Janhunen J. The Mongolic Languages
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ter ul med-gw arbuntii saujaabei ‘he seems not to know [it]’ (literally: ‘he is sitting with
a not-knowing appearance’); (conv. imperf.) ul uj/i-j xer medbeishii ‘how do you know
[it] without seeing?’. The particle ul can also be used alone in the function of a general
negative answer (‘no’).
Nominal words are negated by the postpositionally used particle uwei (< *ügei), e.g.
(negation of existence:) naad xar sateng uwei ‘I have no brown sugar’; (negation of
quality:) en ilgaa saikeng uwei ‘this flower is not beautiful’. After participle markers,
uwei can facultatively have the bound shape -wei, before which the futuritive marker
appears as -w-, e.g. (progr. part. fut. neg. pl. 3p.) naadjaa-gw uwei-sul > naadjaa-w-wei-sul
‘they are not playing’; (part. perf. neg. vx sg. 1p.) bii badaa id-seng uwei-by > id-seng-
wei-by ‘I have not eaten (food)’. Constructions with uwei can also be used as adnominal
attributes, e.g. jisaa uwei xuu ‘a reasonless person’, ujiseng-wei jakaa ujisendaa ‘we saw
a thing which we had never seen’ (literally: ‘we saw an unseen thing of ours’).
Two other postpositionally used negative particles are udieng ‘not yet’ (irregularly
from *edüi ‘this much’) and bishing ‘not the one; other than’ (< *bisi/n). The former can
replace uwei in combination with the futuritive participle, e.g. wantegw ering bol-gw
udieng ‘it has not yet become the time to sleep’; badaayaa id/e-gw udien-taa yee ‘have
you not eaten (your food) yet?’. The latter is used postnominally to deny identity, e.g.
enshiny xig bait bishing ‘this is not a major matter’.
The expression of interrogation in yes/no questions takes place by the sentence-final
particle yee, e.g. en biteg yee ‘is this a book?’; shii nyakeng usugw shadbeish yee ‘can
you speak Chinese?’; acaashiny geridee bei yee ‘is your father at home?’. In pronominal
questions (wh-questions), no corrogative particle is required, e.g. shii aniinsh ‘who are
you?’; taa ordoong xaan aasentaa ‘where did you live before?’. In emphatic questions,
however, the final particles yum/oo or yum dee can be used, e.g. en yoo yum ‘what(ever)
is this?’; en yamer gery yum dee ‘what kind of house is this?’; tershiny yoo yumoo ‘what
on earth is that?’.
A rhetorical or confirmative question is often expressed by combining the negative
particle bishing with the interrogative particle yee
. The negative particle can then be
shortened into shing (shin- : shim-), e.g. shii lwaacidaa saing (bi)shin-sh yee ‘you are
good at Russian, aren’t you?’. It is mostly either in such a question or in double negation
that a participle form can be negated by bishing, e.g. (part. perf.) en bitgii shii uji-seng
bishin-sh yee ‘you read this book, didn’t you?’; (part. fut. px sg. 2p.) shii erij ul ol-gu-
shiny bishing ‘you will certainly find [it]’ (literally: ‘it is not that you will not find’).
A decisive tone can also be indicated by shindee (< *bisin+dee) e.g. akaashiny iciseng
shindee ‘your brother certainly went!’.
Apart from the negative and interrogative particles, there are several other sentence-
final elements, many of which may be classified as modal or emphatic particles. The
particle jak (< ‘thing’, from Manchu), for instance, like its equivalent yum (< ‘something’),
expresses emphasis, e.g. edee xoo barseng jak ‘now everything is over!’. The particles
kee and mookie add the meaning of unexpected surprise, e.g. en xuu tend aajaagw
mookie ‘this man lives there! [I found it out just now]’; xoo yawoo talisensul kee ‘they
all have gone! [I am surprised to know it]’. Uncertainty is expressed by the particle woo,
e.g. ing yauseng woo ‘maybe he went’. The moderative particle kenee ~ kene occurs after
imperative forms, e.g. naad nek ukw kene ‘[please] give me one!’.
There are also particles that are not confined to the sentence-final position, but occur
postpositionally or enclitically with a varying degree of connection with the preceding
word. Some of these particles are originally converbs, while others are nominal case
150 THE MONGOLIC LANGUAGES
forms governing the nominative or connective form of the preceding noun. The following
three functional groups may be distinguished:
(1) the particles of emphatic specification (‘only, the very, at least’) =l, kunu, mak,
maty, as well as kee (also used sentence-finally), e.g. bii=l medbei yee ‘do only I know
it?’; ter gajir kunu madeng saikeng ‘that region, among others, is very beautiful’;
nideeree ujiesee mak medbei ‘you can know it if only you look by your own eyes’;
mogugudaa garie maty uwaa dee ‘just wash your hands at least’; bitgee mart aar piiyee
kee martseng uwei awoor irseng ‘although he forgot his book, he brought at least his pen
without forgetting’;
(2) the concessive particles cii, cig, yiesh (possibly from Chinese) ‘even’, e.g.
