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Mongolian is the principal language spoken by some five million ethnic Mongols living in Outer and Inner Mongolia, as well as in adjacent parts of Russia and China. The spoken language is divided into a number of mutually intelligible dialects, while for writing two separate written languages are used: Cyrillic Khalkha in Outer Mongolia (the Republic of Mongolia) and Written Mongol in Inner Mongolia (P. R. China). In this grammatical description, the focus is on the standard varieties of the spoken language, as used in broadcasting, education, and everyday casual speech. The dialectology of the language, and its background as a member of the Mongolic language family, are also dicussed. Mongolian is an agglutinating language with a well-developed suffixal morphology. In the areal framework, the language is a typical member of the trans-Eurasian Ural-Altaic complex with features such as vowel harmony, verb-final sentence structure, and complex chains of non-finite verbal phrases.
335 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 26, 2014
"Mongolian" is in fact a whole language family instead of a single language, but there exists a core of languages, whose features correspond to the principles underlying the Written Mongolian and Cyrillic scripts, that are similar enough to be treated together. It is this Common Mongolic, roughly the Khalkha language of modern Mongolia and the dialects of Chinese Inner Mongolian, that Juha Janhunen examines in this contribution to the London Oriental and African Language Library series.
In the main, this book will remind readers of early volumes in the Cambridge "X: A Linguistic Introduction" series that aimed to bring readers with considerable linguistics experience up to speed with the features that make the language in question tick: phonology, morphology and syntax. Mongolian is represented in a phonological transcription, and when Written Mongol or Cyrillic Khalkha material is brought in, it is transliterated and never appears in the original script. The discussion is never rigidly synchronic and Janhunen points to earlier stages of the language when it elucidates contemporary phenomena.
However, Janhunen's presentation often surpasses even one of those Cambridge books in its detail and theoretical rigor. The discussion of Mongolian phonology inherits the deep observations of Svantesson et al.'s book on the subject (The Phonology of Mongolian) and some observations of Janhunen's own.
I think a lot of readers would find the level of detail here daunting. The section on morphosyntax is more concerned with listing every possible feature into of providing an easily assimilable picture. Those with a more casual interest in Khalka Mongolian or another form would probably be better served by the Janhunen-edited collection The Mongolic Languages from Routledge, which presents all these varieties in smaller, more accessible format. However, I got a lot out of this book, especially when it comes to Khalkha Mongolian's phonology, changed drastically since the days of Middle Mongolian or Classical Mongolian, but the specifics of which elude learners due to the conservative orthography.
In the main, this book will remind readers of early volumes in the Cambridge "X: A Linguistic Introduction" series that aimed to bring readers with considerable linguistics experience up to speed with the features that make the language in question tick: phonology, morphology and syntax. Mongolian is represented in a phonological transcription, and when Written Mongol or Cyrillic Khalkha material is brought in, it is transliterated and never appears in the original script. The discussion is never rigidly synchronic and Janhunen points to earlier stages of the language when it elucidates contemporary phenomena.
However, Janhunen's presentation often surpasses even one of those Cambridge books in its detail and theoretical rigor. The discussion of Mongolian phonology inherits the deep observations of Svantesson et al.'s book on the subject (The Phonology of Mongolian) and some observations of Janhunen's own.
I think a lot of readers would find the level of detail here daunting. The section on morphosyntax is more concerned with listing every possible feature into of providing an easily assimilable picture. Those with a more casual interest in Khalka Mongolian or another form would probably be better served by the Janhunen-edited collection The Mongolic Languages from Routledge, which presents all these varieties in smaller, more accessible format. However, I got a lot out of this book, especially when it comes to Khalkha Mongolian's phonology, changed drastically since the days of Middle Mongolian or Classical Mongolian, but the specifics of which elude learners due to the conservative orthography.
December 27, 2014
Vнэхээр сайн бичжээ!
March 2, 2024
I think this grammar has good goals but needed more editing. Some things, like the ablative case, which varies in usage across languages, were not explained. Additionally, the verb tenses were given equivalents to tenses you'd expect to see in Indo-European languages, like past perfect, past imperfect, etc. However, when translated, these tenses don't actually match up to their past perfect, etc. equivalents. So it's very confusing why the author couldn't have just explained what the tenses are without giving them false equivalents.
