The Phonology of Mongolian the PHONOLOGY of the WORLD's LANGUAGES General Editor: Jacques Durand
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The Phonology of Mongolian THE PHONOLOGY OF THE WORLD'S LANGUAGES General editor: Jacques Durand Each volume in this series offers an extensive treatment of the phonology of one language within a modern theoretical perspective, and provides comprehensive references to recent and more classical studies of the language. Published in the series: The Phonology of Dutch Geert Booij The Phonology of Standard Chinese San Duanmu The Phonology of English Michael Hammond The Phonology of Norwegian Gjert Kristoffersen The Phonology of Portuguese Maria Helena Mateus and Ernesto d Andrade The Phonology and Morphology ofKimatuumbi David Odden The Lexical Phonology of Slovak Jerzy Rubach The Phonology of Hungarian Peter Siptar and Miklos Torkenczy The Phonology of Mongolian Jan-Olof Svantesson, Anna Tsendina, Anastasia Mukhanova Karlsson, and Vivan Franzen The Phonology of Armenian BertVaux The Phonology and Morphology of Arabic Janet C. E.Watson The Phonology of German Richard Wiese In preparation: The Phonology of Danish The Phonology of Spanish Hans Basb011 Iggy Roca The Phonology of Tamil The Phonology of Prathima Christdas Catalan The Phonology of Polish Max Wheeler Edmund Gussman THE PHONOLOGY OF MONGOLIAN Jan-Olof Svantesson, Anna Tsendina, Anastasia Mukhanova Karlsson, and Vivan Franzen OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford 0x2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dares Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan South Korea Poland Portugal Singapore Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © J.-O. Svantesson 2005 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organizations. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data (Data available) ISBN 0199260176 13579 10 8642 Typeset by Peter Kahrel Ltd., Lancaster Printed and bound in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddies Ltd., www.biddles.co.uk CONTENTS Acknowledgements ix List of Tables x List of Figures xi Abbreviations and symbols xii Transcription xv Introduction xvi 1. VOWELS 1 1.1 Acoustic properties of monophthongs 1 1.1.1 The phonetic basis for vowel harmony 7 1.1.2 The vowel/i/ 8 1.2 Diphthongs 9 1.3 Palatalized vowels 10 2. CONSONANTS 12 2.1 Stops and affricates 12 2.1.1 Stops in other Mongolian dialects 17 2.1.2 Buriad and Kalmuck stops 17 2.2 Fricatives 18 2.3 Nasals 18 2.4 Liquids 19 2.5 Glides 20 2.6 Palatalized consonants 20 3. PHONEMES 22 3.1 Vowel phonemes 22 3.1.1 Non-initial vowels 23 3.2 Consonant phonemes 25 3.2.1 Palatalized consonants 28 3.2.2 Velar and uvular consonants 28 3.2.3 Labials 29 3.3 Loan-word phonology 30 4. WRITING SYSTEMS 34 4.1 Cyrillic Mongolian 34 4.2 Cyrillic Buriad and Kalmuck 40 4.3 Modern Written Mongolian 40 Vi CONTENTS 5. PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSES 43 5.1 Phonological representation 43 5.2 Vowel harmony 46 5.2.1 Transparent i 48 5.2.2 Opaque vowels 50 5.2.3 The domain of vowel harmony 52 5.2.4 Vowel harmony as feature spreading 53 5.2.5 Velar ~ uvular alternation and epenthetic consonants 55 5.2.6 Cyclic vowel harmony 56 5.3 Velar nasal assimilation 57 5.4 Reduplication 58 5.4.1 Adjective reduplication 58 5.4.2 Noun reduplication 59 6. SYLLABIFICATION AND EPENTHESIS 62 6.1 Syllable structure 62 6.1.1 Syllable types 63 6.1.2 Codas, sonority, and epenthesis 65 6.2 Syllabification of morphologically simple words 68 6.3 Schwa ~ zero alternation 71 6.4 Cyclic syllabification 73 6.4.1 The verb suffix –(d)x 75 6.5 The phonemic status of palatal glides 76 6.6 Word structure 78 6.7 Final consonant combinations 79 7. PROSODY 85 7.1 Focal accent 85 7.2 Final prominence tone 90 7.3 Boundary signalling 91 7.4 Questions 93 7.5 Word stress 94 8. OLD MONGOLIAN 98 8.1 Uigur Mongolian 99 8.2 Sino-Mongolian 102 8.2.1 Sino-Mongolian consonants 102 8.2.2 Sino-Mongolian vowels 106 8.3 Arabic Mongolian 107 8.4 'Phags-pa Mongolian 108 8.5 Old Mongolian vowels 111 8.5.1 Primary long vowels 113 CONTENTS Vii 8.6 Vowels in non-initial syllables and vowel harmony 113 8.6.1 Rounding assimilation 114 8.6.2 Alternation of velar and uvular consonants 115 8.6.3 