tereg cig bolbei ‘It is possible [to go] even by car’; mory yiesh bolbei xukur yiesh bolbei
‘horses and cattle will do equally well’ (literally: ‘even horses will do, even cattle
will do’);
(3) the topic particles (conv. cond. refl.) boloos/oo, aagaas/aa > aasaa > asaa ‘as for,
talking of’ (literally: ‘if it is’), especially after pronouns, e.g. en boloos/oo miny guciminy
‘this is my friend’; ted asaa aruukung xuu bishinsul ‘they are quite inhuman’.
Sometimes, the second person singular possessive suffix -shiny also has the role of a
topic marker, e.g. enshiny miniig aalwoo ‘this (what you see here) seems to be mine’.
Functionally close to particles are many postpositions, such as (causal) twalaang,
twald, turgund ‘for the sake of, because of’, e.g. gurung gerie twald kucilbiiyaa ‘let us
make efforts for our nation!’; (directional) juur ‘in the direction of’ (< *jüg ‘direction’),
e.g. garkui juur uj ‘look eastward!’; (terminative) jak (< *jaka ‘border’), conv. term.
boltel, kurtel ‘till, as far as, even’, e.g. en jak geridee xarigw udieng ‘up to now he has
not yet come home’; eimer nomuukung morii kurtel onuj ul shadeng ‘he cannot ride even
such an obedient horse’; (comparative) nuwaang, jirgie, mush, xee
‘like, as’, e.g. xareb-
seng som nuwaang kuiceej kurseng ‘he chased like a shooting arrow’; en(-ii) jirgie xig
‘as large as this’; xorgw mush waa ‘a worm-like taste’; xukrii xee xig coloo ‘a stone as
big as a cow’.
Another group of minor words with a syntactic function are the conjunctions, such as
kesh ‘but’ (from Chinese), xerwul ~ xergul ‘if’ (+ conv. cond.), ecwei ‘or else’
(< eic+uwei ‘not like this’), all of which are relatively recent. A copulative relationship
is expressed by (conv. perf.) boloor ‘and’, e.g. ecig boloor eg ‘father and mother’.
LEXICON
It has been estimated that, roughly speaking, more than half of the entire vocabulary of
Dagur is Mongolic in origin, including both inherited items and reintroduced borrow-
ings. Borrowings from Manchu amount to c.10 per cent, while borrowings from Chinese
cover another 10 per cent of the lexicon. A smaller number of items has been borrowed
from Ewenki. This means that a significant proportion, over 20 per cent, of all vocabu-
lary items are specific only to Dagur.
Due to its peripheral position, Dagur retains a considerable number of archaic
Mongolic words, which are not commonly found in the modern Mongolic languages, but
which are attested in Middle Mongol sources, such as the Hua-Yi yiyu and the ‘Secret
History’. Such words include: tergul ~ terwul ‘road’ (Mongol *jam), najir ‘summer’
(Mo. *jun), xeky ‘head’ (Mongol *tologai), sorby ‘staff’ (Mongol *tayag). Other more or
less idiosyncratic words include several basic items, such as: kasoo ‘iron’, saur ‘spade’, ogw
DAGUR 151
‘brain’, basert ‘kidney’, twalcig ‘knee’, kataa ‘salt’, warkel ‘clothes’, el- ‘to say’
(cf. Mongol *kele-).
From Manchu, including its written form, Dagur has adopted not only political,
military, and other cultural terms, but also words for daily use, cf. e.g. gurung ‘(political)
state’, ambeng ‘minister’, xafeng ‘official’, cwag ‘soldier’, weeshgung ‘noble’, tackw ~
tashkw ‘school’, endur ‘god’, bait ‘matter’, ilgaa ‘flower’. A case of systematic borrow-
ing is observed in the names for the months, based on the Manchu numerals (plus
Manchu ‘month’): aniebie ‘January’, jweebie ‘February’, yalembie ‘March’, duyimbie
‘April’, sunjaabie ‘May’, ninggumbie ‘June’, nadembie ‘July’, jakumbie ‘August’, uyim-
bie ‘September’, jwambie ‘October’, onshumbie ‘November’, jorgumbie ‘December’.
Apart from nouns, the borrowings include also other parts of speech and even some
functional items, e.g. func- ‘to be left’, gaitii ‘suddenly’, utkai ‘that is; the very’, gojim
‘even though’, jak ‘thing’ (also used as an emphatic particle).