The romanization of Mongolian is very idiosyncratic. Apparently this is to make the grammar easier for native speakers, however this doesn't make sense as so much of the grammar is difficult to understand even if you have a linguistics degree. Additionally, the author has a habit of throwing in historical forms of the language, which would usually be omitted in a grammar, slapdash in the middle of paragraphs. I don't think it's wrong to include this historical info, but the lack of clear separation between synchronous and dyssynchronous information means it's almost impossible to tell which is which. Thus, despite reading the phonological section many times, I still have no idea what the current vowel inventory of Mongolian is. I think this is a pretty big failure for a grammar that is supposed to be more focused on phonology than syntax and morphology. Also, the focus on phonology sometimes comes at completely inappropriate times. For example, when looking at noun cases, rather than explaining what the cases are and how they are used, the author gives a lengthy explanation of the phonology of the case endings and how they varies . This is just crazy, I've never seen it in a grammar before. It almost never explains what the cases are and how they are used, so if you're looking for an explanation of Mongolian syntax, I'd look elsewhere.
Finally, the nail in the coffin for me on this grammar is the lack of example sentences . There are no example sentences in the book except in the clausal syntax section, so if you're looking at case endings and want to find an example sentence with the case endings, you have to go to the clausal syntax section and pray you can find some there. I was reading an electronic copy that made this extremely difficult and time consuming. These means that there is some inflectional and derivational morphology mentioned that NEVER ACTUALLY APPEARS IN THE GRAMMAR . Again, this is just crazy. I've never seen this in a grammar before. Additionally, the author frequently makes claims about the language without providing supporting evidence, which is very obnoxious.
The only explanation for all of this is that it was edited by someone who had no experience with linguistics and/or had never read a grammar before. I was using this for a school project but had to switch to something else because I had already used most of the example sentences in the grammar and couldn't find examples of some things I needed. One of the most annoying things about this grammar is that there is no one place with all the morphological glosses, so I frequently had to completely guess what I was looking at. Again, never seen this in a grammar before. It's especially bad because Mongolian is a synthetic language so there are a lot of case ending. Unless you really need very granular detail on Mongolian phonology and are willing to read something 12 times, I'd avoid this grammar.
The romanization of Mongolian is very idiosyncratic. Apparently this is to make the grammar easier for native speakers, however this doesn't make sense as so much of the grammar is difficult to understand even if you have a linguistics degree. Additionally, the author has a habit of throwing in historical forms of the language, which would usually be omitted in a grammar, slapdash in the middle of paragraphs. I don't think it's wrong to include this historical info, but the lack of clear separation between synchronous and dyssynchronous information means it's almost impossible to tell which is which. Thus, despite reading the phonological section many times, I still have no idea what the current vowel inventory of Mongolian is. I think this is a pretty big failure for a grammar that is supposed to be more focused on phonology than syntax and morphology. Also, the focus on phonology sometimes comes at completely inappropriate times. For example, when looking at noun cases, rather than explaining what the cases are and how they are used, the author gives a lengthy explanation of the phonology of the case endings and how they varies . This is just crazy, I've never seen it in a grammar before. It almost never explains what the cases are and how they are used, so if you're looking for an explanation of Mongolian syntax, I'd look elsewhere.
Finally, the nail in the coffin for me on this grammar is the lack of example sentences . There are no example sentences in the book except in the clausal syntax section, so if you're looking at case endings and want to find an example sentence with the case endings, you have to go to the clausal syntax section and pray you can find some there. I was reading an electronic copy that made this extremely difficult and time consuming. These means that there is some inflectional and derivational morphology mentioned that NEVER ACTUALLY APPEARS IN THE GRAMMAR . Again, this is just crazy. I've never seen this in a grammar before. Additionally, the author frequently makes claims about the language without providing supporting evidence, which is very obnoxious.
The only explanation for all of this is that it was edited by someone who had no experience with linguistics and/or had never read a grammar before. I was using this for a school project but had to switch to something else because I had already used most of the example sentences in the grammar and couldn't find examples of some things I needed. One of the most annoying things about this grammar is that there is no one place with all the morphological glosses, so I frequently had to completely guess what I was looking at. Again, never seen this in a grammar before. It's especially bad because Mongolian is a synthetic language so there are a lot of case ending. Unless you really need very granular detail on Mongolian phonology and are willing to read something 12 times, I'd avoid this grammar.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews