The paper aims to give a diachronic overview of the changes that resulted in the currently
wide distribution of the -i suffix found on prenominal PP modifiers, which has often
been described as a derivational suffix but is rather a licensing head for modifiers
of certain types. Data from Old Hungarian, Middle Hungarian and Early Modern Hungarian
will outline the syntactic change in the use of való 'orig. being' and -i, along with
the rise of a new participial copular form. The changes have led to -i becoming the
general modifier head for prenominal PPs. The paper will further argue that the lack
of -i with goal and directional PPs in present day Hungarian is due to syntactic reasons
in some cases and to semantic ones in others.
