Middle Mongol or Middle Mongolian was a Mongolic koiné language spoken in the Mongol Empire. Originating from Genghis Khan's home region of Northeastern Mongolia, it diversified into several Mongolic languages after the collapse of the empire. In comparison to Modern Mongolian, it is known to have had no long vowels, different vowel harmony and verbal systems and a slightly different case system.
Definition and historical predecessors Middle Mongol closely resembles Proto-Mongolic, the reconstructed last common ancestor of the modern Mongolic languages, which dates it to shortly after the time when Genghis Khan united a number of tribes under his command and formed the Khamag Mongol.Janhunen 2003a: 2–3
The term "Middle Mongol" is somewhat misleading, since it is the earliest directly-attested (as opposed to reconstructed) ancestor of Modern Mongolian, and would therefore be termed "Old Mongolian" under the usual conventions for naming historical forms of languages (compare the distinction between Old Chinese and Middle Chinese). Although the existence of an earlier ("old") Mongol clan federation in Mongolia during the 12th century is historically attested, there is no surviving linguistic material from that period.For further reading on this matter, see de Rachewiltz 1999
According to Vovin (2019), the Rouran language of the Rouran Khaganate was a Mongolic language and close, but not identical, to Middle Mongol.
Juha Janhunen (2006) classified the Khitan language into the "Para-Mongolic" family, meaning it is related to the Mongolic languages as a sister group, rather than as a direct descendant of Proto-Mongolic.Janhunen 2003b: 391–394 Alexander Vovin has also identified several possible loanwords from Koreanic languages into Khitan. He also identified the extinct Tuyuhun language as another Para-Mongolic language.
Corpus
The temporal delimitation of Middle Mongol causes some problems as shown in definitions ranging from the 13th until the early 15thRybatzki 2003: 57 or until the late 16th century.Poppe 1964: 1 This discrepancy arises from the lack of documents written in the Mongolian language from between the early 15th and late 16th centuries. It is not clear whether these two delimitations constitute conscious decisions about the classification of e.g. a small text from 1453 with less than 120 wordsCleaves 1950 or whether the wider definition is just intended to fill up the time gap for which little proper evidence is available.
Middle Mongol survived in a number of scripts, namely notably ʼPhags-pa (decrees during the Yuan dynasty), Arabic (dictionaries), Chinese, Mongolian script and a few western scripts.Rybatzki 2003: 58 Usually, the Stele of Yisüngge is considered to be its first surviving monument. It is a sports report written in Mongolian writing that was already fairly conventionalized then and most often dated between 1224 and 1225.e.g. Γarudi 2002: 7 However, Igor de Rachewiltz argues that it is unlikely that the stele was erected at the place where it was found in the year of the event it describes, suggesting that it is more likely to have been erected about a quarter of a century later, when Yisüngge had gained more substantial political power. If so, the earliest surviving Mongolian monument would be an edict of Töregene Khatun of 1240de Rachewiltz 1976 and the oldest surviving text arguably The Secret History of the Mongols, a document that must originally have been written in Mongolian script in 1252,Atwood 2007 but which survives only in an edited version as a textbook for learning Mongolian from the Ming dynasty, thus reflecting the pronunciation of Middle Mongol from the second half of the 14th century.de Rachewiltz 2004: xxix–xxxiv, xl–lix
The term "Middle Mongol" is problematic insofar as there is no body of texts that is commonly called "Old Mongol".See Rachewiltz 1999 for a critical review of the terminology used in periodizations of Mongolic While a revision of this terminology for the early period of Mongolian has been attempted,Svantesson et al. 2005: 98–99 the lack of a thorough and linguistically-based periodization of Mongolian up to now has constituted a problem for any such attempts. The related term "Preclassical Mongolian" is applied to Middle Mongol documents in Mongolian script, since these show some distinct linguistic peculiarities.
Phonology
Middle Mongol had the consonant phonemes and the vowel phonemes .Svantesson et al. 2005: 111, 118 The main difference to older approachese.g. Poppe 1955 is that is identified with and (sometimes as before and ), so that Note that while Poppe writes and , he explains it as and . for Proto-Mongolic cannot be reconstructed from internal evidence that used to be based solely on word-initial and the then rather incomplete data from Monguor.
+Vowels Front Neutral Back High Mid Low
+Consonants Labial Alveolar Palatal VelarUvular Nasal Fortis t t͡ʃ Lenis Fricative Lateral Liquid Semivowel
There appears to have been a positionally determined allophonic variation , , with the postvelar allophones occurring in back-vowel contexts. Both have been claimed to occur before (depending on its origin from Proto-Mongolic or ), which would make them phonemic.Rybatzki (2003: 64)
In transliteration, and are commonly indicated as and , respectively; , and are written (or ), and (or ); is denoted by ; is spelt ; and may be expressed by (or ).Rybatzki (2003: 63-64)Poppe 1955: 24-172
Morphophonology
The vowels participate in front-back vowel harmony, where /a/, /o/ and /u/ alternate with /e/, /ø/ and /y/; in the rest of this article, morphemes are represented only by their back-vocalic allomorph. The vowel /i/ is neutral with respect to vowel harmony. Certain stems end in an 'unstable /n/' (here marked n), which is obligatorily or optionally dropped in front of various suffixes.Rybatzki (2003: 67) The consonants /g/ and /k/ are in alternation with a hiatus in front of certain vowel-initial suffixes.
