Editing Mongolic languages (section)

==History==
[[File:MongolicLanguagesGraph.svg|thumb|right|A timeline-based graphical representation of the Mongolic and [[Para-Mongolic languages]]]]
The possible precursor to Mongolic is the [[Xianbei#Language|Xianbei language]], heavily influenced by the [[Proto-Turkic_language|Proto-Turkic]] (later, the [[Oghuric languages|Lir-Turkic]]) language.

The stages of [[Mongolian language#Linguistic history|historical Mongolic]] are:
* Pre-Proto-Mongolic, from approximately the 4th century AD until the 12th century AD, influenced by [[Turkic languages#Geographical expansion and development|Shaz-Turkic]].<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781135796907 |title=The Mongolic Languages |date=2006-01-27 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-135-79690-7 |editor-last=Janhunen |editor-first=Juha |edition=0 |language=en |doi=10.4324/9780203987919 |ref=none}}</ref>{{pn|date=March 2025}}
*[[Proto-Mongolic language|Proto-Mongolic]], from approximately the 13th century, spoken around the time of [[Genghis Khan|Chinggis Khan]]. 
* [[Middle Mongol language|Middle Mongol]], from the 13th century until the early 15th century<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Rybatzki|2003|p=57}}</ref> or late 16th century,<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Poppe|1964|p=1}}</ref> depending on classification spoken. (Given the almost entire lack of written sources for the period in between, an exact cutoff point cannot be established.) Again influenced by [[Turco-Mongol tradition|Turkic]].
*[[Classical Mongolian language|Classical Mongolian]], from approximately 1700 to 1900.
* [[Mongolian language|Standard Mongolian]] The standard Mongolian language has been in official use since 1919, and this form of the language is used in the economic, political, and social fields.

===Pre-Proto-Mongolic===
''Pre-Proto-Mongolic'' is the name for the stage of Mongolic that precedes Proto-Mongolic. Proto-Mongolic can be clearly identified chronologically with the language spoken by the Mongols during [[Genghis Khan]]'s early expansion in the 1200-1210s. Pre-Proto-Mongolic, by contrast, is a continuum that stretches back indefinitely in time. It is divided into Early Pre-Proto-Mongolic and Late Pre-Proto-Mongolic.

Late Pre-Proto-Mongolic refers to the Mongolic spoken a few centuries before Proto-Mongolic by the Mongols and neighboring tribes like the [[Merkit]]s and [[Kerait]]s. Certain archaic words and features in Written Mongolian go back past Proto-Mongolic to Late Pre-Proto-Mongolic (Janhunen 2006).

===Relationship with Turkic===
{{further|Turco-Mongols}}
Pre-Proto-Mongolic has borrowed various words from [[Turkic languages]].

In the case of Early Pre-Proto-Mongolic, certain loanwords in the Mongolic languages point to early contact with [[Oghur languages|Oghur]] (Pre-Proto-Bulgaric) Turkic, also known as r-Turkic. These loanwords precede [[Common Turkic]] (z-Turkic) loanwords and include:
*Mongolic ''ikere'' (twins) from Pre-Proto-Bulgaric ''ikir'' (versus Common Turkic ''ekiz'')
*Mongolic ''hüker'' (ox) from Pre-Proto-Bulgaric ''hekür'' (Common Turkic ''öküz'')
*Mongolic ''jer'' (weapon) from Pre-Proto-Bulgaric ''jer'' (Common Turkic ''yäz'')
*Mongolic ''biragu'' (calf) versus Common Turkic ''buzagu''
*Mongolic ''siri-'' (to smelt ore) versus Common Turkic ''siz-'' (to melt)

The above words are thought to have been borrowed from Oghur Turkic during the time of the [[Xiongnu]].

Later [[Turkic peoples]] in Mongolia all spoke forms of Common Turkic (z-Turkic) as opposed to [[Oghur languages|Oghur]] (Bulgharic) Turkic, which withdrew to the west in the 4th century. The [[Chuvash language]], spoken by 1 million people in European Russia, is the only living representative of Oghur Turkic which split from Proto Turkic around the 1st century AD.

