Mongolian language

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The Mongolian language (, Mongɣul kele, cyrillic: Монгол хэл, Mongol khel) is the best-known member of the Mongolic language family and the primary language of most of the residents of Mongolia, where it is officially written with the Cyrillic alphabet. It is also spoken in some of the surrounding areas in northern China, the Russian Far East and Kyrgyzstan. The majority of speakers in Mongolia speak the Khalkha (or Halh) dialect, while those in China speak the Chahar, Oyirad, and Barghu-Buryat dialect groups.

Classification

Mongolian is a Mongolic language. The Altaic theory proposes that the Mongolic family is a member of the larger Altaic family, which would also include the Turkic and Tungusic languages. Related languages include Kalmyk spoken near the Caspian Sea and Buryat of East Siberia, as well as a number of minor languages in China along with the Nikudari and Mogholi languages of Afghanistan.

Geographic distribution

Over two million people speak Mongolian throughout Mongolia. There are also up to three million speakers in Northern China, who, however, form only a shrinking minority of the overall population of Inner Mongolia, especially of its cities. Khalkha Mongolian is the national language of Mongolia. In Inner Mongolia, the standard Mongolian language is based on Chahar Mongolian.

Dialects

The more recognised dialect is Khalkha which is spoken in the capital of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, and most of Mongolia. In China, the dialect of the Plain Blue Banner in central Inner Mongolia, which belongs to the Chahar dialect group, is the official pronunciation standard.

Grammar

The grammar is based primarily on urban Khalkha Mongolian, but much of the description of is also valid for Southern Central Mongolian, for example Chahar.

Lexicon

The Mongolian vocabulary includes historic loanwords especially from Old Turkic, Sanskrit (often through Uigur), Tibetan, Chinese and Tungusic and keeps adopting more recent ones from Russian, Chinese and English. Commissions in the Mongolian state have been busy translating new terminology into Mongolian, so that Mongolian words such as 'president' ("generalizer") and 'beer' <šar ajrag> ("yellow kumys") exist (though this one is second to Russian ). There are quite a few loan translations, e.g. ‘population’ (“person mouth”) from Chinese rénkŏu (人口; 'population').

Morphology

Modern Mongolian is an agglutinative, exclusively suffixing language; the suffixes are most often composed of a single morpheme. It has a rich number of morphemes to build up more complex words from simple roots. For example, the word consists of the root ‘to be’, an epenthetic <-g->, the causative <-uul-> (then ‘to found’), the derivative suffix <–laga> that forms nouns created by the action (‘organisation’) and the complex suffix <–ynh> denoting something that belongs to the modified word (<-yn> would be genitive).

Nominal compounds are quite frequent. Some derivational verbal suffixes are rather productive, e.g. 'to speak', 'to speak with each other'. Formally, verbal suffixes that create independent words can roughly be divided into three classes: final verbs, which can only be used sentence-finally, i.e. <-na> (mainly future or generic statements) or –ø (second person imperative); participles (often called “verbal nouns”), which can be used clause-finally or attributively, i.e. <-san> (probably perfective, otherwise past) or <-maar> (‘want to’); and converbs, which can link clauses or function adverbially, i.e. <-ž> (qualifies for any adverbial function or neutrally connects two sentences) or <-tal> (the action of the main clause takes place until the action expressed by the suffixed verb begins).

Roughly speaking, Mongolian has eight cases: nominative (unmarked), genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, instrumental, comitative and directional. In addition, a number of postpositions exist that usually govern genitive, ablative or comitative case or an oblique form, that is, the stem plus sometimes -Vn either for lexical historical reasons or analogy (thus maybe becoming an attributive case suffix). Nouns can take reflexive-possessive clitics indicating that the marked noun is possessed by the subject of the sentence: I friend-[reflexive-possessive] kill-[perfective] ‘I killed my friend’. There are also rather noun-like adjectives that will be converted into nouns when taking any case suffix, but cannot function nominatively without the multifunctional clitic . Plural does not need to be marked, but plural suffixes are becoming more and more common.

Personal pronouns exist for the first and second person, while the old demonstrative pronouns have come to form third person (proximal and distal) pronouns. Other word (sub-)classes include interrogative pronouns, conjunctions (which take participles), spatials and quite a few particles. (Word classes are treated with some simplification here. For a more precise treatment, see Sechenbaatar 2003.)

Negation is mostly expressed by <-güj> after participles and by the negation particle after nouns and adjectives; negation particles preceding the verb (for example in converbal constructions) exist, but tend to be replaced by analytical constructions.

