Mongolic languages and dialects

ENGLISH PREFACE

The Department of Mongolian Studies of Dankook University, Republic of Korea, has published the first volume  in what is to be a series of works on Mongolian-Korean contrastive grammar, as well as Mongolian language textbooks, handbooks, and teaching materials for undergraduate and graduate students learning Mongolian.

The present work, Орчин цагийн монгол хэлний бүтээвэр судлал [The Morphology of Modern Mongolian], contains the basic understanding of Mongolian morphology—the main component of Mongolian grammar. Moreover, since this book is somewhat of a continuation of previous works by professors in the Department of Mongolian Studies of Dankook University, we have used the same basic classifications, terminology, and principles which are currently standard  in Mongolia (and which will continue to be standard in the near future), in order to avoid losing the pedagogical tradition.

Over forty years ago, Academician B. Rinchen wrote:

“Rather than force the many unique grammatical phenomena of Mongolian into the mold of Latin-based grammars, I have consulted many research works by European Mongolists and linguists—especially those on languages similar to Mongolian—and I have observed consensuses and disagreements in the writings of these many scholars in many languages, and have attempted to look for Mongolian data to explain these disagreements. But this should not be limited to just one generation of Mongolists—many generations of Mongolian Mongolists should conduct research like this in their native language, and since future Mongolists must skillfully reflect on the Mongolian language and acquire the most up-to-date scientific methodologies, we Mongols who are currently writing Mongolian grammars for primary schools, secondary schools, and institutions of higher learning are setting the foundation for later scholarship. This book is my humble contribution to this foundation of Mongolian linguistics” (1967:viii-x).

Many dozens of works on Mongolian grammar, including school grammar textbooks, have been written and published both in Mongolia and abroad since Rinchen wrote these words, and it is our hope that our grammar, too, may serve as a contribution to this foundation.

In this book, we have aspired to disseminate the basic concepts contained in previous grammars , enriching these with new results and suggestions as thoroughly as possible. To this end, we include widely accepted, standard concepts and their main features, classifications, observations, and innovative analyses in the main body of the text. In the footnotes, we include explanations, citations, disputed analyses, and mention of phenomena which ought to be studied in detail in the future.  Thus, if one wishes to look in more depth at a given topic mentioned in the main text, they need only to look at the footnotes for specific observations and studies, and direction for work on disputed phenomena.

Originally, we had planned to release a series of volumes on Mongolian morphology, syntax, lexicology and textology (in this order), summarized in a final comprehensive volume on Mongolian grammar, but owing to the untimely and unfortunate reason, this goal will not be fulfilled. I dedicate this volume to the memory of Professor Kang Shin, Ph.D., former Dean of the Dankook University School of Humanities, who departed this life shortly after initiating the book projects “A Comprehensive Grammar of Mongolian”, “A Comprehensive Dictionary of Mongolian” (Mongolian-Korean, Korean-Mongolian), and “An Encyclopedia of Northeast Asian Nomadic Culture”. 
   
We express our deepest gratitude to Professor Chang Choong-Sik (장충식), Ph.D., Honorary President of Dankook University and Chairman of Board of Trustees of the Beom-Eun Scholarship Foundation; and Professor Chang Ho-Sung (장호성), Ph.D., President of Dankook University; for approving the request of the Department of Mongolian Studies to prepare this book, and for providing favorable conditions for the preparation and completion of this volume.

We are also grateful to Professor Shin Jung-Han (신종한), Ph.D., Director of the Institute for Mongolian Studies of Dankook University, who has supported our research work, and Professor Lee Seong-Gyu (이성규), Ph.D., Chair of the Department of Mongolian Studies of Dankook University, who has edited this book.

Last but not least, we are grateful to the staff of the Institute for Mongolian Studies (몽골 연구소), Yulgok Memorial Library (율곡 기념 도서관) of Dankook University, and the National University of Mongolia Library, B. Azzayaa (M.A., National University of Mongolia), A. Möngöndolgion (M.A., National University of Mongolia), B. Oyuunceceg (M.A., National University of Mongolia), and M. Enxjargal (M.A., National University of Mongolia), who assisted us in various ways as we prepared this book.

