táncra perdül" is "starts dancing", because in many
Hungarian dances the pair rotates.
You of course can tell
"pörögni kezd"
(where "kezd" is cca.
"starts") instead of "pördül", but the two are not exactly the same. "Pörögni kezd" implies that
later the act, more than one full turn, will have to be done. "Perdül" indicates only that the rotating motion is
starting; it may or may not stop before a full turn.
Now come
the verbal prefixes. Latin has a lot of them, as ex-, in-, de-, re- etc.; they preceed the verb, and modify "the aspect". Since
English imported a lot of verbs almost unchanged, you may compare the meanings
of, say
evolution, involution,
devolution, revolution.
In all there was the Latin voluo/volvo, so
turn/change, but the turn/change "is viewed from different aspects".
However in English, if the verb is not imported directly from Latin, the verbal
"prefix" comes after the
verb, e.g. in some Basic English you may try to substitute evolution with turning out and revolution with turning back/again.
Verbal prefixes are
frequent in all IE language, but generally they "only" modify. Their
maximal role, in Baltic and Slavic, however is more; and Magyar is surprisingly
near to Lithuanian and Russian here. Namely, in Russian and Lithuanian (and in
other Baltic and Slavic languages as well, but in some Slavic ones the tendency
is weaker) there are two "general aspects" of a verb:
"continuous" and "finished" (where I translate the termini technici of Magyar teachers of Russian to English). The
"continuous" form expresses "general" or
"repeated" act; the "finished" a single one. Now, in most
cases the difference is in a prefix; so general that it would be hard to tell
its exact meaning. Let us see an example.
"Read" is
"olvas" in Magyar, which is given in
Magyar-Russian dictionaries as "chitat'".
(The dictionary forms of verbs is Infinitive without
"to" in English, Sg3PresInd in Magyar and Infinitive in Russian.
However the inverse, Russian-Magyar, dictionary always gives the
"other" form too, so "chitat'/prochitat'";
chitat' being the general or continuous, prochitat' the"finished".
If I read generally, as a usage, or I express simply that I can read, that is
"ya chitayu/mogu chitat'". But a single reading act, where I read/can
read a letter is "ya prochitayu".
In Past Tense the difference is important but slight. However, "ya chitayu" is Present
Tense, but "ya prochitayu"
is generally Future!
Namely, you cannot
start and end a single act in the
Present. "Ya prochitayu"
means more or less "I shall/will have read". I started the act, it will have its result, in the near future.
Now back to Magyar.
"Olvasok" is "I read/am reading".
"Elolvasok" is cca.
(and generally; you maybe are not interested in finer
details of an unknown language) "I shall read". The verbal prefixes
"el-" and "meg-" often carry only the "Perfect"
aspect. (But not always.)
Then take the ancient
verbal root
*per
What can you do with it? A lot. Without the aim of completeness, for example, as follows. I
give always Sg1Ind. Boldface is for suffixes. Italics is
for obligatory but automatic changes.)
for-o-g = turn
(repeatedly)
for-g-at = makes it turn
(e.g. a handmill)
for-o-g-tat = [almost as forgat, but not exactly]
for-o-g-tat-ik = [The Passive
of forog; rather rare]
for-g-at-ód-ik = sg makes it to be
turned by sb/sg (as a process)
for-g-at-tat = makes sb/sg
to make it turn (as a process)
for-g-at-tat-ik = [The Passive
of forgat]
&c.
el-for-o-g = turns away
el-for-g-at = makes it turn away
&c.
for-d-ul = turns (just
now, or just once)
for-d-ul-gat = has the tendency starting to turn
&c.
el-for-d-ul = turns away (in
one motion)
meg-for-d-ul = makes a turn
(generally cca. 180°)
ki-for-d-ul = makes a cca. 180° turn, facing away
fel-for-d-ul = turns upside
down
át-for-d-ul = goes into the
other position
&c.
for-d-ít = makes it turn
(or: translate)
for-d-ít-ód-ik = sb/sg is made to be turned (by indefinite agent)
for-d-ít-tat = causes sb/sg to make it
turned/translated
for-d-ít-tat-ik = [The Passive
of fordít]
&c.
el-for-d-ít = [The finished
aspect of fordít]
ki-for-d-ít = makes the
inside outside and vice versa
fel-for-d-ít = makes it turn
upside down
&c.
for-g-ol-ód-ik = for a time
turns to and fro (e.g. when sleeping)
&c.