Syntax

Phrase structure

The nominal phrase has the order: demonstrative pronoun/numeral, adjective, noun. Attributive sentences usually (…) precede the whole NP. Titles or occupations of people, low numerals indicating groups and focus clitics are put behind the head noun. Possessive pronouns (in different forms) may either precede or follow the NP. E.g. we-genitive meet-perfective that beautiful young_man-ablative focus ‘even from that beautiful young man that we have met’, Dorj teacher our ‘our teacher Dorj’.

The verbal phrase consists of the predicate’s complements and the adverbials modifying it in front of it and, mainly if the predicate is sentence-final, modal particles behind it. E.g. S/he without_saying it-accusative write-perfective particle ‘She wrote it without saying [i.e. that she would do so] (so I can assure you).’ In this clause the adverbial should precede the complement as it is itself derived from a verb and could take ‘it’ as its complement. If the adverbial was an adjective à la 'fast', it could immediately precede the predicate. There are also instances in which the adverb must immediately precede the predicate.

The predicate itself may consist of a noun or an adjective with or without a copula, but if the subject isn’t marked by or as topic , a bare noun will look a little awkward. Participles will never take a copula. Consider this example: 'kills regularly' 'kills regularly (as I have come to know by some time of observance)': though would be a mere copula if put behind a noun, in this case it indicates referentiality. However, any participle can be followed by an auxiliary carrying additional information. For example, if the verbal noun expressing regularity is chosen, the information “perfective” will have to be encoded in an auxiliary: 'killed regularly' If the speaker wished to express how s/he acquired such knowledge, an additional could be added. Simple progressive aspect is built up by a verb, the neutral converb <-ž> and the auxiliary . In place of , some other verbs could express other aspects like completion: drink-CV leave-perfective 'drank up'. However, a few aktionsarten may be expressed adverbially: begin-CV drink-perfective 'began to drink' (or with the same meaning).

Clauses

Unmarked phrase order is subject, object, predicate. While the predicate generally has to remain in clause-final position, the other phrases are free to change order or to wholly disappear. The topic tends to be placed clause-initially, new information rather before the predicate. Noun phrase heads modified by long attributive clauses will for the sake of understandability be placed clause-initially. Topic can form a phrase of its own (with or even ), but this option isn’t extensively used.

Mongolian has passive and causative voice. In a passive sentence the entirely oblique agent takes either dative or instrumental case, the first of which is more common. The verb takes a suffix <-gd->. In the causative, the person caused to do something would take instrumental, or accusative, if the simple verb would have been intransitive, and the verb would take <-uul->. Causative morphology is also used in some passive contexts: I s/he-dative fool-caustive-perfective ‘I was fooled by her/him’. Animacy is an important component, thus English 'The bread was eaten by me' would not be acceptable in Mongolian. <-ld-> (reciprocal), <-tsgaa-> (plurative) and <-lts-> (cooperative) are voice constructions as well.

Compound sentences

One way to conjoin clauses is to have the first clause end in a converb. An example: I it-accusative find-conditional_converbal_suffix you-dative give-future ‘If I find it I’ll give it to you’. Some verbal nouns in the instrumental or most often dative function very similar to converbs: above sentence with find-imperfective-dative ‘When I find it I’ll give it to you’. Quite often, postpositions govern complete clauses. In contrast, conjunctions take verbal nouns without case: become_tired-perfective because sleep-witnessed_perfective 'I slept because I was tired'. Finally, there are usually clause-initial particles with relating meaning: I find-perfective but you-dative give-imperfective-negation ‘I’ve found it, but I won’t give it to you’.

Mongolian has a complementizer auxiliary verb very similar to Japanese to iu. literary means ‘to say’ and in converbal form precedes a verbum sentiendi et dicendi. As a verbal noun (with or case) it can form a subset of complement clauses. As it may function as an evidentialis marker.

Except for clauses governed by certain postpositions, attribute clauses, clauses with complementizer and some very short converbal clauses (which some speakers reject anyway), Mongolian clauses are in strictly paratactic order, such that a hypotactic sentence like 'We will, IF you help us, repair the damage.' could in this order with the same syntactic relations not be constructed in Mongolian.

In the subordinate clause the subject, if different from the subject of main clause, sometimes has to take accusative or genitive case. Subjects in either instrumental or ablative case marginally occur as well. Subjects of attribute clauses in which the head has a function (as is the case for all English relative clauses) demand that if the subject is not the head it has to take instrumental or rather genitive case, e.g. that_one-genitive eat-perfective meal ‘the meal that s/he had eaten’.