Words in Mongolic like ''{{lang|mn|dayir}}'' (brown, Common Turkic ''yagiz'') and ''nidurga'' (fist, Common Turkic ''yudruk'') with initial *d and *n versus Common Turkic *y are sufficiently archaic to indicate loans from an earlier stage of Oghur (Pre-Proto-Bulgaric). This is because Chuvash and Common Turkic do not differ in these features despite differing fundamentally in rhotacism-lambdacism (Janhunen 2006). Oghur tribes lived in the Mongolian borderlands before the 5th century, and provided Oghur loanwords to Early Pre-Proto-Mongolic before Common Turkic loanwords.{{sfn|Golden|2011|p=31}}

===Proto-Mongolic===
{{main|Proto-Mongolic language}}

Proto-Mongolic, the ancestor language of the modern Mongolic languages, is very close to Middle Mongol, the language spoken at the time of [[Genghis Khan]] and the [[Mongol Empire]]. Most features of modern Mongolic languages can thus be reconstructed from Middle Mongol. An exception would be the voice suffix like -caga- 'do together', which can be reconstructed from the modern languages but is not attested in Middle Mongol.

The languages of the historical [[Donghu people|Donghu]], [[Wuhuan]], and [[Xianbei]] peoples might have been related to Proto-Mongolic.<ref>{{harvcoltxt|Andrews|1999|p=72}}, "[...] believed that at least some of their constituent tribes spoke a Mongolian language, though there is still some argument that a particular variety of Turkic may have been spoken among them."</ref> For [[Tuoba language|Tabghach]], the language of the founders of the [[Northern Wei]] dynasty, for which the surviving evidence is very sparse, and Khitan, for which evidence exists that is written in the two Khitan scripts ([[Khitan large script|large]] and [[Khitan small script|small]]) which have as yet not been fully deciphered, a direct affiliation to Mongolic can now be taken to be most likely or even demonstrated.<ref>see Vovin 2007 for Tabghach and Janhunen 2012 for Khitan</ref>

===Middle Mongol===
{{main|Middle Mongol}}
The changes from Proto-Mongolic to Middle Mongol are described below.
====Changes in phonology====
=====Consonants=====
Research into reconstruction of the consonants of Middle Mongol has engendered several controversies. Middle Mongol had two series of plosives, but there is disagreement as to which phonological dimension they lie on, whether aspiration<ref>Svantesson ''et al.'' (2005)</ref> or voicing.<ref>Tömörtogoo (1992)</ref> The early scripts have distinct letters for velar plosives and uvular plosives, but as these are in complementary distribution according to vowel harmony class, only two back plosive phonemes, *''/k/'', *''{{IPA|/kʰ/}}'' (~ *''[k]'', *''{{IPA|[qʰ]}}'') are to be reconstructed.<ref>Svantesson ''et al.'' (2005): 118–120.</ref> One prominent, long-running disagreement concerns certain correspondences of word medial consonants among the four major scripts (''UM'', ''SM'', ''AM'', and ''Ph'', which were discussed in the preceding section). Word-medial ''/k/'' of Uyghur Mongolian (UM) has not one, but two correspondences with the three other scripts: either /k/ or zero. Traditional scholarship has reconstructed *''/k/'' for both correspondences, arguing that *''/k/'' was lost in some instances, which raises the question of what the conditioning factors of those instances were.<ref>Poppe (1955)</ref> More recently, the other possibility has been assumed; namely, that the correspondence between UM ''/k/'' and zero in the other scripts points to a distinct phoneme, ''/h/'', which would correspond to the word-initial phoneme ''/h/'' that is present in those other scripts.<ref>Svantesson ''et al.'' (2005): 118–124.</ref> ''/h/'' (also called ''/x/'') is sometimes assumed to derive from *''{{IPA|/pʰ/}}'', which would also explain zero in ''SM'', ''AM'', ''Ph'' in some instances where ''UM'' indicates /p/; e.g. ''[[Deel (clothing)|debel]]'' > Khalkha ''deel''.<ref>Janhunen (2003c): 6</ref>