Grammar
Middle Mongol is an agglutinating language that makes nearly exclusive use of suffixes. The word order is subject–object–predicate if the subject is a noun and also object–predicate–subject if it is a pronoun. Middle Mongol rather freely allows for predicate–object, which is due to language contact.Rybatzki 2003: 78 There are nine cases, the nominative being unmarked. The verbal suffixes can be divided into finite suffixes, participles and converbal suffixes. Some of the finite suffixes inflect for subject number and gender. Adjectives precede their modificatum and agree with it in number. The pronouns have a clusivity distinction.
Nominal morphology
Number The plural suffixes are distributed as follows:Rybatzki (2003: 66), Poppe (1955: 175-184). +SuffixUsed withNote-narvowel stems denoting non-lineal kinship terms and deitiesonly in texts of eastern provenance-nu'udunclearonly in texts of eastern provenance-svowel stems-dstems in -n, -l, -r The stem-final consonant is elided; likewise the entire stem-final sequence -sun in earlier texts.-udother consonant stems (and occasionally stems in -n, -l, -r as well)-nstems in a vowel + -yThe stem-final -y is elided.
Case endings and the reflexive suffix The case endings have different allomorphs depending on whether the stem ends in a vowel, the consonant /n/ or another consonant. There is also some chronological variation between earlier and later texts, as marked with the sign > in the table.Rybatzki (2003: 69), Poppe (1955: 185-208) +vowel stemsconsonant stemsn-stemsgenitive-yin, -n-un, -in, -ai-(n)u('ai)accusative-yi-i-(n)idative-locative-Du(r), -DaThe D tends to be realised as /d/ after vowels, semivowels, nasals and the lateral, whereas /t/ tends to be found after obstruents; in some scripts and areas, however, no such allomorphy is expressed (Poppe 1955: 196-197).-a-(n)aablative-('a)ca > -('a)sa-('a)ca > -('a)sa-(n)(a)ca > -asainstrumental-'ar (-barThe instrumental -bar, the reflexive -ban and the standalone reflexive stem öber occur in free variation with -'ar, -'an and ö'er, and then only in some scripts. Rybatzki (2003: 69) therefore suspects that these spellings might be instances of archaising orthography with no counterparts in the contemporary spoken language.)-i'ar > -aar-(n)i'arcomitative-lu'a > -laa The dative-locative may denote not only an indirect object, but also local and temporal expressions, both static and dynamic.Rybatzki (2003: 68) The accusative ending may be replaced by the unmarked nominative, especially if the noun is not definite and specific; in such cases, stems ending in unstable /n/ lose it. The comitative may also be used as an instrumental. The ablative expresses the object of a comparison in a construction expressing the comparative degree: qola-ca qola 'farther than far', lit. 'far from far'. The genitive does the same in the superlative degree construction: irgen-ü sayin haran 'the best of the people', lit. 'people good of people'.
A reflexive possessive suffix (meaning 'his own', 'my own' and so on) can be placed after a noun declined for any case. Its shape varies depending on phonological factors and the genitive ending of vowel stems is also changed in front of it: +after vowelsafter consonantsbasic form-'an (-ban)-i'angenitive-yu-'an > -yaan-u-'an > -aan
Pronouns The personal pronouns exhibit an inclusive-exclusive distinction. They mostly take the same case suffixes as the nouns, but display some suppletion and stem allomorphy, as summarised below:
+ Personal pronounsA summary of the table in Rybatzki (2003: 71). & & 1stperson bi min- nama- na(ma)- nada- ba man- bida bidan- 2ndperson ci cin- cima- ta tan- 3rdperson (ene, tere, mün)These are actually the demonstrative pronouns 'this', 'that' and 'the same', used in place of personal pronouns because the nominative forms of the original ones had been lost. in- ima-In addition, the instrumental of the 3rd person singular is formed with the ending -'ari rather than just -'ar. (ede, tede, müt) an-
Other pronouns and related forms are:Rybatzki (2003: 72-73) +nom.sg.obliquepluralplural obliqueplacemannerkindquantitytimeproximal demonstrativeenee'ün-ede(-er/ci)eden-endeeyineyimü (pl.-n)edüidistal demonstrativetereteün-tedeteden-tendeteyinteyimü (pl.-n)tedüi'same'münmünmütinterrogative who?kenken-kedkerkedüikeji'e, keliinterrogative what?ya'un > yaanya'un > yaanya'udqa'ayekinyambarreflexiveö'er (öber)ö'er-ö'ed Indefinite pronouns are formed by combining the interrogatives and the particle -ba(r).
Verbal morphology
Finite indicative verb forms The finite indicative verbal suffixes express different shades of temporal, aspectual and modal meaning, and the ones with a past meaning also agree with the subject in semantic/biological gender. There are two present and two past forms, with a modal distinction between a marked and unmarked form within each pair, and a pluperfect. The usual suffixes are displayed in the table below. As above, more innovative variants are introduced with the sign >.Rybatzki (2003: 74-76) +Temporal meaning:Name of the form:SuffixMeaning and usepresentnarrative‑m(u(i))The usual present-future tense.deductive-yu