LINGUIST List 6.791

Thu 08 Jun 1995

Sum: Mongolian -g-

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1. , 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.doleschalwu-wien.ac.at)
>Institut f. Slawische Sprachen, Wirtschaftsuniv. Wien
>Augasse 9, 1090 Wien, Austria
>Tel.: ++43-1-31336 4115, Fax: ++43-1-31336 744