6.791, Sum: Mongolian -g-

[The Linguist List]

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LINGUIST List:  Vol-6-791. Thu 08 Jun 1995. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 76
 
Subject: 6.791, Sum: Mongolian -g-
 
Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar: Texas A&M U. <aristar at tam2000.tamu.edu>
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1)
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 1995 01:44:19 -0400
From: JPKIRCHNER at aol.com
Subject: Sum: Mongolian -g-
 
-------------------------Messages--------------------------------------
1)
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 1995 01:44:19 -0400
From: JPKIRCHNER at aol.com
Subject: Sum: Mongolian -g-
 
Some weeks ago I posted a query as to the historical source of an epenthetic
/g/, which appears between certain stem-final and suffix-initial vowels in
Mongolian.  Only Sergej Krylov knew about Mongolian specifically, and his
message appears below.
 
>Some remarks about the epenthetic  /g/ in Mongolian.
>As far as I know:
 
>1) In "hard" words it is not phonetically /g/, it is a
>fricative sound (written phonetically as the Greek "gamma").
>In "soft" words it is /g/. (Note that the traditional terms for >"hard" and
"soft" words are "back" and "front" recpectively,
>but at least for Khalkha the terms "hard"and "soft" are
>preferable).
 
>2) Historically it was not an epenthesis.  On the contrary, in
>Proto-Mongolian there was no long vowels, and between the
>short vowels corresponding the modern Mongolian "morae"
>(halves of the long syllables) there was "g". The Old Mongolian >Script
shows it rather clearly. Then this "g" became
>"weakened" between vowels, and then it was fully omitted,
>and instead of two syllables appeared two-morae (that is,
>long) syllables.
 
>        But there were some phonological positions where there >were no
elision of "g", namely, where two sequences of the
>type V+g+V followed after each other. That is:
         VgV --) VV --> long V; but
         VgV+VgV --) VVgVV --> long V+g+long V (it was before
>suffixes with initial VgV) (unfortunately I don't know how to >represent
"gamma" and the transcriptional symbol of length in)this e-mail system and
have to write"g" and "long").
>       As a result of this process, the modern Mongolian
>epenthesis appeared.
>        The direction of the diachronic sound changes do not
>necessarily coincide with the direction of the sound
>alternation viewed from the purely synchronic point of view.
>        The example with the Mongolian epenthesis is one of the >examples
for it.
>        If my remarks are not clear enough, I can explain it
>separately.
>        Sincerely yours,
>                                 Sergej A. Krylov
 
>Ursula Doleschal (ursula.doleschal at wu-wien.ac.at)
>Institut f. Slawische Sprachen, Wirtschaftsuniv. Wien
>Augasse 9, 1090 Wien, Austria
>Tel.: ++43-1-31336 4115, Fax:  ++43-1-31336 744
 
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