Also, you can form (or
rather: we can) nouns/adjectives from the above verbs. E.g.
for-g-ás = (the) turning
for-g-alom = traffic
for-g-alm-as = busy of traffic
&c.
for-d-ul-at = a turn (or change of government)
for-d-ul-at-os = [a story with
lots of events of changes]
for-d-ul-at-os-an = with many
events of change
&c.
What is demonstrated
here? Maybe the general difficulty for IE speakers to learn
an agglutinative language as Basque, Magyar or Navajo de novo. (Indeed, lots of Slovakians learn Magyar, but not
from grammars. In the 1860's 2/3 of the population of
mos = washes
mos-at(-tat)-ik = is washed
mos-ak-od-ik = washes itself
But then what is "mosódik", "mosogat" or "mosat"?
So, we have learnt
that the Hungarian Catholic Church tells from 1195 that
creat = teremt
Creator = Teremtő
Since the English termini technici are simply
taken from Latin, and since Magyar Protestants and Israelites agree with the
Catholics, I think all Magyars of religions of the Bible have the tendency to
translate
The Creator created the
Universe 13 billion years ago.
as
A Teremtő 13 milliárd éve teremtette a Világot.
However how to translate
the Passive (?) of Hawking & Ellis? True, the expression “The creation of the Universe out of
nothing” is not exactly a Passive; but only because it is a nominal, not
verbal, expression. Tóth is
right: it could easily have been formulated in the almost equivalent way “The
Universe created out of nothing” and
I will argue with verbal constructions.
It seems that the verbal equivalent
of Hawking & Ellis’ formula is (near to) a Passive one only because English
has only Active and Passive. And the Passive of
The Creator created the Universe 13 billion years ago
is surely
The Universe was created by
the Creator 13 billion years ago
but thence we do not yet know who would be the
Subject in the Active variant of the Passive
The Universe was created 13
billion years ago.
Who is the it in the simple
English sentence
It is raining?
In Basque there is nothing in Ergative in this sentence, so no Active
Agent; and in Magyar the simplest translation is
Esik
with a verb in Sg3 and no subject at all. Why are
you sure that
The Universe was created 13
billion years ago
is the Passive form of an Active sentence at all? In the English grammar the
"reactivation" is matter of simple style if there is there a "by
X". And if there is not?
KEL, KELET, KELÉS,
KELETKEZÉS...
Magyar physicists hardly ever use the formula
A Teremtő 13 milliárd éve teremtette a Világot.
which would be the mirror
translation of the English
The Creator created the
Universe 13 billion years ago
coming from Latin
Creator creavit
Mundum ante tredecim decies millies
centena milia annos
except for very religious physicists in contexts when they want to confess their faith. The matter-of-fact
sentence about the age of the Universe is
A Világ 13 milliárd éve keletkezett.
Here the first word is the definite article, the second is Subject, the
next three is a temporal construction, and the last is the Verb, or
Predicament, or such. This is definitely not
a Passive construction, so you cannot apply any simple and automatic
transformation in which the "Világ"=Universe
would become Object (in Accusative: Világot). To see the essence of the
Magyar construction, let us take a somewhat more general sentence:
A Világ
(≈ The Universe) X keletkezett (= cca. came into existence; later)
where X is one of the 3
constructions:
X1 = 13 milliárd éve
= 13 billion years ago
X2 = a Semmiből = from Nothing
X3 = egy nagy kvantumfluktuációban = in a big quantum fluctuation
Obviously the 3
variant sentences are different from physical and theological viewpoints, but
all of them are grammatically correct (both in English and in Magyar; the verb
will be analysed somewhat later but the result will be satisfactory). You can
reformulate all three by transforming the Universe into Object (its Nominative
and Accusative are identical) and the Creator (or God, Yahweh, Elohim, Adonai, Tanri or Hashem) as the new
Subject, but this is not a
grammatical transformation. Namely the Magyar formulation (and its mirror
translation into English) permits (but does not claim!) spontaneous processes as well, or even some Agent who is not God. (Remember e.g. the Neo-Platonic
construction of Bishop Marcion in 2nd
century AD where the Ultimate God commands a low enough emanation to form the
World because manual work does not fit to Gods.) It simply states that the
Universe came into existence so-and-so or then-and-then. And that is the
statement of a physicist.
