The Past Tenses of the Mongolian Verb. Meaning and Use

The Past Tenses of the Mongolian Verb

Empirical Approaches to Linguistic Theory Managing Editor

Brian D. Joseph The Ohio State University, USA Editorial Board

Artemis Alexiadou, University of Stuttgart, Germany Harald Baayen, University of Alberta, Canada Pier Marco Bertinetto, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy Kirk Hazen, West Virginia University, Morgantown, USA Maria Polinsky, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA

VOLUME 1

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/ealt

The Past Tenses of the Mongolian Verb Meaning and Use By

Robert I. Binnick

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2012

This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Binnick, Robert I. The past tenses of the Mongolian verb : meaning and use / by Robert I. Binnick. p. cm. — (Empirical approaches to linguistic theory; 1) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-21429-3 (alk. paper) 1. Mongolian language—Verb. 2. Grammar, Comparative and general—Tense. I. Title. II. Series. PL473.B56 2012 494’.2356—dc23 2011035786

ISSN 2210-6243 ISBN 978 90 04 21429 3 Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change.

For Sodnomdorj Gongor and for all those who have in one way or another through the years encouraged my interest in the Mongolian language, not least: James Bosson Lucia Hammar John Krueger Nicholas Poppe Wayne Schlepp Tserenchunt Legden Yidamjab Meng

CONTENTS Editorial Foreword ............................................................................ Preface ................................................................................................. Acknowledgments .............................................................................. Conventions and Transcription ...................................................... Abbreviations .....................................................................................

ix xi xv xvii xxi

I. The Problem of the Mongolian Past Tenses ........................... 1. The Mongolian Past Tenses .................................................. 1.1. The Verbal Systems of the Mongolic Languages ...... 1.2. The Problem of the Past Tenses .................................. 2. Semantic Theories .................................................................. 2.1. Theories Based on Tense and Aspect ......................... 2.2. The Finite Indicative Verbs .......................................... 2.3. The Participles ................................................................ 2.4. Metric (Degrees of Remoteness) Theories of the -jee and -lee Tenses ........................................................ 3. Toward A Pragmatic Theory ................................................ 3.1. Discourse Functions ...................................................... 3.2. The Evidential ................................................................. 3.3. The Modality of -v ......................................................... 3.4. The Inferential ................................................................ 3.5. Chuluu’s Critique ..........................................................

1 1 1 10 14 14 20 25 33 37 37 40 46 50 54

II. Use and Interpretation of the Past Tenses in the Spoken Language ....................................................................................... 1. Evidential and Inferential ..................................................... 1.1. The Opposition of Evidentiality and Inferentiality ... 1.2. Inferential -jee ................................................................ 1.3. Evidential -lee ................................................................. 1.4. -sen in speech ................................................................. 2. Distal and Proximal ............................................................... 2.1. Distal and Proximal ....................................................... 2.2. Future -lee ....................................................................... 2.3. The Pragmatics of Immediacy ..................................... 2.4. Spoken -v and the Past Tenses in Questions ............

61 61 61 62 70 74 79 79 82 88 92

viii

contents 3. Deictic and Anaphoric ........................................................ 3.1. Reference Times ........................................................... 3.2. Definite, Deictic, and Anaphoric Tenses ................. 3.3. An Implicative Hierarchy ...........................................

102 102 105 108

III. Use and Interpretation of the Past Tenses in the Written Language ..................................................................................... 1. Spoken and Written Language ........................................... 1.1. Competing Grammatical Systems ............................. 1.2. The Non-equivalence of the Written Tenses .......... 1.3. The Language of the Internet and Levels of Usage 2. The Past Tenses in Writing ................................................ 2.1. Written -v ...................................................................... 2.2. -sen and -sen baina ...................................................... 2.3. -jee and -sen baina ....................................................... 2.4. Distal -lee .......................................................................

113 113 113 116 122 132 132 138 140 145

IV. The Discourse Functions of the Tenses ................................. 1. The Functions of the Tenses in Discourse and Text ...... 1.1. The Functions of Utterances ...................................... 1.2. The Three Levels of Discourse Coherence ............... 2. The Functions of the Past Tenses ...................................... 2.1. Past Tenses and Temporal Reference ....................... 2.2. Past Tenses and Grounding ....................................... 2.3. Past Tenses and The Topics of Threads ................... 2.4. The Paragraph ............................................................... 3. The Functions of the Past Tenses in Various Genres .... 3.1. Meaning, Use and Genre ............................................ 3.2. Diegetic and Mimetic Genres .................................... 3.3. Genre and Tenses ........................................................ 3.4. Past Tenses in the Various Genres ...........................

147 147 147 149 161 161 171 188 195 198 198 202 207 209

Remarks in Lieu of a Conclusion ...................................................

215

Appendix ............................................................................................. List of Works Cited ........................................................................... Index ....................................................................................................

221 223 229

EDITORIAL FOREWORD The present volume, The Past Tense of the Mongolian Verb. Meaning and Use, by Robert Binnick, inaugurates a new series by Brill, entitled “Empirical Approaches to Linguistic Theory”. I am proud to be the managing editor of the series, and am joined in this enterprise by a strong team of editorial board members: Artemis Alexiadou, Harald Baayen, Pier Marco Bertinetto, Kirk Hazen, and Maria Polinsky. The goal of this series is to offer contributions to our understanding of language in general—the key desideratum of linguistic theory— through highly empirically based studies. The series is eclectic as to theory and does not privilege any particular theoretical framework over any other. We editors expect that each volume will advance our knowledge of how human language works through solid theoretically sophisticated description and through empirical testing of theoretical constructs and claims. Dr. Binnick is particularly well known for decades of work on tense and on Mongolian, so this study represents a joining of these two areas of his expertise. In this case, Mongolian provides the empirical basis, and the realization and value of temporal reference constitute the theoretical constructs that are tested by the Mongolian data. We envision that the series will consist mainly of monographic research studies, but do not rule out the possibility of volumes that are focused collections of papers on a common theme. We look forward to seeing many volumes appear under this imprint in the years to come. Brian D. Joseph EALT Series Managing Editor Columbus, Ohio USA 1 August 2011

PREFACE One of the interesting features of the Mongolian language is the existence of four different past tense forms of the verb. To translate ‘came’, for example, one can choose (in the written language based on Khalkha Mongolian) between ирэв irev, ирлээ irlee, иржээ irjee, and ирсэн irsen. Textbooks and reference grammars have contained various accounts of the differences between these endings, generally vague, sometimes mutually contradictory, and ultimately inadequately informative concerning this significant topic. The question, naturally, is why Mongolian has four different past tense endings, and how their meanings and/or uses differ from one another. This question may be illustrated by a couple of passages from Erdene bulsan aral, the Mongolian translation of R. L. Stevenson’s novel Treasure Island. In the novel, when both time and his former shipmates finally catch up with the old pirate “Billy Bones,” the mysterious lodger at the Admiral Benbow Inn, one of the pirates enters the inn to call on Bones, only to come running out almost at once to inform his fellows that Bill üxčixjee—“Bill’s dead!” It turns out that old Bill has left a treasure map and soon the hero of the tale, Jim Hawkins, finds himself a member of the crew of a vessel sent to seek out that treasure. When the crew lands on the treasure island of the title, Jim encounters Ben Gunn, marooned there years before by the cruel Captain Flint. Panicked at the sight of Jim’s ship, Gunn asks him, “That’s not Flint’s ship, is it?” At which Jim assures him that it isn’t, and, furthermore, that Flint üxčixsen—“Flint is dead.” But why is it that the pirate declares that Billy Bones üxčixjee, when Jim tells Gunn that Captain Flint üxčixsen? Is the choice of different tenses simply fortuitous, or merely a matter of style, or does it reflect some real difference in meaning and/or use? Until the last two decades the grammatical literature was at best unhelpful, and at worst misleading, where the past tense endings of Mongolian are concerned. Binnick (1979) was an early attempt at posing, and pointing towards a solution for, the problem. More than a decade later, Binnick (1990) termed the differentiation of the tenses “pragmatic,” thereby claiming that the difference between the past tenses was not, as previously thought, semantic, and did not have to

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do primarily with their literal, context-free meanings in terms of tense and aspect, but rather with how they are used in context. In the early 90s, when editorial pressure forced me to provide simple labels for the endings -jee and -lee in a contribution on Mongolian, I chose, on what seems now to have been insufficient evidence (albeit following the approach of my 1990 article), to term them inferential and evidential respectively. Unknown to me at that time, a similar suggestion had been published in the meantime by Svantesson (1991), and in the next few years a number of scholars put forward similar analyses of the Mongolian past tense system, based on essentially the modal opposition of evidentiality and inferentiality—Wu (1995, 1996), Kullmann and Tserenpil (1996), Song in 1997 (and 2002), Ujeyediin Chuluu (1998), Nelson et al. (1998), Sanders and Bat-Ireedüi (1999), and Tserenchunt and Luethy (2000)—but as of the mid-90s, no one but Svantesson and myself had suggested anything of the sort. (A different, though insightful, approach appears in Dugarova 1991.)1 And while by the beginning of the present century the idea that Mongolian might have a past tense system based at least in part on an opposition of evidentiality and inferentiality was no longer novel, the proposal was based largely, if not entirely, on native-speaker intuition, and moreover was so vague and general as to provide little, if any, guidance to the non-native-speaker wishing to properly use and interpret the various past tense endings. Nor did it clarify the roles of the so-called “neutral” endings -v and -sen—how they differed from the “non-neutral” endings -lee and -jee, as well as from one another— though there are useful, albeit limited, suggestions in a number of the works mentioned above. The intention in the present work is to construct an argument for, and to flesh out the details covered by, the labels of “evidential” and “inferential,” and as well to provide an account of the “neutral” past tenses. If this goal has been fulfilled it is due principally to the assistance of a native speaker, Sodnomdorj Gongor, and to a lesser extent to the advent of the World Wide Web, which has provided easy access to samples of a wide range of genres in contemporary Mongolian. I have

1 My less than adequate Russian has unfortunately not allowed me to profit from Dugarova’s work as much as I might have done.

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also profited greatly by the insightful work, and the generous responses to my queries, of another native speaker, Tserenchunt Legden. It would have been useful to have known, before I completed my research, of the 1998 article by Nelson et al., which anticipates many of my conclusions.2 Their article is perhaps the most insightful work on the Mongolian past tenses to come out of the twentieth century. Many of the questions raised by the Mongolian past tenses are far from fully resolved, but hopefully the present work has, at the very least, provided a more reliable and useful guide to usage than has hitherto existed, and laid the foundation for further investigation into a number of aspects of this fascinating language.

2 There are some significant differences between our conclusions, however, and some methodological differences; while there is concern in their brief article for the distribution of the past tense endings, there is still primary dependence on subjective judgments on the part of speakers. Moreover, some of their conclusions are quite general, so that on the whole the article strikes one as programmatic. For all that, it constitutes a milestone in our understanding of the Mongolian tenses.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would above all like to thank Sodnomdorj Gongor for letting me make use of his native speaker knowledge of, and intuition for, the Khalkha Mongolian language; for his toleration of my minimal and truly execrable spoken Mongolian; for his numerous interesting and useful observations, both spontaneous and in response to my questions; and for his comments on the final manuscript and corrections of numerous errors, which I have sometimes silently corrected in the manuscript. Without his assistance, this research would literally have been impossible. I would also like to thank Tserenchunt Legden for her encouragement; for her communications, which have been invaluable and from which I have benefited greatly; and for both the fine textbooks she produced with Sharon Luethy, and the Web site (http://www.indiana .edu/~celcar/intermediate/mongolinter.html) to which she contributed useful grammatical comments. As regards the past tense endings, her works are amongst the most insightful published, and I regret that I only became aware of the Web site (and through it, her textbooks) when I had with much travail independently re-discovered what she had already written about the spoken language. I would like to thank her, too, for her comments on the final manuscript, her observations on a number of errors, which I have sometimes silently corrected, and for kindly providing translations for a dozen or so colloquial examples taken from the Internet. I would similarly like to thank Diane Nelson for providing me with a copy of the 1998 Nelson et al. article, which proved, alas, to have been a very significant piece of work, which I much regretted somehow failing to find in my earlier bibliographic searches. Also due thanks are six former or present colleagues at the University of Toronto. From the Scarborough campus: Harald Ohlendorf, who checked most of my translations from the German; Michal Schonberg, who provided some of the translations from Dugarova with the assistance of Mr. Anatoly Oleksiyenko (whom I also wish to thank); Corrine Beauquis, who lent me her intuitions as a native speaker of French; and Yoonjung Kang, who arranged for Kenji Oda (whom I also gratefully thank) to provide me with a précis of the 1993 article by

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acknowledgments

Hashimoto (which, despite its title, is in Japanese, and accompanied by a wholly inadequate summary in English). From the St. George campus, I wish to thank Christina Kramer and Wayne Schlepp, the former for arranging for Jan Schallert (whom I also hereby thank) to provide the translation of one of the passages from Dugarova’s book, and the latter for his helpful responses to various queries. Acknowledgment is also due to the anonymous reviewers whose numerous suggestions have gone far to helping to improve the final version of this book, and to all those at Brill who have worked so hard to transform the manuscript into this volume, especially to Mirjam Elbers, its production editor. Finally, I would like very much to thank my friends and loved ones for understanding, and in the main forgiving, my neglect of them during the writing of this book, and for their support throughout. The research upon which this work is based was partly funded, and largely made possible, by a grant from the University of Toronto. Much of the work on this book was done while on a sabbatical research leave in the Winter session of 2008.

CONVENTIONS AND TRANSCRIPTION Conventions Unattributed glosses and comments in italics are those of Sodnomdorj Gongor, the native speaker of Khalkha Mongolian who gave me the benefit of his native-speaker intuitions. Where glosses both in English and some other language such as French or German are given, the English gloss is mine and the other gloss is that of the source. Unless otherwise noted, all the word analyses and detailed glosses accompanying the examples (as in example 8 below) are mine. In some cases it is impossible to provide a unique and precise English equivalent and the glosses should accordingly be taken as purely nominal. I have separated affixes from their stems using a dot, so: bai.na, and have arbitrarily assigned the -g- used to separate long vowels to the verb stem rather than to the suffix (thus baig.aa ‘be-impfvn’). In examples drawn from other works, a hyphen indicating a morpheme boundary (e.g., nom-un) has been replaced with a dot (nom.un).1 8. Önöö öglöö bi zurgaan tsag.t boso.v. this morning I six hour-dat get up-past ‘This morning I got up at six o’clock.’ (Street 1963: 122)

In the glosses, the terms and abbreviations following the hyphens (e.g., dat and past in example 8 above) represent grammatical categories. (See the table of abbreviations.) The -x form is simply glossed in this work as ifvn “infinitive/future verbal noun” but the -sen form is glossed as past when it is a predicate and as pfvn (perfective verbal noun or participle) when it is a modifier or noun; precedes an auxiliary verb (as in example 3a below), a copula, postposition, or the question particle be/ve; or follows another verbal noun affix (as in examples

1 It should be noted that in the vertical-script language, case (and some other) affixes are generally (though not in all contexts) written as separate words from their stems, so that nom.un, for example, actually is written as nom un. A hyphen is conventionally used (as in nom-un) to indicate the connection between the two. See Grønbech and Krueger (1955: 20), Poppe (1964: 30), and the examples in Kullmann and Tserenpil (1996: 84–100).

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37–39). Although somewhat arbitrary, these labels generally reflect its use in the various types of examples in question. The non-past (present-future) tense affix simply has been labeled pres (“present”), as in (3a). Ta, the plural/polite second person pronoun similar to French vous has uniformly been glossed ‘you (plural)’. In contrast, singular či is glossed simply as ‘you’. 3a. Xugar.san bai.na. Break-pfvn be-pres ‘It’s broken.’ (Sanders and Ireedüi 1999: 191)

The affix -čix- has not been glossed. It likely has no counterpart or adequate gloss in English, but in any case no completely satisfactory, definitive statement of its meaning or use has appeared, published accounts tending to be brief and vague.2 Translations (in single quotes) placed to the left of the name, date, and page of the source publication (as in examples 8 and 3a above) are those of the source publication; translations to the right of (i.e., below) the source name (as in example 16 below), are mine. 16. Dašdorjiin Natsagdorj 1906 on.d tör.jee. (Yatskovskaya 1976: 8) Dashdorjiin Natsagdorj 1906 year-dat be born-past ‘Dashdorjiin Natsagdorj was born in 1906.’

In the present work, affixes containing vowels are represented by their written form containing e, e.g., -lee. Transcription Examples in the literature are sometimes cited in phonetic or phonemic transcription. When such examples are used here, the transcription used in the source (e.g., Ramstedt 1902) is employed, with some modifications, which have been noted. On the Internet, Mongolian

2 Thus Street (1963: 83) simply labels it “perfective,” and in a similar vein, Kullmann and Tserenpil (1996: 133) call it a marker of “[fully] completed action,” with “a slight perfect meaning” and gloss ted duusčixjee as ‘they’ve finished (it)’ (from duus‘finish’). Sanders and Bat-Ireedüi (1999: 87), however, say it forms “intensive” verbs (terminology echoing Poppe 1951: 51), indicating that the “action is complete and unexpected,” and contrast bosov ‘got up’ with bosčixov ‘sprang up’.

conventions and transcription

xix

is not infrequently written in the Latin alphabet and such examples have been noted, and presented as they originally appeared. Examples written in the old vertical script have been transliterated using a fairly standard transliteration. Where such examples are already transliterated in the source from which they have been taken, that transliteration is generally used here. Mongolian examples written in the Cyrillic alphabet are transliterated in this book into the Latin alphabet. Standard schemes of transliteration have been followed, especially those employed by Street (1963), Vietze (1974), Sanders and Bat-Ireedüi (1995, 1999), and Kullmann and Tserenpil (1996). The letters for which there is some variance between transliteration schemes are shown in Table 1 below.3 Table 1 Cyrillic

Street

е ë ж й ѳ у х ц ч ш ъ ы ь э ю я

ye, yѳ yo j i ѳ ʉ x c č š ә ɨ ә e yu, yʉ ya

Vietze Sanders (“popular and transliteration”) Bat-Ireedüi je jo dsch j ö ü ch ts tsch sch y j e ju ja

yö yo j i ö ü kh ts ch sh ” y ’ (or i) e yu, yü ya

Kullmann and Tserenpil

This book

ye yo j i o u

ye, yö yo j i ö ü x ts č š ” ii ’ e yu ya

ts ch sh ii e yu ya

3 Tserenchunt points out (p.c., October, 2008) that “Now Professor George Kara and other scholars use ‘w’ for Mongolian and it has been accepted by many people. So ‘w’ is better than ‘v’ . . .: yavaad > yawaad, yavj > yawj.” The use of the letter is so well established in the grammatical literature, however, that I have chosen not to use here in its place. Similarly, it has become common to transliterate Cyrillic as , as in the name (Narmandah) of one of the authors of Nelson et al. (1998), but this book continues the tradition of using Latin .

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conventions and transcription

Where Russian is concerned (for example, names and titles in the references), the transliteration employed here is a fairly standard one. The Cyrillic letter , transliterated as in the case of Mongolian, is given as in that of Russian. Also, in the Russian transliterations, is represented as (and as ). There are a few other differences in the transliterations, reflecting differences between the Cyrillic alphabets of the two languages, but none should cause any trouble for the reader.

ABBREVIATIONS ABL ACC AGVN CAUS COM CONDC CONTC COPP DAT EMPHP GEN HABVN IFVN IMP IMPFC IMPFVN INFERP INSTR IPA MODC MODP

ablative case accusative (object) case agentive verbal noun causative affix comitative case conditional converb continuative1 converb copular particle2 dative case emphatic particle genitive case habitual (frequentative, generic) verbal noun infinitive/future verbal noun imperative imperfective converb imperfective verbal noun inferential particle instrumental case International Phonetic Alphabet modal converb modal3 particle

1 As with many aspects of the grammar, even though there is general agreement as to the meaning of this form, there is no standard terminology. Poppe (1951: 89) calls it the Konverbum abtemporale and describes it as meaning “eine Handlung, seit deren Eintritt bereits die Haupthandlung ausgeübt worden ist” (“an action, since the beginning of which the main action has been performed”). Vietze (1974: 140) says similarly that as the predicate of a subordinate clause it can be translated “seit” [‘since’]. With an auxiliary verb such as bai- ‘be’, he notes, it conveys a “fortdauernden Zustand bzw. eine (immer noch) andauernde Handlung” (“continuous state or a (still) continuous action”). Similarly, Sanders and Bat-Ireedüi (1999: 105) call it the “continuous” converb. They note that with bai- it can be translated ‘keeps on’; hence Kullmann and Tserenpil (1996: 168) call it the “progressive” converb. 2 Yum, mön, and bii are identified in the present work as copular particles (COPP). Kullmann and Tserenpil (1996: 337ff.) label them modal particles. 3 This is the term used by Sanders and Ireedüi (1999: 83) for the particle č. This particle has a wide range of uses, described by Kullmann and Tserenpil (1996: 346–8), who call it a “focus” particle. (Cf. note 29 on p. 206 on l.)

xxii NEG NOM PASS PAST PFC PFVN PL PRFUT QP RP TERMC VOL

abbreviations negative affix nominative (subject) case passive affix past tense perfective converb perfective verbal noun plural present/future (non-past) tense question particle reflexive-possessive affix terminal converb voluntative (first-person imperative)

CHAPTER ONE

THE PROBLEM OF THE MONGOLIAN PAST TENSES 1. The Mongolian Past Tenses 1.1. The Verbal Systems of the Mongolic Languages The problem of the past tenses of the members of the Mongolic (or “Mongolian”) language family is one of the most challenging puzzles in the study of that family and has long resisted solution. From a certain point of view, the problem is easily stated. Some members of the family have three or more different affixes which seem to be markers of the past tense, so that in Khalkha, for example, irev, irjee, irlee, and irsen all can translate, and be translated by, the English past tense verb came. The question is how these forms differ in meaning and/or use, assuming that they do differ in some way (or ways). From another point of view, however, the problem of the Mongolian past tenses is not so easily stated, first because of the complexities of the term “Mongolian,” and secondly because of the complexities of the type of verbal system typical of these languages. The reader may find some background information on both these topics helpful in understanding the problem of the Mongolian past tenses. The issue of what precisely is meant by “Mongolian” is relevant here because the puzzle of the multiple past tenses found in Khalkha extends not only to the majority of spoken Mongolic dialects and all of the corresponding written languages today, but goes back to the very beginnings of the recorded history of the members of the family. To discuss the problem purely within the context of Khalkha dialects and/or the Mongolian language written in the Cyrillic alphabet is to deprive oneself of insights from other members of the family and to artificially limit the scope of the inquiry at the outset. To a certain extent there is only a terminological issue involved here, for it is often easier (but not necessarily precise) to refer to aspects of a “Mongolian” grammatical system than to specify a more specific language or languages. The problem with this is that the term “Mongolian” has been used to refer to many different spoken and written languages, that the status of various members of the family as independent languages or

2

chapter one

as mere dialects is by no means clear, and the historical and classificatory relationships of the members of the Mongolic language family remain controversial. At present the Mongolic dialects spoken in Inner Mongolia, Mongolia (the former Mongolian People’s Republic, at an earlier time Outer Mongolia), the adjacent Buriat Republic in Russia, and nearby parts of China and Asiatic Russia, form the bases for four different written languages. Spoken Khalkha, the language of the vast majority (some 80% or more) of the inhabitants of Mongolia, is the basis for written Khalkha (also referred to as “Mongol” or “Modern Mongolian”), which utilizes the Cyrillic alphabet. The Buriat language, written in a slightly different Cyrillic script, differs from written Khalkha more than the corresponding spoken languages differ from one another, partly due to different spelling conventions and partly to the much greater effect of Russian on Buriat than on Khalkha, especially where vocabulary is concerned. The various Khalkha and Buriat dialects are fairly close to many, perhaps most, of the Mongolic dialects spoken in Inner Mongolia, such as Chakhar. In Inner Mongolia, a somewhat modernized version of the old vertical script language is used, but is read as if representative of the modern spoken language, much as English-speakers write straight but read the word as the spoken equivalent, strate (phonetically, something like [strejt]). The verbal systems of these various “dialects” and “languages” are for the most part essentially the same, though the endings are spelled differently, pronounced somewhat differently, and consequently appear here in different transliterations. It is a different matter where the dialects which have variously been called Oirat or Kalmuck are concerned. Historically, they formed the basis for a written language in a modified version of the Mongolian vertical script. This written language still has currency amongst the Oirats of China, though the Kalmucks in Russia today use a written language with a Cyrillic alphabet. Both the spoken and written languages differ quite a bit from Khalkha and the dialects of Inner Mongolia, and clearly form a distinct language (or languages) from them. At the same time, there are sufficient similarities in the verbal systems of Khalkha, Buriat, and Inner Mongolian on the one hand, and Oirat and Kalmuck on the other, for the grammars of the two groups of languages to be mutually enlightening. What Bläsing (1984) has to say about the finite indicative verb forms of Kalmuck, for example, bears

the problem of the mongolian past tenses

3

on the analysis of the corresponding verb forms of the languages in the former group, though to be sure there are important differences between the grammars of the two. Finally, there are those Mongolic languages whose verb systems are sufficiently different from the preceding as to render their analysis quite distinct from the systems of the first two groups. This group includes the Mongolic languages of China outside of Inner Mongolian: principally Dagur (Daur) in the former Manchuria and in Xinjiang; and in the province of Gansu, Tu (Monguor), Bonan (Baoan) and Dongxiang (Tunghsiang). The verbal systems of the members of this third group require entirely separate treatment, and are ignored here. Monguor and Moghol (a now defunct language of Afghanistan) differ from Mongol in much, much more than the pronunciation of their names. Discussion of the Mongolic languages also raises the issue of their relationship to the other members of the Altaic group of languages. Aside from the Mongolic languages, this group also includes the Turkic and Tungusic language families, the best-known members of which are, respectively, Turkish and Manchu. While formerly there was largely a consensus that these three families formed branches of an Altaic super-family, possibly along with Korean and/or Japanese, many, perhaps even most, scholars today believe the Altaic languages to be a group of genetically unrelated families which have converged within a language union (Sprachbund).1 For present purposes it really does not matter which is the case. Despite the paucity of cognates and hence systematic sound correspondences linking the three families—let alone the three together with Japanese and/or Korean—there are significant structural similarities common to all five, which, despite real differences between them, justify speaking, at least in some regards, of an Altaic type of language.2 Thus while the present work largely restricts itself to a discussion of, and principally draw its data from Khalkha and relatively closely

1 Poppe (1965)—following Ramstedt (1952–56), Menges (1975) and most strongly, Miller (1971, 1991, 1996) represent the school of thought believing in a genetic relationship between most or all of the five; this view is criticized by Clauson (1956), Doerfer (1963, 1985) and Vovin (2005). 2 Where the verb is concerned, the formation and use of aspectual, tense, and other markers of verbal categories show remarkable similarities across the Altaic languages.