utral*i 116 116 8.6.4 Proto-Mongolic *W? 117 8.7 Old Mongolian consonants 118 8.7.1 Stops and affricates 119 8.7.2 The fricative *h 121 8.7.3 Sonorants and *s 124 8.7.4 Coda consonants 124 8.8 Morphophonological processes 125 8.9 Old Mongolian vocabulary 126 9. THE MONGOLIC LANGUAGES 140 9.1 Mongolian 141 9.2 Buriad 144 9.3 Kamnigan 146 9.4 Oirad 147 9.5 Dagur 149 9.6 ShiraYugur 150 9.7 Monguor 151 9.8 Santa 152 9.9 Bonan 153 9.10 Kangjia 153 9.11 Moghol 154 9.12 Other related languages 154 9.13 Comparative vocabulary 155 10. DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN MONGOLIC LANGUAGES 178 10.1 The Mongolic vowel shifts 178 10.2 Vowel splits and mergers 182 10.3 Long vowels 183 10.4 */-diphthongs 185 10.5 Vowel deletion and reduction 185 10.5.1 Reduction of short non-initial vowels 186 10.5.2 Deletion of initial vowels 188 10.6 Non-initial vowels and vowel harmony 188 10.6.1 Vowel harmony shifts 189 10.6.2 Vowel harmony in Old Mongolian and Halh 190 10.7 Vowel assimilation 194 10.7.1 Progressive rounding assimilation and the development of rounding harmony 194 viii CONTENTS 10.7.2 Regressive rounding assimilation 194 10.7.3 Regressive *i-assimilation 195 10.7.4 Breaking of word-initial*i 196 10.7.5 Breaking of *u in Dagur 197 10.8 Onset consonants 197 10.8.1 Stops 198 10.8.2 Affricates 200 10.8.3 Fricatives 202 10.8.4 Sonorants 203 10.9 Coda consonants 203 10.9.1 Unstable *n 205 10.10 Deaspiration and related processes 205 10.11 Palatalization 208 10.11.1 Consonant palatalization 208 10.11.2 Vowel palatalization 210 10.11.3 Vowel palatalization and vowel harmony 212 10.12 Syllable and word structure 214 10.13 Conclusion 216 Appendices 218 References 230 Index 299 Index of Old Mongolian words 311 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We thank all those who helped us in various ways, especially the Mongolian speak- ers Basbajar, Davaadorz, Hurelbaatar, Sarantujaa, Sarancacral, and several others, who willingly let us do rather lengthy and sometimes boring tape recordings of their language. Several teachers and students at the Mongolian State University in Ulaanbaatar helped us with arranging recordings and in other ways, including L. Lhagva, B. Sarantujaa, Ju. Monh-Amgalan, Francois Jacquesson, and Judith Bertalan. We were helped with the acquisition of literature and visits to differ- ent libraries by Tamara Esenova and Petr Bitkeev (Elista), Veronica Veil (Bonn), Juha Janhunen (Helsinki), Saito Yoshio and Sakaedani Haruko (Tokyo), Kuriba- yashi Hitoshi (Sendai), Coyijongjab, Kogjiltu, and Koke (Kokeqota), Secencogtu (Peking), Tat'jana Skrynnikova (Ulan-Ude), and several others. Special thanks to James Bosson who supported this project from its start and read parts of the man- uscript at various stages, and to Saito Yoshio who read the entire manuscript and gave many valuable comments, as did the series editor Jacques Durand and one anonymous reviewer. Part of the project was financed by the Swedish Research Council for the Human- ities and Social Sciences (HSFR) and by the Swedish Institute. Travel grants to Mongolia and other parts of the world were given also by Vetenskapssocieteten i Lund, Kungl. Humanistiska Vetenskapssamfundet i Lund, the Elisabeth Rausing Memorial Foundation, and the Ido Foundation. LIST OF TABLES 1.1 Formant frequencies for monophthongs 5 3.1 Examples of consonants in different positions 26 3.2 Examples of Russian loan-words in Mongolian 31 4.1 Cyrillic alphabets for Mongolic languages 35 4.2 The Modern Written Mongolian alphabet 41 5.1 Examples of vowel harmony in suffixes 47 5.2 Examples of vowel harmony in uninflected words 49 5.3 Examples of noun reduplication 60 6.1 Syllable types 64 6.2 Two-consonant codas 66 8.1 Sino-Mongolian transcriptions 103 8.2 Examples of initial and non-initial vowels 112 8.3 Examples of Old Mongolian onset consonants 119 9.1 Transcription changes 156 LIST OF FIGURES 0 Research on Mongolian phonology xviii 1.1 Vowel duration 3 1.2 Duration of long and short initial vowels 4 1.3 Formant frequencies for short initial vowels 4 1.4 Formant frequencies for full non-initial vowels 6 1.5 Formant frequencies for reduced non-initial vowels 7 1.6 Non-initial HI 8 1.7 Diphthongs 10 1.8 Long palatalized vowels vs.