| Middle Mongolian | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in | Mongolia, China, Russia | |
| Language extinction | developed into Classical Mongolian by the 17th century | |
| Language family | Altaic[1]
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| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1 | None | |
| ISO 639-2 | – | |
| ISO 639-3 | xng | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Middle Mongolian is an ancient Mongolic language formerly spoken in the Mongol Empire and later on in Greater Mongolia during the 13th to 15th century.
Contents |
Definition and historical precessors
Middle Mongolian is close to Common Mongolian, the ancestor language of the modern Mongolic languages, which would to set at the time when Genghis Khan united a number of tribes under his commonand and formed the Mongol clan federation. The term "Middle Mongolian" is somewhat misleading as what was intended[who?] to be "Old Mongolian" in this terminology would today be termed Proto-Mongolic. The existence of another ("old") Mongol clan federation in Mongolia during the 12. century is historic, but there is no language material from this period. The Khitan language seems to share a common ancestor with Proto-Mongolic, thus is further remote.
Corpus
Middle Mongolian survived in a number of scripts, namely notably Phagspa (decrets during the Yuan Dynasty), Arabic (dictionaries), Chinese, Mongolian script and a few western scripts. Its first surviving document is the Stele of Yisüngge, a sports report, in Mongolian writing that was already fairly conventionalized then. It is most often dated at the verge of 1224 and 1225.[2] By far the most notable document of Middle Mongolian is the Secret History of the Mongols which must originally have been written in Mongolian script, but only survives as a textbook for learning Mongolian from the Ming period, thus reflecting the pronunciation of Middle Mongolian from the second half of the 14th century. Furthermore it is left as the language of the documents issued by the Mongolian Great Qans during the Yuan period.
Phonology
Middle Mongolian had the consonant phonemes /p, m, tʰ, t, s, n, l, r, t͡ʃʰ, t͡ʃ, j, kʰ, k, h/ and the vowel phonemes /i, e, y, ø, a, u, o/.[3] The main difference to older approaches[4] is that <γ> is identified with /h/ and /ɡ/ (sometimes as [p] before /u/ and /y/), so that *pʰ[5] for Proto-Mongolic cannot be reconstructed from internal evidence that used to be based solely on word-initial /h/ and the then rather incomplete data from Monguor.
Grammar
Middle Mongolian is an agglutinating language that makes nearly exclusive use of suffixes. The word order is subject-object-predicate if the subject is a noun and also object-predicate-subject if it is a pronoun. Arabic Middle Mongolian rather freely allows for predicate-object, which is due to language contact.[6] There are nine cases, the nominative being unmarked. The verbal suffixes can be divided into finite suffixes, participles and converbal suffixes. Some of the finite suffixes inflect for subject number and gender. Adjectives preced their modificatum and agree in number with it.
Voice
Middle Mongolian exhibits a passive construction that is peculiar to it and maybe Buryat as well, but is not present in the other dialects or or the in other Mongolic languages . While it might also have fulfilled the function to foreground the patient, it usually seems to mark actions which either affect the subject directly or indirectly affect it in a harmful way.
- belgütei teyin čabčiqdaju bö’et (§131)
- (person name) so chop-passive-converbum_imperfecti be_converbum_perfecti
- ‘Belgütei, having been chopped in that manner’
- ke’üt minu qat bolju’u ke’ekdemüi bi (§112)
- son-plural my khan-plural become-past say-passive-present I
- ‘I am told that my sons have become khans’
- ma’ui setki’esü ene metü čisuban qarqaqdasu (§178)
- bad think-converbum_conditionale this like blood-one’s_own come_out-passive-voluntative
- ‘If I think evil I shall be subject to letting out my blood like this’
- ‘Now if I think evil ..., let my blood by shed like this!’[7]
- naimana irge orqoban eme kö’üben da’uliqdaba bi (§163)
- (tribal name)-dative people homestead-one’s_own woman son-one’s_own pillage-past I
- ‘I have been spoiled by the Naiman in respect of my people and folk and wives and sons’[8]
In §131, Belgütei is negatively affected by an unknown actor. In §112, the addressee is the passive subject. While it is possible for the speech content to be passive subject, it is far less frequent. In §178, the referent of the subject is directly affected, but syntactically, the affected noun phrase is marked with the reflexive-possessive suffix (that on its own can resemble the accusative case in other contexts). In §163, it is not the referent of the subject noun phrase, but people related to it that are directly affected to the distress of the subject. The agent may be marked by the dative (-a and -da, but in contrast to Classical Mongolian never -dur) or the nominative:
- Ögödei qahan ebetčin gürtejü (§272)
- (person name) Khan illness reach-passive-converbum_imperfecti
- ‘Ögödei Khan being befallen by an illness’
- qalqa kene boldaquyu bi (§111)
- shield who-dative become-passive-present I
- ‘By whom shall the office of shield be done for me?’[9]
In both of these examples, the verb stems to which the passive subject is suffixed are intransitive.[10] Passive suffixes get suffixed to phrases, not verbal stems, eg:
