Philological analysis of Old Mongolian: consonant-vowel harmony was not universally enforced
Public Deposited- Last Modified
- February 26, 2019
- Creator
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Hornstein, Eli D.
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Linguistics
- Abstract
- Mongolic languages provide an interesting arena for attempts to link diachronic studies to broad synchronic questions. A prime example is the origin of Halh Mongolian phonology from its ancestor Old Mongolian. In Halh, there is vowel harmony on the [+/-ATR] feature, which also controls dorsal consonant [+/-high] variation (Svantesson 1985, Goldsmith 1985). Under Halh V-C harmony [+high] velars are produced in a [+ATR] vocalic environment and [-high] uvulars are produced when vowels are [-ATR]. Old Mongolian also possessed both vowel and V-C harmony, but based on [+/-back] rather than [+/-ATR]. In Old Mongolian, [-back] vowels and [+high] velar consonants harmonize, and [+back] vowels harmonize with [-high] uvular consonants. While the most commonly used, cross-linguistically attested system of phonological features (Sagey 1986) is perfectly capable of describing both patterns (as I have just done), that description doesn’t provide much insight into the phonological relationships taking place in either system, or what underlies the shift between them. This study uses philological analysis to directly characterize Old Mongolian tokens that contain vowels and dorsal consonants in contemporary text sources. Irregularities in both C-V harmony involving the velar stop [k] and V-V harmony involving the back vowel [u] were identified through this method. This represents the first attempt to consider self-reported surface forms by speakers of Old Mongolian rather than relying on reconstruction from modern languages. The identification of irregulars in Old Mongolian harmony contradicts the traditional view from reconstruction work that V-V and C-V harmony was entirely regular. This different view of the Old Mongolian phonological landscape may have a significant impact on attempts to relate Mongolic phonology to bigger questions in linguistics.
- Date of publication
- spring 2014
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- Rights statement
- In Copyright
- Note
- Funding: None
- Advisor
- Smith, Jennifer
- Degree
- Bachelor of Arts
- Honors level
- Honors
- Degree granting institution
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Extent
- 52
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