The Ewenki borrowings derive mainly from Solon, e.g. aminaang ‘cock, male bird’,
yeekee ~ iikee ‘pan’, nannaakeng ‘beautiful’, though some items pertaining to hunting
suggest an Orochen source, e.g. eterkeeng ‘bear’, nikcaa ‘musk deer’, pentuu ‘young
antlers [for medical use]’. There also seem to be some relatively old Ewenki borrowings,
e.g. degii ‘bird’ (replacing Mongolic *sibaxu/n id.), which may have entered Dagur
before the differentiation of the modern Ewenki dialects. It goes without saying that there
are considerably more Dagur borrowings in the Ewenki dialects spoken in the Dagur
sphere, especially Solon.
There is a layer of premodern Russian loanwords, e.g. topoor ‘ax’, bajingky ‘leather
shoes’, xelieb ~ lieb ‘bread’, weidree ‘bucket’. Most cultural vocabulary has, however,
been adopted from Chinese, e.g. dyaang ‘shop’ (Chinese dian), waas ‘socks’ (Chinese
wazi), jeetw ~ jeetuu ‘hoe’ (Chinese juetou), liibai ‘week’ (Chinese libai), shincii id.
(Chinese xingqi), maashieng ‘at once’ (Chinese mashang), puntu.rshie- ~ funtu.rshie-
‘to make efforts’ (based on Chinese fendou). Some Chinese words may have been
transmitted by Mongol proper, e.g. congkw ‘window’ (cf. Mongol *congko/n, from
Chinese chuanghu), while other (older) items entered Dagur through Manchu, e.g.
saisaa ‘sage’ (from Chinese caizi through Manchu saisa id.), paid- ~ faid- ‘to arrange’
(from Chinese pai through Manchu fai.da- id.), gyaa ‘downtown’ (from the equivalent
of modern Mandarin jie through Manchu giya or giyai).
Many of the Chinese elements are reasonably well adapted to Dagur. Contemporary
borrowings are, however, often adopted without adequate phonological adjustment. This
results in the marginal occurrence in Dagur speech of such exotic sounds as retroflex
consonants (Pinyin ch zh sh r), retroflex vowels (Pinyin chi zhi shi ri), sibilant vowels
(Pinyin ci zi si), and a high rounded vowel (Pinyin qu ju xu nü lü). In many cases it is
obviously a question of direct citations, conditioned by widespread bilingualism. Words
in general use apparently still tend to undergo adaptation, at least as far as the most exotic
features (such as tones) are concerned. There may be individual differences, however,
and both partially and fully adapted shapes can cooccur in speech, e.g. cheezhan >
ceejang ‘station’ (Chinese chezhan), cüüdung > cuidung ‘match’ (Chinese qudeng).
Chinese lexical influence is also manifest in the presence of compounds and phrases
based on loan translation, e.g. gurung gery ‘nation’ (literally: ‘state house’, cf. Chinese
guojia), kasoo tergul ‘railway’ (‘iron road’, cf. Chinese tielu), galy tereg ‘train’ (‘fire
car’, Chinese huoche), dangg tat- ‘to smoke’ (‘to pull tobacco’, Chinese chouyan).
Many of these have counterparts in the other Mongolic languages, and some may
actually have entered Dagur via Mongol proper.
152 THE MONGOLIC LANGUAGES
REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING
Enhebatu (1983) Da-Han Xiaocidian, Huhehaote: Neimenggu Renmin Chubanshe.
Enhebatu [vXvggabadu] et al. (1984) Taqhur Galav u vUigas (Dawoeryu Cihui) [= Muvgqhul
Tuirul uv Gala vAyalqhuv u Sudulul uv Cuburil/Menggu Yuzu Yuyan Fangyan Yanjiu Congshu
005], Guigaquda.
Enhebatu [vXvggabadu] et al. (1985) Taqhur Galav u vUigae Galalgae jiv Ma’teriyal (Dawoeryu
Huayu Cailiao) [= Muvgqhul Tuirul uv Gala vAyalqhuv u Sudulul uv Cuburil / Menggu Yuzu
Yuyan Fangyan Yanjiu Congshu 006], Guigaquda.
Enhebatu [vXvggabadu] and Shinetge [Sinatgae] (1988) Taqhur Gala bae Mungqhul Gala
(Dawoeryu he Mengguyu) [= Muvgqhul Tuirul uv Gala vAyalqhuv u Sudulul uv
Cuburil / Menggu Yuzu Yuyan Fangyan Yanjiu Congshu 004], Guigaquda.
Erhimbayar [Eerhenbayaer] and Enhebatu (1988) Dawoeryu Duben, Huhehaote: Neimenggu
Jiaoyu Chubanshe.
Ivanovskii [Ivanovskiy], A. O. (1894) [1982] Mandjurica I: Obrazcy solonskago i daxurskago
yazykov, Sanktpeterburg, [reprint:] Materials for Central Asiatic and Altaic Studies 2, Budapest.