4

chapter one

related Mongolic languages, we have occasion as well to refer to at least one other Altaic language, namely Turkish. The Mongolic languages, like the other Altaic languages, are noteworthy for their extraordinarily rich and complex verb systems, some facets of which should be pointed out, especially for the reader unfamiliar with languages of this type. They have numerous auxiliary verbs and copular particles, which can be strung together, along with content verbs, often to form long strings of verbs, such as those italicized in the examples in (1) below. (The italicizations in the examples are mine.) 1. a. Šaardlag.iig Demand-acc

arai čamai with great difficulty

xanga.j provide-impfc

amji.j bai.na. succeed- impfc be-pres ‘[The restaurant] is just barely able to satisfy the demand . . .’ (lit. ‘is succeeding satisfying’) (Street 1963: 149) b. Ter ene tuxai med.sen bai.j taar.na. That this about know-pfvn be-impfc match-pres ‘He must have known about this.” (Kullmann and Tserenpil 1996: 209) c. . . . bid nar.t yar’.j tusal.j ögö.x.güi yuu? We pl-dat speak-impfc help-impfc give-ifvn-neg qp ‘will you please tell us . . .’ (http://www.mongolianoralhistory.org/samples/transcriptions/ TR060402.xml; http://www.mongolianoralhistory.org/samples/ translations/EN060402.xml) d. Ter nada.d exel.j zaxia biči.x.güi bol That me-dat begin-impfc letter write-ifvn-neg if bi I

tüün.d that-dat

zaxia letter

biči.x.güi write-ifvn-neg

bai.saar be-contc

bai.x be-ifvn

bol.no. become-pres ‘If he does not write me a letter first, I won’t write a letter to him.’ (Kullmann and Tserenpil 1996: 199)

Combinations of auxiliaries or copulas with other verbal forms mark various distinctions of tense and aspect. In (2a) the “continuative converb” (-seer) combines with the copular verb baix ‘to be’ to form a continuative perfect (‘have been waiting’). In (2b) the “imperfective verbal noun” (-ee) combines with the copula to form a kind of progressive not unlike the English progressive construction, though if the sentence is positive (without the -güi ‘not’), the “imperfective converb” (-j) is used instead of the corresponding verbal noun, as in (2c).

the problem of the mongolian past tenses

5

2. a. Bi tüün.iig xülee.seer bai.na. I that-acc wait-contc be-pres ‘I have been waiting for him.’ (Sanders and Bat-Ireedüi 1999: 105) b. Yuu č xiig.ee.güj3 bai.na. What modp do-impfvn-neg be-pres ‘(I’m) not doing anything.’ (Sanders and Bat-Ireedüi 1999: 63) c. Yuu xii.j baina ve? What do-impfc be-pres qp ‘What are [you] doing?’ (Sanders and Bat-Ireedüi 1999: 63)

Mongolian verbs today have at least four different verbal nouns or participles (in Khalkha, those marked with the affixes -sen, -ee, -x, and -deg) and a dozen converbs, differentiated mostly by temporal relationships; for example, the “perfective” or “perfect” verbal noun formed with -sen and the corresponding perfect(ive) converb in -eed contrast with their “imperfective” or “imperfect” counterparts in -ee and -j as perfective aspect to imperfective, or sometimes as past tense to present.4 The deverbal, non-finite verb forms entering into these combinations have other uses as well. As is typical of Altaic languages, in the Mongolic languages there are three different types of deverbals—(1) nominalizations like itgel ‘faith, belief’ from itgex ‘to believe’ and idee ‘food’ from idex ‘to eat’; (2) verbal nouns (essentially participles) like the “perfect” or “perfective” suusan ‘(having) sat’ and “imperfect” or “imperfective” xiigee ‘doing’; and (3) converbs like the “perfective” yavaad ‘having gone’ and “imperfective” yavj ‘going’. Verbal nouns can be used just like any other noun, but they also can serve as the predicates of sentences, with (3a) or without (3b) accompanying copulas. Both verbal nouns, like the non-past one or “infinitive” in (3c), and converbs, like the “terminal” or “terminative” converb in (3d), are used as the main verbs of subordinate structures which function syntactically as phrases, but semantically as clauses. Converbs can also occur on their own as adverbs (3e). Converbs are also the etymological sources of conjunctions such as bögööd ‘and’ in (3f), which is the “perfective converb” of an obsolete verb (bü-) 3 I have arbitrarily assigned the -g- used to separate long vowels to the verb stem rather than the suffix. The root of xiigeegüi is xii-. 4 Traditionally perfective aspect and imperfective aspect are considered to contrast as marking complete action vs. incomplete. Thus the verb in the English sentence I went home would be considered to be perfective, while the progressive construction, e.g., I was going home, would be imperfective. This pre-theoretical understanding of the aspects is unsatisfactory, but should suffice for present purposes.

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chapter one

meaning ‘be’. Bolon ‘as well as’ (3g), too, has the form of a converb— the “modal” converb—of a verb, namely bolox ‘to become’. (The italizations in (3) are mine.) 3. a. Xugar.san bai.na. Break-pfvn be-pres ‘It’s broken.’ (Sanders and Ireedüi 1999: 191) b. Ter ajil.d.aa yav.san. That work-dat-rp go-past ‘He has gone to work.’ (Street 1963: 207) c. Üün.iig marta.x.aas.aa ömnö xii. This-acc forget-ifvn-abl-rp before do-imp ‘Do it before [you] forget.’ (Altangerel 1998: 33) d. Namar bol.tol ted end ajilla.na. Autumn become-termc those here work-pres ‘They’ll work here until [it becomes] autumn.’ (adapted from Sanders and Ireedüi 1999: 106) e. Namaig bitgii širte.n xar! Me-acc don’t stare-modc look-imp ‘Don’t stare at me!’ (Kullmann and Tszerenpil 1996: 158) f. Minii naiz German.d sur.č baig.aa My friend Germany-dat study-impfc be-impfvn bögööd uda.x.güi ir.ne. and delay-ifvn-neg come-pres ‘My friend studies in Germany and will come soon.’ (Kullmann and Tserenpil 1996: 299) g. Ter oros bolon xyatad xel.eer sain That Russian and Chinese language-instr well yar’.dag. speak-habvn “He speaks Russian and also Chinese well.” (Kullmann and Tserepil 1996: 300)

In addition to these complexities, there are those presented by the tense/aspect morphology of the content verbs. The topic of the present volume comes from the fact, already noted above, that Altaic languages typically have, in addition to their present tense or tenses, more than one past tense. In the case of the Mongolic languages, this multiplicity of past tenses presents a real problem, as it has never been made precisely clear in what manner of meaning and/or of use these tenses differ, assuming that they do. While every textbook and grammar necessarily comments on the various “tense” endings, we shall see that there has been a wide divergence in opinions, often based on little

the problem of the mongolian past tenses

7

more than naïve speaker intuitions and sometimes on mistaken comparisons with the quite different verbal systems of other languages. It is only in the last couple of decades that linguistic research focused on this problem has seriously advanced its solution. To be specific, members of the Mongolic language family typically contain three different past tense suffixes, as in the vertical-script example (4) below.5 For the sake of convenience, these are referred to here, respectively, as the past tenses in -v, -lee, and -jee.

{}

ba la jai you (plural) book read-past ‘you read a book’ (Wu 1995: 94)

4. ta

nom

ungsi-

Because of vowel harmony, each ending in a typical modern Mongolic language potentially appears in between two and eight different forms, because the vowels in the endings generally adjust themselves to the vowels of the stems as regards rounding and a feature until recently called palatality or backedness. In the old written language in vertical script, the letters represented in transliteration as g and γ reflect velar sounds which obey vowel harmony, g occurring with “front” vowels, γ with “back” ones. The importance of this for present purposes is simply that in written Khalkha, for example, the -lee ending and the -sen ending have four different forms each (table 2): Table 2 Stem ava- ‘take’ (back, unround) deve- ‘wave’ (front, unround) oro- ‘enter’ (back, round) ög- ‘give; do for someone else’ (front, round)

-lee form

-sen form

avlaa devlee orloo öglöö

avsan devsen orson ögsön

5 The past tense endings and their uses are, with some noteworthy exceptions, very similar in most Mongolian dialects and languages. For surveys of the forms, see Poppe (1955) and Wu (1996). For example, Bläsing (1984: 38) says, “Sieht man einmal ganz ab von Partizipialeinheiten (z.B. -сн . . .), so konkurrieren im Kalmückischen und Khalkha-Mongolischen . . . drei Formen auf der Zeitstufe der Vergangeheit miteinander (klm. -ла, -в, -ж; xlx. -лаа, -ав, -жээ).” ‘Aside from participial units such as -сн, in Kalmuck and Khalkha there compete three forms in the past tense: Kalmuck –ла [-la], -в [-v], -ж [-j]; Khalkha -лаа [-laa], -ав [-av], -жээ [-jee].’ (My translation—rb)

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The -jee ending is unusual in not undergoing vowel harmony. Thus avjee ‘took’ but also irjee ‘came’ and ögjee ‘gave’. Both -jee and -lee also have short, vowelless variants, for example in questions before the question particle uu/üü: Bagš xödöö yavj uu? ‘Did the teacher go to the countryside?’ (Kullmann and Tserepil 1996: 186). As well, the ending -jee also has variants in -č following certain consonants, e.g., zogsč(ee) ‘stopped’. In written Mongolian in the old vertical script, the three endings called here -v, -lee, and -jee, are usually transliterated as, respectively, -ba/-be, -luγa/-lüge (modern -la/-le), and -ǰuqui/-ǰüküi/-čuqui/-čüküi (modern -ǰai, -ǰei, -čai, -čei).6 In written Khalkha in Cyrillic script, the corresponding forms are -в (-v), -лаа/-лээ/-лоо/-лѳѳ (-laa/-lee/-loo/-löö), and -ж(ээ), ч(ээ) (-j(ee)/-č(ee)).7 As noted in the section on Conventions, in the present work, affixes containing vowels are referred to by their written form containing e, e.g., -lee. (It is quite common in the literature, however, to refer to the affixes using their back-vocalic forms, e.g. -laa.) In addition to the three finite indicative past tense endings, there are two verbal nominal (participial) forms that belong in any discussion of the past tenses. The first of these, the verbal noun whose ending in vertical-script Mongolian is transliterated as -gsen/-γsan (= written Khalkha -сан/-сэн/-сон/-сѳн, -san/-sen/-son/-sön), usually termed the perfect or perfective (sometimes the past) verbal noun,8 often functions as a predicate bearing some sort of past meaning. As a participle it often bears a relative past (i.e., anterior) meaning (e.g., yavsan ‘gone, having gone’). The second is the verbal noun formed with the affix

6

At various times there also occurred the forms -bei/-bai and -lügei/-luγai, -legei/-laγai, -luqa, -luqai (Poppe 1955: 265f.; Weiers 1969: 149, 153f.). Wu (e.g., 1996: 77) cites the modern forms -la/-le. Other forms include -ǰükü/-ǰuqu (Poppe 1955: 265f.; Weiers 1969: 158f.). Wu (e.g., 1996: 73) cites the forms -ǰei/-ǰai/-čei/-čai for the modern language. As in the Cyrillic script, the consonants j and č vary according to the final sound of the stem the ending. 7 Depending on the final sounds of the stem the ending -v is added to, there may be a (harmonizing) linking vowel, as in ол-о-в (ol-o-v) ‘found’. Cf. oro-v ‘entered’. In the present work, this linking vowel is assigned in analyses to the stem. 8 Sanders and Bat-Ireedüi (1999: 25) refer to it as the perfective verbal noun, a practice generally followed here. This is more accurate than “perfect,” but the latter term is traditional and hence familiar, is shorter, and should occasion no confusion as long as the actual meaning and use of the form are borne in mind.

the problem of the mongolian past tenses

9

-ge/-γa (= Khalkha -аа/-ээ/-оо/-ѳѳ, -aa/-ee/-oo/-öö).9 This is usually called the imperfect or imperfective (also the present) verbal noun.10 As with any other verbal nouns in the Mongolic languages, these participles may serve, without any accompanying copular particle or copular auxiliary verb, as the main predicate of an independent clause or sentence, as uilsan does in example (5). In such sentences, there is little or nothing to distinguish these participles from finite verbs. 5. Tseren iči.sen.d.ee uil.san Tseren be ashamed-pfvn-dat-rp cry-past ‘When he was ashamed, Tseren cried.’ (Poppe 1970: 134)

Consequently, following the lead of some grammarians, the perfective verbal nominal (participial) form is referred to in the present work as the past tense in -sen, since there is ample reason to regard the -sen suffix as a fourth past tense marker, alongside the finite tense endings -jee, -lee, and -v. (It is also, however, referred to as the “perfective” participle, and when, as in example (3a), it is functioning as a participle, it is labeled pfvn rather than past.) 3. a. Xugar.san bai.na. Break-pfvn be-pres ‘It’s broken.’ (Sanders and Ireedüi 1999: 191)

There is little reason, however, to similarly label the -ee ending a past tense marker, since it is debatable whether it really functions as a pasttense ending, as it only does so when negated; compare the sentences in (6). 6. a. Minii sar.iin temdeg . . . sar ir.ee.güi. My month-genitive mark . . . month come-impfvn-neg ‘I haven’t had my period for . . . months.’ (Sanders and Bat-Ireedüi 1995: 128)

9 Mongolian regularly inserts g between two long vowels (including diphthongs); hence the -ee ending appears as -gaa, -gee, -goo, or -göö immediately following a long vowel (as in nuugaa ‘hiding, concealing’) or diphthong (as in baigaa ‘being’). As has already been noted, here this linking consonant is, however, arbitrarily assigned in analyses to the stem, as in baig.aa. 10 In Sanders and Bat-Ireedüi (1999: 63), the imperfective verbal noun. As with the perfective (see note 8 on p. 8), we generally follow their practice, while not excluding use of the term imperfect so long as the actual meaning of the form is borne in mind.

10

chapter one b. Mongol uls ix xögji.j baig.aa. Mongolia(n) nation greatly develop-impfc be-impfvn ‘Die Mongolei entwickelt sich sehr.’ (Vietze 1974: 84) ‘Mongolia is being greatly developed.’

1.2. The Problem of the Past Tenses Although there is general (though not universal ), agreement that the various past tense forms of Mongolian differ in meaning and/or use— after all, there must be some reason why a language would have the different past tense forms found in example (4)—it remains debatable, and, to this day, much debated, how they so differ.11

{}

ba la jai you (plural) book read-past ‘you read a book’ (Wu 1995: 94)

4. ta

nom

ungsi-

There has been a wide divergence of opinion regarding almost every aspect of the meanings and uses of these forms. As Chuluu puts it (in chapter 4 of his doctoral thesis, Ujeyediin 1998),12 . . . it is clear that any of the four morphemes [-v, -jee, -lee, -sen] can be chosen by the speaker to indicate the past tense and the choice of suffix is perhaps up to the speaker. There is no doubt that they can be all regarded as past tense markers, the question is, however, why Mongolian has four different morphemes for the same past tense. . . . It has been generally concluded that these morphemes are distinct in certain ways but attempts to establish clear and reliable criteria for distinguishing them are not conclusive.

Until the last twenty years or so almost all scholars accepted some form of the theory, first articulated by Ramstedt (1902), but having its roots

11 Sanžeev (1973: 92) states that “the differences between [the three past tense] forms, which are almost imperceptible, are still debated by students of Mongolian.” (Oddly enough, he also says, “the three past tenses are used interchangeably.”) It is interesting, and suggestive, that while Sodov’s Foreign Literature Reader (1967: 60) uses törjee in Šyekspir 1564 ond . . . törjee ‘Shakespeare was born in the year 1564’, Altangerel’s English-Mongolian dictionary (1998: 40) uses törsön in Šyekspir 1564 ond törsön. 12 His name is given in his thesis as Ujeyediin Chuluu. He has published also under the name Chaolu Wu (i.e., in the Chinese style, Wu Chaolu). I generally refer to him as Chuluu, but refer to the various works by the name of the author given in each case.

the problem of the mongolian past tenses

11

at least as far back as the grammar of Schmidt (1831), that the distinctions between the endings have to do with time.13 I call this account the “semantic” theory. Few if any scholars other than the ones noted in the preface had, prior to the mid-to-late 1990s, suggested a different type of account, one based on modal distinctions, a type of account characterized here as a “pragmatic” theory. In the last decade or so, elements of essentially such a modal account have been presented, for example, in the grammar by Kullmann and Tserenpil (1996), works by Song (1997, 2002), the thesis of Ujeyediin Chuluu (1998), and the textbook of Tserenchunt and Luethy (2000) (as well as on a Web site with grammatical notes by Tserenchunt).14 However, there are a number of inadequacies shared by these various works. None of them presents much (if any) evidence other than sheer native speaker intuition to support their accounts; none presents a sufficiently detailed account to allow the non-native-speaker to properly use and interpret the various forms;15 and none of them make clear that, as in the case of French, the tense/aspect systems of spoken

13 Already in Schmidt (1831) something approaching Ramstedt’s theory is present, if only in embryo. The -ba (-v) past he calls (p. 56) the “Präteritum imperfectum” (i.e., imperfect past). Schmidt’s “Perfectum” (‘perfect’, p. 57) includes both the -luγa (-lee) and -ǰuqui (-jee) forms, which he glosses using the German present perfect: i. bi γar.iyar bari.luγ-a I hand-instr take-past ‘ich habe es mit der Hand ergriffen’ (‘I have seized it with my hand’) ii. qola γaǰar.ača ire.ǰüküi far land-abl come-past ‘er ist vom fernen Landen gekommen’ (‘he has come from a distant country’) 14 As noted in the preface, I only became aware of this Web site (which at the present time is available at http://www.iub.edu/~celcar/intermediate/mongolinter.html) and, through it, the Tserenchunt/Luethy textbooks, at the point at which my research on the spoken language with a native speaker, Sodnomdorj Gongor, was almost complete, and I had just realized that the written language was a distinct problem from that posed by the spoken language. I had read Kullmann and Tserenpil’s grammar, but obviously had not taken in what they had to say on this topic, since their account came as news to me when I referred to their grammar while reading Tserenchunt’s textbook. Whether their grammar (unconsciously) influenced my research, I cannot say. As I noted in the preface, too, I only became aware of Nelson et al. (1998) after completing my research and the drafting of this book. 15 Interestingly enough, the Mongolian phrasebook in the popular Lonely Planet series (Sanders and Bat-Ireedüi 1995) simply omits any mention of the verb endings -lee and -jee in its grammatical sketch, despite the fact that these are amongst the most commonly used endings in the language. (These authors’ 1999 textbook does, however, discuss these affixes.)

12

chapter one

Mongolian and written Mongolian are not identical.16 Also, from the theoretician’s perspective, most of these works fail to deal with Mongolian tense/aspect in terms of contemporary theories of semantics and pragmatics. Accordingly, the present study aims to present a new and comprehensive account of the meaning and use of the past tense endings in spoken and written Khalkha, which holds true (at least in broad outline) as well for the closely allied Mongolic languages (such as Inner Mongolian, Buriat, and to a large extent even Kalmuck/Oirat), and thereby provides implicit suggestions for new directions in the study of yet other members of the family, such as Dagur (Daur) and Monguor (Tu). The main points I argue for here are these: a) The Khalkha verbal system is fundamentally an evidential/inferential system. That is, apart from tense (past vs. non-past), perhaps the most important distinction marked in the verb is between what the speaker personally can vouch for (evidential) and what the speaker cannot—what he or she is merely reporting or inferring (inferential), or has freshly discovered (mirative). b) The system also makes a fundamental distinction between the distal and the proximal. Thus -lee can be used as a present—or even a future—time marker, as well as a past time one, so long as the situation recounted is in some way part of the speech act situation (situation of utterance), that is, part of what is happening when

16 When I finished the first draft of this book, I discovered that Nelson et al. (1998) did state that “Mongol has grammaticalised . . . stylistic features related to spoken vs. written discourse” (p. 115) and generally anticipated my conclusions regarding the distribution of the forms and their different uses in spoken and written language. To sum up what they have to say regarding spoken and written use (pp. 117–18):

/-jee/ . . . appear[s] in both spoken and written Mongol. It [is] particularly prevalent in spoken storytelling, particularly when setting the scene or introducing a new event in the discourse. /-laa/ . . . occurs in both spoken and written language, especially to convey a sense of immediacy. /-v/ . . . appears in written, rather than spoken, language. . . . . . . [/-san/] as a finite verb affix is extremely prevalent in spoken language. In conclusion, two of the affixes, /-jee/ and /-laa/, occur in both spoken and written language . . . . . . . /-v/ and [/-san/] . . . are largely confined in their distribution to written and spoken Khalkh Mongol, respectively. We see below, however, that some of their conclusions are not quite correct, and others do not tell the full story.

the problem of the mongolian past tenses

c)

d)

e)

f)

13

and where the speaker is uttering the sentence in question.17 When talk is of an occurrence separated—and especially when distant—in time from the time of utterance, the -jee form is generally used instead. The past tenses marked by -jee and -lee are essentially deictic and indefinite (they simply indicate that some occurrence happened some time in the past, without necessarily relating it to any particular contextual time), while those in -sen and -v are anaphoric (relating the occurrence recounted in their clause to a contextual time) and definite (relating it to a particular time). When, for some reason, neither the evidential, proximal -lee, nor the inferential, distal -jee is appropriate to use, a neutral form is used instead, -sen in the spoken language, -v in the written. At least some of the contexts triggering use of these latter tense markers are specifically those in which definite, anaphoric tenses are appropriate. Within a topical thread (a passage or string of passages sharing a common subject or theme), -lee may indicate a new subject or theme, or may suggest further information to come, while -jee may mark the conclusion of the thread. In texts and extended discourses, past tense use depends on genre. In narration, the tenses are anaphoric; -jee indicates an occurrence preceding the reference time (roughly, the current time defined by the context), -lee one which follows it, and the neutral -v (-sen) indicates one occurring at the reference time, which allows its use to foreground narrative material (that is, to mark it as part of the main events of the narrative). In non-narration, the tenses are deictic and function like metric tenses, that is, tenses marking degrees of remoteness18 from the present time: -jee is a distant past, -lee a recent past, and -v is neutral in this regard.

17 Nelson et al. (1998: 121) propose that -lee “does not mark past tense per se, but rather signals the relative proximity of the speaker with the situation being related, which may include the past or future,” from which they conclude that “[i]n most cases, -/laa/ is a discontinuous tense that includes past or future but excludes the present,” which they compare (p. 122f.) to a discontinuous tense reported by Comrie (1985: 88–89) in an Australian aboriginal language, Burera. (They mistakenly date this to 1976.) However, they later note (p. 125) that “[t]here are some types of predicates where a present tense interpretation for /-laa/ is possible, or more precisely, where a state is interpreted as continuing into the present,” so that (p. 126) “[i]n these examples, /-laa/ is not a discontinuous tense.” The upshot would seem to be that, as proposed in the present work, -lee is not a discontinuous tense. 18 That is not to say that the tense systems of the Mongolic languages are remoteness or metric systems of the kind typified by the Bantu languages.

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chapter one

g) The meanings of the various endings and their functions in discourse are mutually determinant. Not every tense can be used in every context, nor in every context can every temporal relationship be expressed. Meaning and use are not independent. h) The uses of the tenses in written language differ from those in spoken language. Formal speech approximates the usages found in writing, while informal writing approximates that of speech. Speech and writing alike range over a variety of usages, from the most colloquial and informal to the most formal and standard. The evolving language of the Internet and non-traditional media exhibits many of the usages of each of writing and speech, and in some regards, its usage is unique. 2. Semantic Theories 2.1. Theories Based on Tense and Aspect For almost a century and a half, the correct analysis of the tense/aspect system of Mongolian largely eluded even the greatest scholars. This is not at all surprising, given that their accounts of the semantics of the verb were nearly all based on a false assumption, namely that the grammatical “tenses” of the Mongolian verb marked by the affixes -jee, -lee, and -v are differentiated primarily by tense (time of the occurrence or state relative to the present, or some other, time) and aspect (roughly, completeness of the occurrence). While such theories have been superseded by more adequate ones, such as the accounts presented in Kullmann and Tserenpil (1996), Sanders and Ireedüi (1998),19 and Tserenchunt and Leuthy (2000), their prevalence in older works still widely consulted today and perpetuation in some recent works requires their review, particularly as it serves to provide a background to the development in the last two decades of more satisfactory theories. The various accounts of the meanings and uses of the forms given in the older, and much of the recent, literature are often vague and sometimes contradictory. Scholars do not agree with each other, and some, such as Poppe, even differ with themselves. For example, Poppe’s 1951

19 Their characterizations of the tenses are not as satisfactory as those in the Tserenchunt/Leuthy textbook or the Kullmann/Tserenpil reference work, but still mark an advance on the accounts in the older textbooks.

the problem of the mongolian past tenses

15

grammar has it that the -jee ending marks a witnessed or certain past occurrence (which is how he characterizes the -lee ending in his 1970 Handbook), then his 1954 grammar calls -jee a pluperfect marker, while the Handbook calls it an extended past. (This last characterization also is to be found in some Russian and Mongolian works, for example Kas’yanenko 1968 and Jančivdorj and Ragčaa 1967). At various times Poppe terms the -v ending an indicator of a completed past occurrence or a perfect (1951), a marker of the recent past (1954), or just the “simple” past (1970). But it is -jee which is called a recent past by Street (1963)—as is -lee by Ševernina (1958) and by Kas’yanenko (1968). Ševernina characterizes -jee as a distant past (as does Schlepp 1983). The sense that -jee marks a distant past, even a pluperfect (the time of the occurrence is earlier than a given past time), may be due to its marking a regress, a concept applied by Dugarova (1991: 55), a “superficial” regress being marked by the form -lee, a profound one by -jee. Dugarova writes:20 Формы -лаа и -жээ относят ситуации, происходящие на том этапе, который достигнут в повествовании, назад, к более ранним этапам, и являются в каком-то смысле “дейктическими” в пределах хронологии художественного “мира” повествования. Эти глагольные формы выражают подобие предшествования, хотя, согласно принятым в настоящей работе дефинициям, являются технически не темпоральными. Функциями форм -лаа и жээ, таким образом, являются обозначение “регресса”, если воспользоваться термином Э. Кошмидера [1962 387], возвращения “назад”, к предшествующим событиям, обусловившим ситуацию, наличную к моменту, до которого продвинулся рассказ. “Регресс” может быть “неглубоким” (возвращение к непосредственно предшествующему этому моменту событию) или, напротив, “глубоким” (возвращение к более отдаленным событиям). “Неглубокий” регресс маркируется формой -лаа, глубокий—формой -жээ. (The forms -laa and -jee relate situations, which are occurring at the stage which has (already) been achieved in the narration, back to earlier stages, and are in some sense ‘deictic’ within the framework of the chronology of the artistic ‘world’ of the narrative. These verbal forms express something similar to precedence, although, in keeping with definitions accepted in the present work, are technically not temporal. Thus the forms -laa and -jee serve to denote ‘regression’, if one is to use E. Koschmider’s term [1962: 387], a turning ‘backwards’, to previous events which have provided conditions for the situation that exists in 20

Extended quotations in translation here are mine, unless otherwise noted.

16

chapter one the present moment, and to which point the story has progressed. The ‘regression’ can be ‘shallow’ (a return to events immediately preceding this moment) or, on the contrary, it can be ‘deep’ (a return to more remote events). ‘Shallow’ regression is marked by the form -laa, and ‘deep’ regression by the form -jee.)21

What Dugarova is suggesting is that these markers form part of the background, rather than of the narrative foreground. Instead of advancing narrative time, they may halt it or even send it backwards. An illustrative example from English is (7a), where the explanatory second sentence involves an event that precedes in time the event recounted in the first sentence. This contrasts with a narrative sequence, such as Caesar’s boast (7b), in which each sentence recounts a later event than the one before. In such examples, all of the sentences are equally on the main narrative line and form part of the foreground of a narrative. 7. a. The Titanic sank. It hit an iceberg. b. I came, I saw, I conquered.