Sounds

The full inventory of long and short vowels can only occur in word-initial syllables. In word-internal and word-final syllables, vowels are reduced. Long vowels can only appear in initial syllables. In many non-initial syllables, there is, phonemically, no vowel at all (for example, 'two', 'work', and 'neutral' are, phonemically, /xɔjr/, /atʃɮ/, and /saːrmɡ/, respectively (examples from Svantesson et al)). An epenthetic vowel is allophonically inserted, and the form of the epenthetic vowel is predictable from the preceding vowel: the epenthetic vowel is just a centralized version of the vowel in the preceding syllable. In the examples given, the words are phonetically [xɔjɔ̆r], [atʃĭɮ], and [saːrmăɡ]. However, in the epenthetic vowel in a syllable after /u/ is a centralized /e/, and if there is an /i/ in the preceding syllable, then an epenthetic vowel's phonetic form is determined by the vowel in the syllable preceding the /i/, that is, two syllables before the epenthetic vowel. Another factor affecting the form of the epenthetic vowel is the preceding consonant: if it is postalveolar or palatalized, then the epenthetic vowel is a centralized /i/, as in [atʃĭɮ].

No discussion of the phonology of Mongolian would be complete without discussing the language's vowel harmony. Mongolian groups vowels into two groups. Traditionally, these groups have been seen as "front vowels" and "back vowels," but Svantesson et al analyze the groups instead as (what they term) "non-pharyngeal" (e, u, o) and "pharyngeal" (a,ʊ,ɔ). /i/ is a neutral vowel, and does not belong in either group. The type of vowel which occurs in the first syllable of a word determines what vowels can occur in the rest of the word. If the first vowel is pharyngeal, then every vowel of the word must be either /i/ or a pharyngeal vowel. Similarly, if the first vowel is a non-pharyngeal vowel, then every vowel of the word must be either /i/ or a non-pharyngeal vowel.

Vowels

	Front		Central		Back
	Short	Long	Short	Long	Short	Long
Close	i	iː			u	uː
Near-Close					ʊ	ʊː
Close-Mid	e	eː			o	oː
Open-mid					ɔ	ɔː
Open			a	aː

Mongolian also has four diphthongs, /ui/, /ʊi/, /ɔi/, and /ai/. Short /o/ is phonetically [ɵ].

Consonants

		Labial		Dental		Palatal	Velar		Uvular
		Plain	Palatalized	Plain	Palatalized	Palatal	Palatalized	Plain	Uvular
Nasal		m	mʲ	n	nʲ			ŋ
Plosive	Voiceless aspirated	(pʰ)	(pʲʰ)	tʰ	tʲʰ		(kʰ)	(kʲʰ)
	Voiceless	p	pʲ	t	tʲ
	Voiced						ɡʲ	ɡ	ɢ
Affricate	Voiceless aspirated				tsʰ	tʃʰ
Affricate	Voiceless	(f)			ts	tʃ
Fricative					s	ʃ	xʲ	x
Lateral fricative				ɮ	ɮʲ
Trill				r	rʲ
Approximant		w̜	w̜ʲ			j

Mongolian lacks a true phoneme /l/; instead, it has a voiced alveolar lateral fricative, /ɮ/. Syllable-finally, /n/ (if it doesn't precede another /n/) is realized as [ŋ]. The consonants in perentheses occur only in loanwords.

Writing systems

Mongolian has been written in a variety of alphabets over the years.

The traditional Mongolian script was adapted from Uyghur script in 1208, although it has undergone transformations, and occasionally been supplemented by other scripts. The Mongolian alphabet was used in Mongolia until 1931, when it was temporarily replaced by the Latin alphabet, and finally by Cyrillic in 1937. The traditional alphabet was abolished completely by the pro-Soviet government in 1941, and a short-lived attempt to reintroduce the traditional alphabet after 1990 was abandoned after some years.

In the People's Republic of China, the Mongolian language is a co-official language with Mandarin Chinese in some regions, notably the entire Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The traditional alphabet has always been used there, although Cyrillic was considered briefly before the Sino-Soviet split. There are two types of written Mongolian used in China: the classical script, which is official among Mongols nationwide, and the Clear script, used predominantly among Oirats in Xinjiang.