Janhunen, Juha (1988) ‘A revival of Dagur studies’, Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen 48: 308–16.
Ka)uz
.
yn´ski, Stanis)aw (1969–70) ‘Dagurishes Wörterverzeichnis nach F. V. Muromskis hand-
schriftlichen Sprachaufzeichnungen’, Rocznik Orientalistyczny 33/1: 103–44, 33/2:109–43.
Kara, G[yörgy] (1995) Daurica in Cyrillic Script [= Materials for Central Asiatic and Altaic Studies
10–11], Budapest.
Kuribayashi, Hitoshi (1989) ‘Daguurugo’, in Kamei Takashi et al. (eds) Gengogaku Daijiten 2:
597–603, Tokyo: Sanseido.
Martin, Samuel E. (1961) Dagur Mongolian Grammar, Texts, and Lexicon [= Indiana University
Publications, Uralic and Altaic Series 4], Bloomington.
Namtsarai [Namtzarai] and Has-Erdeni [Qasardani] (1983) Taqhur Gala Muvgqhul Galav u
Qaricaqhulul, Guigaquda: vUibur Muvgqhul uv vArat uv Gablal uv Quriie.
Poppe, Nicholas [N. N.] (1930) Dagurskoe narechie [= Materialy Komissiï po issledovaniyu
Mongol’skoi i Tannu-Tuvinskoi Narodnyx Respublik i Buryat-Mongol’skoi ASSR 6],
Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Akademiï Nauk SSSR.
Poppe, Nicholas [Nikolaus] (1934–5) ‘Über die Sprache der Daguren’, Asia Major 10: 1–32, 183–220.
Poppe, Nicholas [Nikolaus] (1964) ‘Die dagurische Sprache’, Mongolistik [= Handbuch der
Orientalistik I: V, 2], pp. 137–42.
Shiotani, Shigeki (1990) ‘Daguurugo Hairaru Hougen no Kougo Shiryou: Tekisuto to Chuushaku’,
Nihon Mongoru Gakkai Kiyou 21: 47–95, Tokyo: The Japan Association of Mongolian Studies.
Todaeva, B. X. (1986) Dagurskii yazyk, Moskva: Nauka (AN SSSR: Institut vostokovedeniya).
Todaeva, B. X. (1997) ‘Dagurskii yazyk’, in Mongol’skie yazyki – Tunguso-man’chzhurskie yazyki –
Yaponskii yazyk – Koreiskii yazyk [Yazyki Mira], Moskva: Rossiiskaya Akademiya Nauk &
Izdatel’stvo Indrik, pp. 51–60.
Tsumagari, Toshiro [Toshirou] (1985) ‘Daguurugo Hairaru-hougen no on’in-taikei’, Hoppo Bunka
Kenkyu (Bulletin of the Institute for the Study of North Eurasian Cultures, Hokkaido University)
17: 227–40.
Tsumagari, Toshiro [Toshirou] (1986) ‘Daguurugo Hairaru-hougen kisogoi’, Mongoru Kenkyuu 17:
2–38, Tokyo: The Japan Association of Mongolian Studies.
Zhong Suchun (1982) Dawoeryu Jianzhi [Zhongguo Shaoshu Minzu Yuyan Jianzhi Congshu],
Beijing: Minzu Chubanshe.
DAGUR 153
154
CHAPTER SEVEN
KHALKHA
Jan-Olof Svantesson
Khalkha, or Khalkha Mongol (xalx mongol), often misleadingly identified simply as
‘Modern Mongolian’, is the official language of the Republic of Mongolia, used both
orally and in writing in all kinds of communication, in everyday life, in administration,
in books and newspapers, as well as at all levels of education. The number of Khalkha
speakers today is close to 2 million, though the rest of the 2.3 million inhabitants of the
Republic of Mongolia (including Buryat and Oirat speakers) are also rapidly adopting
Khalkha as either the second or the first language.
Taxonomically, Khalkha belongs to the larger context of the Mongol language, and in
view of its oral intelligibility to speakers of other Mongol dialects it can hardly be counted
as a separate language in the linguistic sense. Khalkha is, however, separated from the
rest of the Mongol dialects by two important properties: its political status as a state
language, and its separate Cyrillic literary norm, which replaced Written Mongol as
the official written language of Mongolia in the 1940s. Recently, there have been
attempts to reintroduce the Written Mongol language, but for the time being the ‘Old
Script’ is used only marginally.
Khalkha itself is also divided into (sub)dialects, of which that of Ulan Bator
(Ulaanbaatar) occupies a position of historical and political prestige. The variant
described in this chapter is the standard language, which is close to, but not identical
with, the modern Ulan Bator dialect. The standard language, which was created in
parallel with the written norm, had from the beginning a supradialectal or panchronic
orientation, especially as far as the orthography is concerned.