This preface was written on an auspicious dashnyam day—the sixth blue female sheep day of the first white tiger month of spring of the female white iron hare year of the XVII sexagenary cycle of the lunar calendar, or Wednesday, February 9, 2011, on the Cheonan campus of Dankook University, Republic of Korea. 

Note: A draft of this book was finalized and prepared for publication in June 2011, but due to financial reasons it was not published then. Research undertaken over the last two years has therefore not been included in this edition.

Yümjir Mönx-Amgalan of the Xulj Borjigin Clan
Professor and Ph.D ., Doctor of Science (Sc.D)
National University of Mongolia

Walther Heissig (1913–2005) was certainly one of the most influential researchers on Mongolian, well thought of by his fellows and esteemed by his students. This edition of archive materials concerning Heissig's life and work (cited below as WH) is a good opportunity for this author to discuss some aspects of a future, possibly all-embracing biography of Heissig.

The paper focuses on the phenomenon of (sentence-)final particles in the Buryat language. Described in detail for such languages as Japanese or Cantonese, final particles have not been properly described as such for Buryat. I analyze semantic and morphosyntactic properties of the most widely used Buryat final particles and their combinations. I also give an overview of final particles as an areal phenomenon characteristic of some other Mongolic languages and the languages of East
and Southeast Asia and consider Buryat data within the areal context.

Статья посвящена заключительным частицам бурятского языка. Заключительные частицы подробно описаны для таких языков, как японский и кантонский китайский, однако не вполне осмыслены  в таком качестве для бурятского языка. В статье анализируются семантические и морфосинтаксические свойства наиболее употребительных бурятских заключительных частиц, а также дается обзор феномена заключительных частиц в ареальной перспективе (анализируются данные некоторых других монгольских языков, а также языков других семей Восточной и Юго-Восточной Азии). Высказывается предположение об ареальном характере заключительных частиц в бурятском языке.

The paper provides a bibliographical survey of monographic publications in the field of Mongolic historical and comparative studies that appeared in the last four decades. It covers scholarly literature on general historical and comparative linguistics, historical phonology and writing systems, historical and comparative grammar, etymological studies, Middle Mongol philology, and modern Mongolic language varieties. A conclusion is made that the recent development of Mongolic historical comparative linguistics has seen what can be termed the Great Move East, i.e. the gradual shift of Mongolic linguistic studies from Europe and the western part of Russia directly to the areas inhabited by speakers of the Mongolic languages. There is a considerable progress in the study of various aspects of the Mongolic languages, but serious gaps are also observed, e.g. the lack of a historical comparative analysis of Mongolic syntax and an etymological or comparative dictionary based on modern linguistic methodology.

The previously non-discussed ancient east Asian Wanderwort araj~aran ‘interjection; barely, suddenly’ is discussed and presented in great detail, and traced throughout many languages phonologically and semantically. The root has also undergone local secondary semantic developments in places, meanings which have then been borrowed into neighboring languages, some already carrying the same root, some thus borrowing only the new semantic meaning. After detailed lexical documentation of this root in various languages, a possible semantic map is presented at the end of the study. Language groups and languages involved in this very geographically spread out Wanderwort are the Turkic, Tungusic, Mongolic and Yukaghir languages, as well as Tocharian B, Selkup, Kott, Russian, Japanese and Iñupiatun Eskimo.

ADDENDUM: Note that the final version of this paper has been published on the 17th of December, 2020 as: Piispanen, P.S. (2020) An Ancient East Asian Wanderwort. Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 73(4), p. 569-586.
https://doi.org/10.1556/062.2020.00029

The Khüis Tolgoi inscription (early 7th c. AD), originally located in the vicinity of Tsetserleg city, nowadays in the basement of the National Museum of Archeology, Ulaanbaator, is written in a Mongolic language that is reasonably close to Middle Mongolian of 13-14th c. AD, but predates the latter by six centuries. The importance of this discovery is two-fold: first, it turned out that the oldest written language of the "Altaic" type on the steppe is Mongolic, and not Turkic. Second, it radically changes our existing notions about the language contacts in Central Asia and their directions.