The palatal affricates *''č'', *''čʰ'' were fronted in Northern Modern Mongolian dialects such as Khalkha. {{IPA|*''kʰ''}} was [[spirantization|spirantized]] to {{IPA|/x/}} in Ulaanbaatar Khalkha and the Mongolian dialects south of it, e.g. Preclassical Mongolian ''kündü'', reconstructed as ''{{IPA|*kʰynty}}'' 'heavy', became Modern Mongolian {{IPA|/xunt/}}<ref>Svantesson ''et al.'' (2005): 133, 167.</ref> (but in the vicinity of [[Bayankhongor]] and [[Baruun-Urt]], many speakers will say {{IPA|[kʰunt]}}).<ref>Rinchen (ed.) (1979): 210.</ref> Originally word-final *''n'' turned into /ŋ/; if *''{{IPA|n}}'' was originally followed by a vowel that later dropped, it remained unchanged, e.g. ''{{IPA|*kʰen}}'' became {{IPA|/xiŋ/}}, but ''{{IPA|*kʰoina}}'' became {{IPA|/xɔin/}}. After i-breaking, {{IPA|*[ʃ]}} became phonemic. Consonants in words containing back vowels that were followed by ''{{IPA|*i}}'' in Proto-Mongolian became [[Palatalization (phonetics)|palatalized]] in Modern Mongolian. In some words, word-final ''{{IPA|*n}}'' was dropped with most case forms, but still appears with the ablative, dative and genitive.<ref>Svantesson ''et al.'' (2005): 124, 165–166, 205.</ref>

Only foreign origin words start with the letter ''L'' and none start with the letter ''R''.<ref name="Ramsey1987">{{cite book|author=S. Robert Ramsey|title=The Languages of China|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2E_5nR0SoXoC&pg=PA206|year=1987|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=0-691-01468-X|pages=206–}}</ref>

=====Vowels=====
The standard view is that Proto-Mongolic had ''{{IPA|*i, *e, *y, *ø, *u, *o, *a}}''. According to this view, ''{{IPA|*o}}'' and ''{{IPA|*u}}'' were [[pharyngealization|pharyngealized]] to {{IPA|/ɔ/}} and {{IPA|/ʊ/}}, then ''{{IPA|*y}}'' and ''{{IPA|*ø}}'' were [[velarization|velarized]] to {{IPA|/u/}} and {{IPA|/o/}}. Thus, the vowel harmony shifted from a velar to a pharyngeal paradigm. ''{{IPA|*i}}'' in the first syllable of back-vocalic words was [[Assimilation (linguistics)|assimilated]] to the following vowel; in word-initial position it became {{IPA|/ja/}}. ''{{IPA|*e}}'' was rounded to {{IPA|*ø}} when followed by ''{{IPA|*y}}''. VhV and VjV sequences where the second vowel was any vowel but ''{{IPA|*i}}'' were monophthongized. In noninitial syllables, short vowels were deleted from the phonetic representation of the word and long vowels became short;<ref>Svantesson ''et al.'' (2005): 181, 184, 186–187, 190–195.</ref> e.g. ''{{IPA|*imahan}}'' (''{{IPA|*i}}'' becomes {{IPA|/ja/}}, ''{{IPA|*h}}'' disappears) > ''{{IPA|*jamaːn}}'' (unstable ''n'' drops; vowel reduction) > /jama(n)/ 'goat', and ''{{IPA|*emys-}}'' (regressive rounding assimilation) > ''{{IPA|*ømys-}}'' (vowel velarization) > ''{{IPA|*omus-}}'' (vowel reduction) > /oms-/ 'to wear'

This reconstruction has recently{{When|date=November 2016}} been opposed, arguing that vowel developments across the Mongolic languages can be more economically explained starting from basically the same vowel system as Khalkha, only with ''{{IPA|*[ə]}}'' instead of ''*[e]''. Moreover, the sound changes involved in this alternative scenario are more likely from an [[Articulatory phonetics|articulatory]] point of view and early Middle Mongol loans into [[Korean language|Korean]].<ref>Ko (2011)</ref>

====Changes in morphology====

=====Nominal system=====
[[File:Secret history.jpg|thumb|right|upright=1.13|alt=white page with several lines of black Chinese characters running top-down and separated into small groups by spaces. To the left of some of the characters there are small characters such as 舌　and 中. To the right of each line, groups of characters are indicated as such by a "<nowiki>]]</nowiki>"-shaped bracket, and to the right of each such bracket, there are other medium-sized characters|''[[The Secret History of the Mongols]]'' which goes back to a lost Mongolian script original is the only document that allows the reconstruction of agreement in social gender in Middle Mongol.<ref>Tümenčečeg 1990.</ref>]]

In the ensuing discourse, as noted earlier, the term "Middle Mongol" is employed broadly to encompass texts scripted in either Uighur Mongolian (UM), Chinese (SM), or Arabic (AM).