DATA AND SOURCES
Due to its political status, Khalkha is the most extensively documented and investigated
Modern Mongolic idiom. Its documentation started with the monographs of G. J. Ramstedt
on Khalkha phonetics (1902) and conjugation (1903). The first systematic grammar was
published in Russian by Nicholas Poppe (1931), later expanded into a German version
(1951), which may still be considered a standard work on Khalkha. Poppe (1970) is a
more strictly structuralist descriptive grammar.
Other basic grammars and grammatical sketches include those by John C. Street
(1963), Udo Posch (1964), G. D. Sanzheev (1973), Marie-Lise Beffa and Roberte
Hamayon (1975), and N. S. Yaxontova (1997). An overall description of Khalkha
phonology is given by Don Graham Stuart and Matthew Haltod (1957), while the syntax
is described by T. A. Bertagaev (1964) and Robert I. Binnick (1979a).
With the progress of the work, the phonological research on Khalkha has come to
focus on a few central issues, notably the vowel system, as discussed by Chingeltei and
Shinetge (1959), Shirô Hattori (1982), Annie Rialland and Redouane Djamouri (1984),
and Jan-Olof Svantesson (1985). Svantesson (1994, 1995) has also worked on questions
KHALKHA 155
pertaining to syllable structure. On the syntactic side, an important topic has been formed
by the temporal-aspectual system, as discussed by Binnick (1979b, 1990, 1991) and
Svantesson (1991). Of the large number of other contributions on a variety of grammatical
details, the work by Masanori Mizuno (1992) on accusative subjects may be mentioned.
Lexicologically, Khalkha is recorded in a wide selection of bilingual dictionaries,
including the Khalkha–Russian dictionary by A. Luwsandendew (1957) and the
Khalkha–English dictionaries by Gombojab Hangin et al. (1986) and Charles R. Bawden
(1997). The largest bilingual corpus is contained in the new Khalkha–Russian dictionary,
published under the editorship of A. Luwsandendew and Ts. Tsedendamba (2001–2002).
The standard monolingual dictionary is that by Ya. Tsewel (1966), reverse-indexed by
Hans-Peter Vietze and Ludwig Zenker (1976).
In the preparation of the present chapter, the author has benefited from the kind
remarks of Anna Tsendina and Arthur Holmer, both of whom have read the original
manuscript.
SEGMENTAL PHONEMES
Khalkha segmental structure may be approached from three points of view: phonetic,
phonemic, and graphemic. Below, the Khalkha data will mainly be quoted in a
graphemic notation (in boldface), which corresponds to the Romanized image of the
Cyrillic orthography. In the discussion of the sound system and morphophonology,
phonemic representations (in italics) and/or phonetic realizations (in square brackets)
will also be presented, e.g. baatar baatr [patr] ‘hero’. For some details, the phonemic
representations may be understood as underlying (deep-level) forms.
The Khalkha vowel system comprises seven basic units, which may be written phone-
mically as a e i o ö u ü (Table 7.1). Diachronically, these units stand in a more or less
one-to-one correspondence to the Proto-Mongolic vowels *a *e *i *o *ö *u *ü.
Phonetically, however, the system has undergone rotation, the basic effect of which is the
pharyngealization of the original rounded back vowels *o *u and the centralization of the
original rounded front vowels *ö *ü. The pharyngealized vowels are also realized as
lower than their non-pharyngealized counterparts.
The rough phonetic values of the basic vowels may, consequently, be described as
[a e i o u], with the additional remark that the qualities
[ ] are accompanied by pha-
ryngealization. The low unrounded back vowel
[a] alternates with the velar quality [],
which might perhaps also be described as pharyngealized. On the other hand, all vowel
qualities can be slightly fronted in a palatal environment. The graphemic representations
of the vowels are a e i o ö u ü. In the Cyrillic orthography, the vowels a e o u also have
iotated counterparts, which may be Romanized as ya ye yo yu. The iotated counterparts
of ö ü are orthographically replaced by ye yu, but they will be Romanized here as yö yü.
Each of the seven vowels occurs both short (single) and long (double) in the initial
syllable, except that there is no short e in colloquial Ulan Bator Khalkha in this position.
TABLE 7.1 KHALKHA VOWELS
uüi
oöe
a
Short e and i are distinguished in writing, but they have merged to [i] in the spoken lan-
guage, so that, e.g. ix [ix] ‘big’ and ex [ix] ‘mother’ have become homophonous. There
is no substantial qualitative difference between long and short vowels, except that long
öö is a mid-high back vowel [o], while short ö tends to be more fronted and raised, close
to the quality of []. Dialectally, this has resulted in the merger of short ö and ü (as in
Buryat and Khamnigan Mongol).
Examples of qualitative and quantitative vowel contrasts: bal [pa] ‘honey’ vs. baal-
[pa] ‘to harrow’; il [i] ‘clear’ vs. iil- [i] ‘to flee’ vs. eel [e] ‘blessing’; bol- [p]
‘to become’ vs. bool [p] ‘slave’; öl [o] ‘grey’ vs. ööl- [o] ‘to trim’; ul [] ‘sole’
vs. uul [] ‘mountain’; ül- [u] ‘to remain’ vs. üül [u] ‘cloud’.
There are also four diphthongs (diphthongoid sequences) ending in i. The first com-
ponent of the diphthongs is either ü, as in üil [ui] ‘deed’, or one of the original back
vowels a o u
, as in ail [ai] ‘family’, uil- [i] ‘to cry’, oil- [i] ‘to understand’.
Orthographically, the diphthongs are written with the Cyrillic letter for a non-syllabic
(‘short’) i, Romanized as i. This convention is also used to write the long vowel ii (ii).
An additional historical and orthographical diphthong is *ei (ei), which, however, has
phonemically merged with the long vowel ee.
The Khalkha consonant system (Table 7.2) is considerably larger than that of Proto-
Mongolic, the main reason being the presence of an almost complete palatalization cor-
relation. Apart from the phenomenon of palatal breaking, distinctive palatalized
consonants have arisen in Khalkha due to the reduction and deletion of *i in non-initial
syllables, as in amy ‘life’ < *ami/n vs. am ‘mouth’ < *ama/n. There are 14 pairs of
unpalatalized vs. palatalized consonants, plus three isolated unpalatalized consonants (gh
ng lh) and one inherently palatal consonant ( y). Altogether, this yields 32 consonant
phonemes. The palatalized consonants are, however, distinctive only in words with an
original velar vocalism.
By the manner of articulation, the consonants represent the following functional
types: the strong stops p py t ty, the strong affricates ts c, the weak stops b by d dy g gy
gh, the weak affricates dz j, the fricatives sh x xy, the nasals m my n ny ng, the laterals
l ly lh, the vibrants r ry, and the glides w wy y. By the place of articulation, the unpalatal-
ized consonants may be divided into the labials p b m w, the dentals t d ts dz s n l lh r,
the velars g x ng, and the postvelar (uvular) gh. The phonetic realization of the palatal-
ized consonants varies depending on their primary place of articulation. In the labials
py by my wy palatalization is realized as an actual secondary articulation (palatalized
156 THE MONGOLIC LANGUAGES
TABLE 7.2 KHALKHA CONSONANTS
ppy t ty
b by d dy gy g gh
ts c
dz j
sshxyx
m my n ny ng
lh
lly
rry
wwy y
labials). In the dental series, however, the palatalized segments ty dy c j sh ny ly ry may
be characterized as alveopalatals, while the palatalized velars gy xy (as well as the inher-
ently palatal y) are realized simply as palatals.
The strong stops are probably produced with tensed vocal cords; they give a tense
voice quality to the surrounding vowels, both the following and the preceding one, result-
ing in some pre- and postaspiration. In the phonetic transcription, the strong stops and
affricates are probably best written as postaspirated [p p t t ts t] in initial posi-
tion, and as preaspirated [p p t t ts t] in medial and final position. Other phonetic
correlates are involved, however, and the aspiration is not as long and perceptually
salient as in some other languages (like Chinese).
The weak stops and affricates are basically plain voiceless unaspirated sounds in all
positions. In Modern Khalkha, however, this is fully true only of the weak labials and
dentals
[p p t t ts t], while the weak velars seem to be functionally voiced, though they
can be phonetically voiceless [k k q] word-finally and before a voiceless consonant. In
other positions, they are phonetically voiced [ ]. Additionally, especially in the case
of gh, the weak velars can have fricative realizations.
A peculiarity of Khalkha with regard to the other dialects of the Mongol language is
that the laterals llyare pronounced as lateral fricatives (fricolaterals) with the values [
]. Especially in word-final position they tend to become voiceless and may even be pre-
ceded by a slight closure. As a result, l comes phonetically very close to (and can at least
potentially merge with) the third lateral lh, which is basically a voiceless lateral fricative,
though it might also be described as a lateral with simultaneous velar friction [lx]. The
segment lh is, however, rare and occurs only in Tibetan loanwords, e.g. lhaghw [lxaw]
‘Wednesday’.
The orthographical correlates of the basic consonants are here Romanized by the let-
ters (and digraphs) p b m w for the labials, t d ts z s n l lx r for the dentals, and g x for
the velars. In the Cyrillic orthography, there are no special letters for the segments gh ng.
The palatal glide is expressed by using the iotated vowel letters ya ye yo yu, which also
indicate the palatalization of a preceding consonant. Palatalization before long vowels is,
however, indicated by the sequences ia io iu, as in xiam xyaam ‘sausage’. Syllable-final
palatalization is expressed by the Cyrillic palatalization letter (‘soft sign’), which may
also be Romanized as y. An actual postconsonantal palatal glide segment y is ortho-
graphically signalled by using the corresponding depalatalization letter (‘hard sign’); in
such cases, the glide may be Romanized as ÿ, e.g. awÿaas ‘talent’.