The present perfect tense has sometimes been identified with a recent past, and the term “present perfect” has been applied both to -jee— Street (1963: 122) says it may emphasize “the present result of a past action or of a state that existed in the past (and may continue into the future)”—and to -lee (by Ramstedt, and following him, by Poppe 1951, 1955, 1970 and Sanžeev 1964). In light of this (brief and unsystematic) survey, Chuluu’s already-quoted conclusion (Ujeyediin 1998) that “attempts to establish clear and reliable criteria for distinguishing them are not conclusive” seems an understatement. Several scholars indeed have suggested that there is no temporal or semantic distinction between the endings, but their suggestions are on the whole vague, generally lack adequate supporting evidence, and do not point toward definite alternative analyses. Ramstedt, in his pioneering (1902) study, already warned against a simple account of the endings as “tenses,” though his warning proved inadequate to prevent subsequent authors from taking too seriously the labels he assigned the endings. Although he (on p. 21) calls the

21

Translation by Jan Schallert, thanks to Christina Kramer.

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17

endings -ne (the “present-tense”, i.e. the non-past or present-future), -lee, -jee, and -v “tempora indicativi” (“tenses of the indicative”), he warns that “kann man auch hier den namen ‘tempora’ nur mit vorsicht gebrauchen” (“one can use the name ‘tempora’ only with care”); apart from “certain objective temporal distinctions,” “[d]ieser khalkhassischen verbalformen bezeichnen nämlich in der that, ausser gewissen objektiven zeitunterschieden, auch verschiedene zeit- und aktionsarten (action imperfecta & actio perfecta)” (“these Khalkha verb forms indicate in reality besides certain objective temporal distinctions also various kinds of time and aspect (actio imperfecta & actio perfecta”).22 A number of scholars have stated something similar to Poppe’s observation (1954: 163, noted by Bläsing 1984: 37) that “there is no temporal difference between various present (or past) forms, but only a difference of the point of view of the person speaking and the latter’s subjective attitude.” Similarly, Ševernina (1958: 39) warns that the various forms are often used for one another and are not “definite.”23 Even Ramstedt himself, despite his use of terminology based on tense and aspect, does not fully subscribe to the view that the Mongolian “tense” forms are simply markers of tense and aspect, but implicitly presents another, non-temporal, perspective. He notes that the past tenses often have uses that he characterizes as modal. He writes (1902: 21), albeit somewhat obscurely, that In vielen fällen tritt bei den tempora die aktionsart deutlicher als die relative zeitstufe hervor, und wir sollten dann von “modi”, nicht von “tempora” reden. So, wenn die -wɒ-bildung zu hypothetischen annhamen gebraucht wird. So auch die -lā-bildung, wenn durch sie etwas als sicher geschehend oder als demonstriert bezeichnet wird. Die -nɒ-bildung dagegen hat eine so allgemeine bedeutung, dass sie eher die hundlung ganz tempuslos als auf eine bestimmte zeit hinweisend aussagt. Die gegenseitigen verhältnisse der khalkhasischen tempusformen entsprechen also, trotz ihrer hier gegebenen namen, nicht denjenigen der objektiven zeitstufen. (In many cases aspect comes out more clearly in the tenses than relative time, and we should then talk of ‘modi’, not of ‘tempora’. Thus when the [-v]-form is used for hypothetical suppositions. Thus too the [-lee]-form, when through it something is indicated as clearly happening or as

22 The translations here from Ramstedt are mine. I wish to thank my colleague, Professor Harald Ohlendorf, for his help with the translations from German given in the present work, though ultimate responsibility for them remains mine. 23 To use Bläsing’s (1984: 37) term.

18

chapter one demonstrated. The [-ne]-form on the contrary has such a general meaning, that it expresses the action entirely atemporally (timelessly) rather than as referring to a definite time. The reciprocal relationships of the Khalka tense forms thus do not correspond, despite the names given them here, to those of the objective times.)

Ramstedt suggests designating them not “tempora” (tenses), but rather “modi” (moods). But as Bläsing (1984: 37) comments, Ramstedt does not provide us with “an elucidation or precise definition” of such terms as modus and actio. Nor is it entirely clear in the end whether Ramstedt views the endings as modal, aspectual, or temporal, or some combination thereof. But notwithstanding Ramstedt’s warnings, most scholars through the end of the 1980s took the distinctions between the past tense markers to be semantic ones involving both tense and aspect. Ramstedt’s terminology (given in table 3 below) suggests a theory in which the four24 finite, indicative tenses of Mongolian are semantically defined by the temporal (i.e., tense) opposition of past versus non-past, and the aspectual distinction of perfective (i.e., complete) and imperfect (incomplete).25 Table 3 Ending -ne -v -lee -jee

Label Imperfektivisches präsens, Präsens Imperfekti ‘imperfective present’, ‘present of the imperfect’ Perfektivisches präteritum, Präteritum perfekti ‘perfective preterite’, ‘preterite of the perfect’ Perfektivisches präsens, Präsens Perfekti ‘perfective present’, ‘present of the perfect’ Imperfektivisches präteritum, Präteritum Imperfekti ‘imperfective preterite’, ‘preterite of the imperfect’

24 Some Mongolian languages show more than one present tense, however. For example, the vertical script language has a second present tense ending, -yü/-yu (Poppe 1954: 92). For the forms and uses of the present tense endings in the Mongolian languages, see Poppe (1955: 261ff.), Weiers (1969: 131–46), and Wu (1996: 58–68). 25 Although the terms perfect and imperfect are often used in this connection in the Mongolistic literature, the aspectual distinction in question is actually that of perfective and imperfective.

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Thus, following Ramstedt, the -v past, referred to simply as the past tense by Hangin (1968: 24) and as the definite past by Bosson (1964: 27), is called by many scholars the past perfect or past of the perfect;26 while the past in -jee, termed the narrative past by Hangin (1968: 114), is on the contrary called the past imperfect or past of the imperfect, reflecting a purely—if perhaps only nominal—aspectual contrast between the two.27 The -lee past, on the other hand, is considered by some scholars not to be a true past tense at all.28 Instead, they term it a present perfect, which differs from the past perfect in tense (i.e., time) and from the present imperfect in aspect.29 The contrasting present imperfect is for Ramstedt and those following him the form in -ne;30 this marks the non-past (present-future) tense.31 These contrasts are summarized in table 4 below. Table 4 tense\aspect past non-past

perfect

imperfect

-v -lee

-jee -ne

26 Poppe, following Ramstedt’s präteritum perfekti (1902: 19), has Präteritum perfecti (1951: 80), Praeteritum perfekti (1955: 266), and past of the perfect (1970: 131). Ramstedt also writes of the perfektivisches präteritum (p. 24). In Russian this is perfektnyi preterit (Sanžeev 1964: 193), hence Mongolian öngörön tögssön tsag, önggeren tegüsegsen caγ, ‘past perfect tense’ (as in Beffa and Hayamon 1975: 81). 27 Poppe, again following Ramstedt (1902: 18), who has präteritum imperfekti, writes of the Präteritum imperfecti (1951: 80), Praeteritum imperfekti (1955: 265), and past of the imperfect (1970: 131). Ramstedt also has imperfektivisches präteritum (p. 24). In Russian, this is imperfektnyj preterit (Sanžeev 1964: 190). 28 Strangely enough, some scholars who refer to it as the present perfect list it as one of the three past tenses. Thus Poppe (1954: 92), who consistently calls it the present perfect, includes it in the “three forms of the past.” 29 Poppe, following Ramstedt’s präsens perfekti (1902: 17), has Präsens Perfecti (1951: 80), Praesens perfekti (1955: 265), and present of the perfect (1970: 130). Ramstedt writes of the perfektivisches präsens (p. 24). In Russian this is perfektnyj prezens (Sanžeev 1964: 188). Oddly enough, Sanders and Bat-Ireedüi’s textbook (1999: 39) calls this form the past perfect tense. 30 Ramstedt calls this the imperfektivisches präsens (1902: 24) or präsens imperfekti (p. 15), following which come Poppe’s Präsens imperfecti (1951: 79), Praesens Imperfecti (1955: 260) and present of the imperfect (1970: 130), and, in Russian imperfektnyj prezens (Sanžeev 1964: 185). 31 Similarly in Mongolian ( Jančivdorj and Ragčaa 1967: 113) it is the odoo ba ireedüi tsagiin dagavar ‘present and future tense suffix’. Beffa and Hayamon (1975: 80) call it the effectif non passé (i.e., non-past), in Mongolian edüge/odu-a čaγ ziγaqu khelber, odoo tsag zaax xelber ‘form indicative of present time’.

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As has already been suggested, Ramstedt explains these labels poorly and indeed warns the reader (p. 22) against taking them too seriously: Die gegenseitige verhältnisse der khalkhassischen tempusformen entsprechen also, trotz ihrer hier gegebenen namen, nicht denjenigen der objektiven zeitstufen. Die bedeutung und verwendung jeder einzelnen form gründet sich, unabhängig von denen der anderen, nur auf ihre historische unterlage, und man hat nur mit einer gewissen freiheit des redenden zu rechnen unter den vorhandenen ausdrucksmitteln die für seine zwecke passendsten zu wählen. (The reciprocal relationships of the Khalka tense forms do not correspond . . . to those of the objective times, despite the names given to them here. The meaning and use of each particular form is based, independent of those of the others, only on its historical base, and one has but to reckon with a certain freedom of the speaker to choose amongst the available means of expression that serves his purpose.)

Nonetheless there has been a tendency by later scholars to elaborate on, and to attempt to justify, Ramstedt’s labels in terms of various semantic distinctions. 2.2. The Finite Indicative Verbs The name “past perfect” suggests that the past tense in -v “refers to past and perfected action” as Hangin (1968: 24) puts it, that is, to an event completed in the past, as in (8, 9). 8. Önöö öglöö bi zurgaan tsag.t boso.v. this morning I six hour-dat get up-past ‘This morning I got up at six o’clock.’ (Street 1963: 122) 9. Či öčigdör nom unši.v uu? you yesterday book read-past qp ‘Hast du gestern ein Buch gelesen?’ (Vietze 1974: 44) ‘Did you read a book yesterday?’

The term “past imperfect,” in parallel with the label “past perfect,” should suggest an event not completed in the past. But in fact incompletion as such does not usually enter into characterizations of this form, which is more properly the “present of the perfect,” to translate Ramstedt’s term. Rather than the incompleteness of the action, some writers emphasize prolongation in time, so that “past imperfect” means little more

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than “extended past.”32 Poppe (1970: 131), for example, says that the past tense verb formed with -jee “denotes an action that took place in the past and lasted for some time,” and he offers the examples numbered (10, 11) below:33 10. Ürgelj ündes tüü.j. all the time roots collect-past ‘all the time he collected [edible] roots’ 11. Tiim sain xüü bai.jee. such good boy be-past ‘there was such a good lad’

Beffa and Hayamon (1975: 82) claim that the action may extend into the present, saying this form indicates “an action commenced in the past, and which is prolonged or repeated in the present.” They offer the examples (12, 13): 12. Mongol.iin Mongolia-gen

büx whole

nutg.iin country-gen

dundaj middle

öndör height

1550 metr a.j. 1550 metres be-past ‘l’altitude moyenne de toute la Mongolie est de 1550 mètres’ (‘the mean altitude of all of Mongolia is 1550 metres’) 13. xoër two

baildagč combatants

naadam.d Naadam-dat

barilda.x wrestle-ifvn34

ge.j zodog šuudag.tai ir.jee. say-impfc wrestler’s-jacket wrestler’s pants-com come-past ‘les deux combattants sont arrivés avec leur costume de lutter aux jeux (au Naadam)’ (‘the two combatants have come with their fighting suits to the games [to the Naadam]’)

32

Beffa and Hayamon (1975: 82) call this the passé prolongé ou aoriste ‘prolonged past or aorist’, in Mongolian, öngörön ürgelǰilsen tsag, önggeren ürgülzilegsen caγ ‘passing extended time’. Similarly Kas’yanenko (1968: 20) says this expresses “prolonged past time” (prošedšee dlitel’noe vremya). 33 The translations are Poppe’s. 34 The form sometimes called the “infinitive” is the so-called future participle or verbal noun, the “nomen futuri.” Besides an infinitive, it also functions as a presentfuture or non-past form.

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As a matter of fact, the -jee past, supposedly imperfective in aspect, can serve to mark completed past actions (14–16): 14. xaa oči.j? where go-past ‘kuda pošel?’ (Kas’yanenko 1968: 20) ‘where did s/he go?’ 15. nar gar.č sun come out-past ‘the sun rose’ (Poppe 1970: 131) 16. Dašdorjiin Natsagdorj 1906 on.d tör.jee. (Yatskovskaya 1976: 8) Dashdorjiin Natsagdorj 1906 year-dat be born-past ‘Dashdorjiin Natsagdorj was born in 1906.’

Although Ramstedt (1902: 16) calls the -lee past the “present of the perfect” (präsens perfekti), he does not justify this name. His statements (p. 17) about the form, indeed, are a bit confusing, for though he calls it “the present of the perfect,” he observes that it is a kind of preterite (past tense), though it can also serve as a present or a future: Diese form wird angewendet in sätzen, wo eine handlung als sicher abgeschlossen oder ein zustand als sicher erreicht angegeben wird. Sie giebt nicht nur eine bestimmte zeitstufe, die gegenwart des vollendeten, sondern auch die sicherheit des ausgesagten an. Es wird dadurch eine handlung auf etwas, was für die richtigkeit der aussage irgendwie eine stütze giebt, miteinbegriffen. Der redende kann sich entweder auf die persönlichen erinnerungen des ausgeredeten (‘es war ja’ od. ‘wie bekannt’) oder auf die zeitlichen verhältnisse berufen (‘schon, jetzt’). So angewendet entspricht diese form unseren präteritis (imp., perf. und plusqupf.). Es kann aber die rightigkeit der aussage auch aus der äusseren situation im momente des sprechens (‘sieh da’, ‘sich doch’) oder als logische konsequenz aus dem vorher gesagten hervorgehen (‘es wird ja’, ‘es versteht sich’). In solchen fällen müssen wir bei dem übersetzten das präsens oder futurum gebrauchen. (This form is used in sentences, where an action is represented as firmly concluded or a state as firmly achieved. It indicates not only a certain tense, the present of the perfect, but also the firmness of the statement. It includes thereby a reference to an indication of something that somehow supports the correctness of the statement. The speaker can refer either to the personal recollections of the addressee (‘it was, as you know’ or ‘as is well known’) or to the temporal relationships (‘already, at present’). Used thus, this form corresponds to our preterite (imperfect, perfect, and pluperfect).

the problem of the mongolian past tenses

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The correctness of the statement can also arise however out of the external situation at the moment of speech (‘look at that!’, ‘do look!’) or as a logical consequence of what has been said before. In such cases we must use the present or future in the translation.)

Accordingly he glosses example (17) below thus: “ ‘(er) stirbt schon’, od. ‘ist ja schon gestorben’,” i.e., “‘he is already dying’ or ‘you know, he’s already dead’.” Poppe (1951: 80) glosses it as ‘ist ja tot’, i.e., ‘is already dead, don’t you know’.35 17. Üxe.lee. die-past36

Others,37 however, have viewed the form, in contrast to Ramstedt’s “present perfect” as an imperfective, i.e., an uncompleted, past, indicating “an action which has been started but is still unfinished.”38 Thus in (18), “that person has already started to come here, but has not yet arrived” (Wu 1995: 95). 18. tere kümün ire.le. that person come-past ‘That person is coming.’

Chenggeltei (1981: 298, in Wu 1995: 97) sees the form as indicative of a bounding point, rather than of a period of time:39 (a) the moment when an action is about to start; (b) the moment when an action just started; (c) the moment when an action is about to finish; (d) the moment when an action is just finished or has already finished.

35 By using ja, Ramstedt and Poppe are trying in their glosses to capture a certain nuance of the -luγa (= -lee) form, namely a sense that the fact is well-known to, or should be recalled by, the addressee. You know and don’t you know are my attempts to capture the sense of German ja. 36 For the sake of consistency, all the “past“ tense forms are glossed here using the tag “past,” even where this is not entirely felicitous, as in the case of this example. 37 For example, Dobu (1983: 52), cited in Wu (1995: 97). 38 Dobu (1983: 52), in Wu (1995: 95). 39 Wu (1995: 95) notes that “Dobu’s explanation partially coincides with Chenggeltei’s who suggests that -la/-le refers to an action which is either about to start or about to finish (1981: 298). By such an explanation, one may understand that [example (18)] refers to an action that has already started and is going to be completed in the near future. Therefore the [translation of the sentence] can also be: . . . ‘That person is about to arrive.’ ”

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Thus -lee can be used for the imminent future, as in (19) below, or the recent past (20), or for either (21, 22).40 19. Batu γaru.γad yabu.la. Batu go out-pfc41 go-past ‘Batu is about to go out.’ 20. tere sayiqan Kökeqota.ača he just Huhhot-abl ‘He just arrived from Huhhot.’

ire.le. come-past

21. nom.čini una.la book-your fall-past ‘Your book is about to fall down.’ or ‘Your book has just fallen down.’ 22. čirig ire.le soldier come-past ‘The soldier is just now coming’ or ‘The soldier has just arrived.’

Wu points out (1995: 98) that the interpretation of -lee depends on the Vendlerian (i.e., aspectual) class of the verb.42 With verbs denoting activities (and processes) and so-called achievements (such as ‘die’), -lee refers mainly to the imminent future, whereas with stative verbs such as ‘be’ it refers principally to the recent past; with accomplishment verbs (e.g., ‘climb’) it may refer to either, presumably because accomplishments essentially combine an activity phase with a final achievement. However, this correlation of tense with Aktionsart (“kind of action”) is only a tendency, for Wu (p. 99) observes that with some activity verbs, -lee may nonetheless refer to either imminent future or recent past, as in his examples (23, 24). He points out (p. 99f.) that adverbs such as sayi ‘just’, udaqu ‘soon’, and öčögedür ‘yesterday’ will disambiguate such sentences. 23. Bi nom ungsi.la I book read-past ‘I am about to read some books’ or ‘I have just read some books (finished a moment ago)’

40

Examples from Wu (1995: 97). This is the perfective converb, not to be confused with the perfect verbal noun. 42 Vendler (1957) classified verbs as activities like run and read, states like feel and seem, achievements like find and notice, and accomplishments like climb (climb the mountain). These categories of verbs differ in numerous semantic and syntactic properties. Although Vendler was not the first to propose such an aspectual classification (indeed, the essence of his proposal is to be found already in Aristotle), his name has come generally to be associated with it. For discussion see Binnick (1991: 170–8). 41

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24. bi ger bari.la I house build-past ‘I am about to build a house’ or ‘I have just built a house (finished a short time ago)’

Further, with verbs of motion, -lee generally refers to the imminent future (19, 25): 19. Batu γaru.γad yabu.la. Batu go out-pfc go-past ‘Batu is about to go out.’ 25. Tere yabu.la he leave-past ‘he is about to leave’ (Wu 1995: 100)

Wu concludes (p. 100) that “the [-lee] suffix does not actually have one core meaning as usually suggested in previous research; rather, it can have various meanings depending upon the type of verb to which it is attached.” To the extent that the forms labelled as “perfect” by Ramstedt do not necessarily refer to completed action, nor those labelled “imperfect” to incomplete action, and the so-called present perfect is often neither present nor “perfect,” Ramstedt’s terminology is not very revealing and clearly cannot form the basis for a sound account of the Mongolian past tenses. 2.3. The Participles The ending -v has been labelled the “past of the perfect.” It is usually considered the unmarked43 or “normal” past tense, and is usually 43 In the present context, “unmarked” is a technical term roughly equivalent to “basic” or “usual,” whereas “marked” means “special, unusual.” Most definitions revolve around the notion that the unusual requires an explicit indicator, whereas the usual does not. Thus languages often have a marker like English -ling (duckling, gosling) referring to the young of a species, but require no explicit marker to refer to members of the species as a whole, nor to adult members (compare duck, goose). Markedness is a confusing concept, since it has been used to refer to formal, distributional, and semantic properties, which do not necessarily accord with one another, and has been defined in different ways by different schools of linguistics. The three things relevant to the present discussion regarding markedness are (1) that the existence of the marked member of an opposition implies the existence of the unmarked (as terms like duckling imply the existence of terms like duck), (2) that the marked member, but not necessarily the unmarked, requires explicit marking as by the addition of an affix, and (3) that the extension (membership in the real world) of the

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glossed by, and in turn often—but not always—serves as the translation of, the preterites (simple past tenses) of other languages. However, in Mongolian there are restrictions on its use and it is largely in alternation with the “perfect” participle (perfect verbal noun, nomen perfecti)44 formed with the variants of the ending -sen. The verbal nouns can serve as nouns, adjectives, or adverbs. As a noun, a participle may take a plural form (as -sen does in example 26). In such uses the perfect participle refers to action completed at, or prior to, the contextual time. Thus in (26) the verbal noun is effectively pluperfect because the main verb of the sentence is itself past; in (27) the same verbal noun is past, however, because the context is present; but in (28) there is no defined contextual time and all one can say, contrary to the past tense used in Street’s gloss, is that the event in question is relatively past, i.e. anterior to the contextual reference time: it could, for example, mean ‘the thing you had requested’, ‘the thing you will have requested’, etc. 26. yav.sa.d ir.lee go-pfvn-pl come-past ‘those who had gone have come’ (Poppe 1970: 133) 27. Bi bas ene gazar šine ir.sen I also this place newly come-pfvn ‘I’m a new-comer here too.’ (Street 1963: 206)

xün. person

28. činii zaxi.san yum your request-pfvn thing ‘the thing you asked [me] to buy’ (Street 1963: 207)

The distinction between -sen and -ee is nominally aspectual, that is, perfect(ive) vs. imperfect(ive), rather than temporal (anterior vs. cotemporal), so perfect (or perfective) and imperfect (or imperfective) are

marked member is included in that of the unmarked member (ducklings are ducks) but its intension (conceptual definition) includes that of the unmarked member (the definition of duckling contains more content, provides more information, than does that of duck). These properties play a crucial role in deciding which categories are the marked members of their oppositions. 44 Ramstedt (1902: 27), Poppe (1951: 81). In Mongolian, öngörön tögssön tsagt üilt ner/önggeren tegüsegsen caγ-tur üiletü ner-e ‘past perfective verbal noun’, i.e., ‘verbal noun of the completed past tense’ (nom verbal du passé fini) (Beffa and Hayamon 1975: 99, Vietze 1974: 58).

the problem of the mongolian past tenses

27

better names for the participles that they form than are terms like past participle and present participle. When used with stative expressions, the state referred to by the perfective participle leads us to infer, but the verb itself does not refer to, prior action. Thus in (5) the state denoted by the -sen participle, that of being ashamed, is co-temporal with (that is, overlaps) the action of the main verb of the sentence. With other types of predicates, however, -sen indicates anteriority (29) and -ee co-temporality (30). Hence the names perfective, referring to completed action, and imperfective, referring to incomplete action. 5. Tseren iči.sen.d.ee uil.san. Tseren be ashamed-pfvn-dat-rp cry-past ‘when he was ashamed, Tseren cried’ (Poppe 1970: 134) 29. Či tüün.ii yav.sn.iig med.sen üü? you that-gen go-pfvn-acc know-past qp ‘Did you know that he (had) left?’ (Kullmann and Tserenpil 1996: 143) 30. Ta you (plural)

ter that

ir.j come-impfc

baig.aa be-impfvn

xün.iig tani.x uu? person-acc be acquainted with-ifvn qp ‘Do you know that person who is coming?’ (Kullmann and Tserenpil 1996: 146)

The perfective verbal noun, like any other verbal noun, can also serve as the main predicate of a sentence, with (as in 31) or without a copula (32, 33), and it may be negated (34). As a main predicate, it may also appear in a question (35, 36). Sometimes the appropriate gloss is present perfect (31, 32, 36), sometimes past (33–35). One, central, issue that must be considered is whether a form in -sen, when employed as the main predicate of the sentence, differs from the past tense finite forms in meaning and/or use, and if so, in what way(s) it does. It must also be considered whether, and in what way, -sen without a copula differs from -sen with a copula. 31. Či üün.iig duul.san yum uu? you this-acc hear-pfvn copp qp ‘Hast du schon davon gehört?’ (Vietze 1974: 58) ‘Have you heard this?’

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32. Ter ajil.d.aa yav.san. that work-dat-rp go-past ‘He has gone to work.’ (Street 1963: 207) 33. Bi xot.oos ir.sen. I city-abl come-past ‘I came from the city.’ (Hangin 1968: 32) 34. Bi oilog.son.güi. I understand-pfvn-neg ‘I did not understand.’ (Hangin 1968: 32) 35. Bat xezee ir.sen be? Bata when come-pfvn qp ‘When did Bata come?’ (Poppe 1970: 134) 36. Yar’.j duus.san uu? talk-impfc finish-pfvn qp ‘Have you finished [talking]?’ (Sanders and Ireedüi 1995: 78)

In keeping with the agglutinative character of the Mongolian language, a different ending -sen (labeled pfvn here though it is actually a short form of asan, the -sen form of the obsolete verb a-, which also provides the root of ajee ‘was’) may be added, amongst others, to the non-past participle (ifvn, 37), to the perfect participle (38), and to the frequentative (habvn) in (39): 37. Za, neg saixan xuušuur ide.x.sen. oh a fine khuushuur eat-ifvn-pfvn ‘How I’d like to eat Khuushuur [sic] again!’ (Kullmann and Tserenpil 1996: 339) 38 xar xainag bol.son.son black khainag become-pfvn-pfvn ‘war zu einem schwartzen Yakbastard geworden jedoch . . .’ (Poppe 1951: 84) ‘. . . had become a black khainag.’ 39. end neg ail bai.dag.san here a yurt be-habvn-pfvn ‘hier pflegte eine Jurte zu stehen’ (Poppe 1951: 84)45 ‘Here there used to be a yurt.’

45 The transcription in Poppe’s examples (37–39) has been adjusted slightly to fit the transliteration used in the present work.

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In these forms, the additional ending acts like a past tense marker, taking the rest of the proposition within its scope,46 so that (39), for example, means something like ‘it used to be the case that [a yurt was usually here]’, where the affix immediately preceding the final perfect noun ending functions aspectually; thus in (39) -deg, the so-called frequentative verbal noun, marks usualness, and the proposition within the scope of san is literally ‘a yurt is usually here’. Similarly the included proposition in (38) is ‘. . . has become a black khainag’, which is within the scope of the perfective affix meaning ‘it was the case that’. In addition to the perfect(ive) participle, amongst the past tense suffixes found in Mongolic languages Wu (1996) lists the imperfect(ive) participle or verbal noun (nomen imperfecti) formed using -ee.47 Wu was quite possibly the first scholar, in the West at least, to label the form a past tense ending.48 Above, it was commented in regard to the examples in (6) that -ee cannot be considered a past-tense marker in the way that -sen can. In and of itself, the imperfective participle used as a predicate is not a marker of past tense, but rather a kind of present, conveying (as in 6b) the sense of something begun in the past and continuing at the present time: something which is still the case. It is consequently often glossed using a present tense, as in (6b), so its labeling by Wu as a past tense marker requires some qualification. 6. b. Mongol uls ix xögji.j baig.aa. Mongolia greatly develop-impfc be-impfvn ‘Die Mongolei entwickelt sich sehr.’ (Vietze 1974: 84) ‘Mongolia is being greatly developed.’

