MONGOLIAN LANGUAGES

one of three subfamilies of the Altaic language family. The Mongolian languages are spoken in Mongolia and adjacent parts of east-central Asia. Their subclassification is controversial, and no one scheme has won universal approval. The central Mongolian languages are usually divided into a western group, consisting of the closely related Oryat (spoken in Mongolia and in the Sinkiang region of China) and Kalmyk (Russia), and an eastern group, consisting of the closely related Buryat (Russia) and Mongol (Mongolia and China) languages. Outlying languagesMoghol (spoken in Afghanistan), Daghur (Inner Mongolia, China), Yellow Uighur (Kansu province, China), and the related groups of Monguor (Tu), Tung-hsiang, and Bao'an (Bonan), which are spoken on the border between the provinces of Kansu and Tsinghaiexhibit archaic features. All of the central, but none of the outlying, languages have written forms. The history of the Mongolian language, both spoken and written, consists of three periods. The divisions of the spoken language are Old, or Ancient, Mongolian (through the 12th century), Middle Mongolian (13th16th centuries), and New, or Modern, Mongolian (17th century to the present). Old Mongolian is reconstructed from borrowings in other languages and by comparison of the recorded Mongolian languages. The Mongolian vertical script language developed at the end of the 12th century; the oldest extant text dates from roughly 1225. The Pre-Classical period of the written language corresponds to Middle Mongolian. This language is slightly more archaic than the contemporary Middle Mongolian recorded in Chinese transcription in the Secret History of the Mongols (c. 1240) and in other texts and glosses in the Chinese, 'Phags-pa, Persian, and Latin scripts. The conversion of the Mongols to Buddhism (c. 1575) ushered in the Classical period (17th and early 18th centuries) of translation of scriptural texts from Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese, and this period corresponds to the commencement of the Modern period of the spoken language. Not until the 19th century did features of contemporary spoken Mongolian languages begin to appear in Mongolian texts. With the translation of Buddhistic texts, Mongolian received a large number of Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan, and Uighur terms, including not only technical religious words but also personal names and astronomical and calendrical terms. At the end of the Ancient Mongolian period, the Mongolian language began to spread from its original homeland, and, during the Middle Mongolian period, various dialects began to develop into separate languages. The outlying languageswhich today survive as Moghol in Afghanistan; Daghur (Dagur, or Daur) in the east; and Monguor (Tu), Bao'an (Bonan), and Santa (Tung-hsiang) in the southwere isolated from the main body of Mongolian languages when the tide of Mongol conquest receded. These languages diverged from the main group of Mongolian dialects and to this day retain archaic features characteristic of Middle Mongolian that have been lost in other Mongolian languages; e.g., many retain /f/ and /h/ from Proto-Altaic */p/ (an asterisk identifies a sound as a hypothetical, reconstructed form), as well as unassimilated vowel sequences. An example of the latter phenomenon is Middle Mongolian e' (which in Classical Mongolian contained a medial velar, eg), where other languages have merged the vowels into a single, long vowel (thus ). one of three subfamilies of the Altaic language family. The Mongolian languages are spoken in Mongolia and adjacent parts of east-central Asia. Their subclassification is controversial, and no one scheme has won universal approval. The central Mongolian languages are usually divided into a western group, consisting of the closely related Oyrat (spoken in Mongolia and in the Sinkiang region of China) and Kalmyk (Russia), and an eastern group, consisting of the closely related Buryat (Russia) and Mongol (Mongolia and China) languages. Outlying languagesMoghol (spoken in Afghanistan), Daghur (Inner Mongolia, China), Yellow Uighur (Kansu province, China), and the related groups of Monguor (Tu), Tung-hsiang, and Bao'an (Bonan), which are spoken on the border between the provinces of Kansu and Tsinghaiexhibit archaic features. All of the central, but none of the outlying, languages have written forms. Mongolian languages are characterized by palatal harmony, in which all of the vowels in a word are formed in either the front or the back of the mouth. Other characteristics are agglutinative word structure, in which a large number of affixes may be added to the root, each affix having a distinct meaning or grammatical function; a relatively large number of grammatical cases in the noun; double cases (e.g., Classical Mongolian ger-t-ece from within the house'); a very rich verbal morphology; and almost no grammatical irregularity. The languages are exclusively suffixal and postpositioning, lacking prefixes and prepositions. Word order is subjectobjectverb (SOV), with modifiers such as adjectives preceding what they modify and specifiers such as quantifiers following the specified; and little if any transformation of basic structures is permitted. Additional reading N. Poppe, Introduction to Mongolian Comparative Studies (1955), is principally a comparative grammar but contains as well history and description of the various languages and a brief history of scholarship. Articles on the Mongolian languages and the family as a whole are found in Handbuch der Orientalistik, vol. 5, part 2, Mongolistik (1964), along with a brief history of scholarship. A comprehensive bibliography is H.G. Schwarz, Bibliotheca Mongolica, vol. 1, Works in English, French, and German (1978). Robert I. Binnick