In deviation from the general pattern, the palatalized affricates and sibilant c j sh are
written by special letters, which may be Romanized as c j sh (for what are more com-
monly Romanized as ch zh sh). The Cyrillic alphabet has additionally several letters,
notably f k shh, which are mainly used in Russian graphic borrowings. Of these, the
letter k can correspond to a strong (aspirated) velar stop [k], which probably represents
two actual marginal phonemes (k ky) for some speakers.
Examples of some crucial consonantal contrasts: ad [at] ‘demon’ vs. at [at] ‘castrated
camel’; dal [ta] ‘seventy’ vs. tal [ta
] ‘steppe’; dzam [tsam] ‘road’vs. tsam [tsam] ‘mask
dance’; bar [par] ‘tiger’ vs. byar [par] ‘strength’; jad [tat] ‘spear’ vs. cad- [tat] ‘to be
able’; sar [sar] ‘moon’ vs. shar [ar] ‘yellow’; xar [xar] ‘black’ vs. xyar [xar] ‘ridge’; nam
[nam] ‘party’ vs. nyam [nam] ‘Sunday’; xor [xr] ‘poison’ vs. xory [xr] ‘twenty’.
A special orthographical convention, corresponding to the diachronic situation but not
to the synchronic segmental structure, is used to indicate syllable-final n gh in distinc-
tion from ng g. Thus, the sequences na no ne and ga go indicate n (< *nA) and gh
(< *gA), respectively, while the letters n g (without a vowel) indicate ng (< *n & ng) and
KHALKHA 157
g (< *g), e.g. xan xang [xa] ‘king’ vs. xana xan [xan] ‘wall’, bag bag [pa] ‘team’ vs.
baga bagh [pa] ‘small’. In basically the same way, the iotated letters ya ye yo indicate
the actual glide segment y in distinction from the diphthongs ending in i, e.g. tsai tsai
[tsai] ‘tea’ vs. saya say [saj] ‘recently’; sain saing [sai] ‘good’ vs. bayan bayng
[paj] ‘rich’.
The contrast between n and ng is synchronically only possible in syllable-final posi-
tion, while the contrast between g and gh is also attested in medial syllable-initial (pre-
vocalic) position. In the latter position, no orthographical distinction is made (except
before i), e.g. zurag dzurg ‘picture’ : refl. zurgaa dzurg-a (< *jirug-axa/n) vs. zurgaa
dzurgha ‘six’ (< *jirguxa/n). Altogether, the contrast between g and gh (both diachroni-
cally < *g) is rather marginal and may even be absent dialectally or idiolectally. The
same is true of the contrast between b (by) and w (wy) (both diachronically < *b), which
is possible only after l, e.g. alba alb ‘duty’ (< *
alba/n) vs. term. alaw alw ‘to kill’
(< *ala-ba). A distinctive w is also attested in borrowings, e.g. wan wang ‘king’ (from
Chinese).
WORD STRUCTURE
The maximal syllable structure is CVVCCC, i.e., the vowel kernel may be preceded by
at most one consonant and followed by a cluster of up to three consonants. The vowel
can be short, long or a diphthong. In non-initial syllables, it can also be a non-phonemic
schwa vowel. Onsetless syllables occur only word-initially. Whether a consonant com-
bination can form a syllable coda or not depends on the phonetic properties of the con-
sonants. Permitted types of coda include: voiced + voiceless consonant, e.g. daws [taws]
‘salt’, alt [at] ‘gold’, bügd [put] ‘all’; nasal + stop or affricate, e.g. xünd [xunt]
‘heavy’, möngg [mo] ‘silver’, myanggh [ma] ‘thousand’; fricative + stop or
affricate, e.g. tsast [tsast] ‘snowy’. Three-consonant codas consist of a voiced conso-
nant followed by a fricative + stop or affricate, e.g. ilst [ist] ‘sandy’.
A considerable proportion of root words are monosyllabic. There is a requirement that
a monosyllabic word must have a heavy syllable rhyme, i.e., it either has a coda conso-
nant, as in xüng [xu] ‘person’, a long vowel or a diphthong, as in düü [tuu] ‘younger
brother’, suu- [s] ‘to sit’, tsai [tsai] ‘tea’, or both, as in tsaas [tsas] ‘paper’. Words
of the type (C)V (with a short vowel) do not occur. A few monosyllabic function words
are spelled (and transliterated) with a short vowel only, e.g. bi ‘I’, ta ‘you’ [honorific],
but they are pronounced (and may be phonemized) with a long vowel in citation form,
i.e. bii [pi], taa [ta].