46 By the scope of a semantic category such as negation is meant how much of the proposition (or other unit) the category in question applies to. For example, John doesn’t want Sue to leave is ambiguous, depending on the scope of the negation. If the negation applies to the whole proposition—in which case we say it has wide scope—the meaning is that John has no desire for Sue to leave, but doesn’t necessarily want her to stay, either: he can be quite indifferent. If the negation applies to just the object of want, if the negation has narrow scope, the meaning is that John positively desires that Sue not leave. Syntactically, any element which governs another may be said to have it within its scope. Thus in John doesn’t want Sue to leave, there is no structural scope ambiguity on the surface level, though in a transformational syntactic theory there may be a syntactic scope ambiguity, depending on whether the underlying structure is something like John does want [Sue not to leave], associated with narrow semantic scope, or it is John does not want [Sue to leave], associated with wide semantic scope. 47 Ramstedt (1902: 25ff.), Poppe (1951: 81). 48 What Wu says (p. 81) of the -γsan ending could equally well be said of -γa: “[This] suffix is normally not identified as a past tense marker in grammars, but . . . the suffix can be used to indicate past tense in all Mongolian languages. . . .”

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Like any other verbal noun, the imperfective may serve as a noun, adjective, or adverb. In such uses, and as the main predicate of subordinate structures, this ending is cotemporal with the context time, as (40): despite the present-tense gloss, the reference is to the contextual time, not (directly) to the present. Thus in (41), yavaa refers to past time because xellee is past, whereas in (42) iree refers to present time because the question is (implicitly) in the present tense; and in (43) baigaa again has no inherent time reference because there is no temporal context. 40. . . . xii.j baig.aa xün ... do-impfc be-impfvn person ‘the man (who is) doing . . .’ (Sanders and Ireedüi 1999: 63) 41. Minii xajuu.d suu.j yav.aa zaluu xel.lee. my side-dat sit-impfc go-impfvn youth speak-past ‘The young man who was riding at my side spoke.’ (Street 1963: 207) 42. Ter naaš ir.ee49 xün xen be? the this way come-impfvn person who qp ‘Who is the person who is coming this way?’ (Hangin 1968: 93) 43. šireen deer baig.aa tom šar tsag table on be-impfvn big yellow clock ‘the big yellow clock [which is] on the table’ (Street 1963: 207)

As the main predicate of a sentence, this participle occurs both within (6b, 44) and without (6a, 45) the scope of an auxiliary verb or copular particle, and in this role it commonly occurs negated in either case (6a, 45). It can also appear in questions (45).50 6. a. Minii sar.iin temdeg . . . sar ir.ee.güi. My moon-gen mark . . . month come-impfvn-neg ‘I haven’t had my period for . . . months.’ (Sanders and Bat-Ireedüi 1995: 128) b. Mongol uls ix xögji.j baig.aa. Mongolia greatly develop-impfc be-impfvn ‘Die Mongolei entwickelt sich sehr.’ (Vietze 1974: 84) ‘Mongolia is developing greatly.’

49 Sodnomdorj calls iree here a mistake and comments that he would say irj yavaa. (This may reflect a difference in dialects.) 50 I have not found any unnegated examples in questions, however.

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44. Bid . . . üüreg av.č ajilla.n yav.aa yum. We . . . responsibility take-impfc work-modc go-impfvn copp ‘We are working along with the responsibility of . . .’ (Street 1963: 207) 45. Nada.d xün yum xel.üül.ee.güi Me-dat person something speak-caus-impfvn-neg ‘Has anyone left me a message?’ (Sanders and Ireedüi 1995: 70)

yüü? qp

In the modern, colloquial language, finite verbs are not negated, but are replaced within the scope of negation by participles, to which a reduced, cliticized form of the negative postposition ügüi ‘without, -less, not’ is added, e.g., the various past tense forms meaning ‘went’ become yavsangüi ‘didn’t go’, and both yavna ‘goes, will go’ and yavj baina ‘is going, goes’ become yavaxgüi ‘isn’t going, doesn’t go’. It would seem that the participial predicates of sentences would likewise simply be negated by the addition of -güi, so that yavsan when negated would be yavsangüi. While this is generally the case with other participles (as in 46), it is, as recent works by native speakers point out, not precisely the case where -sen is concerned. 46. — Ta end am’dar.dag uu? You (plural) here live-habvn qp ‘Do you live here?’ — Ügüi, bi end am’dar.dag.güi. No I here live-habvn-neg ‘No, I don’t live here.’ (Sanders and Irredui 1995: 52)

Tserenchunt writes, “Some scholars say that the negative -aagyi (awaagyi, ireegyi) and -sangyi (awsangyi, irsengyi) endings have no difference.51 But it is not true in my opinion.” (Personal communication, June 1, 2007). Tserenchunt and Luethy (2000: 62) say [The form -sen] is made negative by placing the [-eegüi] ending on the main verb. This is the general past tense form. The expected form [-sengüi] is only used when expressing not doing some thing as planned and is only used for the recent past.

51 The phrasebook by Sanders and Ireedui (1995: 28) glosses ‘no (he hasn’t [gone])’ by “yavsangüi or yavaagüi.” (Tserenchunt’s -gyi = my -güi.)

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And they offer the example (47). 47. Bid nom unš.aa.güi. Bid sonin unš.san. We book read-impfvn-neg We news read-past ‘We didn’t read a book. We read the newspaper.’ (Tserenchunt and Luethy 2000: 62)

Kullmann and Tserenpil (1996: 184f.) similarly say that For negation [-sen] should only be used if the action happens against one’s assumption. Otherwise . . . “-аа” with the negative particle [-güi] is used [-eegüi], which then indicates that the expected thing could still happen [48, 49].52 48. He didn’t go out. (He hasn’t gone out.) Ter gar.san.güi. (gar.aa.güi.) that go out-pfvn-neg go out-impfvn-neg 49. I didn’t see her. (I haven’t seen her.) Bi tüün.iig xar.san.güi. (xar.aa.güi.) I that-acc see-pfvn-neg see-impfvn-neg

In predicative use with the negator ügüi (-güi), this “imperfect” affix largely acts like a present perfect, and is often glossed as such, as in (50) below; it may, however, receive a past tense gloss (51): 50. Ter šiid.ee.güi. That decide-impfvn-neg ‘He hasn’t decided (yet).’ (Kullmann and Tsedenpil 1996: 146)

52 The form -eegüi baina is glossed ‘hasn’t -ed’ in the Sanders/ Bat-Ireedüi phrasebook. Thus: i. Minii örölög tseverl.ee.güi bai.na My room clean-impfvn-neg be-pres ‘My room hasn’t been cleaned. ’ (p. 70) ii. Minii sar.iin temdeg . . . sar ir.ee.güi. My month-gen mark . . . month come-impfvn-neg ‘I haven’t had my period for . . . months.’ (p. 128) Sentence (iii) is glossed there ‘No, I’m not [married]’,” but given that (iv) is ‘Are you married?’, (iii) clearly means ‘I haven’t gotten married.’ Cf. the entries from Luvsanjav et al. (1988: 99) (v–vii). iii. Ügüi, bi uraglaagüi. (p. 48) iv. Ta uraglasan uu? (p. 48) v. Are you married? Ta gerlesen üü? vi. I’m not married. Bi gerleegüi. vii. I’ve just got married. Bi sayaxan gerlesen.

the problem of the mongolian past tenses 51. Bi tiim sanaag.aar xel.ee.güi I such thought-instr say-impfvn-neg ‘I didn’t mean that.’ (Luvsanjav et al. 1988: 48)

33

yum. copp

With negation, however, its sense (as in 52, 53) is basically that of something which has not yet happened, as Hangin (1968: 93) and Vietze (1974: 84) state. 52. Ter ire.v üü? — Ir.ee.güi. that come-past qp come-impfvn-neg ‘Did he come?—Not yet.’53 (Hangin 1968: 93) 53. Bi ene nom.iig unš.aa.güi. I this book-acc read-impfvn-neg ‘Ich habe dieses Buch noch nicht gelesen.’ (Vietze 1974: 84) ‘I have not yet read this book.’

So Ramstedt (1903: 26) glosses ireegüi ‘ist bis jetzt noch nicht [gekommen]’, i.e., ‘up to now has not yet [or ‘still not’] come.’ 2.4. Metric (Degrees of Remoteness) Theories of the -jee and -lee Tenses As regards the pasts in -jee and -lee there exists an alternative to the two-tenses/two-aspects theory, in which the distinction of the pasts is seen as temporal, but not as having to do with the difference between the time spheres of past and present. Instead, what is purportedly involved is a kind of metric tense distinction or distinction of degrees of remoteness.54 In this alternative theory, the past in -lee represents a recent or immediate past,55 and that in -jee a remote past.

53

Poppe (1970: 132) glosses ireegüi ‘has not come’. What have sometimes have been called, as here, metric tense systems and today are more usually called remoteness systems, are tense systems in which grammatical tenses mark relative distance from the present time and usually include both more than one past tense and more than one future tense. The most comprehensive study to date is that of Botne (to appear). For example, Kikuyu, a Bantu language, has three past tenses and three futures, defined respectively as recent/immediate, intermediate, and distant. In many languages without metric tense systems there are ways of expressing recency in the past (e.g., she just ate, French elle vient de manger) or immediacy in the future (she’s about to eat, French elle est sur le point de manger). 55 Hangin writes of the immediate past (1968: 99, 1976: 17) and similarly Beffa and Hayamon of the parfait immédiat ‘immediate past’, in Mongolian sayaxan tögssön tsag, sayiqan önggeregsen čaγ, literally, ‘time not long passed’ (Beffa and Hayamon 54

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Thus Kas’yanenko (1968: 20) writes that “the verbal form in [-lee] properly expresses past time concluded not long ago: garlaa ‘went out’. . . .” Hangin similarly says (1968: 99), “The immediate past denotes an action just completed.” Hangin offers the example (54). The gloss ‘it’s gotten late’ would have been more appropriate to his comment that this form represents recently completed action. 54. Oroi bol.loo, odoo yava.x.güi yüü? late become-past, now go-ifvn-neg qp ‘It’s getting late, aren’t you going?’ (Hangin 1968: 99)

As has been pointed out by Hangin (1968: 99) and Wu (1995: 95), amongst others, -lee can also be interpreted as a near or immediate future. Thus example (55) (from Nasunbayar et al. 1984: 310) Wu also interprets, depending on the context, as meaning ‘The signal for the army to leave is about to be given.’ 55. čirig mordo.qu dokiya talbi.la army leave-ifvn signal release-past ‘The signal for the army to leave was given.’

If -lee is a recent past, the -jee past is a distant or remote past. Wu (1995: 86f.) cites the examples in (56) in criticizing this view, which was presented by Nasunbayar et al. (1984: 308): 56. a. Bold.un mal neliyed ös.čei Bold-gen livestock quite increase-past ‘Bold’s livestock increased quite a lot.’ b. tere nidonon mori.ban gege.ǰei. that last year horse-rp lose-past ‘He lost his horse last year.’

Hashimoto (1993) generalizes this into a theory in which three of the four tenses differ principally in their relationship to the present time. The verb form with the -v ending represents (p. 16) a past tense which is distal, cut off altogether from the present, while the form in -jee is proximal, and takes as its scope the past up to the present moment;

1975: 82). Wu (1995: 94f.) cites Nasunbayar et al. (1982: 310) as saying that -luγa indicates “the recent past tense.”

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Present Past

Future -v -jee/-čee -laa

Diagram 1

the form in -lee adds to this the near future. Diagram 1 above is after Hashimoto’s diagram (21). Wu is critical of at least the traditional type of metric analysis, pointing out that, out of context, (56a) says nothing of how distant the event is in the past, while the remoteness evident in (56b) is due to the adverb ‘last year’. Wu further observes (p. 87) that -jee can be used with an adverb of recent time, as in (57), to indicate a recent event. 57. bi sayiqan tegün.tai I just that-com ‘I just met him.’

aγulǰi.ǰai. meet-past

Indeed, perhaps anticipating an analysis such as Hashimoto’s, Street (1963) views the -jee form as a kind of present perfect, indicative of recent past time, writing (p. 122f.) that it “either has the meaning of a recent past, or emphasizes the present result of a past action or of a state that existed in the past (and may continue into the future). A variety of English translations are required.” He offers the examples (58–60): 58. Baga Baga

toirg.oor Toirog-instr

... ...

3 km 3 km

boxir drain

usn.ii water-gen

töv šugam barigda.j duus.jee. main line build-impfc finish-past ‘They have just finished building a main sewer line 3 km. long along the Baga Toirog.’

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59. Mongol orn.iig toir.j üze.x.eer ir.jee. Mongol country-acc tour-impfc see-ifvn-instr come-past ‘He has come to visit around Mongolia.” (Street 1963: 122: Street explains, “the person has just arrived at the airport.”) 60. . . . odoo arvan . . . now ten

xoyor two

myanga thousand

šaxam nearly

mal.tai cattle-com

bayan aj axui bolo.n xög.jee. wealthy farm become-modc grow-past ‘. . . has now grown into a wealthy farm with nearly 12,000 cattle.’ (Street 1963: 122)

But examples such as (16, 61) show that -jee cannot, pace Street and Hashimoto, (simply) constitute a recent past. 16. Dašdorjiin Natsagdorj 1906 on.d tör.jee. Dashdorjiin Natsagdorj 1906 year-dat be born-past ‘Dashdorjiin Natsagdorj was born in 1906.’ (Yatskovskaya 1976: 8) 61. Ene üe.d this period-dat “Lir Van” (1605), “King Lear”

“Gamlet” (1601), “Hamlet” “Makbet” (1606) “Macbeth”

“Otello” (1604), “Othello” zereg sort

jüjg.üüd play-pl

n’ the

gar.čee. (Sodov 1967: 62) come out-past ‘In this period were produced the plays “Hamlet” (1601), “Othello” (1604), “King Lear” (1605), “Macbeth” (1606), etc.’

Ujeyediin (1998)56 is critical also of the view that -luγa represents a recent past: In [certain] examples . . ., the suffix does refer to the recent past because the speaker is talking about what he has done just before the present moment of speech. However, this use is not unique nor the sole feature of the suffix, but it is one of many uses the suffix expresses as pointed out by Chenggeltei (1981: 298) and there are cases in which “it can be used for situations that occurred a long time ago, if the speaker remembers them clearly” (Svantesson 1991: 193). For instance, in [the examples in (62)], the speaker uses the [-lee] suffix to express this sense. 62. a. ene nom.ibi baγa.un üye.degen this book-acc small-gen period-dat/rp ‘I read this book during my childhood.’

ongsi.la read-past

56 No pagination is given here for quotations from Ujeyediin (1998), which derive from a draft computer file.

the problem of the mongolian past tenses b. tos ügülel.i arban jil.un this article-acc ten year-gen ‘(I) wrote this article ten years ago.’

emüne before

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biči.le write-past

Accordingly, he concludes that degree of remoteness is derived from context and that the past tense marker does not by itself distinguish it. To distinguish these past tense morphemes by the degree of the remoteness is a problematic solution, since none of the past tense markers in Mongolian distinguish recent or remote past without the help of a certain context. 3. Toward A Pragmatic Theory 3.1. Discourse Functions Clearly a “semantic” theory, based on differentiating the various past tense endings by their temporal and/or aspectual meaning, cannot provide an adequate solution to the puzzle of the Mongolian past tenses. But there have been clues in the works of a number of scholars, including even Ramstedt himself, that the correct solution involves essentially what is termed here a “pragmatic” theory. A number of authors have made suggestions that characterize the various past tense endings, and distinguish them from one another, in terms of their functions in discourse, though this necessarily raises the interesting question of what distinctions in meaning or use, if any, underlie these discourse-functional differences. For example, Bläsing (1984: 47) distinguishes narration in the -v (his “-в” [-v]) past and that in -jee (his “-ж” [-j] past), saying: Die -в-basierte Erzählung ist wohl der häufigste und am stärksten differenzierte Diskurstyp; in ihm treten mehr oder weniger alle Inventareinheiten auf, was eine sehr fein nuancierte Darstellungsweise gewährleistet und optimale Bedingungen für eine kontrastive Betrachtung bietet. Die meisten Romane und Kurzgeschichten sind -в-basiert. Dementsprechend wird dieser Typ auch der Kernpunkt der vorliegenden Untersuchung sein zur Feststellung der funktionalen Eigenschaften der einzelnen Einheiten. Die Diskursebene wird neben der Basiseinheit -в durch die Segmente -жана,57 -на und auch zuweilen durch -дг vertreten, während die relative Anteriorität durch die -ла-Form ausgedrückt wird. Soweit -сн- und

57 Bläsing (1984: 48, 51, 71f., 80) characterizes -jana as a present tense, an “actual” present (p. 74) in opposition to the “general” present in -na, and expressive of the

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chapter one -ж-Einheiten vorkommen, signalisieren sie eine postterminale Betrachtungsweise. . . . (The story based on -v is certainly the most frequent and most strongly differentiated type of discourse; more or less all inventory units appear in it, which ensures a very finely nuanced method of representation and offers optimal conditions for a contrastive view. Most novels and short-stories are -v-based. Accordingly, this type will also be the quintessential point of the present investigation for the establishment of the functional properties of the individual units. Apart from the basic unit –v, the discourse level is represented by the segments -jana, -na and also at times by -dg, while relative anteriority is expressed by the -la form. As far as -sn- and -j-units occur, they signal a post-terminal viewpoint.) Die -ж-basierte Erzählung ist weniger gebräuchlich als -в-basierte Erzählungen. Dieser Diskurstyp tritt in erster Linie in Märchen, d.h. in der mündlichen Literatur auf . . . und scheint auch hier hauptsächlich auf die einleitenden Sätze und Passagen beschränkt zu sein. Dadurch kommt eine mehr stilistische Nuancierung zum Ausdruck, die dem Geschilderten zunächst einen betont fiktiven, nacherzählenden Charakter verleiht; später können die Märchen dann in einem anderen Diskurstyp (meist dem -в-basierten) weitererzählt werden. . . . (The -j-based story is less frequently used than the -v-based story. This type of discourse occurs in the first place in oral literature (folk tales) and appears also here to be confined mainly to the introductory sentences and passages. Through that comes a more stylistic nuance to the expression, which bestows to what is described first of all an emphatically fictive, reproductive character; later the story can be continued in a different discourse type (mainly the -v-based one).)

We have seen above that Dugarova, too, relates temporal relations to discourse functions. She notes that -lee marks a superficial regress, and -jee a more profound one, in narrative time, as clauses headed by these forms form part of the background to the narrative and not part of the foreground, that is, of the narrative proper. She offers (1991: 55f.) an instructive example (63):

“durative Aktionsart” (p. 68). As such, it roughly translates the present progressive, as in the example (i): i. tsasn orjana ‘снег идёт, es schneit’ (‘it is snowing’).

the problem of the mongolian past tenses 63. Neelttei Open

baig.aa be-impfvn

salxi wind

gegeevč.eer window-instr

sevelee.j, gently blow-impfc

namr.iin autumn-gen

39 xongor pleasant

tsaivar yagaan xošgii n’ whitish pink curtain the

dervelz.üül.ne. flutter-caus-pres Tsonxn.ii window-gen suu.jee. sit-past deer on

derged beside Dulmaa Dulmaa

Badarč, Badarch

Badarč.iin Badarch-gen

Dulmaa Dulmaa

xoër two

ööd öödöösöö end-on

tsagaan pansan white jaconet

zuusen [sic]58 xex [sic]59 tenger zangia.g hung blue sky tie-acc

tsamts shirt

tegšle.n smooth-modc

zas.laa. adjust-past Tege.xe.d Do thus-ifvn-dat

Dulmaag.iin Dulmaa-gen

torgon silk

tuyaa glow

deel.iin dress-gen

xurts bright

önge.tei colour-com

ulaan red

yer general

busiin extraordinary

xögjöötöi enlivened

jav.aa Badarč.iin nüür go-impfvn Badarch-gen face

deer on

tusa.x n’ reflect-ifvn the

tüün.iig that-acc

ulam still more

bögööd and

č modp

bayasaltai happy

üzemtei attractive

bolgo.no. make-pres

(Tsog 1976 3.101) ‘The gentle autumn wind blows [literally, “is blowing”] in the open window and rustles white-pink curtains. Badarch and Dulma sit [literally, “have been sitting”] beside the window and look [literally, “have been looking”] at each other. Dulma adjusts [literally, “is adjusting”] a tie of celestial color on the white shirt of Bardach. Then, on the unusually lively face of Bardach, there appears a reflection of the bright red silk dress of Dulma and makes him even happier and more attractive’.60

58

Should read züüsen. Should read xöx. 60 The gloss is actually a translation by Michael Schonberg and Anatoly Oleksiyenko of Dugarova’s Russian gloss of the passage: В открытое окно веет (букв. ‘вея’) ласковый осенний ветерок и колышет беловато—розовые занавески. Около окна сидят (букв. ‘сидели’) Бадарч и Дулма и смотрят (букв. ‘смотря’) друг на друга. Дулма поправляет (букв. ‘поправила’) галстук небесного цвета на белой фанзовой рубашке Бадарча. Затем на необычно оживленном лице Бадарча отражается 59

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About (63) she comments (p. 56): В приведенном фрагменте форма -жээ обозначает ситуацию до описываемых событий: мы застаем героев повествования уже сидящими рядом у окна, причем ситуация, обозначенная глаголом суужээ ‘сидели’, мыслится как имевшая место задолго до описываемых глаголами дэрвэлзүүлнэ ‘колышет’ и болгоно ‘делает’ ситуаций. Глагол в форме -лаа (заслаа ‘поправила’) относит обозначенную ситуацию также назад относительно ситуаций, обозначенных глаголами в презенсе, но представляет ее как имеюшую место непосредственно перед тем, как имеют место ситуации, называемые презентными формами. (In the preceding fragment the form [-jee] designates a situation before the described events: we find the heroes of the narration already sitting together at the window, [before?] the situation, designated by the verb suujee ‘they sat’, it is conceived of as taking place long before the situations described by the verbs dervelzüülne ‘flutters, flaps’ [transitive] and bolgono ‘does’. A verb with the form [-lee] (zaslaa ‘straightened’) conveys the designated situation also back relative to the situations, designated by verbs in the present, but represents it as taking place immediately before that, as they take the place of situations named by present forms.)

The question, then, is what kind of functions differentiate the past tense endings, and how these functions relate to the meaning or meanings borne by the endings. 3.2. The Evidential If a number of authors observe distinctions of discourse functionality in the sundry past tenses, even more have commented upon different modal uses of the past tense forms. Even in Ramstedt (1902: 21) there are hints of a modal account of the “tenses,” though it is not clear just what Ramstedt meant by modi ‘modes’. As I noted in the preface, in the early 1990s, searching for simple labels for the past tense endings, I chose, based on such observations of modal uses, to call -lee the “evidential.” Although I had already отсвет ярко-красного дели Дулмы и делает его еще более радостным и привлекательным. Dugarova’s parenthetical observations are intended to convey the precise meanings of the various verb forms, as opposed to their translations in context. By using the present tense for the translations, Dugarova indicates that the passage is descriptive, not essentially narrative. Nonetheless the verb forms used are, with the exceptions of dervelzüülne ‘rustles’ and bolgono ‘makes’, not present tense forms.

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41

suggested an implicitly evidential characterization of this form (and a similar treatment of -jee as inferential) in Binnick (1979), as of 1994 I still had little evidence to support such a labeling. Meanwhile, the thinking of a few other writers was heading in the same direction. Although Street did not connect the tenses with modal functions, he did (1963: 129) use the term inferential, albeit in regard to the particle biz, offering the example (64): 64. Ter ir.sen biz. that come-past inferp61 ‘He must have come.’

In 1997 Song proposed a modal treatment and in 2002 further investigated comparisons with the system found in Korean. As has been noted above, Tserenchunt and Luethy (2000) contrasted the endings -jee and -lee essentially in modal terms, though without using the terms “evidential” and “inferential.” Nelson et al. (1998: 115, 118) did explicitly label -lee evidential (though treating -jee as unmarked for evidentiality, rather than as inferential, a term they do not use.) These terms, “evidential” and “inferential,” are familiar to Altaicists from the grammars of languages of the Turkic family ( Johanson and Utas 2000; Johanson 2003; Johanson 2006), for example Turkish, in which there are two different past tenses, obligatorily marking a distinction between evidentiality (65a) and inferentiality (65b).62 (The

61

The detailed gloss is my modification of Street’s. The Wikipedia article on evidentiality says (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Evidentiality) that [Iranian, Finno-Ugric, and Turkic languages] indicate whether evidence exists for a given source of information—thus, they contrast direct information (reported directly) and indirect information (reported indirectly, focusing on its reception by the speaker/recipient). Unlike the other evidential “type II” systems, indirectivity marking does not indicate information about the source of knowledge: it is irrelevant whether the information results from hearsay, inference, or perception (however, some Turkic languages distinguish between reported indirect and nonreported indirect . . .). What is called “direct” here is what is usually termed the “evidential,” and “indirect,” the “inferential.” As in Turkic, the Mongolian inferential does not distinguish the types of sources, and thus includes all three sources noted above—hearsay (e.g., example i), perception (either recall, as in ii, or a fresh discovery, as in example iii below), and inference. In this last regard, Schlepp (1983: 38) says that -jee, what he calls the “distant past,” “signifies action in the past, often in the mood that it is a fitting or logical consequence, sometimes contrary to expectation,” as in his example (iv). 62

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examples in (65) are from http://www.cromwell-intl.com/turkish/ verbs.html.) 65. a. Derviş.ler.i gör.dü.m. Dervish-pl-acc see-evidential past-first person singular ‘I saw dervishes.’ b. Derviş.ler.i gör.müş.üm. Dervish-pl-acc see-inferential past-first person singular ‘I saw dervishes (so they say).’

Traditionally, however, the grammars of the languages of the Mongolian family have not been viewed as incorporating a similar modal system, despite the presence of evidential/inferential markers in the Turkic languages, the Tungusic languages, and both Japanese and Korean.63 Nonetheless, even before the 1990s there had been indications in the writings of various grammarians that -lee might be some sort of evidential marker, and -jee equally some kind of inferential marker, for example the statement by Ramstedt (translated in the passage just before example 17 above) that -lee indicates the “firmness of the statement,” or that its use may arise from the “external situation” or a “logical consequence” of what has already been said.64 Ramstedt offers the examples (17, 66–68). 17. Üxe.lee. die-past “‘(er) stirbt schon’, od. ‘ist ja schon gestorben’” (i.e., “‘he is already dying’ or ‘you know, he’s already dead’”)

i. Ter yav.čix.jee. That leave-čix-past ‘He has left already.’ (as I found out) ii. bi saqilaγa ügei keüked bayi-ǰai I discipline without child be-past ‘I used to be an undisciplined child.’ (“the speaker recalling something”) iii. Bill üxčixjee! ‘Bill’s dead!’ (Stivenson 1975: 28; chapter 5 of Treasure Island; described as immediately following “a cry of surprise”) iv. qarin čimadur ǰedkür oru.ǰuqui but you-dat devil enter-past ‘On the contrary, the devil has entered thee.’ 63 On Japanese, see, e.g., Itani (1994), Mushin (2001, 2001a), Tenny (2006), McCready and Ogata (2007); on Korean, Song (2002), Kim (2005), Chung (2006, 2007, 2007a). On Manchu-Tungusic, see Nedjalkov (1997), Malchukov (2000). 64 These suggestions of Ramstedt’s were apparently not pursued by later scholars, however.

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66. bol.loo become-past ‘has become’ or ‘enough!’ (‘es ist schon geworden’ od. ‘genug!’) 67. noya.d ir.lee prince-pl come-past ‘the princes have come’ (‘die fürsten sind schon gekommen’) 68. bid odoo xool idlee we now food eat-past ‘we have now eaten’ (‘wir haben jetzt gegessen’)65

Poppe (1970: 130) similarly says that the form “expresses an action which has taken place, and which has either been witnessed or is commonly known, and is therefore regarded as an indisputable fact.”66 This form may be used of present and future as well as of past events, as Ramstedt (p. 17) notes (as we have seen); in this case, too, the action in question is certain (Poppe 1951: 80). Poppe offers the example (69): 69. bi yav.laa I go-past ‘I’m going’67

Street (1963: 121) comments that the example below (70) might be said “as when one looks out a window and sees the person entering the building.” 70. ter ir.lee that come-past ‘he’s coming’

Hangin (1976: 17) notes that -lee “implies first hand knowledge on the part of the speaker. . . . It is possible for a narrator of a tale to throw in this form of the past to enliven his tale as if he himself were involved in the action.”

65 Sodnomdorj comments that this is incorrect; odoo ‘now’ renders the example future, not present perfect or past, and for the indicated sense, the modifier should instead be saya ‘just now’. 66 Cf. Street (1963: 121). 67 ‘Ich gehe’; Vieze (1974: 45) translates this example ‘ich gehe jetzt’, i.e., ‘I’m going now.’

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chapter one Chuluu (Ujeyediin 1998) similarly observes that Street (1963: 121) concurs that [-lee] is used mainly “when the speaker or writer has first-hand knowledge of an event or state described, or when he is otherwise willing to vouch for the accuracy of a statement.” This is revised in Binnick (1979: 5-6) to state that the suffix is used, “if the event is something the speaker is vouching for, or is information which is well-known and stated not to convey new information but for another purpose.” Recently, it is called “evidential past” (Binnick 1990: 53) and “indirect past” and defined as showing that the speaker has witnessed the situation himself (Svantesson 1991: 193).

Schlepp (1983: 37) refers to the -lee past as the “past assertive,” since it “asserts matters of speaker’s experience or expresses contention, admiration or matter of fact: also signals coming into being of (a) new state or situation,” as in the examples (71–73): 71. (matter of fact) erte nigen čaγ-tur early one time-dat ‘once upon a time there was a master’ 72. ene edür neliyed qola this day rather far ‘we’ve gone rather far today’ 73. (change of state)

nigen a

bagsi master

bü.lüge be-past

yabu.luγ-a go-past

ire.lüge! come-past ‘(he, she, it, etc.) is coming!’

As already noted here, the treatments of -lee and -jee in the textbook by Tserenchunt and Luethy and in the grammar of Kullmann and Tserenpil are especially suggestive in this regard. The former book (2005: 108) calls the -lee ending “the Known Past Tense” and notes that it is “mostly used to express something that happened in the recent past that the speaker observed,” as in (74).68 And as in this example, recency is often reinforced through use of the adverb saya, or of sayaxan ‘recently’. 74. Bat döngöj saya Bata barely just now ‘Bat[a] came just now.’

ir.lee. come-past

68 Kullmann and Tsedenpil (1996: 187f.) say similarly that “[t]his suffix expresses an action that one witnessed and that happened in the recent past.”

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Consequently, the -lee form may tentatively (and approximately) be identified with the evidential past tense of Turkish. If the -lee form is some kind of evidential marker, one would expect to find, as indeed one does, some peculiar restrictions on its use. For example, Beffa and Hayamon (1975: 82) point out that -lee is used only in the affirmative. Although in the more literary language this form may be negated with one of the negators ül (vertical-script ülü) or es (ese), in the colloquial language negation is expressed by the combination of a participle with -güi. Here, however, Tserenchunt and Luethy, and Kullmann and Tserenpil do not agree, the former citing the form -sengüi (75a), but the latter citing -eegüi (75b).69 75. a. Avtobus ir.sen.güi. bus come-pfvn-neg ‘The bus didn’t come.’ (Tserenchunt and Luethy 2005: 108) b. Ter gar.aa.güi bai.na. that go out-impfvn-neg be-pres ‘He hasn’t gone out.’ (Kullmann and Tserenpil 1996: 145)

The ending -lee is likewise uncommon in questions. The only interrogative examples cited by Street (1963: 122) are like those in (76), and involve the word bilee ‘was, is’:70 76. a. Yuu bilee? what was ‘What was it? (the person wracks his brain trying to remember something)’71 b. Jamts? Xen bilee, bi marta.j bai.na. Jamts? who was I forget-impfc be-pres ‘Jamts? Who is it: I forget.’

69 Although Kullmann and Tserenpil don’t offer an example with -eegüi, the example (75b), taken from their discussion of -ee, is possibly an example of what they have in mind here. 70 Street, in discussing -lee, offers numerous examples containing bilee (verticalscript bülüge). This particle is commonly treated by others as a monomorphemic copula, i.e. as not consisting, synchronically, of bi- plus the ending -lee. In different contexts, it is translated ‘is’ or ‘was.’ It contrasts with bailaa ‘is, was’, the regular -lee form of bai- ‘be’. It is not clear whether bilee is a unique formation that should be distinguished from examples in -lee. 71 Street comments (p. 122), regarding bilee in examples like those in (76), “When occurring in questions (as it does only rarely), this particle implies personal involvement of the questioned in the matter being discussed.”

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Once again, regarding the interrogative, Tserenchunt and Luethy do not quite agree with Kullmann and Tserenpil. The former say (2005: 108) that “in questions about recent actions,” the -v form is used, the question particle üü/uu being retained (77), though be/ve is dropped (78). Kullmann and Tserenpil (1996: 187), however, say that “[i]nterrogation is only possible with the shortened form [-l] in colloquial language to express that one can’t remember, although one usually witnessed the action,” and offer example (79), but also note that usually interrogation is with -sen, as in (80). 77. Talx ava.v uu? bread buy-past qp ‘Did you just buy bread?’ 78. Ta xaan.aas ire.v? You (plural) where-abl come-past ‘Where did you just come from?’ 79. Či ter sonin medee.g sonso.v you that interesting news-acc hear-past ‘Have you heard the interesting news?’

uu? qp

80. Či ter sonin medeeg sonsson uu?

As one would expect of an evidential, too, it is rare with a second person subject, though very common with the first. In example (81) below, it occurs within the scope of the quotative auxiliary verb geand hence is really a kind of quoted first person: 81. mart.čix.laa ge.j üü? forget-čix-past say-impfc qp ‘You mean you don’t remember?’ (Street 1963: 121)

If -lee is an evidential, it would seem likely that there is in Khalkha Mongolian and other Mongolic languages, as in Turkish, an inferential counterpart. In light of this presumption, the next two sections take a look at the modality of the other two finite past tense endings, -v and -jee, first to inquire whether -jee does indeed constitute an inferential counterpart of -lee, and secondly to inquire into the meaning and use of the other past tense affix, -v. 3.3. The Modality of -v The form -v has been called modally “neutral,” for example by Song (1997: 193–204, 2002: 149), and “colorless” (Street 1963: 122), not with-

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out reason. But then it is paradoxical to discover that -v “can replace only the [-lee] ending,” while the “[-jee ending] cannot be replaced” by it, the reason being that “for sure” “the written [-v] ending is used when the speaker observed the action.” That is, -v would appear to be evidential, like -lee. Sodnomdorj has also commented that the difference between baiv and bailaa is “just stylistic,” adding that in a certain text “baiv could have been [the] same” as bailaa. And regarding texts such as that in (82), he said that “alternating [-v] and [-lee] forms avoids repetition” and hence is stylistically preferable. The question, then, is whether -v is evidential or modally neutral. It is a question explored below (and which turns out to be considerable more complicated, and more interesting, than Sodnomdorj’s comments alone suggest.) 82. Tereer he

ger.t.ee house-dat-rp

ire.x.d.ee come-ifvn-dat-rp övd.sön bai.laa. fall ill-pfvn be-past ix great

xüč effort

erge.j return-impfc yadar.č, be tired-impfc Namaig me-acc

or.j enter-impfc biye body

n’ his

yangina.n ache-modc

ire.xe.d ter come-ifvn-dat that

garga.sn.aas bas put out-pfvn-abl also

xet excessive

ix great

xet excessive sanaa thought

tav’.sn.aas zürx.eer n’ xatguula.n övdö.j bai.v. put-pfvn-abl heart-instr his feel pain-modc fall ill-impfc be-past (www.lds.org/library/display/0,4945,538–1–2874–12,00.html) ‘He returned to the house exhausted and in pain. When I arrived, he was experiencing heart pain from overexertion and stressful anxiety.’ (http://www.lds.org/library/display/0,4945,538–1–2874–1,00.html)

Even apart from evidentiality, however, -v has a modal dimension, as Ramstedt notes (p. 20): “Like the preterite in many other languages, this preterite is also used in Khalkha in order to indicate a hypothetical fact [supponiertes faktum],” as in (83).72

72 Ramstedt’s transcription has been slightly modified. xīwǟ = xiivee, an emphatic form of the past tense of xii- ‘do, make’.

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83. eŋgәs This way

xīwǟ do-past

u gor-ug ̜ ē, without working

t’eŋgәs xīwǟ, that way do-past

bas also

u gor-ug ̜ ē. without working ‘mache ich es so, so geht es nicht, mache ich es wieder anders, so geht das auch nicht.’ (‘if I do it this way, it doesn’t work, and if I do it that way, it also does not work.’)

Such modal, non-past-time uses of the -v past tense are in line with ones examined by James (1982) in a wide range of languages. However, Wu (1995: 102) points out a rarely-commented-upon future hypothetical use of the -v ending, saying that the suffix: can also be used to indicate that something may happen at some time in the future; e.g., hypothetical states or conjectures about the results of certain actions that are felt by the speaker to occur in the future are usually marked with [-v].

He offers the following examples (84–85): 84. ta mori.ača.ban qayaγda.ba aa! you (plural) horse-abl-rp fall-past emphp ‘Be careful, you might fall down from the horse.’ 85. kičiyel.eče.ben qočor.ba aa! class-abl-rp be late-past emphp ‘Be careful, you’ll be late for class!’

He draws (p. 110) similar Dagur examples from Engkebatu (1985: 35) and Yellow Uygur ones from Bulchuluu (1988: 37f.), and points out that Poppe (1955: 266f.) remarks on similar usages in Buriat and Kalmuck, calling them “a form of warning.” He further notes (Ujeyediin 1998) that this “use of the suffix is only associated with the second person subject and it cannot be used with the first and third persons.” However, Wu (p. 103) also offers some examples (86–87) in which -v has future value without a hypothetical reading. He attributes such future meaning to the semantics of the auxiliary verb in each case. Here, unlike the hypothetical-future examples, the non-past -ne cannot in fact be substituted for -v, he says. 86. nara unu.qu siqa.ba sun fall-ifvn be close-past ‘The sun will set very soon.’ [Roughly, ‘the sun setting is close.’—rb]

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87. tere kür.čü ire.kü oyirta-ba that arrive-impfc come-ifvn be close-past ‘He will arrive soon.’73 [‘His arrival is close.’—rb]

He comments upon different attitudes and intentions on the part of the speaker associated with the -v and -sen pasts. Thus in the -v sentences in (88), “the speaker [is] trying to be polite or wishing someone well. Although one can replace [-v] with [-sen] as in [89], the resulting sentences lack the meanings implied by the [-v] suffix as in [88].” 88. a. ta sayin saγu-ba uu? you (plural) good stay-past qp ‘Are you keeping well?’ b. ta sayin unta-ba uu? you (plural) good sleep-past qp ‘Did you sleep well?’ c. ta amur ire-be üü? you (plural) peaceful come-past qp ‘Did you have a good trip?’ 89. a. ta sayin sagu-γsan uu? b. ta sayin unta-γsan uu? c. ta amur ire-gsen üü?

He then offers examples (90–91), with -v and -sen respectively, saying (1995: 101) that a sentence like those in (90) is used when the speaker is mainly concerned with whether or not the event is accomplished and with indicating that he knows, or at least supposes, that the event should have been done.

Thus in (90a) below, the speaker is concerned with whether or not you have finished reading the book that you are supposed . . . to have finished reading . . . and, by implication, questions why you haven’t. . . . Therefore the proper translation should be something like ‘You finished reading the book, didn’t you?’. 90. a. ta nom.iyan ungsi.ba you (plural) book-rp read-past ‘Did you read your book?’

uu? qp

73 Wu offers the literal glosses ‘the sun was close to setting or the sun is setting’ and ‘he was close to arriving’.

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chapter one b. ta γaγčaγar.iyan you (plural) yourself-instr ‘Did you come by yourself ?’ c. ta ger.tegen you (plural) home-dat rp ‘Did you go back home?’

ire.be come-past

üü? qp

qari.ba return-past

uu qp

Examples like those in (91) lack such an implicit meaning and are simply normal interrogatives. There clearly is far more to the “colourless” -v than most grammars have indicated.74 91. a. ta nom.iyan ungsi.γsan uu? b. ta γaγčaγar.iyan ire.gsen üü? c. ta ger-tegen qari.γsan uu?

[‘Did you read your book(s)?’] [‘Did you come alone?’] [‘Did you return home?’]

Before looking further at -v, let us turn to -jee and the issue of whether it forms the inferential counterpart of -lee. 3.4. The Inferential If the -lee past is evidential, it would be natural to expect the -jee past to be something similar to the Turkish inferential. But the meanings attributed to it can only be called “inferential” to the extent that they represent knowledge acquired in various ways, not necessarily directly through observation, and the stress is not on the inferentiality, but rather on the acquisition. Scholars emphasize the coming into awareness. Thus Hangin says (1968: 114), “The past tense [in -jee] . . . expresses an action which took place in the past and of which the speaker has now become aware.” He comments on the example (92), “as I found out.” 92. Ter yav.čix.jee. That left-čix-past ‘He has left already.’

Similarly, Tserenchunt and Luethy (2005: 92) note that “the [-jee] ending can be used by anyone who is just now recognizing something that

74 Questions formed with -v and -sen, and the differences between them, are discussed in chapter II.

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happened in the past.” They gloss their example Bat yavčixjee ‘Oh, Bat[a] has left’, and observe that this affix is often used with -čix, when it has this meaning. Hangin states (1976: 17) that “[The -jee form] usually indicates that an action which took place in the past was not necessarily witnessed by the narrator.” That is, it is inferential. In line with the concept of “coming into awareness,” Tserenchunt and Luethy call it the “unknown past tense,” by which they mean, similarly, “a past action that the speaker did not observe.” Kullmann and Tserenpil (1996: 185) similarly say that “[it’s] always used for actions that one hasn’t observed.” If this “coming into awareness” is indeed the core “meaning” of this suffix, to express an event which the speaker has just realized, it would explain why the first and second person are uncommon—speakers are relatively unlikely to be surprised by anything concerning themselves or their interlocutors. The ending -jee is indeed rarely used in the second person, except in questions; even there, however, nearly all the examples cited in the literature involve the complement-marking verb ge- ‘say, intend, think’, as in (81, 93–94), and hence are really a kind of quoted first person: 81. mart.čix.laa ge.j üü? Forget-čix-past say-past qp ‘you mean you don’t remember?’ (Street 1963: 121) 93. Ir.ne ge.j üü? Come-pres say-past qp ‘Sagte er, daß er kommt?’ (Poppe 1951: 80) ‘Did he say that he is coming?’ 94. bi čamaig xülee.ne ge.j üü? I you-acc wait-pres say-past qp ‘Do you mean I am going to wait for you?’ (cf. Street 1963: 124, Poppe 1970: 131).

However, Kullmann and Tserenpil (1996: 185) present example (95), though they flatly state that such questions in -j, the short form of -jee, are only possible in the colloquial language and in the third person, and that “This kind of question is used when one is sure that the person being asked can know the answer.” Tserenchunt and Leuthy (2005: 92) offer a similar example, too: ter xödöö yavj uu? ‘Did he go to the countryside?’, and Wu (1995: 93) the example (96).

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95. Önöödr.iin sonin gar.č uu? today-gen newspaper go out-past qp ‘Was today’s newspaper released?’ (Kullmann and Tserenpil 1996: 186) 96. ta öčögedür ire.ǰi you (plural) yesterday come-past ‘Did you come yesterday?’75

üü? qp

The -jee past occurs more rarely in the first person than in the second (97–98): 97. yag marta.j orxi.jee just forget-impfc do completely-past ‘I just completely forgot’ (Street 1963: 123). 98. bi anduur.čee I be mistaken-past ‘I was mistaken’ (Hangin 1968: 14).

Tserenchunt and Luethy (2005: 92) say that in the first person -jee is used for unplanned actions, particularly with the verbs martax ‘forget’ (99) and untax ‘fall/be asleep’. 99. Bi nom.oo mart.čix.j(ee). I book-rp forget-čix-past ‘I forgot my book.’

Wu (1995: 93), however, offers declarative examples in the first person that do not involve these verbs (100–101): 100. bi öčögedür ire.ǰei. I yesterday come-past ‘I came yesterday.’ 101. bid nom ungsi.ǰai. we book read-past ‘We read a book.’76

75

Tserenchunt comments (p.c., October, 2008) that “this example is practically impossible.” This may reflect a dialect difference. On the other hand, while a Google search for irj üü found 169 examples, a search for öčigdör irj üü found none. 76 Tserenchunt declares this sentence, too (cf. ex. 96) “practically impossible.” Again, this may reflect a difference between dialects.

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As regards the restrictions on the second person in declarative sentences, Wu argues (pp. 93-4) that this restriction is not distinctive to -jee; in certain declarative sentences, none of the past tenses may be used (102), while in others (4) any of them may be:

{}

ba la jai you (pl) book read-past ‘you read a book’ (Wu 1995: 94)

4. ta

102. *ta77

nom

ungsi-

öčögedür

you (pl) yesterday ‘you came yesterday’

ire-

{ } be le

come-past

Accounting for some first-person examples essentially in terms of coming-into-consciousness, Galsang (1981: 13) views -jee as involving “the speaker recalling something or someone.”78 Examples include these (103–104): 103. bi saqilaγa ügei keüked I discipline without child ‘I used to be an undisciplined child.’

bayi.jai be-past

104. baγa bayi.qu.daγan bi kögčim.dü small be-ifvn-rp I music-dat ‘I really liked music when I was a child.’

yeke very

duratai like

bayi.ǰai be-past

Ujeyediin (1998) comments that in these examples, as the adult is recalling something in their childhood, “the event time expressed in the sentences is certainly quite distant from the time of speech act,” but that in Galsang’s interpretation, the emphasis is on the speaker’s recall, not on the past situation. Here -jee is preferred: “other past tense markers seem not to make any difference in terms of the remoteness or of someone’s recalling a past event.” He posits partial correctness for the hypothesis that -jee has “the meaning of suddenly acquired knowledge of a past or unexpected past

77 78

The asterisk indicates an unacceptable, ungrammatical, “sentence.” Reported by Chuluu (Ujeyediin 1998).

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event,” noting that the ending “expresses an action which took place in the past and of which the speaker has now become aware” (citing Hangin 1968: 114) or “an event which the speaker has just realized” (Binnick 1990: 52). He prefers, however, to characterize it as denoting, in Galsang’s terms (Galsang 1981: 13) “an action that took place without being known by anybody or an event that has been done mistakenly.” By Galsang’s account, Wu says, the examples in (105) involve a lack of prior knowledge on the part of the speaker (in [a], the speaker has only now discovered that he made mistakes, or how many he made; in [b] the speaker has just found out who took the book; and in [c] Dorj’s coming is news to the speaker); it is this which has led scholars to see the ending as expressive of “a sudden occurrence or unexpected action,” which he sees as “ not the only function that it has but a part of its various functions.” 105. a. čegeǰi.ber bičig biči.ged bi tabu alda.ǰai heard-instr writing write-pfc I five lost-past ‘I made five mistakes when doing a dictation.’ b. nom abu.γad yabu.γsan kümün Dorji bayi.ǰai book take-pfc go-pfvn person Dorj be-past ‘The person who took away a book was Dorj.’ c. Dorǰi ire.ǰei Dorj come-past ‘Dorj came.’

3.5. Chuluu’s Critique Wu (1995: 96) is critical of modal characterizations of the endings -lee and -jee. As regards -lee, he says that the “evidential” reading of examples such as (69) “needs the [context] which shows the condition given in the brackets, [otherwise] [-lee] can be understood in other ways.” 69. ter ir.lee that come-past ‘he’s coming’ (as when one looks out a window and sees the person entering the building”).

He cites examples such as those in (106), in which “[t]he verbs in the [-lee] form are in an indirect quotation, where they refer to the event stated not as the speaker’s first-hand knowledge but as acquired either

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through somebody else or through other means and about which he is uncertain,” and further claims that if -lee were replaced in these examples by one of the other past tense endings, “the sentences would lose the uncertainty which is implied by [-lee].” 106. a. bi tan.u I you-gen

aqa.yi older brother-acc

ger.tegen home-dat rp

ire.le come-past

geǰü sonus.čai that hear-past ‘I heard that your elder brother came back home.’79 b. tan.yi Kökeqota.du yabu.la geǰü surugči.nar you-acc Huhhot-dat go-past that student-pl kele.ǰü bayi.γsan say-impfc be-past ‘The students said that you had gone to Huhhot.’ c. tere γadaγadu.du γaru.la geǰü čalči.ǰu that abroad-dat go out-past that boast-impfc ‘He boasted that he had been abroad.’

bayi.γsan be-past

He is equally critical of the view that -jee “is used to refer to suddenly acquired knowledge of a past or unexpected event, while [-lee] is used to indicate a well-known past event. . . .” He cites in this regard A. D. Rudnev’s view that -lee or the “decisive form” is used “when speaking of already known facts or when the perfect is expressed,” while the

79 Nelson et al. (1998: 119) are quite correct when they respond that in example (106a) “the interpretation of the verb with /-laa/ is evidential in that the event in the lower clause is interpreted as having been witnessed by someone who saw the elder brother returning.” Their statement (idem) that “[t]he first person speaker is actually the syntactic subject of the matrix verb sonus, not the embedded verb, which is inflected with the . . . affix /-jee/” may require some explication. Wu seems to take the position that -lee in (106a) cannot be evidential because the speaker is in no position to have witnessed the return of the older brother. However, the speaker is simply the subject of the verb sonus- ‘hear’. The object, what is heard, is expressed by an embedded clause, tan-u . . . gejü. Semantically, gejü is equivalent of the English complementizer that. Nelson et al. take this to be the main verb of the embedded clause, which in turn governs its own complement clause, tan-u . . . ire-le ‘your elder brother came home’. Whatever the syntax, and whether we take gejü to be a verb or a complementizer, the subject of the ire-le clause is tanu-u aqa-yi ‘your elder brother’, and the utterer of that clause is, on Nelson et al.’s analysis, if I understand them correctly, understood to be the subject of ge- ‘say’. On my analysis, the verb sonus- presupposes a source for the information “that your older brother came home.” In either case, there was a presumed witness, from whose point of view the evidential -lee is justified. Therefore, the fact that the subject of the verb sonus- (and utterer of the sentence) could not have witnessed the return of the brother is evidence that -lee here is not evidential.

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-jee or “accidental” form is used for “a sudden occurrence without expectation.” Further, he is critical (1995: 90) of the characterization of -jee in Svantesson (1991) as inferential or quotational: . . . based on the speech of a Khalkha Mongol informant, Svantesson (1991: 193) concludes that the speaker prefers to use the [-jee] suffix when he speaks of a past situation which he has not personally experienced but has witnessed its consequences and infers what has occurred, or has heard about it from someone else. Ultimately, Svantesson’s explanation has something to do with the result of a past action. Once again, emphasizing the present result or referring to the indirect past is, we suspect, a dialectal variant or even personal preference. The Street (1963) and Svantesson (1991) studies are based on Khalkha Mongol data.80 Furthermore, although he distinguishes the past tense morphemes, as indirect past ([-jee]), direct ([-lee]), and the plain ([-sen]) Svantesson (1991: 193) notices that the use of indirect and direct past forms are not obligatory, and the plain form is a possible alternative in most contexts, depending on whether or not the speaker wants to stress how he obtained his knowledge of the situation. Quite to the contrary, after analyzing the classical Mongolian data, Poppe (1954: 93) remarks this suffix is used when the speaker indeed claims to have witnessed the action and the use in this sense is still found in some dialects of modern Mongolian. For instance, Wu (1996: 19) analyzed two sentences in which the speaker has direct knowledge of past situation. See the following examples ([107]). 107. a. tere urǰinun yeke surγaγuli.du oro.ǰai that year before last big school-dat enter-past ‘He entered university year before last.’ b. batu.yin aqa.ni öčögedür ire.ǰei Batu-gen elder brother-possessive81 yesterday come-past ‘Batu’s elder brother arrived yesterday.’

He claims that “[i]n the above examples, the [-jee] suffix is not used to indicate a past situation inferred from the present result of a past action, but it is the direct knowledge of the speaker derived from his past experience and thus the suffix expresses the meaning of the direct past.”

80

Chuluu is a native speaker of an Inner Mongolian dialect. Although formally a possessive, this marker functions here as an indicator of definiteness. 81

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In some cases, he finds a difference in discourse function between the various endings, and specifically one having to do with focus, that is, what part of the sentence conveys the most important information. Contrasting the examples in (108) and (109), he says that in (108), the speaker is calling attention to the existence of a horse or of an animal that might be a horse. But in (b) and (c), “the speaker confirms a known fact to the listener, namely that there was a horse there.” Similarly, (109a) “indicates only the fact of the brother’s having gone” and if adverbial qualifiers such as the destination are added, these are not the focus of attention. But in (109b) and (c), he says, it is this additional information which is most important. Accordingly, “the examples in ([109]) . . . may differ as to how appropriate they are in discourse which focuses on elements other than the action itself.”

{

}

{

}

a. bayi-γsan b. bayi-ǰai 108. tende nige mori c. bayi-ba there one horse be-past ‘There was a horse.’ a. yabu-γsan b. yabu-ǰai 109. aqa-čini c. yabu-ba older brother-your leave-past ‘Your older brother left.’

He also observes (Ujeyediin 1998) a preference for -v in narrative, previously observed by Street (1963: 122) and Chenggeltei (1981: 294). He connects this use in narration with the first person subject: “when someone makes a statement about what he has done in the past, he tends to choose the [-v] suffix instead of the others.” He expresses doubt that this use is a “distinctive characteristic of the suffix,” noting that “according to [his] own speech, preference is in fact for the [-v] suffix when narrating something [he has] done in the past.” He offers the examples in (110): 110. a. bi doloγan čag.tu nom.un I seven o’clock-dat book-gen ‘I went to the library at 7 o’clock.’ b. bi tabun nom ǰigele.be I five book borrow-past ‘I borrowed five books.’

sang.du treasury-dat

oči.ba go-past

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Correspondingly, he finds that with other subjects (as in 111), preference is for one of the other past tense endings. But he sees the choice as “just a matter of preference, not an explicit distinction of the suffixes.”82 111. a. ta doloγan čag.tu nom.un sang.du odi.ǰai you (plural) seven hour-dat library-dat83 go to-past ‘You went to the library at 7 o’clock.’ b. Dorǰi tabun nom ǰigele.gsen Dorj five book borrow-past ‘Dorj borrowed five books.’

He argues (1995: 107) that “the attempt to make a separate definition for each form of the past tense suffixes is inadequate, since it leaves questions about other possible uses of the suffix unanswered,” and is insistent on the role of context: “the meaning of the suffix is not the only consideration; instead context becomes a major factor in describing function,” concluding (Ujeyediin 1998), “instead of having one core meaning [each], they may have meanings that vary in different contexts.” Thus his work, however interesting, leaves unanswered the question of whether the sundry endings do have unique meanings, and if so, what those meanings might be. As he himself recognizes, while his work introduces several new perspectives, it leaves significant questions unanswered. In particular, when the speaker or writer is confronted at a given point in a discourse or text by the need to make a choice of one of the four past tense endings, how does the speaker or writer do so? On precisely what factors is the choice based, and how does the value for each parameter enter into the calculus of choice? Or again, what different inferences does the listener or reader draw from the past tense endings at particular points in discourse or text, and on what basis does the listener or reader do so? The present work argues, with Nelson et al. (1998: 117), that Chuluu is wrong, that the occurrence of the various past tense verb forms 82

We share Nelson et al.’s conclusion (1998: 117) that, pace Wu (1995), “the distribution of the four past tense affixes in Khalkh Mongol is determined by systematic differences in style, semantics, and pragmatics, and that the interpretation of verbs with these elements is to a certain extent predictable out of context.” 83 Literally ‘book-gen treasury-dat.’