The case system of Middle Mongol has remained mostly intact down to the present, although important changes occurred with the comitative and the dative and most other case suffixes did undergo slight changes in form, i.e., were shortened.<ref>Rybatzki (2003b): 67, Svantesson (2003): 162.</ref> The Middle Mongol comitative -''luɣ-a'' could not be used attributively, but it was replaced by the suffix -''taj'' that originally derived adjectives denoting possession from nouns, e.g. ''mori-tai'' 'having a horse' became ''mor<nowiki>'</nowiki>toj'' 'having a horse/with a horse'. As this adjective functioned parallel to ''ügej'' 'not having', it has been suggested that a "privative case" ('without') has been introduced into Mongolian.<ref>Janhunen (2003c): 27.</ref> There have been three different case suffixes in the dative-locative-directive domain that are grouped in different ways: -''a'' as locative and -''dur'', -''da'' as dative<ref>Rybatzki (2003b): 68.</ref> or -''da'' and -''a'' as dative and -''dur'' as locative,<ref>Garudi (2002): 101–107.</ref> in both cases with some functional overlapping. As -''dur'' seems to be grammaticalized from ''dotur-a'' 'within', thus indicating a span of time,<ref>Toɣtambayar (2006): 18–35.</ref> the second account seems to be more likely. Of these, -''da'' was lost, -''dur'' was first reduced to -''du'' and then to -''d''<ref>Toɣtambayar (2006): 33–34.</ref> and -''a'' only survived in a few frozen environments.<ref>Norčin ''et al.'' (ed.) 1999: 2217.</ref> Finally, the directive of modern Mongolian, -''ruu'', has been innovated from ''uruɣu'' 'downwards'.<ref>Sečenbaɣatur ''et al.'' (2005): 228, 386.</ref> Social gender agreement was abandoned.<ref>Rybatzki 2003b: 73, Svantesson (2003): 166.</ref>

=====Verbal system=====
Middle Mongol had a slightly larger set of declarative finite verb suffix forms<ref>Weiers (1969): Morphologie, §B.II; Svantesson (2003): 166.</ref> and a smaller number of participles, which were less likely to be used as finite predicates.<ref>Weiers (1969): Morphologie, §B.III; Luvsanvandan (1987): 86–104.</ref> The linking converb -''n'' became confined to stable verb combinations,<ref>Luvsanvandan (ed.) (1987): 126, Činggeltei (1999): 251–252.</ref> while the number of converbs increased.<ref>Rybatzki (2003b): 77, Luvsanvandan (ed.) (1987): 126–137</ref> The distinction between male, female and plural subjects exhibited by some finite verbal suffixes was lost.<ref>The reconstruction of a social gender distinction is fairly commonplace, see e.g. Rybatzki (2003b): 75. A strong argument for the number distinction between -''ba'' and -''bai'' is made in Tümenčečeg (1990): 103–108, also see Street (2008) where it is also argued that this has been the case for other suffixes.</ref>

====Changes in syntax====
Neutral word order in clauses with pronominal subject changed from object–predicate–subject to subject–object–predicate; e.g.

{{interlinear|indent=3|abbreviations=NFUT:nonfuture
|Kökseü sabraq ügü.le-run ayyi yeke uge ugu.le-d ta ... kee-jüü.y
|Kökseü sabraq speak-CVB alas big word speak-PAST you ... say-NFUT
|"Kökseü sabraq spoke saying, 'Alas! You speak a great boast....' "<ref>Street (1957): 14, ''Secret History'' 190.13v.</ref>}}

The syntax of verb negation shifted from negation particles preceding final verbs to a negation particle following participles; thus, as final verbs could no longer be negated, their paradigm of negation was filled by particles.<ref>Yu (1991)</ref> For example, Preclassical Mongolian ''ese irebe'' 'did not come' v. modern spoken Khalkha Mongolian ''ireegüi'' or ''irsengüi''.