The paper deals with the reflexes of Proto-Mongolic *VgV and *VxV groups as occurred in the Dada yu/Beilu yiyu, a little known Sino-Mongol glossary dated between 1567 and 1603. The results obtained from a detailed examination of the glossary’s language material in a historical comparative perspective allow us to draw some nontrivial conclusions about the origin and development of these groups in the Mongolic languages. For the *VgV group, the following reflexes are attested: (1.1) *VgV > VgV (e.g. buγu ‘deer’ < *bugu, hünegen ‘fox’ < *hünegen; regular development), (1.2) *VgV > VxV (e.g. toχorawun ‘crane (bird)’< *toguraxun, üdüxü ‘vagina’ < *hütügü/n; irregular development also present in Kalmuck, Buryat, and the Gansu-Qinghai languages), (1.3) *VgV > VkV (ökeʨi ‘elder sister’< *egeči; occasional development also observed in Middle Mongol sources, as well as in some modern Mongolic languages). The *VxV group has the following reflexes: (2.1) *VxV > VwV (e.g. nawur ‘lake’ < *naxur, seriwün ‘cool’ < *serixün; largely attested in Middle Mongol, but only irregularly occurring in the modern Mongolic languages such as Dagur) (2.2) *VxV > V’V (e.g. ari’un ‘clean, pure’ < *arïxun, dolo’an ‘seven’ < *doloxan; hiatus typical for Middle Mongol, but not represented in modern Mongolic languages), (2.3) *VxV > VV (e.g. aula ‘mountain’ < *axula, neü- ‘to move, migrate’ < *nexü-; diphthongs well attested in late Middle Mongol and partly preserved in Dagur, Moghol, Dongxiang, Mongghul, and Mangghuer), (2.4) *VhV > V̄ (e.g. berē ‘club, cudgel’ < *berixe, tōsu ‘dust’ < *toxasu/n; contracted long vowels found in most modern Mongolic languages). A combination of archaic (2.1, 2.2) and innovative (2.3, 2.4) features in the Mongol idiom reflected in the glossary leads us to the conclusion that it may be identified as belonging to a transitional stage between Middle Mongol and Modern Mongolian, with a statistically significant predominance of linguistic features characteristic of the latter. The cases of irregular and unpredictable fluctuation between intervocalic *g, *k, *x in the Mongolic languages are discussed as well. A new scheme of the development of Proto-Mongolic intervocalic velars from a common source is proposed by the author, which may refine and elaborate the existing Proto-Mongolic reconstructions.

This paper represents a long-needed criticism of Miller (2005) which carried over the famous discussion of Turkic böz 'fabric' in the micro-'Altaic' context even further East to Japan and Korea. I demonstrate that Miller's arguments fail on historical linguistics and philological grounds for all five putative 'Altaic' families due in large extent to the faulty nature of either his argumentation or data, or both. Twelve years ago Roy A. Miller (further: RAM) again attempted to divorce Turkic böz 'fabric' from its likely Mediterranean sources, such as Arabic bazz and/or Greek βύσσος and establish an indigenous 'Altaic' etymology that at the same time accounts for loanwords (Miller 2005).

This paper presents a new approach to reading the Preclassical Mongol inscription on the 1413 Tyr stele, now kept at Primorye State Museum named after V. K. Arsenyev (Vladivostok, Russia). The stele contains texts carved in three languages: Chinese, Jurchen, and Mongol. The Jurchen and Mongol texts are very close to each other in content , as well as in the grammatical structure of words and sentences. For this reason, some missing and previously illegible parts of the Mongol text can be reconstructed and read on the basis of the Jurchen version. Lines 2 and 3 of the Mongol inscription have already been discussed earlier in a separate publication. In the present paper, the same approach, combined with a careful investigation of all the existing photos and rubbings of the inscription, is extended to lines 4 to 9.