The modified Cyrillic alphabet used for Mongolian is as follows:

Cyrillic	Name	IPA	Transliteration	Cyrillic	Name	IPA	Transliteration
Аа	а	a	a	Пп	пэ	(pʰ ), (pʰʲ )	(p )
Бб	бэ	p,pʲ, b	b	Рр	эр	r,rʲ	r
Вв	вэ	w,wʲ	v	Сс	эс	s	s
Гг	гэ	ɡ,ɡʲ,ɢ´, k	g	Тт	тэ	tʰ,tʰʲ	t
Дд	дэ	t,tʲ	d	Уу	у	ʊ	u
Ее	е		je	Үү	ү	u	ü
Ёё	ё	jɔ	jo	Фф	фэ~фа~эф	(f )	(f )
Жж	жэ	tʃ	ž	Хх	хэ~ха	x,xʲ	h
Зз	зэ	ts	z	Цц	цэ	tsʰ	ts
Ии	и	i	i	Чч	чэ	tʃʰ	č
Йй	хагас и	i	j	Шш	ша~эш	ʃ	š
Кк	ка	(k ), (kʲ )	(k )	Щщ	ща~эшчэ	(stʃ )	(šč )
Лл	эл	ɮ,ɮʲ	l	Ъ ъ	хатуугийн тэмдэг	"
Мм	эм	m,mʲ	m	Ыы	эр үгийн ы	i	y
Нн	эн	n,nʲ	n	Ьь	зөөлний тэмдэг	ʲ	'
Оо	о	ɔ	o	Ээ	э	e	e
Өө	ө	o	ö	Юю	ю	jʊ, ju	ju
				Яя	я	ja, j	ja

Үү and Өө are sometimes written as Vv and Єє, mainly when using Russian software or keyboards that don't support them.

History

Prehistoric Mongolic

The Mongolian language originated from the Proto-Mongolic language that was spoken at the time when Činggis qaγan united a number of tribes speaking Late Pre-Proto-Mongolic languages. The Proto-Mongolic language is the origin of all subsequent Mongolic languages. Insofar as its elements are preserved in these languages, it is possible to speak of Common Mongolic. There are languages believed to be related to Proto-Mongolic, namely Tabghach (the language of the founders of the Northern Wei dynasty) and Khitan. In the case of Tabghach, the surviving evidence is very sparse, thus one can state that a generic relationship is possible. In the case of Khitan, there is rich evidence, but most of it is written in the two Khitan scripts that have as yet not been deciphered. However, from the available evidence it has to be concluded that a generic relationship to Mongolic is extremely likely. The common ancestor language of these two languages and Proto-Mongolic is termed Pre-Proto-Mongolic.

Historical Mongolian

The first surviving Mongolian text is the Stele of Yisüngge, a report on sports in Mongolian script on stone, that is most often dated at the verge of 1224 and 1225. Other early sources are written in Mongolian, Phagspa (decrets), Chinese (the Secret history), Arabic (dictionaries) and a few other western scripts. These comprise the Middle Mongolian language that was spoken from the 13th to the early 15th or late 16th century. The documents in Mongolian script show some distinct linguistic characteristics and are therefore often distinguished by terming their language Preclassical Mongolian. The next distinct period is Classical Mongolian that is dated from the 17th to the 19th century. It is a written language with a high degree of standardization in orthography and syntax that sets it quite apart from the subsequent Modern Mongolian. The most notable documents in this language are the Mongolian Kanjur and Tanjur as well as a bunch of chronicles.

Changes in phonology

Consonants

Middle Mongolian documents show only two velar plosives and (and one allophone for each), but in some instances the disappeared and in others not. There is no hint as to how this might be related to contextual factors, and while there is a hypothesis that this is related to distinctive vowel length or stress , it is a matter of dispute whether there is any factual evidence for this. Now there is a word-initial that disappeared during the Middle Mongolian stage. This might be the same phoneme as one of the instances of (or possibly ). Thus, it is likely that x > h > Ø. Eg Phagspa , Preclassical Mongolian , reconstructed in Proto-Mongolic as *haran ‘person’, became Modern Mongolian /aran/. Phagspa čaqa’an, Preclassical čaγaγan, reconstructed for Late Pre-Proto-Mongolic as *ʧʰagahan ‘white’, became Modern Mongolian /ʦʰaga:n/. As also apparent from this example, affricates were fronted in Northern Modern Mongolian dialects such as Khalkha. /kʰ/ was spirantized to /x/ in Ulaanbaatar Khalkha and the Mongolian dialects South of it, eg Preclassical Mongolian , reconstructed as *kʰynty ‘heavy’, became Modern Mongolian /xunt/ (but in Erdenet many speakers will say / kʰunt/). Originally word-final turned into <ŋ>; if *n was originally followed by a vowel that later dropped, it remained unchanged, eg *kʰen became /xiŋ/, but *kʰoina became /xɔin/. After i-breaking, *[ʃ] became phonemic. Consonants that were followed by *i in Proto-Mongolian became palatalized in Modern Mongolian. In some words, word-final *n was dropped with most case forms, but still appeared with the ablative, dative and genitive.