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in different contexts is not in principle optional, but depends by and large on the inherent meaning of each particular ending. The discourse functions of the forms are further argued to follow from their modal uses. To be sure, he is correct in writing (Ujeyediin 1998) that “[i]n practice, the distinction between these past tense morphemes is vague and difficult to apply with any degree of precision,” but it is questionable that it does “not lead to clearly distinct categories.” Nor is it necessary to accept his counsel of despair to the effect that “[t]he real problem with the use of the morphemes . . . is not just that there is great variation in meaning in contexts, but that they have no clear basic or core feature.” At the same time, it is clear that while terms like “evidential” and “inferential” serve as convenient labels for categories into which to put the endings, such broad characterizations are far from adequate in an account of their meanings and uses, as is argued in the next chapter.

CHAPTER TWO

USE AND INTERPRETATION OF THE PAST TENSES IN THE SPOKEN LANGUAGE 1. Evidential and Inferential 1.1. The Opposition of Evidentiality and Inferentiality At this point, it seems fairly well established that Mongolian makes a distinction of evidential and inferential.1 However, even if the Mongolic languages do exhibit a distinction of evidential and inferential, there is much more that needs to be investigated regarding the meaning and use of the Mongolian past tense endings, and especially of -lee and -jee. For while Turkish has just two past-tense forms, Mongolian has at least three. Even if it is indeed the case that -v is modally neutral (at least as regards evidentiality and inferentiality), and that -sen is, too (if this is regarded as a past tense ending), it is less easy to say under what conditions evidentiality and inferentiality are optionally or obligatorily marked, that is, when the speaker or writer must (or can) use -v (or -sen), as opposed to either -lee or -jee. The usage of -sen raises several questions. While -sen regularly replaces both -v and the other endings within the scope of negation, or in questions, it does not invariably do so. Conditions on its use in both positive and negative statements, and on the contexts in which it is either optional or obligatory with the meaning of -v (or any other past ending), remain to be specified. Yet a further question concerns the difference in meaning or use between predicative -sen (112) and -sen with a copula (113).2 In Mongolic languages, these are not synonymous, despite the claims to the contrary in many books. But it remains to specify the differences in use and meaning between the two

1 Tserenchunt, a native speaker, writes, “I completely agree with your conclusion about the inferential and evidential past tenses in Mongolian as in Turkic languages” (personal communication, June 1, 2007). 2 Apparently, -sen baina is nearly synonymous with -jee. Cf. note 14 on p. 68.

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constructions: for example, what difference, if any, would it make if (112) ended with unšsan baina, or (113) with just xojson? 112. Bid nom unš.san. We book read-past ‘We read a book.’ (Tserenchunt and Luethy 2000: 62)3 113. Ter mašin xoj.son bai.na. That auto win-pfvn be-pres ‘He has won a car.’4 (Tserenchunt and Luethy 2005: 92)

Complicating such questions is the fact that, as regards the meaning and use of the past tense endings, there are significant differences between spoken and written Mongolian. Significant differences between the grammatical systems of spoken and written languages are certainly not unknown, and one can cite in this regard numerous aspects of both English and French grammar, particularly where the verb is concerned, as in the notorious case of the French perfective past tense, which uses the simplex passé simple in writing (e.g., elle chanta ‘she sang’) but the complex passé composé in speech (elle a chanté), which also serves as the present perfect (‘she has sung’). Not only may Mongolian similarly utilize different forms for the same meaning in written and spoken language, but the same form may have different uses in the two types of language, as we shall see. Thus while it is a starting point to recognize that the Mongolian past tenses principally differ not in tense or aspect, but rather in modality (and specifically, in evidentiality), it is only a starting point. The remainder of the present work is devoted to attempting to provide an adequate account of the meaning and use of the past tense endings in both colloquial speech and written language. 1.2. Inferential -jee The -jee ending has been characterized as a perfect as well as a past tense, for example by Street (1963: 122–4), who says that it “either has 3

Cf. example (4):

{ }

ba la ‘you read a book’ (Wu 1995: 94) jai 4 Tserenchunt and Leuthy comment (p. 92) that -sen and baina “together . . . create the sense of just now finding out about a past action.” 4. ta nom

ungsi-

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the meaning of a recent past, or emphasizes the present result of a past action or of a state that existed in the past. . . .” Poppe (1951: 80) similarly characterizes it as a recent (nahe) past. But for most grammarians, in contrast, where the -lee ending has been identified with the present perfect tense or as a recent past tense, the -jee ending has been connected with an action or state which is completed in a past time removed from the present, possibly quite distantly so. It has also been connected with extension, sometimes with extension over time in the past, hence the label Präteritum imperfecti (Ramsted 1902: 24, Poppe 1951: 80), that is, past of the imperfect (Poppe 1970: 131), sometimes with extension to the present.5 Hence the Mongolian term öngörön ürgeljilsen tsag6 ‘past extended time’ (Beffa and Hayamon 1975: 82) and Kas’yanenko’s (1968: 20) Russian equivalent prošedšee dlitel’noe vremya. This ending has also been defined in both discourse-functional and modal terms. Hangin notes its narrative use (1968: 114, 1976: 17) and calls it the narrative past (1968: 114); cf. Beffa and Hayamon (1975: 83). At the same time, Grønbech and Krueger (1955: 36) say it is “objective about the state of affairs.” Bosson (1964: 73) and Vietze (1974: 45) refer to unexpected or sudden, and unobserved, occurences.7 Hangin (1968: 114) notes that it expresses a past action “of which the speaker has now become aware;” in his 1976 book (p. 17) he says it indicates 5 As was noted in connection with examples (12, 13), Beffa and Hayamon (1975: 82) say that “[c]e suffixe indique qu’il s’agit d’une action commencé dans le passé, et qui se prolonge ou se répète dans le present”—‘this suffix indicates that it concerns an action begun in the past and which is prolonged in or is repeated in the present.’ 12. Mongol.iin büx nutg.iin dundaj öndör Mongolia-gen whole country-gen middle height

1550 metr a.j. 1550 metres be-past ‘l’altitude moyenne de toute la Mongolie est de 1550 mètres’ (‘the mean altitude of all of Mongolia is 1550 metres’) 13. xoër two

6 7

baildagč combatants

naadam.d Naadam-dat

barilda.x wrestle-ifvn

ge.j zodog šuudag.tai ir.jee. say-impfc wrestler’s-jacket wrestler’s-pants-com come-past ‘les deux combattants sont arrivés avec leur costume de lutter aux jeux (au Naadam)’ (‘the two combatants have come with their fighting suits to the games [to the Naadam]’) Vietze’s (1974: 45) urgelmilsen is apparently a typo for ürgeljilsen. Vietze: “Ereignesse, die sich plötzlich und unbeabsichtigt ereignet haben.”

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a past action which “was not necessarily witnessed by the narrator.” Vietze (1974: 45) writes that one of the uses of the form is for “generally known facts.”8 Descriptions of the form are obviously much more diverse than in the case of -lee, considering -jee as they do from a number of different points of view. Certainly, as regards modality, its meaning would seem to be the unmarked member of the opposed categories indicated by -lee and -jee; that is, it might best be considered, in contrast to -lee, as the non-evidential. But in an evidential/inferential system of the Turkish type, the non-evidential is simply the inferential. Native speaker intuitions support these rough definitions of the two endings.9 Thus -lee is described in terms of evidentiality: a) Regarding witnessing: “Witnesses can’t use [-jee]; they must use [-lee]. Non-witnesses could use either.” b) Орчихлоо ‘left’. “In the near past; the speaker is a witness or has to definitely know.” c) Ter javčixjee. “He has already left.” (Hangin 1968: 114) This would be used “if [the speaker] wasn’t here and didn’t know [the subject had left]” and that yavčixsan would be used by the speaker instead, if “he left when I was here and I saw it.” On ter javčixlaa: in uttering it, the speaker is indicating “I saw it, he just left, he was with me.” The ending -jee is just as clearly described as non-evidential. In particular, in many cases, stress is on the recency of discovery. In regard to examples (114, 115), Tserenchunt has commented (personal communication, May 31, 2007),

8

“allgemein bekannte Tatsache”. Except where otherwise noted, native speaker judgements (usually presented in italics and in quotes) are those of Sodnomdorj Gongor, who is a native speaker of Khalkha. Whether, and to what extent his judgments would be shared by other speakers of Khalkha, of speakers of other dialects of Mongolian, and to what extent the facts cited here hold likewise for Kalmuck and for such more distant relatives of Mongolian as Dagur, Monguor, etc., are interesting, but at the present time open, questions. 9

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I’d like to try to explain the difference between ‘uexchixjee’ and ‘uexchixsen’.10 In the first case [example (114)] the pirate just realized that Billy Bones [had died]. The pirate did not observe the action, but he is realizing now that past action. So the pirate uses ‘uexchixjee’. Another example: last night when you were sleeping it snowed and you just woke up and see the snow and you say: Uengursun shuenue tsas orjee (orchixjee). When you say ‘orchixjee’ your emotion of surprise is expressed. In the next case [example (115)] Jim says: Flint ‘uexchixsen’ because Jim already knows that Flint is dead. That is not any more new information for Jim. 114. Bill üx.čix.jee. Bill die-čix-past ‘Bill’s dead.’ (Stivenson 1975: 45). 115. Flint üx.čix.sen. Flint die-čix-past ‘Flint is dead.’ (Stivenson 1975: 85).

Sodnomdorj similarly has remarked that the use of -jee in example (114) is not due to the death being recent, but rather that it “has just now been discovered.” Because of the inferential nature of -jee, it cannot readily be used with the first or second person. However, an amnesiac who cannot remember the circumstances of his or her birth can use the -jee form when learning about themselves from their birth certificate, as in example (116). However, this form could not normally be used, for example, in the kind of statement given in (117). Even though the fact that the addressee, A, was born in Mongolia (and therefore could be expected to know something about the country) is a new fact in this context, it is a fact already known to the speaker, B, and accordingly the -jee form cannot be used. 116. Bi Nyu-York xoto.d tör.jee. I New York city-dat be born-past ‘I was born in New York City.’

10

The transliteration here utilizes the kind of orthography widely used when writing Mongolian in the Latin alphabet. Uexchixjee = üxčixjee and uexchixsen = üxčixsen. Uengursun shuenue tsas orjee represents öngörsön šönö tsas orjee ‘last [passed] night snow fell’.

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117. A: —[I don’t know anything about Mongolia.] B: —Gevč ta tend tör.sön But you (plural) there be born-past ‘But you were born there!’

šüü modp

dee! modp

In support of a modal analysis of the Mongolian past tense endings, Song (2002: 158f.) cites restrictions on the co-occurrence of verb endings and the various persons of the subject,11 noting that cross-linguistically, languages do not exhibit incompatibilities between tense/aspect and person (“e.g., where the past tense or the imperfective aspect is unable to occur with the first or second person”) but that such incompatibility is often found in the case of modality, especially evidentiality: It was seen in section (2) that Mongolian has three past suffixes differing in their evidential meaning. . . . Among the three past suffixes, the Indirect Knowledge Past -jee is hardly used with a first person subject (Jae-mog Song 1997: 193–204). Examples (34a and 35a) with a third person subject allow all the three past suffixes. By contrast, examples (34b and 35b) with a first person subject allow the Direct Knowledge Past -laa and the Neutral Past -v, but not the Indirect Knowledge Past. . . . It is self-evident why the Indirect Knowledge Past suffix -jee is not used to refer to these situations. The event of [the speaker’s coming to Prague] in (34b) and that of [the speaker’s making a phone call to Dorj] in (35b) cannot be outside the speaker’s direct knowledge, unless he was unconscious at the event time. Interestingly, Mongolian also has exceptions to this subject restriction. Verbs like unt- ‘sleep’, sogt- ‘get drunk’, mart- ‘to forget’, and uxaan ald- ‘to lose consciousness’ allow the Past suffix -jee with the first person subject, as exemplified in (36–38). They refer to situations about which the speaker may not be in the position of having direct knowledge. Though the speaker went through the situations himself/herself in examples (36–38), he/she was not aware of the situations at the event time. The speaker finds himself/herself having been in those situations later on. The speaker was not a conscious participant in the situations, therefore the first person subject is allowed with the Indirect Knowledge Past -jee in (36–38). Examples (34b and 35b) with the suffix -jee, which are labeled as unacceptable, may become acceptable when the speaker is an amnesic patient who has heard about his past event/situation from someone else.

11 The analyses accompanying Song’s examples are as in the original publication, except the ones in square brackets, which are mine.

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(34) a. Bat öčigdör Prague.d ir.lee/ev/jee. Bata yesterday Prague-[dat]12 come-past ‘Bata came to Prague yesterday.’ b. Bi öčigdör Prague.d ir.lee/ev/*jee.13 I yesterday Prague-[dat] come-[past] ‘I came to Prague yesterday.’ (35) a. Bat öčigdör Dorj.d uts.aar xel.lee/ev/jee. Bat yesterday Dorj[-dat] phone-[instr] speak-[past] ‘Bat made a phone call to Dorj yesterday.’ b. Bi öčigdör Dorj.d uts.aar xel.lee/ev/*jee. I yesterday Dorj-[dat] phone-[instr] speak-[past] ‘I made a phone call to Dorj yesterday.’ (36) Bi öngörsön šönö I pass-[pfvn] night ‘I slept deeply last night.’

nam deeply

unt.jee. sleep-past

(37) Bi öčigdör niilleg deer uxaan ald.jee. I yesterday party in mind lose-past ‘I lost consciousness at the party yesterday.’ (38) Bi öčigdör surguul’ deer malgaig.aa I yesterday school at hat-[rp] ‘I forgot my hat yesterday at school.’

mart.jee. forget-past

While restrictions on the use of the various past tense endings with the different persons do support the evidential analysis, what Song says cannot be quite correct. For one thing, the -jee ending does occur with the first person with verbs other than those cited, one example being (118). And there are restrictions on its use with the second person, as we shall see. 118. Tuxai.n üje.d bi guravdugaar angi.d Occasion-gen time-dat I third class-dat ‘At that time, I was in the third grade.’ (http://mongol.cri.cn/21/2007/04/20/[email protected])

bai.jee. be-past

Because of the inferential nature of -jee, it cannot readily be used with the first or the second person: “[You] can’t use -jee with the first or second person, nor in questions [with first or second person subjects].” This

12

Song calls this the “locative.” An asterisk before a form indicates that it is unacceptable (“ungrammatical”) in the given sentence, assuming the given meaning. 13

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claim is something of an over-generalization, and it is only under certain conditions that it fails. For example, in the sort of context found in the case of example (116), in the case of the amnesiac learning details about him- or herself from a document such as a birth certificate, -jee is certainly possible with the first person. But when someone who has forgotten details of their own experience recalls them, in which case it might be argued that the information is a new discovery on their part, the speaker nonetheless cannot use -jee (119) to talk about their newly recalled personal experience. 116. Bi Nyu-York xoto.d tör.jee. I New York city-dat be born-past ‘I was born in New York City.’ 119. A:—How long did you live in Mongolia? B:—I don’t recall. [Thinks.] Oh, I remember now. I lived [*am’darjee] there for three years.

But this is clearly a matter of nuance and depends on the specifics of each situation, for while Sodnomdorj rejected -jee in (119), he accepted it in (120), commenting that the speaker “forgot and now [realizes or notices]” the fact.14 120. Bi baga.d.aa ene nom.iig I small-dat-rp this book-acc ‘I read this book when I was small!’

unš.jee. read-past

One type of situation, however, in which a speaker may use -jee to relate their own experience is when they are in effect commenting on it, as if offering a third-person opinion. Some examples include these (121–124): 121. Busad üje.d bi parazit bai.jee. for another thing time-dat I parasite be-past (http://otgonpurew.blogspot.com/2006/08/21.html) ‘For another thing, at the time I was a parasite.’

14 Of unšsan baina, Sodnomdorj commented that it has “almost the same meaning” as unšjee.

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122. Bi tedn.ii l negen adil bodo.j yav.jee. I they-gen modp one like think-impfc continue15-past (http://www.unen.mn/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=336 2&catid=53; at the present time no longer available on-line) ‘I thought as if I was one of them.’ 123. Bi tege.xe.d I do thus-ifvn-dat

ööriigöö er myself male

xün.d person-dat

tootso.j yav.jee. consider-impfc continue-past “That time I considered myself a strong man.”—“Talking about oneself to another.” 124. Vasya bi čamaig buruu bod.jee. Vasya I you-acc wrong think-past (http://www.ulaanbaatar.mn/index.php?option=com_content&task=vie w&id=134&Itemid=218) ‘Vasya, I had the wrong idea about you.’ (‘I got you wrong.’)

Interestingly enough, any of the following forms (in 125) seem to be acceptable here (in 124), except *bodson. 125. Vasya bi čamaig buruu {bodoj baisan baina/bodoj baisan/bodoj baina/ *bodson}. ‘had been thinking/was thinking/am thinking/*thought’

Like Song, Tserenchunt has noted in regard to certain verbs, “One interesting example of the usage of this tense is the verbs martax [‘forget’] and untax [‘fall asleep’]: the speaker uses [these] verbs with [the] jee/chee ending even about him or her self ” (personal communication, June 1, 2007). As has been noted above, Tserenchunt and Luethy (2005: 92) connect use of these verbs in the first person and -jee with the reporting (as in 100) of unplanned actions. 100. Bi nom.oo mart.čix.jee/mart.čixa.j I book-rp forget-čix-past ‘I forgot my book.’

15

Literally, ‘go’.

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The following example of this usage occurs early in the play Xuvia Bodogčid by L. Vangan (Vangan 1967: 8) (126): 126. Boldoo—

Xüüxd.üüd.ee bi yum mart.čixa.j. Child-pl-rp I thing forget-čix-past ‘Children, I forgot something.’ (“I just realized I forgot something.”)

In the second person, -jee may be used in reminders (127). 127. Tiimee 11-r Yes 11th

sar.iin month-gen

17-nd 17th

gej that

ta zöv you (plural) correct

bod.jee. think-past (www.inforadio.mn/html/pages/hotlogchid/ichinhorloo.htm)16 “Right, you have calculated correctly that it is the 17th of November.”

Two conclusions follow from these facts. First, -jee is indeed some kind of marker of inferentiality. But second, the uses of the inferential past tense marker -jee are numerous and complex, and require to be delineated with further precision. 1.3. Evidential -lee As a first approximation to a definitive characterization, -lee is simply labeled the evidential past tense, in contrast to -jee, which serves as the inferential past tense.17 In contrast to -jee, the main issue in regard to -lee arises not from what the speaker can be expected to know, but rather the addressee. Third-person subjects, as we have seen, are quite acceptable and normal, as in (70): “waiting for someone, you see him coming.”18

16

No longer available. Nelson et al. (1998: 126) note that -lee “is the only past tense morpheme in Mongol which consistently encodes evidentiality.” We argue here, however, that spoken -v is essentially the form -lee takes in ordinary interrogative sentences and hence is evidential, as opposed to written -v. 18 Tserenchunt (p.c., October, 2008) comments that “ ‘Ta irlee’ is acceptable” and offers the example (i). I suspect that this and similar examples do not constitute a counter-example to the claim, since they are probably examples like (120) and following, in which the first person is permissible with -jee because there is content which is new; with the second person, there is content which is new to the addressee. 17

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71

70. ter ir.lee that come-past ‘he’s coming’

In contrast, the second person strikes the native speaker as unacceptable; (128) evoked the comment from Sodnomdorj that he couldn’t “see any situation where you’d say this” and that “for sure” you can’t use it in this way. (This is not completely true, however.) 128. Ta You (plural) ‘You came.’

ir.lee. come-past

The first person is better: (129) is “better than [(128)],” as, presumably, is (130). 129. Bi ir.lee. I come-past ‘I came.’ “Better than [ta irlee]; ‘I’m already here.’ (You see me, it’s true.)” 130. Bid ir.lee. we come-past ‘We came.’ “You can see the group of us; we all came here.”

The -lee ending can certainly be used for the first person more readily than can -jee. A Google search on the World Wide Web, for example, found 258 examples containing the phrase bi irlee ‘I came’, but just one with bi irjee. Because of its evidential nature, -lee cannot readily be used with the second person, however. A search for the phrase či irjee ‘you came’ did not find any pages, and či irlee found just ten. The reason, presumably, is that the addressee is in the same speech situation as the speaker, and can be assumed to know (in regard to that situation) what the speaker knows. That does not mean, of course, that the addressee knows (or experiences) everything that the speaker

i. Nadad To me

tusla.h [tusla.x] help-ifvn

hun [xün] someone

heregtei [xereg.tei] necessary

Ashguei [ašgüi] dee. Ta ir.lee. Wonderful modp You come-past ‘I needed someone to help me. Wonderful! You came.’

bai.san be-pfvn

yum. copp

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does, but with a second-person subject, a sentence in -lee is telling the addressee something about themself or -selves. Since the whole point of such a sentence is to bring the matter to the attention of the addressee, it obviously cannot freely be used in such a case, apart from certain unusual exceptions. These exceptions, however, only serve to underline the evidentiality of the form. For example, the form may be used in a reminder, stating something that (presumably) the addressee has forgotten, or is ignoring, as in (131). In this particular instance, the “reminder” is either preclusory or simply “for the record,” since it occurs in the first set of utterances—in fact, it is the second sentence—of the interview. The interviewer starts by saying “Well, Divaasambuu guai, we are now in your home, near the Gandan monastery, we came with an intention to interview you. You agreed.” 131. Ta zövšöör.löö. You (plural) agree-past ‘You agreed.’ (TR/EN060402—Gandan Interview, Person 1. Mongolian Oral History, at http:// www.mongolianoralhistory.org/samples/transcriptions/ TR060402.xml; the translation is at http://www.mongolianoralhistory .org/samples/translations/EN060402.xml)

Similar to the use of -jee to make comments about oneself, -lee may be used to make observations (132), complaints (133), and other expressions of the speaker’s feelings, or the like, regarding the addressee. These are things that the addressee presumably does not know, and/ or may need to have brought to their attention, and they function in discourse in some respects very much like reminders. 132. Dortmund.iin xünd xetsüü üye.d ir.lee. . . . Dortmund-gen difficult difficult time-dat come-past (http://sport-tsonh.net/forum) “Observation: you came when we needed you.” [I.e., at a difficult time for Dortmund.—RB] 133. Neg muu jijig baiguullaga gej ta xel.lee. (sonin.mn) One bad small organization that you (plural) say-past “You said that it is one19 small bad organization.”

19

Or ‘a’?

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Where the focus is not on the occurrence of the event as such but is on some modifier expressing some aspect of the event that the addressee is unaware of, even expressions which in another context would be odd or unacceptable, such as ta irlee ‘you (plural ) came’, are perfectly fine. For example, consider (134), which is “O.K. because they don’t know how long I’ve been waiting.” 134. Azaar Fortunately

xüleeg.ee.güi wait-impfvn-neg

bai.xa.d be-ifvn-dat

ta you (plural)

ir.lee. come-past ‘Fortunately, you came while I was not waiting a long time.’

The addressee(s) know(s) very well that he himself/she herself/they themselves came, and most likely know they came while the speaker was waiting. But the speaker is either informing them for the first time that it was fortunate that they came when he or she had not been waiting for a long time, or else the speaker is commenting on this, or reminding the addressee of it. Another function of the -lee ending with the first person is to situate the speaker in the event being reported. For example, in the case of (135), “Gavrilash asked the writer; if he asked someone else gev [would be] O.K.; *gejee [is unacceptable] (manai naiz requires -lee).” 135. Neg ödör manai naiz Gavrilaš One day our friend Gavrilash (Sadovyanu 1967: 13) ‘One day our friend Gavrilash said. . . .’

... ...

ge.lee. say-past

Nor can the -lee ending be used in second-person questions: there it is replaced by -v (“the question form of [-lee] is [the -v] ending,” says Tserenchunt),20 as in (136); but in the reply the addressee-turnedspeaker uses the evidential -lee (137):

20 Tserenchunt, p.c., June 1, 2007. Many textbooks and grammars have examples of -v questions in the second person with -lee replies in the first person, but few comment explicitly on the issue. Kullmann and Tserenpil (1996: 187) offer -sen as an optional alternative to -l, the short form of -lee, as in (i): i. Ta šuudan {javal/javsan} uu? You (plural ) post office go-past qp ‘Have you been to the post office?’

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136. Ta

{xezee, xaan.aas}

You (plural) {when, where-abl} ‘When/from where did you come?’

{

*ir.lüü ?21 ire.v come-past

}

137. Bi delgüür.ees ir.lee. I store-abl come-past ‘I came from the store.’

An interesting question involves the use of the various endings in firstperson questions. A Google search for questions such as Bi xen bailaa? ‘Who was I?’, Bi xaanaas irlee? ‘Where did I come from?’ failed to find any examples. Sodnomdorj judged Bi xen bailaa impossible, and commented that Bi xaanaas irlee could only be used under special circumstances in which the speaker had been unaware while traveling, as when they had been asleep and therefore were ignorant of the route taken. 1.4. -sen in speech The ending -v occurs in written language in contexts in which it is not found in speech, and while -sen also occurs in writing, and competes with -v in all contexts—in positive (138) and negative (139) statements, and both positive (140–141) and negative (142) questions— these record, or imitate, speech.22 138. Aav yav.san. Father go-past ‘Father went.’ (Kullmann and Tserenpil 1996: 78) 139. Yuu ge.j nerle.x.ee med.sen.güi. what say-impfc name-ifvn-rp know-past-neg (http://hawk87.blogspot.com/2007/11/blog-post_17.html) ‘I didn’t know how to name [it/them/etc.].’23

21 Sodnomdorj offers as the proper form in this question irlee. He comments that irlüü (the short form of irlee combined with the question particle) is used in “verification” questions such as Ta Ulaan Baataraas irlüü? ‘You came from Ulaan Baatar?’ In “real” questions with question words, either irlee or irev may be used, though there is a preference for irlee when the occurrence was long ago and irev when it is recent. 22 The occurrence of the -sen baina complex, however, is a different matter. 23 Thanks to Tserenchunt for providing the correct translation.

past tenses in the spoken language 140. Ta You (plural)

manai our

sait.iig site-acc

anx beginning

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xaan.aas where-abl

med.sen be? know-pfvn qp (http://www.biirbeh.com/modules.php?name=Surveys&pollID=5) ‘Where did you learn of our site originally?’ 141. Med.sen üü? know-past qp (http://medsenuu.blogspot.com/) ‘Do you know?’ (i.e., ‘have you learned?’) 142. Minii oxin angiinxan.taig.aa yav.san.güi yuu? My girl classmate-com-rp go-past-neg qp (http://www.biirbeh.com/ modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=1 481; at the present time no longer available) ‘My daughter, didn’t you go with your classmates?’24

To the native speaker, -sen seems a spoken form and -v a written one, as many comments reveal (viz., those below on 143–144). The minutes of the January 7th, 2003 meeting of the Mongolian Parliament’s Standing Committee on Nature, Environment, Food, and Agriculture25 consists of a series of statements in -v, a segment of which is reproduced in (145). These minutes evoked the comment that here -sen would “not [be] good, because [it is] a spoken form.” Such comments are not incompatible with Kullmann and Tserenpil’s (1996: 184f.) observation that the -sen “suffix . . . is clearly the most commonly used past tense suffix in colloquial language.” 143. Mandaliin Biibiš nada.d yar’.san. ‘Mandaliin Biibish me-dat converse-past (Luvsantseren 1972: 14) ‘Mandaliin Biibish spoke to me.’ “[-v would be] too written a form.” 144. Baljin ovog.toi Baljin surname-com

Narantsetseg n’ 1965 on.ii Narantsetseg topic marker 1965 year-gen

10 sar.iin 24-nd Ulaanbaatar xoto.d tör.sön. 10 month-gen 24-dat Ulaanbaatar city-dat be born-past (www.naraafoun-dation.org.mn/index.php?action=namtar) ‘B. Narantsetseg was born on the 24th of the 10th month in the year 1965.’ “-sen [is] spoken style,” “-sen [is] not good because [it’s] a spoken form”

24 25

Again, thanks to Tserenchunt for providing the correct translation. At the present time this is no longer available on-line.