- Jamuqa nökötte'en bariju irekdejü (§200)
- (person name) companion-dative-one's_own seize-converbum_imperfecti come-passive-converbum_imperfecti
- 'Jamuqa, being seized by his companions and forced to come (unto Genghis Khan)'[11]
In modern Mongolian, neither the passivization of ir- nor the suffixing of passive suffixes to phrases are possible, so the modern translation of §200 runs:
- Jamuha nöhöddöö barigdaž ireed[12]
- (person name) friend-dative-one's_own seize-passive-converbum_imperfecti come-converbum perfecti
Next to the passive, there is also a causative that is, however, less notable. Subjects of intransitive verbs of clauses that are causativized get accusative marking (as in §79), while former subjects of transitive verbs get marked with dative or instrumental case (as in §188 and §31). In contrast to the passive suffix, the causative suffix doesn't attach to a phrase, but to single verbs (as long as they denote different actions):[13]
- Temüjin-i morila’ulju (§79)
- (person name)-accusative mount_a_horse-causative-converbum_imperfecti
- 'they had Temüjin mount a horse'
- mori-yan Kököčü aqtači-da'an bari’ulju’ui (§188)
- horse-one's_own (person name) keeper_of_geldings-dative-one's_own seize-causative-past
- 'He gave his horse to his equerry Kököčü to hold'[14]
- qarčiqai-bar bari’uluqsan noqut (§31)
- hawk-instrumental seize-causative-perfect_participle duck-plural
- 'the ducks ... caught by his hawk'[15]
- berined-iyen berile’üljü ötökle’üljü qu’urda’ulju (§189)
- daughter-in-law-one's_own to_daughter-in-law-converbum_imperfecti present_ötög-c_i play_qu'ur-c_i
- 'She had her daughter-in-law perform the rites pertaining to a daughter in law, ordered that the ceremonial wine be drunk and the horse fiddle be played, and ...'[16]
- 'making the daughters in law perform the rites of a daughter in law, making one to present the ötög, making one to play the qu'ur'[17]
Next to these morphemes, Middle Mongolian also had suffixes to express reciprocal and cooperative meaning, namely -ldu- ~ -lda- and -lča-.[18] On the other hand, while the plurative/distributive -čaγa- is Common Mongolic, it is not attested in Middle Mongolian.[19]
See also
Notes
- ^ The existence of the Altaic family is controversial. See Altaic languages.
- ^ eg Γarudi 2002: 7
- ^ Svantesson et al. 2005: 111, 118
- ^ eg Poppe 1955
- ^ Note that while Poppe writes /p/ and /b/, he explains it as /p ~ b/ and /pʰ/.
- ^ Rybatzki 2003: 78
- ^ de Rachewiltz 2004: 101
- ^ Cleaves 1982: 87. “wives and sons” might also have been a general term for ‘family’. De Rachewiltz 2004: 82, 591 simply translates "of my people and my wife here" in accordance with his interpretation of §162.
- ^ Cleaves 1982: 46
- ^ Except for the marked translations from de Rachewiltz and Cleaves, all information taken from Poppe 1965. Poppe also argues for a “passive of necessity and possibility”, but part of his examples can be refuted and part are rhetorical questions that don’t fit the category (although they are peculiar).
- ^ Ōsaki 2006: 216. The translation adapts elements from Cleaves 1982: 136, but follows the Mongolian translation below in assuming that ir- is related to the position of Genghis, not of Jamuqa. This interpretation is in full agreement with de Rachewiltz 2004: 129: 'when Jamuqa was brought here by his companions' (cursive marking by de Rachewiltz).
- ^ Bira et al. 2004
- ^ The argument and the four examples below are taken from Ōsaki 2006: 245-247.
- ^ de Rachewiltz 2004: 109, 667. He points out that Kököčü most likely held considerable social status.
- ^ de Rachewiltz 2004: 6
- ^ de Rachewiltz 2004: 110
- ^ Cleaves 1982: 116. The plural reading is perhaps more likely here.
- ^ Гarudi 2002: 336-339
- ^ Rybatzki 2003: 65
References
- Bira, Š. et al. (2004): Mongolyn nuuc tovčoo. Ulaanbaatar: Bolor sudar.
- Cleaves, Francis Woodman (1982): The Secret history of the Mongols. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
- Everding, Karl-Heinz (2006): Herrscherurkunden aus der Zeit des mongolischen Grossreiches für tibetische Adelshäuser, Geistliche und Klöster. Teil 1: Diplomata Mongolica. Mittelmongolische Dokumente in 'Phags pa-Schrift. Edition, Übersetzung, Analyse. Halle (Monumenta Tibetica Historica III,6). -- Karl-Heinz Everding (talk) 19:37, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
- Γarudi (2002): Dumdadu üy-e-yin mongγul kelen-ü bütüče-yin kelberi-yin sudulul. Kökeqota: Öbür mongγul-un arad-un keblel-ün qoriy-a.
- Ōsaki, Noriko (2006): “Genchō hishi” no gengo ni mirareru judōbun. In: Arakawa, Shintarō et al. (ed.): Shōgaito Masahiro sensei tainin kinen ronshū - Yūrajia shogengo no kenkyū. Tōkyō: Yūrajia gengo no kenkyū kankōkai: 175-253.
- Poppe, Nicholas (1955): Introduction to Mongolian comparative studies. Helsinki: Finno-Ugrian society.
- Poppe, Nicholas (1965): The passive constructions in the language of the Secret history. Ural-Altaische Jahrbücher 36: 365-377.
- Rachewiltz, Igor de (2004): The Secret history of the Mongols. Brill: Leiden.
- Rybatzki, Volker (2003): Middle Mongol. In: Janhunen, Juha (ed.) (2003): The Mongolic languages. London: Routledge: 47-82.
- Svantesson, Jan-Olof, Anna Tsendina, Anastasia Karlsson, Vivan Franzén (2005): The Phonology of Mongolian. New York: Oxford University Press.
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