The book examines partial interfixed reduplications in the standard Turkic languages.
Generally no longer productive, this type of reduplication served primarily to intensify adjectives and adverbs. The reduplicated anlaut was prepended to the the base, and a lexically determined consonant inserted in between, e.g. Tksh. kara ‘black’ → ka.p.kara ‘jet-black’, Trkm. gūry ‘dry’ → gu.s.gūry ‘completely dry’.
Unlike most previous works, this book considers the phenomenon comparatively across twenty modern languages, is based on possibly complete collections of examples, and approaches the subject from a diachronic perspective, combining etymological, historical-comparative, and quantitative methodology.

The paper deals with the noun case system of the ''Dada yu/Beilu yiyu'', a little known Sino-Mongol glossary dated between 1567 and 1603. Of seven grammatical cases commonly distinguished in Proto-Mongolic, only four are attested in the Mongol language material of the glossary: nominative (the unmarked basic stem), genitive, accusative, and dative. The forms, functions and grammatical meanings of these cases are thoroughly discussed in the paper. Some features may be considered to be linguistic archaisms, e.g. formal coincidence of the accusative marker +i with one of the morphonological allomorphs of the genitive, or the variant ending +in ~ +Un used after consonant stems. However, there are a number of clearly innovative developments, such as the dative ending shape +DU < *+DU/r. In addition, some idiosyncratic features of the glossary can be distinguished as well, e.g. no overt morphosyntactic marking on the dependent in possessive phrases. A conclusion can be made that the case system of the language variety as attested in the ''Dada yu/Beilu yiyu'' may have reflected a transitional stage between Middle Mongol and Modern Mongolian.

The previously non-discussed ancient east Asian Wanderwort araj~aran 'interjection; barely, suddenly' is discussed and presented in great detail, and traced throughout many languages phonologically and semantically. The root has also undergone local secondary semantic developments in places, meanings which have then been borrowed into neighboring languages, some already carrying the same root, some borrowing only the new semantic meaning. After detailed lexical documentation of this root in various languages, a possible semantic map is presented at the end of the study. Language groups and languages involved in this very geographically spread out Wanderwort are the Turkic, Tungusic, Mongolic and Yukaghir languages, as well as Tocharian B, Sel'kup, Kamass, Kott, Russian, Japanese and Iñupiatun.

ADDENDUM: This final version of the paper has been published on the 17th of December, 2020 as: Piispanen, P.S. (2020) An Ancient East Asian Wanderwort. Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 73(4), p. 567-584.
A direct link to the original publication is found here: https://akjournals.com/view/journals/062/73/4/article-p567.xml

In this paper, numerous Turkic and Mongolic bird names etymologies are discussed, suggested, verified and commented upon. Reconstructed roots are given or revised, and various borrowings, both on the proto-language level, and on the local individual language level are summarized. The Turkic birds in question are species of the white stork, harrier, lark, falcon, tern, quail, goshawk, kestrel, starling, pheasant, wild turkey, swan, chicken and pigeon, and on the Mongolic side the black-cock, pheasant, swan, wild turkey and chicken.

[DRAFT PAPER VERSION - NON-SUBMITTED]

Note: I advice any reader to consider this draft version merely a brief notes version. This draft paper is now being extensively edited and rewritten - next iteration will be posted some time in the future. It is important to note that some important references are missing, and that several of the comparisons made here have already been made in some other sources. Then, this draft paper version (v1) will be completely removed from the site and exchanged with the upcoming version (rev2). At that point, an entirely new Session dealing with that version instead will be commenced.... hoping to see as many as possible of you there!

(An unpublished paper from 2013 containing some opinions on the historical phonology of Turkic which I no longer entertain)
The ambiguous verbal suffix -zU occurs only twice in the whole Old Turkic corpus. In the introduction, it is concluded that it is a virtually obsolete causal converb.
Having analysed the sound change *ǰ > z in Turkic by means of various cases, *-r2U and *-ǰU are presented as two equally possible Proto-Turkic reconstructions of the converbial suffix -zU. Since internal evidence is indecisive in reconstructing -zU as *-r2U or *-ǰU, external evidence is taken into account.
The Mongolic converbs in -ǰi ~ -ǰU and -rUn are suggested as two possible cognates of -zU. Both are discussed in detail, and the Mongolic converb in -ǰi ~ -ǰU is ruled out due to its semantic discrepancy. It is concluded that Mongolic -rUn might be the cognate of Turkic -zU whereas Mongolic -ǰi ~ -ǰU is a borrowing of the Turkic converb in *-dI.