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145. Baigal’ orčin, xödöög.iin xögjl.iin nature environment land-gen development-gen xoroo.nii committee-gen ödr.iin day-gen

2003 on.ii 2003 year-gen

(Myagmar garig) Tuesday

tör.iin state-gen

ordn.ii palace-gen

1 dügeer sar.iin 1 st month-gen

xuraldaan meeting V “B”

baingiin standing

10 tsag 10 hour

tanxim.d hall-dat

7–n.ii 7–gen

10 minuta.d 10 minute-dat

exle.v. begin-past

Xuraldaan.iig baingiin xoroo.nii darga Š. Gungaadorj meeting-acc standing committee-gen chairperson Š. Gungaadorj nee.j, irts, open-impfc attendance

xeleltse.x

Xuraldaan.d ir.vel meeting-dat come-condc

asuudl.iig agenda-acc

zoxi.x 18 be fitting-ifvn 18

taniltsuula.v. present-past gišüün.ees member-abl

17 gišüün ir.j, 94.4 xuviin irts.tei bai.v. 17 member come-impc 94.4 individual attendance-com be-past ‘The January 7th, 2003 (Tuesday) meeting of the Standing Committee on Nature, Environment, and Rural Development began at 10:10 in Hall “B” of the State House. Š. Gungaadorj, chairperson of the Standing Committee, opened the meeting and presented attendance and the agenda. 17 of the 18 members attending, attendance was 94.4%.’26

Despite the fact that -lee is evidential and therefore generally used in first-person statements, oral autobiographical accounts regularly utilize instead the -sen form, as in (146–147), selections from long autobiographical accounts. (Example (147) forms part of example (320).) 146. Bi Xyatad.iin I China-gen xotn.oo city-rp 8-n.d 8th-dat

Šandun muj.iin Shandong province-gen

1897 on.ii 1897 year-gen tör.j, be born-impfc

8 8

Čefü Chefu

sar.iin month-gen tendx.iin of there-gen

Angli English

süm.d zagalmailuul.san. church-dat baptize-past (Нэрт монголч эрдэмтэн Николас Поппегийн дурадгал

26

The whole text of (145), with analysis, is example (321) below.

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[1–4-р бүлэг],27 http://www.maranata.mn/index.php?option=com_ content&task=view &id=2533&Itemid=127) ‘I was born in Chefu city in Shantung province of China on the 8th of August of [the year] 1897 and was baptized in the English church.’ 147. Ingeed So

. . . 1943 . . . 1943

on.ii year-gen

8 8

Süxbaatar.iin Süxbaatar-gen

neremjit named

deer to

Ter that

oč.son. go-past

odoog.iin now-gen

baig.aa. be-impvn

tal n’ side its

iim such

xoyor two

yagaan pink

surguul’” school

aa . . . odoog.oor uh . . . today-instr

Texnikum College

xoër, two

23-d 23-dat

n’ the

ge.j say-impfc

Baruun tal n’ xoyor west side its two

züün east

Tüün.ii That-gen

“Ofitsyer.iin officer-gen

surguul’ school

Gandan deer, Gandan in

. . . Barilg.iin . . . Construction-gen

sar.iin month-gen

dörvön four baišin building

... ...

davxar, storey

davxar, storey tend there

bai.san. be-past

zaxiral xurandaa Erdendamba ge.j director colonel Erdendamba say-impfc

xün person

bai.san. be-past (http://www.mongolianoralhistory.org/samples/transcriptions/ TR060101B.xml) ‘On 23 August, 1942 I went to the School of Officers. That school was situated in recent-time Gandan, aa . . . there is the Construction College now. There was a two-story building on its right and there were two-story and four-story pinkish buildings on its left. Its director was [a man named] Colonel Erdenedamba.’ (http://www.mongolianoral history.org/samples/translations/EN060101B.xml)

In speech, -sen often contrasts with -jee. When they do, -jee is inferential and -sen is evidential. For example, faced with the example (148), Sodnomdorj declared that unšsan was “the best form.” Version (b) is

27

‘Memoires of the famous Mongolist scholar, Nicholas Poppe (chapters 1–4)’.

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possible, according to him, if “I forgot and now I realize/notice” the fact. He declared version (a) impossible. 148. Bi I

baga.d.aa small-dat-rp

ene this

nom.iig book-acc

{ a.b. unš.laa. unš.ǰee.} read-past. ‘I read this book when I was small.’28

In the case of Poppe’s example (15), if the speaker actually witnessed the sunrise but the occurrence is distal, the form is again garčixsan. If the speaker witnessed the event but it occurred just now—it is proximal—the form used is garlaa. 15. nar gar.č sun rise-past ‘the sun rose’ (Poppe 1970: 131)

If asked “How long did you live in Mongolia?,” to reply that he or she lived there for three years, the speaker will say (149), with -sen, as the experience is distal and, naturally, witnessed. Sodnomdorj rejected am’darjee even in the case where the speaker replies that he or she can’t recall, thinks a moment, and then exclaims, “Oh, I remember now! I lived there for three years.” But in light of other examples we have seen of bi with -jee, it is likely that that there are contexts in which am’darjee could be used to recount the speaker’s own experience, but presumably only if they were not previously aware of it. 149. Bi tend gurvan jil am’dar.san. I there three year live-past ‘I lived there for three years.’

28

Cf. examples (62a, 120): 62. a. ene nom.ibi baγa.un üye.degen ongsi.la this book-acc small-gen period-dat rp read-past ‘I read this book during my childhood.’ 120. Bi baga.d.aa ene nom.iig unš.jee. I small-dat-rp this book-acc read-past ‘I read this book when I was small!’

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If someone is asked when a meeting was held, looks on a schedule, and replies that apparently the meeting was yesterday, they will use bolčixjee or bolčixsan baina. The example (150) elicited the comment that “he had already gone, the speaker did not witness [his going],” with both yavav and yavlaa ruled out in this context. 150. Aimg.aas Aimag-abl

namaig me-acc

ire.xe.d come-ifvn-dat

Bold Bold

ax younger brother

bai.san.güi, töv rüü yav.jee. be-pfvn-neg centre towards go-past (www.biirbeh.com/modules.php?name=news&file=article&sid=182) ‘When I came from the aimag, my older brother Bold wasn’t there; he went29 to the centre.’

It would appear that in speech the ending -sen can be used as an evidential past tense. The apparent evidentiality of spoken -sen raises three questions: • is evidentiality merely an option, or is spoken -sen always evidential? • does -sen when used in writing work the same way it does in speech? • if -lee is evidential, why is -sen used as an evidential past, and does it differ from -lee? 2. Distal and Proximal 2.1. Distal and Proximal If the opposition of evidential and inferential is a primary distinction in the “tense” system of the Mongolian verb, equally important is an opposition of distal and proximal. But we shall have to be careful here about using these terms, which easily lend themselves to various interpretations and hence confusion.30

29 As in English, the verb is literally past tense (javjee = ‘went’) but is interpreted as pluperfect, and could be translated ‘had gone’. The difference is a question of perspective and discourse function. 30 Nelson et al. (1998: 122), claim, insofar as “/-laa/ signals that an event is temporally, conceptually, or physically close to the speaker,” that “the tense system of Khalkh Mongol . . . encodes a degree of metricality.” Here we interpret proximity rather differently, and would argue that if Mongol has a metric tense system, it is not limited to

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chapter two UTTERANCE TIME (“now”)

Tom eats

time Diagram 2

The primary distinction between -lee and -jee is that of evidential and inferential. But, as we have seen, many accounts of the -lee past tense centre on recency or immediacy, so that this form has often been called by some variant of Hangin’s (1968: 99, 1976: 17) immediate past or Beffa and Hayamon’s (1975: 82) parfait immédiat. Similar characterizations occur in Russian (Kas’yanenko 1968: 20: vyražaet nedavno zaveršivšeesja prošedšee vremja ‘it expresses past time completed not long ago’) and Mongolian (sayaxan öngörsön tsag ‘time just passed’ in Beffa and Hayamon 1975: 82; odoo tögssön tsag ‘time finished [just] now’ in Vietze 1974: 44). Here we term the quality of immediacy borne by -lee “proximality” and call it the proximal past tense, while the contrasting quality of -jee we term “distality” and call -jee distal. What we mean by these terms is a difference in temporal distance from the deictic centre, that is, from the time of the speech act (i.e., the time of utterance). The past tense endings, with the exception of -lee, are all distal, in that the nominal (and normal) use of each is to mark a situation as removed from (distant from) the present—as a situation which ended at some time in the past, and has not obtained or occurred in the immediate past. Thus, as illustrated in diagram 2, there is a gap between the past eventuality (e.g., that reported by Tom ate) and the present. The ending -lee, however, is proximal. As a past tense it refers to something that has just occurred, as a present to what is still occurring, and as a future to that which is just about to occur, that is, in any case to something which is not completely sundered from the present situation; there is no gap between the eventuality and the present. Thus (151a) is “better in the past,” while (151b) is “better if [the speaker] has just arrived”; (151c) is used when the speaker “just came”

-lee, and is not a metric tense system (i.e., system of “degrees of remoteness” from the time of utterance) as that term is usually used, as, for example, for the system found in the Bantu languages.

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and in a setting such as an airport to which the speaker has just arrived. Compare (151d), which does not assume such recency. 151.

{

}

a. ir.sen Bi galt terg.eer b. ir.lee . I fiery wagon-instr come-past ‘I came by train.’ c. Bi Angli.as ir.lee. I England-abl come-past ‘I came from England.’ d. Bi Angli uls.aas ir.sen. I England country-abl come-past ‘I’m from England.’ (Sanders and Bat-Ireedüi 1995: 43)

With adverbs that refer to times that are in the past and therefore wholly separated from the present, -sen is more acceptable than -lee. With öčigdör ‘yesterday’ (152a), uulzsan ‘met’ “sounds better” than uulzlaa, but the reverse is true with önöödör ‘today’ (152b). Uulzlaa invites the inference that “I just met with him, he’s [still] here.” With önöödör, nor are either -sen baina or -sen yum acceptable (152c). 152. a. Öčigdör bi tüün.tei uulz.san. Yesterday I that-com meet-past b. Önöödör bi tüün.tei uulz.laa. Today I that-com meet-past c. Öčigdör /Önöödör bi tüün.tei uulzsan Yesterday/today I that-com meet-past ‘Yesterday/today I met with him.’

{*bai.na, *yum}. be-pres, copp

Sodnomdorj consistently contrasted -jee as referring to “long ago” (or in the distant past at a given time in the past) with -lee as “just now” or “just recently” (possibly at a given past time), or “now.” Regarding (153), for example, he commented that ömsjee means that “he already had it on,” while ömslöö means that “he was putting it on while riding.” 153. Ter xün savxin tsamts, saravčtai malgai That person leather shirt visored hat (Baast 1962: 9) ‘That person put on a leather shirt and a visored hat.’

öms.löö. put on-past

It would appear that while quite often, perhaps even in general, proximality accords with evidentiality and distality with inferentiality, the

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two oppositions are by no means co-dependent, but rather are to some extent independent of one another. 2.2. Future -lee Even in its present and future uses -lee contrasts with the presentfuture (non-past) ending -ne, which is essentially distal in that even when used as a present tense, it principally functions as a generic, but not as an actual, present, in a way remarkably similar to the simple present tense of English. While it is possible, as in English, to use the present tense with stative predicates in an actually present sense (so that medexgüi in ter mongol xel medexgüi ‘he has no Mongolian [language]’ [Altangerel 1998: 197] means ‘doesn’t know’), with other types of predicates, for example ones denoting actions or processes, it can only be generic or future, just as in English.31 Thus “present-tense” butsana is used as a future in (154),32 but “present-tense” gesne ‘thaws’ is generic in (155). 154. Bi margaaš butsa.na. I tomorrow return-pres ‘I’m returning tomorrow.’ (Sanders and Bat-Ireedüi 1995: 70) 155. Xavr.iin Spring-gen

süül tail

sar.aar month-instr

tsas snow

xail.j melt-impfc

gazar earth

ges.ne. thaw-pres ‘Toward the end of spring the snow melts and the ground thaws.’ (Street 1963: 120)

And, as a future, -ne removes the situation from the immediacy of the present, in contrast with both -lee in its future use, and the predicative participle -x. Something should be said here regarding this latter form. It is usually called the infinitive or the future verbal noun: Ramstedt (1902: 31 One difference between the languages is that performative utterances in English generally employ the simple present tense, whereas in Mongolian they use the progressive, just like non-performative utterances. (Performative utterances are those, like I agree, which are intended to perform a speech act, in this case that of agreeing, rather than simply to communicate information.) Thus where an English-speaker says I think that . . ., the Mongolian-speaker says Bi . . . gej bodoj baina ‘I am thinking that. . . .’ (Viz., Altangerel 1998: 483). 32 Cf. Street (1963: 120), Poppe (1970: 130).

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29), and following him, Poppe (1951: 82), use the term nomen futuri. The Mongolian equivalent is ireedüin tsagt üilt ner ‘participle [“verbal noun”] of the future’ (Vietze 1974: 56). Kas’yanenko (1968: 22) calls it the pričastnaya forma nastoyaščego-buduščego vremeni ‘the participial form of present-future time’, while Sanders and Bat-Ireedüi (1999: 25) call it the present-future verbal noun. Kullmann and Tserenpil (1996: 147) call it the future participle. Kas’yanenko would seem closest to an accurate description. Semantically, it is equivalent to the non-past -ne, and substitutes for it in syntactic positions that do not allow the finite endings,33 for example under negation (156–158). That it is not simply a future, but rather a non-past, is suggested, amongst other things, by the fact that it also replaces the present progressive (159), as Kullmann and Tserenpil point out (1996: 147). Kullmann and Tserenpil also point out (p. 147) that it requires some kind of copula and does not appear (in statements) as the main predicate without one, though it does in questions (160–163). Like the -ne ending, it is interpreted as a present with stative expressions (156–157),34 but as a future with active and eventive predicates (158, 160–163): 156. Odoo xii.x ajil bai.x.güi. (Vietze 1974: 57) Now do-ifvn work be-ifvn-neg (Kullmann and Tserenpil [1996: 147] gloss this example as ‘Now there is no work to do.’) 157. Bi üün.iig mede.x.güi. I this-acc know-ifvn-acc ‘Ich weiß nicht.’ (Vietze 1973: 57) (‘I don’t know.’) 158. Bi yava.x.güi. I go-ifvn-neg ‘Ya ne poyedu.’ (Kas’yanenko 1968: 22) (‘I shall not go.’)35

33

As Kullmann and Tsrerenpil (1996: 147) say: “it replaces the [future tense -ne].” But Sanders and Bat-Ireedüi (1999: 25) have an example, (i), with a stative predicate that is nonetheless glossed as future. i. Ta end bai.x uu? You (plural ) here be-ifvn qp ‘Will you be here?’ 35 Poppe (1970: 135) similarly has bi irexgüi ‘I shall not come.’ Ramstedt (1902: 29) has bi yavax ‘ich werde (soll ) gehen’—‘I will/shall [should] go’.) 34

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159. Bi odoo biči.x.güi bai.na. I now write-ifvn-neg be-pres ‘I’m not writing.’36 (Kullmann and Tserenpil 1996: 147) 160. Ongots xezee ire.x.iig ta mede.x Airplane when come-ifvn-acc you (pl) know-ifvn ‘Wissen Sie, wann das Flugzeug kommt?’ (Vietze 1973: 57)37 (‘Do you know when the airplane is coming?’)

üü? qp

161. Ava.x uu? Take-ifvn qp ‘soll ich [er, man] nehman?’ (Ramstedt 1902: 29) (‘should I (he, one) take [it]?’) 162. Ta tsai ū.x.ū You (pl) tea drink-ifvn-qp ‘werden Sie Tee trinken?’ (Poppe 1951: 82) (‘will you drink tea?’) 163. Či odoo yaa.x ve? You now do what-ifvn qp ‘What will you do?’ (Kullmann and Tserenpil 1996: 147)

Kullmann and Tserenpil (p. 147) try to convey something of the difference between the two futures by their glosses for (164–166). They are clearly indicating a modal difference, but it is difficult from their glosses to discern quite what it is. 164. a. Minii naiz uda.x.güi My friend delay-ifvn-neg ‘My friend will really come soon.’ b. Minii naiz uda.x.güi My friend delay-ifvn-neg ‘My friend will come soon.’

ire.x come-ifvn

yum. copp

ir.ne. come-prfut

165. a. Bi xödöö yava.x yum. I countryside go-ifvn copp ‘Surely I’ll go to the countryside.’

36 Tserenchunt (p.c., October, 2008) comments that this “is a strange sentence. The present continuous negative would be [‘bičeegüi baina’].” I suspect that what was intended originally was the futurate sense of the English present progressive, corresponding to the future sense of the non-past participle. That is, something similar to refusals like “I don’t care what you say, I’m not writing that letter” or statements about arrangements such as “I’m not leaving till June.” 37 Kullmann and Tserenpil (1996: 148) gloss the same example as ‘Do you know when the plane will come?’

past tenses in the spoken language b. Bi xödöö I countryside ‘I’ll go to the countryside.’

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yav.na. go-pres

166. a. Či uda.x.güi xorin nas You delay-ifvn-neg 20 age ‘Soon you’ll really be twenty years old.’ b. Či uda.x.güi xorin nas You delay-ifvn-neg 20 age ‘Soon you’ll be twenty.’

xüre.x reach-ifvn

yum. copp

xür.ne. reach-prfut

While -x, like -ne, marks the future, it is -lee which is like the English futurate38 construction be going to in connecting a future situation with that of the present, though -lee is not always to be translated be going to. An interesting contrast is that between (167) and (168) below. Example (167) is glossed “[leave it with me,] I will read it” and described as being used “when someone offers a book.” Example (168) might, on the contrary, form part of the response to the question “have you read that book?”. Although the example is glossed with going to, the speaker “can’t use [-lee] here.” However, the addressee’s promise “I will read the book,” in the situation in which someone offers it on condition that the addressee read it, was translated as (168), with unšna. 167. Bi ter I that

nom.iig unš.laa. book-acc read-past39

168. Bi ter I that

nom.iig unš.n.aa. book-acc read-pres-emphp

Tentatively, the data suggest two differences between the two. First, -lee is a near or even immediate future, while -ne is distal, temporally separating the event in question from the present. It is important to note that while -lee connects the future eventuality with the present situation, so that often it can be translated with “be going to,” it does not function quite like English be going to. It simply indicates nearness

38 Futurate expressions are those which refer to future time but are semantically present, e.g., is to, is about to, is going to, even the simple present and progressive present in their future use. Futurate expressions generally presuppose or implicate that the future occurrence is already under way or is already certain, for example, planned or arranged. I’ll leave at noon could be a prediction or statement of intention, but I leave at noon, I’m leaving at noon, and I’m going to leave at noon are usually statements of something already scheduled. 39 This example actually translates as ‘I will read a book (or books).’ A marker of definiteness is required to convey the sense of ‘the book’ or ‘that book’.

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to the present, nominal immediacy, as when the waker utters (169).40 It is not inherently indicative of intentionality, though in (169) it does imply an intention. But, as (170) shows, the future use of -ne can also translate be going to. Since this example concerns natural phenomena, there is no question of intentionality (notwithstanding the fact that gex often conveys intentionality); but the sense is simply that the prediction is based on the present conditions. 169. Za eej.ee, odooxon bos.loo. OK mom-rp just a moment get up-past ‘O.K., mom, I’ll get up in just a moment.’ 170. Duu.tai boroo oro.x ge.j bai.na. Noise-com rain enter-ifvn say-impfc be-pres ‘There’s going to be a thunderstorm.’ (Luvsanjav et al. 1988: 87)

Kullmann and Tserenpil (1996: 188) emphasize the immediacy conveyed by -lee by glossing (171a) as ‘are you leaving [now]?’ (their square brackets), but (171b) as ‘Are you going to go?’ In both cases the sense is that the going in some sense is already in progress: in the case of (a), the addressees may have given evidence of their imminent departure, such as putting on their outdoor clothes and going to the door. In the latter case, there is likely no immediate evidence of imminent departure, but the speaker has reason to believe that the addressee has determined to go. However, in the case of (b), the actual going may be well in the future. If it is to be immediate, the form of the sentence does not say so. Example (171c) (p. 187), they gloss as ‘the day is almost over’, the “almost” simply emphasizing the immediacy of its ending. 171. a. Či You b. Ta You (pl) c. Ödör Today

yav.laa go-past yava.x go-ifvn öngör.löö. pass-past

yuu? qp uu? qp

40 From http:// mycolorfulworld.wordpress.com/ 2007/02/14/Шар-шувуу/. Cf. Za za odooxon bosloo at http://www.elibrary.mn/read_book.php?bid=66&page_id=24.

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The second difference has to do with contingency. “Be going to” in English conveys that the determining conditions are already met, and the future event is represented as planned, scheduled, or certain. The sun is going to rise tomorrow in the east; Christmas is going to be on December 25th; I’m going to finish this book, no matter what. But the will/shall future is contingent, and depends on future events. I can’t say at this moment that we’re not going to see the sun tomorrow, but if it’s very cloudy, we won’t. God willing, I will finish this book. That Christmas will be on December 25th is due to a number of preconditions, and if any one of them changes, Christmas may well be on some other date. One can think of a number of extremely unlikely events that would have such an effect. For example, if the calendar were so changed that December had just 21 days and the rest were tacked on to January, Christmas would be on January 4th. If we examine future sentences with -lee and -ne (172), we observe a difference in contingency and dependency on the current state of affairs. In (172a), the particle biz suggests some basis for likelihood, or at least possibility; it is a little like the question “so you’ll come back soon?.” Nonetheless, this is essentially epistemic modality: there is a basis for believing that the event will occur, but the event itself remains open, and may or may not occur. The example (172b) is different, in that presumably there is reason to believe that the event itself is more than possible—it is probable or even certain, all other things being equal. Perhaps the train is scheduled to leave in a few minutes, or perhaps there are all the signs of a train on the verge of departure. Finally, in (172c), both in the Mongolian and in the English translation, the future serves a kind of modal function. Neither the polite, interrogative form, nor its rather impolite and imperative declarative counterpart, you will put me through to 375, indicates certainty, and, as with any other request, it is open to the addressee to refuse (“no, I won’t”). The sense of will here is not quite that of the volitional will and not quite that of the future will. What these three disparate examples share, however, is the nature of the contingency in question. The future events are contingent, but if they depend on the present situation, they only do so indirectly. 172. a. Ta udaxgüi ir.ne biz dee? you (plural) soon come-pres perhaps particle ‘I hope, [sic] you’ll come back soon.’ (Luvsanjav et al. 1988: 155)

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chapter two b. Odooxon xödöl.nö. just a moment depart-pres ‘The train’s leaving any minute now.’ (Luvsanjav et al. 1988: 156) c. Ta 375-d zalga.j you (plural) 375–dat connect-impfc ög.nö üü? do for someone else41-pres qp ‘Will you put me through to 375?’ (Luvsanjav et al. 1988: 226)

Whether used for past or non-past occurrences, -lee is tied to the speech act situation, fundamentally a marker of proximality and evidentiality. But neither proximality nor evidentiality is objectively given. It is a subjective decision—albeit an unconscious one—on the part of the speaker how to view the situation in question, and hence which ending to use. 2.3. The Pragmatics of Immediacy The determination of when to use a distal (non-immediate), and when a proximal (immediate) form is up to the speaker, but is subject to a number of pragmatic factors. The judgement that “[-sen] is quite distant, [-lee] quite recent, and in midperiod they overlap” leaves open the question, for example, of how the choice of ending is made when the situation described is neither obviously immediate nor nonimmediate. Very likely, the choice is dependent on the discourse-functional purpose of the utterance, similar to the choice of tenses in metric tense systems. Thus what is immediate, or “distant” varies from context to context. The dichotomy of distant and recent, or non-immediate and immediate, is not dissimilar to the distinction of past and present perfect in European languages. Right after eating, the speaker uses the perfect: I’ve eaten. Hours later, the past is appropriate: I ate. But inbetween, the choice depends on the context of the utterance. If talking about the present situation resulting from the earlier eating or noneating, the present perfect is appropriate. “Have you eaten?” receives the reply “I have” or “I haven’t.” But if talking about the past situation, the past is naturally normal: “Did you eat when the others did?” receives the reply “Yes, I did” or “No, I didn’t.”

41

Literally, ‘give’.

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In a similar way, -lee is used if the past event is directly linked to the immediate situation, and cannot be used otherwise. Bi irlee ‘I came’ can be said by someone who has just stopped, or been stopped; otherwise bi irsen is better. Thus “what country are you from?” is ta yamar ulsaas irsen be? (Sanders and Bat-Ireedüi 1995: 43), but, as we have seen, a question such as “where have you come from?” elicits an answer in -lee, like (151b). 151. b. Bi galt terg.eer I firey wagon-instr ‘I came by train.’

ir.lee. come-past

Besides recency, descriptions of the form have also centred on present relevance, and it has consequently been called, inter alia: • Perfect assertive (Schlepp 1983: 37) • Perfect tense (Ramstedt 1902: 24; Grønbech and Krueger 1955: 36; Chinggeltei 1981: 87) • Present perfect—Praesens Perfecti, perfektnyj prezens, present of the perfect, etc. (Ramstedt 1902: 17; Poppe 1951: 80, 1955: 265, 1970: 130; Sanžeev 1964: 88) The present perfect in some cases is proximal like the -lee past in that the event or process in question continues into the present (173a), is imminent (173b), or is in the immediate past (173c). 173. a. I’ve {been awake/worked} all night. b. I’ve almost finished. c. I’ve {finished my chores/caught a chill}.

But in other cases, the present perfect does not report on a eventuality in the immediate past. In the right context, for example, the situation illustrated in diagram 2 above, in which there is a gap between the past eventuality and the present time, could be reported using the present perfect, as Tom has eaten. Affecting the use and interpretation of the present and other perfect tenses are a number of pragmatic factors, including the context, the point of the utterance, and the nature of the eventuality itself. Thus a sentence with an activity verb like work (174a) would normally be interpreted as an experiential perfect referring to an indefinite time in a perhaps quite distant past when

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associated with a characterization like as a fireman, but as a continuative perfect referring to an immediate past up to and including the present when associated with a temporal expression like all night (173a), while (174b), with an eventive verb like go (to the store) would most likely be interpreted as a resultative perfect, reporting a relatively recent event. Furthermore, the temporal frame affects the interpretation as well. Example (174c) would likely be interpreted as an experiential perfect because walking across the Sahara takes a long time, but (174d) as a resultative perfect, because walking across the room does not, and hence is more likely to be both immediate and relevant to the present state of affairs. But the context plays a role as well; if (174c) is a news item, it is likely to be “hot news” and hence recent, if not immediate, while in the context of discussing reasons for, or the circumstances surrounding, walking across the floor, (174d) might be experiential and non-immediate. 174. a. b. c. d.

