Khorchin Mongolian

The Khorchin ( Mongolian ', Chinese 科尔沁 ''Kē'ěrqìn'') dialect is a variety of Mongolian spoken in the east of Inner Mongolia, namely in Hinggan League, in the north, north-east and east of Hinggan and in all but the south of the Tongliao region. There were 2.08 million Khorchin Mongols in China in 2000, so the Khorchin dialect may well have more than one million speakers, making it the largest dialect of Inner Mongolia.

Phonology

Consonants

Historical has become modern , and in some varieties, is replaced by . Then, *u (<*<*u) has regressively assimilated to before *p, e.g. *putaha (Written Mongolian budaγ-a) > pata ‘rice’. However, less systematic changes that pertain only to a number of words are far more notable, e.g. 'capacity'> Khorchin . This last example also illustrates that Khorchin allows for the consonant nuclei and (cp. 'many').

Vowels

The large vowel system developed through the depalatalization of consonants that phonemicized formerly allomorphic vowels, hence and . On the other hand, *ö is absent, e.g. Proto-Mongolic > Kalmyk , Khalkha 'colour', but Khorchin , thus merging with . is absent in the native words of some varieties and is completely restricted to loanwords from Chinese, but as these make up a very substantial part of Khorchin vocabulary, it is not feasible to postulate a separate loanword phonology. This also resulted in a vowel harmony system that is rather different from Chakhar and Khalkha: may appear in non-initial syllables of words without regard for vowel harmony, as may (e.g. 'horses' and 'expensive'; Khalkha would have 'horses' and ). On the other hand, still determines a word as front-vocalic when appearing in the first syllable, which doesn't hold for and . In some subdialects, and which originated from palatalized and , have changed vowel harmony class according to their acoustic properties and become front vowels in the system, and the same holds for their long counterparts. E.g. *mori-bar 'by horse' > Khorchin vs. Jalaid subdialect .

Morphology

Khorchin uses the old comitative to delimit an action within a certain time. A similar function is fulfilled by the suffix that is, however, restricted to environments in the past stratum. In contrast to other Mongolian varieties, in Khorchin Chinese verbs can be directly borrowed; other varieties have to borrow Chinese verbs as Mongolian nouns and then derive these to verbs. Compare the new loan 'to ask for money' < zhāngluó (张罗) with the older loan 'to borrow' < jiè (借)Bayančoγtu 2002: 529, 531-532 that is present in all Mongolian varieties and contains the derivational suffix .

Notes

References

Citations

Sources

* Bayančoγtu (2002): ''Qorčin aman ayalγun-u sudulul''. Kökeqota: Öbür mongγul-un yeke surγaγuli-yin keblel-ün qoriy-a.
* Qai yan (2003): Qorčin aman ayalγu ba aru qorčin aman ayalγun-u abiyan-u ǰarim neyitelig ončaliγ. In: ''Öbür mongγul-un ündüsüten-ü yeke surγaγuli 2005/3'': 91-94.
* Sečenbaγatur et al. (2005): ''Mongγul kelen-ü nutuγ-un ayalγun-u sinǰilel-ün uduridqal''. Kökeqota: Öbür mongγul-un arad-un keblel-ün qoriy-a.
* Svantesson, Jan-Olof, Anna Tsendina, Anastasia Karlsson, Vivan Franzén (2005): ''The Phonology of Mongolian''. New York: Oxford University Press.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Khorchin Dialect
Agglutinative languages
Mongolic languages
Central Mongolic languages