There are also many bisyllabic and even polysyllabic roots. Moreover, because of the
agglutinative morphology, derived or inflected words are often polysyllabic. In words
with more than one syllable, stress is not contrastive. There is no agreement in the liter-
ature about the place of stress, or even if there is stress. The possible interaction of stress
and intonation also remains to be investigated further. Another important issue connected
with polysyllabic words involves vowel quantity in non-initial syllables. Traditional
analyses of Khalkha, for instance the one implemented in the Cyrillic orthography,
distinguish short and long vowels in all syllables, but there are reasons to question this
interpretation.
A phonetic analysis immediately reveals that the ‘short’ vowels of non-initial sylla-
bles are reduced (centralized) versions of the vowel of the preceding syllable (here
invariably transcribed as []). In the Cyrillic orthography, these vowels are written with
158 THE MONGOLIC LANGUAGES
the equivalents of the single vowel letters a e o ö, depending on the harmonic quality of
the vowel of the previous syllable, e.g. xawar [xawr] ‘spring’, mongol [m]
‘Mongol’. When a reduced vowel is preceded by a palatalized (including alveopalatal)
consonant, it has an [i]-like quality and is written as i, e.g. guril [r] ‘flour’, ajil
[at] ‘work’.
Not only the qualities, but also the places where reduced vowels occur can be pre-
dicted by rules, and for this reason they can be regarded as non-phonemic schwas, which
are absent from underlying (lexical) forms (as in Kalmuck). The basic rule is that schwa
vowels are inserted in order to make well-formed syllables. If the underlying form of
a word ends in two consonants, a schwa is inserted if these two consonants cannot form
a syllable coda, but not otherwise. For example, since the clusters rd gd ls (voiced +
voiceless consonant) in ard ard [art] ‘people’, bügd bügd [put] ‘all’, uls uls [s]
‘state’ can form a coda, no schwa is required. By contrast, the clusters mr td tr in xamr
‘nose’, xyatd ‘Chinese’, baatr ‘hero’ cannot form a coda at the surface, so a schwa must
be inserted, yielding xamar [xamr], baatar [patr], xyatad [xatt].
If there are three underlying final consonants, the schwa is inserted between the first
two consonants, if this is phonotactically possible, e.g. gudamj [tmt] ‘street’ from
underlying gudmj. If, on the other hand, the last two consonants would not yield a well-
formed syllable coda, the schwa is inserted between them, e.g. byaslag [pas]
‘cheese’ from underlying byaslg. More generally, it may be said that schwas are always
inserted as far to the left as possible while maintaining a sequence of well-formed sylla-
bles, e.g. yörtönts [jortnts] ‘world’ from underlying yörtnts, xüüxeldei [xuxte]
from underlying xüüxlde.
In a few cases, the schwa insertion rule takes morphology into consideration. One con-
spicuous case is the futuritive participle marker
-x, which requires a schwa if the verb stem
ends in a consonant, cf. e.g. part. fut. xalax [xax] ‘to change’ vs. xalx [xax] ‘shield;
Khalkha’. Since the occurrence of the schwa in this case is not phonologically predictable,
it has to be treated as a potentially distinctive segment (º). It might also be possible to
maintain that the schwa belongs to the underlying form of this and other similar gram-
matical markers. There seem to exist no regular lexical items with an underlying schwa.
In spite of the presence of exceptions, the orthographical short vowels of non-initial
syllables may generally be treated as non-distinctive schwas, which are not present in
underlying forms. In this situation, the orthographical long vowels of non-initial sylla-
bles need not be interpreted as phonologically long. Instead, they may be analysed as
quantitatively unmarked and segmentally equal to the short vowels of the initial syllable
(as in Kalmuck). Support for this analysis comes from phonetic data, which show that
these vowels tend to be much shorter than the long vowels of the initial syllable and only
slightly longer than the short vowels of the initial syllable, e.g. sanaa sana [sana]
‘thought’, ulaan ulang [a] ‘red’, xöömii xoomi [xomi] ‘throat’.
The distribution of the vowel qualities in non-initial syllables is regulated by vowel
harmony. The Khalkha vowels may be divided into two classes, corresponding to the
original back vowels a o u and the original front vowels e ö ü i. However, due to the
effect of vowel rotation, also termed the Khalkha Vowel Shift, the original back vowels
o u (and to a lesser extent a) are pronounced as pharyngealized, while the original front
vowels ö ü (and to a lesser extent e) are pronounced as centralized or even fully velar-
ized. Phonetically, it seems that pharyngealization is a marked feature, which distin-
guishes the vowels o u (and possibly a) from ö ü (and possibly e). The pharyngealized
vowels are characterized by a relatively small pharynx cavity, probably due to retraction
of the tongue root and tensing of the pharynx constrictor muscles.
KHALKHA 159