This article examines ideological constructions of the domestic sphere in metalinguistic commentary about loss in Buryat, a contracting language of Siberia whose speakers are shifting to Russian. Although calling Buryat “just a kitchen language” suggests that the kitchen is linguistically devalued, a popular joke told among bilingual speakers and its use-in-context show that kitchens can also be invoked to positively demarcate an inner sphere of comfortable, “offstage” interaction, to authenticate otherwise derided ways of speaking, and to build solidarity. The kitchen emerges as a complex discursive resource for commenting on—and for re-creating—pragmatic rules for the use of different codes and registers.

According to linguistic classification, Dagur is one of the archaic Mongolic languages. This language is unique, connected to Old Mongol language Khitan, and it has a close relationship with Manchu and Solon Ewenki—two Tungusic languages. The aim of this paper is to show the uniqueness of Dagur language through the representation of the names of body parts from etymological aspect. This paper tries to shed light on how body part names may play in the determination of Dagur language’s place among other Mongolic languages

The present Khamnigan-Mongolian text is a collection of basic sentences in daily conversation, which was told by Ms. Sammin, a native speaker in Ewenke Sum, Inner Mongolia, China.  We used here the questionnaire 'Translation of daily conversation', which was prepared by the research group for the Mongolic languages of Inner Mongolia University in 1980s.
As I already mentioned in Yamakoshi (2006), many sentence materials of other Mongolic languages have been collected along this questionnaire. These sentence materials are very useful for comparative study of the Mongolic languages.  The present collection of Khamnigan-Mongolian sentences is hopefully another contribution not only to the comparative study of Mongolic languages, but also to the descriptive study of this less documented language.

Book review: BLAŽEK, V. Altaic Languages - History of research, survey, classification, and a sketch of comparative grammar, in collaboration with M. Schwarz and O. Srba, Brno: Masaryk University Press, 2019, pp. 360, ISBN: 978-80-210-9321-8

Proceeding of the 1st Conference on Central Asian languages and Linguistics (at Indiana University, 2014-05-16).
This paper aims to examine the function of “participles (or also called as “verbal nouns”)” in Shinekhen Buryat (SB; one of the Mongolic languages) and to suggest the following two points: 1) It seems to be difficult to define the prototypical participles in SB as inflectional verb > adjective transposition; 2) we should recategorize the participles in SB. In SB, Some of the participles are more verbal and more inflectional. These are “participles” of the inflectional paradigm of verbs. On the other hand, the other forms are less verbal and less inflectional, i.e., more derivational. We should categorize those suffixes into syntactic derivational suffix.
We can find the same problem about participles on the other Altaic languages. Participles in Altaic languages are different from those in Indo-European languages on their verbal properties. It would be important for not only linguistic description, but also for language-teaching to examine the function of each “participle” found on previous grammar.
Keywords: participles, verbal nouns, inflection, derivation, Mongolic languages.

The article deals with the diachronic development of some phonetic phenomena in the vowel systems of the Dagur and Buryad languages. The author states that the phenomena under question should be regarded as contact-induced, especially as far as Dagur and some dialects of Buryad are concerned. At the same time one cannot not completely deny the possibility of genetically conditioned similarities in both languages.

The paper presents comparative analysis of the case forms in Dagur and Buryad. The author gives interpretation of ways of development of these forms from possible comments on how the case markers developed from common Mongolic state. The analysis lets us to ascertain the formal similarity of markers in Dagur and Buryad, which is due to the common origin. Above all the Dagur language has retained a number of archaic features, which Buryad lacks.