We still have to
clarify the exact meaning of the verb keletkezett. The previous two Sections gave some information
for that.
The Sg3PresInd of the
Magyar verb (the dictionary form) is keletkezik, and it can be broken down as:
kel-et-kez-ik
Here kel- is the root, -et
is a suffix forming nouns from verbs, -kez is a
suffix forming verbs from
(Ők)
törik a fát; Pl3 Subject = They break the tree.
A fa
töretik általuk; Sg3 Subj.
with Agents = The tree is broken by them.
A fa
törik (Sg3
Subject without Agent) = The tree is being broken.
Observe the obligatory -t in
Magyar Accusatives/Objects!
Really a minority of
the verbs ends with -ik in Sg3; but the Passive
always ends with a Causative suffix + an -ik; and keletkezik is a verb whose Active ends with -ik.
Now we turn to the
other parts of the sentence. The root is
kel-
It is indeed, as we may expect for agglutinative languages, an existing
Sg3 of an existing verb. However the verb is old, so it is not a modern
terminus technicus. In the Manyshi
it is kwáli, in the Finnish kaalaa.
Magyar-made Magyar-English dictionaries give the more important equivalents as:
rise, get up, shoot,
sprout, come up
Indeed, a fundamental, primitive verb. The Magyar-Latin dictionary
gives
surgo, oritur, emergit, nascitur
So generally the initial act.
Lots of prefixed forms
are used in Magyar. One is
felkel
which can be: gets up (from the bed), but also rises
(the Sun).
Another is
kikel.
which is gets out (of bed), is hatched
(chicken) or shoots (the plant from
the seed). Or
megkel
is rises
(the bread).
Always
a start, albeit that can be diverse. In Magyar, there is the Causative
form too:
kelt.
It means makes sb to get up, or makes
himself to get up, or hatches
eggs, or such.
Kelet
is a
So keletkezik must be comes into existence, or
something such; and indeed, the Magyar-English dictionary gives
comes
into existence, originates, arises, springs up &c.
As for the nominal counterpart:
keletkezés = rise,
origin, beginning, genesis.
A last check on
Magyar-Latin:
keletkezik = orior, nascor, exsisto, proficiscor.
So indeed:
A Világegyetem 13 milliárd éve keletkezett. ≈ The
Universe came into existence 13 billion years ago.
As a Magyar-speaking physicist in Hungary I tell that this is the most
frequent Magyar formulation of the scientific question; and it indeed does not
tell anything at all about the cause/Cause of it, simply because grammatical
enough languages can define sharply enough the questions to be able to answer
them. E.g. for the question
How
old is the Universe?
the most precise answer is neither
God
created the Universe 13 billion years ago,
nor
The Universe created itself
13 billion years ago,
but, simply and precisely
The Universe is 13 billion
years old.
Magyar is more
grammatical than English, so it is simpler to discuss Fundamental Questions
there; see also the galdegaia
in Basque [5]. I simply cannot exactly see what was in the heads of Hawking
& Ellis when they formulated the last paragraph of the main text of The
Large Scale Structure of Space-Time; but I do know that the Magyar translation
of an English text may be ambiguous, it is so in this case, and so it is not
optimal for arguing for some specific belief about acts of God.
REFERENCES
[1] P.
Csizmadia: Tudomány, hit, manipuláció. http://www.kfki.hu/~cspeter/irasok/2006tt/index.html
(in Magyar)
[2] T.
Tóth: Tudomány, hit, világmagyarázat. Focus, 2005 (in Magyar)
[3] S.
W. Hawking & G. F. R. Ellis:
The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time.
Cambridge, at the University Press, 1973. The cited text is at
p. 364
[4] Halotti
Beszéd. The actual sentence
is cited, discussed and analysed in
many linguistic and historical books, of course
in Magyar.
[5] Itziar Laka: A Brief Grammar of Euzkara, the Basque Language. http://www.ehu.es/grammar/
My HomePage, with some other studies, if you are curious.