The dawn of Hungarian phonetics as an experimental discipline

Lajos Hegedűs (1908–1958), a pioneer phonetician and linguist, laid the foundations of Hungarian experimental phonetics and also of a new approach, adopted by his fellow scientists, to studying speech. This paper provides an overview of his findings and thoughts that are remarkable internationally. He conducted research using modern methodology in several fields. He studied articulatory movements using X-ray technique, palatography, kymography, oscillography, fundamental frequency metre and more. In addition, he addressed a number of linguistic topics in contention using objective data. Hegedűs analysed the acoustic structures of vowels, coarticulation of nasals, various intonation curves, rhythm, pauses, etc. He built a remarkable speech database of Hungarian dialectal speech and transcribed a tremendous amount of the collected speech materials. Not only did his interests encompass an array of topics in phonetics, but also other diverse areas of linguistics. He launched discussions about language and thought, researched Hungarian language taboos, etc. His early demise at the age of 50 put a tragic end to his inexorable scientific contributions, with his heritage serving as a basis for the work of later generations of phoneticians.