Vowels

Proto-Mongolic had *i, *e, *y, *ø, *u, *o, *a. First, *o and *u were pharyngealized to /ɔ/ and /ʊ/, then *y and *ø were velarized to /u/ and /o/. Thus, the vowel harmony shifted from a velar to a pharyngeal paradigm. *i in the first syllable back-vocalic words was assimilated to the following vowel; in word-initial position it became /ja/. *e followed by *y was rounded to *ø. VhV and VjV sequences where the second vowel was any vowel but *i were monophthongized. Short vowels in any syllable but the first were deleted from the phonetic representation of the word; long vowels in these positions became short vowels.

Eg *imahan (*i becomes /ja/, *h disappears)> *jama:n (instable n drops; vowel reduction> jama(n) ‘goat’

and *emys- (regressive rounding assimilation)> *ømys- (vowel velaization)> *omus- (vowel reduction)> oms- ‘to wear’

Changes in morphology

Nominal system

While most case suffixes did change somewhat in form, ie were shortened, most of the modern case system remained intact. Important changes occurred with the comitative and the dative. The Middle Mongolian comitative <-luγ-a> could not be used attributively, but it was replaced by suffix <-taj> that originally derived adjectives denoting possession of the stem from nouns, eg ‘having a horse’ became ‘having a horse/with a horse’. As this adjective functioned parallel to <ügei> ‘not having’, it has been suggested that a “privative case” (‘without’) has been introduced into Mongolian. There have been three different case suffixes in the dative-locative-directive domain that are grouped in different ways: <-a> as locative and <-dur>, <-da> as dative or <-da> and <-a> as dative and <-dur> as locative , in both cases with some functional overlapping. As seems to be grammaticalized from ‘within’, thus indicating a span of time, the second account seems to be more likely. Finally, the directive of modern Mongolian <-ruu> has been innovated. Gender agreement was abandoned.

Changes in syntax

Word order in clauses with pronominal subject changed from Object-Predicate-Subject to Subject-Object-Predicate.

Notes

References

Γarudi (2002): Dumdadu üy-e-yin mongγul kelen-ü bütüče-yin kelberi-yin sudulul [The study of grammatical forms in Middle Mongolian]. Kökeqota: Öbür mongγul-un arad-un keblel-ün qoriy-a.
Janhunen, Juha (ed.) (2003): The Mongolic languages. London: Routledge.
Janhunen, Juha (2003a): Written Mongol. In: Janhunen 2003: 30-56.
Janhunen, Juha (2003b): Para-Mongolic. In: Janhunen 2003: 391-402.
Janhunen, Juha (2003c): Proto-Mongolic. In: Janhunen 2003: 1-29.
Poppe, Nicholas (1964 [1954]): Grammar of Written Mongolian. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Rybatzki, Volker (2003): Middle Mongol. In: Janhunen 2003: 47-82.
Sechenbaatar, Borjigin (2003): The Chakhar dialect of Mongol - A morphological description. Helsinki: Finno-Ugrian society.
Svantesson, Jan-Olof, Anna Tsendina, Anastasia Karlsson, Vivan Franzén (2005): The Phonology of Mongolian. New York: Oxford University Press.
Toγtambayar, M. (2006): Mongγul kelen-ü kele ǰüiǰigsen yabuča-yin tuqai sudulul [Grammaticalization in Mongolian]. Liyuuning-un ündüsüten-ü keblel-ün qoriy-a.
Tömörtogoo, D. (2005): Mongol dörvölžin üsegijn durashalyn sudalgaa [Research on the Phagspa script]. Ulaanbaatar: IAMS.
Tsedendamba, Ts., C. Möömöö (ed.) (1997): Orčin cagijn mongol hel [Contemporary Mongolian]. Ulaanbaatar.
Tserenpil, D., Rita Kullmann (2005) [1996]: Mongolian grammar. Ulaanbaatar: Admon.

External links

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Mongolian language

Classification

Geographic distribution

Dialects

Grammar

Lexicon

Morphology

Syntax

Phrase structure

Clauses

Compound sentences

Sounds

Vowels

Consonants

Writing systems

History

Prehistoric Mongolic

Historical Mongolian

Changes in phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Changes in morphology

Nominal system

Changes in syntax

Notes

References

Further reading and resources

Mongolian grammars

Specialized research works

Dictionaries

See also

External links