An  emerging  area of linguistic typology is sound change within particular types of phonological systems (Honeybone & Salmons 2014). Vowel harmony systems, for which many good descriptions now exist (Vago 1980; Ohala 1994), provide fertile ground for such investigations. In this paper, I examine  sound change in language families with well-understood vowel harmony systems in both the proto-language and the modern languages: Turkic (Johanson & Csató 1998), Tungusic (Li 1996; Ko 2012), Mongolic (Janhunen 2003a, and Uralic (Abondolo 1998), as well as information from Chukotko-Kamchatkan, Nez Perce and Nilo-Saharan languages.  By examining the changes in vowels between the proto-languages and modern languages, I have synthesized the changes found in these systems into a typology. This typology appears to be true regardless of VH type, whether a system is front/back, high/low, or ±ATR. These changes can often create an additional rounding harmony where one was not previously present. The broader patterns of sound changes within VH systems can be categorized into three types: vowel space trading, neutralization at the edges of vowel space, and multiple vowel coalescence. Within these patterns, there are two types of phonetic behavior: cases where a vowel change results in a vowel that behaves according to its new phonetic features, and new vowels that continue to behave within the VH system according to their old phonetic features.
Vowel space trading involves mid-vowels rising to high positions and high-vowels lowering to mid. This group of sound changes tends to involve parallel shifts without any neutralization; the mid-vowels rise, often conditioned by a following high vowel, and high-vowels lower to mid position. This shift is more common in back vowels than in front vowels, but accounts exist for both. This most greatly impacts change in harmony systems with height and rounding as harmonizing features; when the vowels behave according to their new phonetic values, they trigger the opposite set of harmonizing vowels.
Neutralization at the edges of the vowel space involves VH oppositions mergers) to [i], [a], or [u], each respectively the result of a merger of harmonic vowel pairs and is common in the Tungusic and Mongolic languages (Li 1996; Zheng 1996; Ko 2012; Joseph and Whitman 2012; Janhunen 2003:5). Phonological structure often has functional underpinnings, typically rooted in perceptually contrastive features of vowels. Typological work on consonant and vowel inventories often reflects these statements, such as the most common three-vowel system being [i, a, u]. Importantly, in this typology, I found no neutralization to mid or central vowels.
Finally, there is a group of common changes that create new oppositions through vowel coalescence. Most often, a new vowel is created from an existing vowel when a high front vowel /i/ occurs later in the stem. These innovations have the additional effect of altering the harmonizing features of the VH system or introducing new features to the counterpart contrasts, as found in Manchu (Li 1996). Now the vowels more strongly contrast by height rather than simply [ATR]. Coalescence also tends to create new oppositions (rounding), re-orient a VH system, or expand the domain of rounding.
Through this study, I show that cross-linguistic patterns of vowel harmony change within these systems can be generalized and classified. Ultimately, this work contributes evidence to the literature on the functional dispersion theory of contrast, especially with regard to maximization distinctiveness of contrasts and minimization articulatory efforts (Flemming 2005; Flemming 2008), and is also a case study that conforms to ideas about vowel acquisition (Joanisse and Seidenberg 1998; Walker 2011). While historical linguists have been skeptical of these motivations for sound change when applied more generally, it appears to hold at least in the complex systems of vowel harmony.

In this article, the author analyzes the issue of additional modality in modern Mongolian. Additional modality is fundamentally connected with the utterance, and defines the personal attitude, subjective assessment, and approval of the speaker of the utterance. The main function of additional modality is to express assessment on the part of the speaker. Assessment evaluating modality, which expresses the emotional state of the speaker, can be divided into two categories considering its favorable or positive characteristics and negative or unfavorable characteristics.
  The modal meaning of assessment, expressing the speaker's positive emotional state, can be divided into such general semantic fields as the following: joy (rejoicing, gratitude, approval, and contentedness); permission (concession, recognition, support, and justification); and pride (admiration, respect, praise, blessing, compassion).
  The modal meaning of assessment, expressing the speaker's negative emotional state, can be divided into such general semantic fields as the following: sadness (melancholy, offense, recoil, regret); rejection (interdiction, protest, dislike, accusation); and malice (underrating, indifference, abuse, cursing, and hatred).
  Expressing the personal opinion of the speaker is one constituent function of additional modality, particularly of the modal meaning that reflects the speaker's emotional state.

Keywords: additional modality, subjective assessment, positive and negative characteristics, semantic fields, emotional state