Tom’s worked as a fireman. Tom’s gone to the store. Tom has walked across the Sahara. Tom has walked across the room.

In some cases of the resultative perfect, to be sure, the “present” is interpreted not as the time of utterance, the time of the speech act, but as an “extended now” defined by the relevant state resulting from the past event. For example, in the case of “Mother has gone to visit Uncle Matt,” the speaker’s mother may have literally just gone, may indeed still be en route. But it is equally possible that she went some time ago—hours, days, or even months—so long as her absence, and her journey and subsequent visit with Uncle Matt, endure without break. The meaning of “just” and its Mongolian equivalent sayaxan is variable and dependent on a number of pragmatic factors, as shown by such English examples as those in (175), and Mongolian examples like (176–178). In (175a), the commuters may have gotten off seconds ago, or minutes, but presumably have not been waiting long; in (175b) the sign had presumably not been put up in the last few minutes, but likely at least hours, and probably days, before; and in (175c), we are explicitly told that the hotel had opened days earlier. Having just gotten off a train is evidently a different matter from having just put up a notice or having just opened a hotel.

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175. a. Commuters, who have just come off the train, waiting for the bus to go home, Lowell, Mass. (caption on photo; http://www.flickr.com/ photos/library_of_congress/2178248615/; at the present time no longer available) b. I have no idea if the man had some sort of political or cultural agenda (TVUUC had just put up a sign welcoming gays to the congregation), or if it’s just some lunatic acting for no reason at all. (http:// www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=6288) c. He explained the hotel had just opened a few days ago. (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ showthread.php?t=667994; at the present time no longer available.) 176. Blog.iin tör.sön ödör sayaxan bolo.v. Blog-gen be born-pfvn day just become-past (http://www.yes.mn/blog/?mb_id=ternaoda&id=455; at the present time no longer available.) ‘It was just the blog’s anniversary.’ 177. Xarin am’dral.iin maan’ anxnii xair sayaxan ir.sen. But life-gen our first love just come-past (http://www.setguul.mn/index.php?str=news-data&newsid=74) ‘But the first love of my life has just come.’ 178. Sayaxan id.sen öndög namaig zovoo.j Just eat-pfvn egg me-acc bother-impfc

bai.na uu be-pres qp

daa particle (www.sport-tsonh.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=34& t=435&start=25&st= 0&sk=t&sd=a; at the present time no longer available.) ‘The egg I just ate is bothering me!’

Similarly, proximal -lee can be used in a wide range of actual time depths from the present (68, 179), depending on a number of pragmatic factors. The “present situation,” “speech act situation,” or “context of utterance” is not a given, but varies from situation to situation. The speaker is at liberty to represent one and the same past eventuality as either distal or proximal, just as the English-speaker can use the past or the present perfect tenses for the same event (180), and with greater or less distance of the eventuality from the present (181), depending principally on the purpose of the utterance, but also on a number of other factors. It would be wrong, however, to say that the choice of the ending is an option of the speaker’s, that the speaker is free to use whatever ending matches the way the speaker views the situation. The context affects the interpretation of the tense ending, so that, relative to the intended purpose of the utterance in the particular discourse

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or text, the speaker or writer may have few, if any, choices of tense ending. 68. bid odoo xool we now meal ‘we have now eaten’

id.lee eat-past

179. a. 43 dax’ uls Guinea Bissau42-d xöl tav’.laa. 43rd country Guinea Bissau-dat foot set-past (http://www.amai.mn/archives/1877) ‘We set foot in [our] 43rd country, Guinea Bissau.’ b. “ГОЁЛ 2008” naadam exle.xe.d belen bol.loo fashion 2008 show begin-ifvn-dat ready become-past (http://www.suuder.com/?p=658) ‘The “Fashion 2008” show is ready to begin.’ 180. a. Tom ate lunch at noon. b. Tom has already eaten lunch. 181. a. George W. Bush has been president of the U.S. for seven years. b. Has any native of Connecticut been president of the U.S.?

2.4. Spoken -v and the Past Tenses in Questions In speech, -v occurs principally in questions. “In statements, it is not often used in the colloquial language, which prefers the verbal noun of the perfect . . ., but in questions it occurs quite frequently with the interrogative particle [-üü],” writes Poppe (1970: 131), and the same is reported by Street (1963: 122), Hangin (1968: 24), Kas’yanenko (1968: 20), and Vietze (1974: 44). Furthermore, Poppe writes43 “Als Prädikat mit der Verneinung ügei (-güi) bildet diese Form eine negative Entsprechung des positiven Präteritum perfecti auf -wa.” (“As a predicate with the negation ügüi (-güi) [the form -sen] forms a negative expression of the positive ‘past of the perfect’ in [-v].”) Beffa and Hayamon (1975: 81) specify this as a postposed negation, and alongside -sen as a substitute for -v, refer to the verbal noun in -ee. Of the -v ending itself, Poppe writes, “Mit einer Negation kommt diese Form nicht vor.” (“This form does not appear with a negation.”).44

42 43 44

In the Latin alphabet in the source. Poppe (1951: 82). Poppe (1951: 80).

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From what Poppe and others say, it would seem that -v and -sen are in complementation; in the colloquial language -sen is the form -v takes under negation or in the absence of interrogation.45 However, there is reason to believe that in speech -v is actually a form of -lee. Traditionally grammarians have observed that all of the indicative endings can co-occur with the question particle uu/üü (thus, for example, Poppe 1951: 79, 1970: 130; Street 1963: 120). But questions in -jee often involve gej (-j is the short form of -jee used before the question particle) and are used to verify either a statement (as in a verifying, echo question like 182) or an intention.46 By the very nature of the inferential ending, it is unlikely to occur in “normal” questions like “did you leave?” or “where did you come from?.” Interestingly enough, there seem, for example, to be no examples of -jee questions in either the Sanders-Bat-Ireedüi phrasebook or the one by Luvsanjav et al. 182. Та ünexeer 1900 on.d tör.sön ge.j üü? You (plural) really 1900 year-dat be born-past say-past qp ‘Are you really saying you were born in [the year] 1900?’ “not believing [what you said]”

Similarly, interrogative -lee is restricted, though perhaps not as restricted as -jee. Kullmann and Tserenpil (1996: 187f.) offer up questions in -l (the short form of -lee) with present perfect meaning as alternatives to questions in -sen (183–184), and also offer similar questions with the full form of -lee and with non-past meaning as alternatives to questions in -x (185–187). Kullmann and Tserenpil note (p. 187) that such questions as (185–187) “express that one has good reason to believe that the action will take place.” Regarding (183–184) they

45 Nelson et al. (1998: 118) point out that -v and -sen “are largely confined in their distribution to written and spoken Khalkh Mongol, respectively.” 46 “An echo question is a question that directly takes up (or ‘echoes’) part of an uttterance made before.” (http://urts120.uni-trier.de/glottopedia/index.php/Echo_ question). It may repeat all (i) or part (ii) of a preceding utterance. It generally lacks the characteristic word order of real questions, the kind that seek (new) information, and functions simply to verify something unexpected by, or surprising to, the hearer (as in i) or which is not clear or not intelligible (as in ii). i. I just returned from Ulaanbaatar.—You just returned from Ulaanbaatar?! ii. Over break, I ended up visiting my (unintelligible).—You ended up visiting who? (http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/syntax-textbook/box-questions .html )

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comment such questions are used “in colloquial language to express that one can’t remember, although one witnessed the action.” In other words, they are, like -jee questions, requests for confirmation, not real requests for information. One indication that questions in -j(ee) and -l(ee) are not “real” questions is that the response to such a question never seems to employ the same ending as used in the question. This is in contrast with questions in -sen and -v, where such matching of endings is quite common. 183. Ta šuudan

{ } yaval yavsan

184. Či ter sonin medeeg news?’ 185. Či 186. Ta 187. Či

{ { {

yavlaa yuu yavax uu untlaa yuu untax uu

} } }

uu? ‘Have you been to the post office?’47

{

sonsol sonsson

}

uu? ‘Have you heard that interesting

?48 ‘Are you leaving (now)?’ ? ‘Are you going to sleep (now)?’

bosloo yuu ? ‘Are you getting up (now)?’ bosox uu

One can hypothesize that the difference is due to the different functions of the two types of questions. “Yes” and “no” are often signaled in Mongolian by repetition of the verb, and of course the answer to a WH question (one containing a question word like what or where and seeking information, rather than an answer of “yes” or “no”) may contain a verb; in either case, the context requires the same ending as in the question, if a past-tense answer is appropriate. The failure of “echo” questions to elicit such a response is due to the fact that the answer is not intended to be informative, but merely confirmatory. Thus a response such as tiimee ‘yes’ or ügüi ‘no’ is appropri-

47 Regarding examples (183) and (184), however, Tserenchunt comments (p.c., October, 2008), “In these examples, the ‘yaval uu’ and the ‘sonsol uu’ are contraction[s] of ‘yavsan bil uue? [sic],’ ‘sonsson bil uu’ [sic]. It is not the ‘lee’ ending. ‘Bilee’ and ‘bil uu’ [sic] are used when the speaker [does] not remember the past action and he or she just wants to recall [it], to make sure if the action had happened before.” I’m not sure how how much of the account presented here this would affect; clearly further research is indicated, especially as regards bilee. 48 Their alternative examples have the subjects či and ta respectively in (185) and ta nar and ta respectively in (186), but as far as I can tell, this is just a typo.

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ate; an answer such as törsön ‘was born’ would be appropriate where the question is “what happened?” or “he did what?” (clarifying an unclear statement), but not where the echo question is seeking to confirm a statement containing törsön, just as the appropriate response to an English question like “You know the Dalai Lama?!” is usually “Yes,” “I do,” or “Yes, I do,” and not “I know him” or “I know the Dalai Lama.” It is predictable, accordingly, that, in “Tamiriin ber” in Vangan’s volume Jiriin xümüüs (p. 83), when the character Baldan asks (188), the character “Ulaan deelt” (“Red-robed”) replies simply “Ügüi”—‘No.’ 188. “Tsaad јоlooč čin’, čamaig mata.ј other driver your you-acc denounce-past ‘That there driver of yours, is he squealing on you?’

uu?” qp

Though in colloquial speech -v is largely restricted to questions (Street 1963: 122, Hangin 1968: 24, Vietze 1974: 44), there are questions in -sen as well: “[q]uestions are often expressed with this suffix” (Kullmann and Tserenpil 1996: 184). In fact, apart from questions explicitly or implicitly in the present tense, questions in -sen may be the most common type. They are certainly more common than questions in either -jee or -lee. Or -v, for that matter. Though it appears, as is said, that -sen replaces -v in statements, in questions they compete, and both occur with uu/üü (189–194), though only -sen occurs with ve (195, 196). (Questions in -v, at least, can occur without any question particle, as in (197)). In speech, -v may be translated using the present tense (189), the past tense (190), or the present perfect, or more than one of these (191), depending on the context, but then so can -sen, which is translated by the present perfect in (198), the present in (199), and the past in (200).49

49 Tserenchunt comments (p.c., October, 2008), “in the examples 189–200, I would say that the -v ending refers to the recent action, while the -san ending refers to the fact in past no matter if it is recent or distal action. . . .” There is quite a bit that could be said about this comment, which, as I read it, is not in conflict with the general conclusions of the present work. As regards these specific examples and what I have to say about them, I must let the discussion in this volume speak for itself. At the same time, the question of precisely what time spoken -v ranges over relative to both its use in questions and the use of both -lee and -sen in statements, is by no means settled and evidently calls for further research.

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189. Ta zam.d.aa züdre.v üü? You (plural) way-dat-rp tire-past qp ‘Are you tired from your trip?’ (Street 1963: 122) 190. Ter surguul’.d yava.v uu? That school-dat go-past qp ‘Did he go to school?’ (Street 1963: 122) 191. Ta ene nom.iig üze.v üü? You (plural) this book-acc see-past qp ‘Have you seen this book?’ or ‘Did you see this book?’ (Street 1963: 122) 192. Ta gantsaaraa yav.san uu? You (plural) alone go-past qp (http://www.tsahimurtuu.mn/show.php?table=news&id=16; at the present time no longer available.) ‘Did you go alone?’ 193. Ta čölöög.öör You (plural) vacation-instr ‘Did you go on vacation?’

yav.san go-past

uu? qp

194. Či am’draliinxaa utga učr.iig ol.son uu? you one’s own life’s meaning-acc find-past qp (www.harp.mn/forum/ index.php?Uildel=ShowThread&TiD=1979&P= 0; at the present time no longer available.) ‘Have you found the meaning of your life?’ 195. ax nar xaana50 yav.san younger brother pl where go-past (cgi.geocities.jp/yz_0084/light/light.cgi) ‘Where did [the/your/my] brothers go?’

ve? qp

196. ‘Why did the Pilgrims come to America? To gain religious freedom.’ Yaagaad pilgrim.čuud (anxdagčid) Amerika.d irsen why pilgrim-pl (pioneers) America-dat come-past ve? Šašin šüte.x erx čölöö.nij tölöö. qp religion worship-ifvn freedom-gen for (http://www.naizuud.com/blog/view/id_806/) 197. Či xaan.aas ire.v? You where-abl come-past (http://www.ineehuu.com/print.php?type=N&item_id=4965) ‘Where did you come from?’

50 Sodnomdorj comments that this should be either xaa or xaašaa, not xaana, with xaašaa the “most correct.” The source had axa instead of ax, raising questions about the writer’s command of at least written Mongolian. I have found only one other Web page with xaana in this construction.

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198. (Ter xün) Darxan xoto.d51 yav.san uu? Yavsan. That person Darxan city-dat go-past qp go-past ‘Has he gone to Darkhan?’52 ‘Yes, (he has).’ (Sanders-Irredüi 1995: 28) 199. Ta You (plural) Ügüi, No

uragla.san marry-past

uu? ‘Are you married?’ qp

bi uragl.aa.güi. ‘No, I’m not.’ (Sanders-Irredüi 1995: 48) I marry-impfvn-neg

200. Xen yav.san? Aav yavsan. Who go-past Father go-past ‘Who went?’ ‘Father went.’ (Kullmann and Tserenpil 1996: 78)

In this context, it is instructive to consider the rather different uses the two endings in question are put to. In contrast to questions in -jee and -lee, the responses to those in -sen (also -sengüi) quite often involve a repetition of the verb, or at least the tense. (Recall that the usual negation of -sen is not -sengüi, but instead -eegüi.) There are numerous such examples in the Sanders-BatIreedüi phrasebook (e.g., 198, 199, 201), the phrasebook by Luvsanjav et al. (202–204), and the textbook by Kullmann and Tserenpil (200, 205, 206). Kullmann and Tserenpil pair one question in -sen (207a) with an answer in -lee (207b), and one with an answer in -v (208), but there seem to be no similar examples in phrasebooks, interviews, plays, or Web forums. 201. a. Ta al’ xot.oos ir.sen be? You (plural) which town-abl come-pfvn qp ‘Which town are you from?’ b. Bi . . . xot.oos ir.sen. I . . . town-abl come-past ‘I’m from the town of. . . .’ (Sanders-Irredüi 1995: 44)

51 Sodnomdorj comments that this should be either xot or xot ruu. I found no Web pages with xotod in this construction, one with xot (quoted from another phrase book), and none with either xot ruu or xotruu. For ruu yavsan uu, I found 32 Web examples. Immediately preceding ruu yavsan uu on these pages were the unsuffixed nouns or nominal expressions, mod (zuud.blog.banjig.net/post.php?post_id=39656), xoyor uul (www.mongolnews.mn/weekend.php?n=1466), nomiin san (mongolhel .blog.mn/index.m?p=29), Afganistan (www.lamongols.com/content/view/3366/39), etc. This would seem to support Sodnomdorj’s native-speaker intuition in regard to this example. 52 My transcription.

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202. a. Ta zax.iin tasalbar av.san You (plural) market-gen ticket take-past ‘Have you got a market ticket?’ b. Av.san av.san. . . . Take-past take-past ‘Yes, of course.’ (Luvsanjav et al. 1998: 214)

uu? qp

203. a. Ta biyelgee üzsen üü? You (plural) biyelgee53 see-past qp ‘Have you seen the body-shaking dance?’ b. Üz.sen. . . . See-past ‘Yes.’ (Luvsanjav et al. 1998: 254) 204. a. Ta xeden on.d tör.sön You (plural) how many year-dat be born-past ‘When were you born?’ b. Bi 1930 on.d tör.sön. I 1930 year-dat be born-past ‘I was born in 1930.’ (Luvsanjav et al. 1998: 42)

be? qp

205. a. Činii aav xaašaa yavsan be? Your father to where go-past qp ‘Where did your father go?’54 b. Minii aav gol ruu yav.san. My father river towards go-past ‘My father went to the river.’ (Kullmann and Tserenpil 1996: 99) 206. a. Ter yuu ruu čuluu šid.sen be? That what towards stone throw-past qp ‘At what did he throw stones?’ b. Ter tsonx ruu čuluu šid.sen. That window towards stone throw-past ‘He threw stones at the window.’ (Kullmann and Tserenpil 1996: 99) 207. a. Či yuu.nii max av.san uu? You what-gen meat take-past qp ‘What kind of meat did you buy?’55 b. Bi üxr.iin max av.laa. I cow-gen meat take-past ‘I bought beef.’56 (p. 80)

53

A traditional Mongolian folk dance. Their gloss is ‘Where did your father go last night?’, which doesn’t match their example. 55 Tserenchunt (p.c., October, 2008) says that uu here should be be. 56 Tserenchunt (p.c., October, 2008) comments that “In this example, the person who answers the question refers to the action he just has done. So, he uses ‘avlaa’. Because in real interaction people do not follow the [form in the] question. They can add some new information or emotions.” There is an artificial quality to many 54

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208. a. Dorj.iig yuug.aar songo.son be? Dorj-acc what-instr elect-pfvn qp ‘As what did (the people) elect Dorj?’ b. Dorj.iig ang.iin axlagč.aar songo.v. Dorj-acc class-gen leader-instr elect-past ‘(They) elected Dorj as class president.’ (p. 94)

In the case of -v questions, however, when the verb is repeated in the answer, not only is -v not used (since it is not an affirmative form in the colloquial language), but, contrary to what the grammatical tradition would suggest about the relationship between -v and -sen, -v is replaced not by -sen, but by -lee. Thus immediately following example (188) above, Nütsgen deelt (“bare-robed”) asks (209) (‘did you see the new leader?’), to which “Red-robed” replies, ‘yes’, but in this case, ‘yes’ is expressed by üzlee. 209. Šine new

darg.iig leader-acc

üze.v see-past

üü? qp

In the phrase book by Luvsanjav et al. (p. 12) the question (210a) appears immediately above the statement (210b), which is clearly intended as its response. Similarly, an on-line Chinese/Mongolian phrase-book (http://www.qingis.com/monggolkiril.htm) gives the question (211a) just above what is clearly intended as the proper response, (211b). In an interview on a Web page, the question (212a) elicits the response (212b). In the play “Xuvia bodogčid” in Jiriin xümüüs (on p. 28), Sonomxand asks (213a), to which Jamts begins his reply as in (213b). Here the verb is repeated, but in a different form and in a different context. But the -lee form teglee seems to be a reflection of -v in the same way as irlee is a reflection of irev in (210, 211).57 210. a. Sain yav.ј ire.v üü? Well go-impfc come-past qp ‘Did you have a safe (pleasant) journey?’58 b. Sain yav.ј ir.lee. Well go-impfc come-past ‘Yes, thank you.’

examples given in textbooks and phrase-books. It is almost impossible for the nonnative-speaker, however, to judge what is most natural in a given context. 57 In examples (210–213) the corresponding forms are underlined. 58 In “Tamiriin ber” (p. 90), the character Sambuu asks the same question, but the reply is simply sain irlee.

100 211. a. Sain Well b. Sain Well

chapter two ire.v come-past ir.lee. come-past

üü? qp

212. a. — Ta saixan šinele.v You (plural) fine “renew”59-past ‘Did you have a good New Year’s?’ b. — Saixan šinel.lee. Fine “renew”-past ‘I did.’ (http://nutag.mn/content/view/820/1/) 213. a. Či saya ire.v You just come-past ‘Did you just come?’ b. Teg.lee60 . . . . ‘Yes. . . .’

üü? qp

üü? qp

There are many examples of -v questions in forums on the Web (quite often presented in the Latin alphabet, e.g., 214, 215), and nearly all the responses to these questions are, as we would expect, in -lee (as in 214). However, at least one uses -sen (215). And example (216) parallels üzev (in an embedded question) with üzsen. 214. — toglo.j üze.v üü?61 run around-impfc try-past qp ‘Did you try sports?’62 — üz.le try-past ‘I tried them.’ = ‘I did.’ (guitar.mn/forum/viewtopic.php?start=105&t-1836)63 215. — chi video.g ni üze.v you video-acc the see-past ‘Did you see the video?’

59

üü. qp

The reference is to celebrating the new year. Literally ‘did so’. 61 The front vowels transliterated in the present work as ö and ü are generally represented in the Latin alphabet on the Web as oe and ue respectively, occasionally, as here and in the next example, as o and u. Often in Cyrillic script, and sometimes in the Latin, ü is represented as v. 62 I was unable to check the context before this page disappeared. Toglox has a very wide range of meanings, but I suspect something like ‘playing sports’ was the intended meaning. 63 The whole text of (214) (and of 215) is in the Latin alphabet in the source; the original orthography is copied here. 60

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— üz.sen . . . . . see-past ‘I saw it.’ = ‘Yes.’ (www.asiafinest.com/forum/loftversion/index.php/t75847.html; at the present time no longer available.) 216. Ted they

n’ topic marker

yuu.g what-acc ögüülrüün; saying:

činii your

ger.t house-dat

üze.v ge.sen.d Xijxie n’ see-past say-pfvn-dat Hezekiah topic marker Ted they

n’ topic marker

minii my

ger.t house-dat

xamag bai.gaa.g üz.sen bui. everything be-impfvn-acc see-pfvn copp (http://gospelgo.com/a/1846/2ki.htm; 2Kings 20:15) ‘What have they seen in thine house? And Hezekiah answered, All the things that are in mine house have they seen. . . .’ (2 Kings 20:15 in King James version; http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/etext)

Apparently, no responses to interrogative -v use -v . . . except in the pages of Kullmann and Tserenpil’s grammar, where the question (217a) is matched with an answer (217b) using the same, -v, verb form. If answers like (217b) occur at all, they are likely not readily used in speech, and must occur under quite restricted conditions.64 217. a. Baatar ene nom.oos yuu.g unši.v? Baatar this book-abl what-acc read-past ‘What did Baatar read from this book?’ b. Baatar ene nom.oos 2-r büülg.iig unši.v. Baatar this book-abl 2nd chapter-acc read-past ‘Baatar read the 2nd chapter from this book.’ (p. 87)

The fact that responses to -sen questions generally employ -sen suggests that the responses to -v questions should likewise repeat the verb, since both endings are used to ask “real” information questions. That -v normally elicits a response in -lee, and that -lee is not used to form information questions, argues for -v being the form -lee takes in information questions in the colloquial spoken language. That -v questions are appropriately answerable with -lee shows that such questions

64 I have been able to find few WH questions with a -v verb-form, and none of these is accompanied by a reply in -v.

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presuppose a recent, proximal answer. Where the context is such that the speaker makes no such presupposition, the question is phrased using -sen and it receives an answer in the same tense form. However, though -v may be proximal in presupposing an eventuality closely linked to the speech act situation, spoken -v cannot be accounted “evidential,” since it is restricted to questions. 3. Deictic and Anaphoric 3.1. Reference Times The past tenses marked with the endings -lee and -jee are polar opposites, the one proximal and evidential, the other distal and inferential. But what of the past tenses in -sen and -v? In evidentiality, they appear to be neutral, as described, for example, by Song (1997: 184; 2002: 149), who writes of the -v ending that it “doesn’t indicate whether the situation was known directly or indirectly to the speaker.” He calls the -lee past the “direct knowledge past,” something known to, even witnessed by, the speaker, and that marked by -jee the “indirect knowledge past,” something newly discovered. The -v or “neutral past,” is described as “relatively colorless” (Street 1963: 22), i.e., without specific modal value.65 While this picture is correct and insightful as far as it goes, it is inadequate to fully capture the range of—and the restrictions on—the uses of these markers. In particular, a further contrast must be pointed out. The past tenses marked by -lee and -jee belong to the deictic or absolute tenses, which serve to directly relate the time of the “eventuality” or “occurrence” (the time of the event or situation reported) to the time of the speech act (the “utterance time” at which the sentence is “uttered”—i.e., spoken, written, or otherwise communicated). The endings -v and -sen, on the contrary, belong to the anaphoric tenses, which relate the time of the eventuality only indirectly to the time of utterance, their relationship to this deictic centre being mediated by a reference time. It is to this reference time, not the utterance time itself, that they directly relate the time of the occurrence. Similarly, the pluperfect tense of European languages (as in Tom had eaten) locates the state or event at a time earlier than “now,” but it

65 The glosses and terminology have been slightly altered to bring them into conformity with those used in the present work.

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time Tom eats

UTTERANCE TIME (“now”) Diagram 3

time Tom eats

REFERENCE UTTERANCE TIME TIME (“now”) Diagram 4

does so only indirectly, by dint of placing the occurrence at a time that is itself prior to a reference time which is already in the past. That is, a sentence like Tom had eaten lunch, as opposed to Tom ate lunch, presupposes some reference time other than the utterance time. Compare diagrams 3, 4 above. In the case illustrated in diagram 3, Tom’s eating is in the past. In that illustrated in diagram 4, it is also in the past, but it is also prior to some presupposed time which is itself in the past. The reference time may be implicit, presupposed in context. In a discourse (by which term we mean here written text as well as oral discourse), referring expressions—including those with temporal reference—are generally interpreted as relevant to their context; e.g., in (218), young men and women in the second sentence are understood as referring to those in Egypt, since the preceding sentence concerns that country. Temporal references likewise may be implicit, induced in this way by the context. In (219), daraagiin ödör ‘the following day’ is understood to refer to the day in December, 1924, succeeding a day implicitly referred to in the earlier sentence (since ‘in December of 1924’ entails ‘on a day in December of 1924’). 218. Egypt became considerably more conservative, many Muslims abandoning their European fashions for a more modest and traditional garb. Young men began to grow their beards in a show of unpretentiousness; more women began veiling their hair. (http://viviansalama.wordpress. com/2005/08/27/the-future-of-the-muslim-brotherhood-2/) 219. 1924. 12 1924. 12

sar.d amyerik.iin Uotertaun xölög ongots . . . month-dat America-gen Watertown ship ...

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chapter two Šine Orlean.ruu New Orleans-towards

yav.j go-impfc

bai.x.d.aa be-ifvn-dat-rp

.... ....

Daraagiin ödör n’ .... following day the .... ‘In December of 1924, when the American ship Watertown was going to New Orleans. . . . The following day. . . .’ (http://www.monstudnet.mn/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4105&postdays=0 &postorder=asc&start=15&sid=7327ed038c37b709ec6e47e5ab802ebe)

As it happens, many uses of the simple past tenses of European languages—indeed of all languages—actually presuppose a reference time that is different from the utterance time, but which coincides with the time of the eventuality. Thus in a context such as (220), the sentence Tom ate dinner means ‘Tom ate dinner at the time that the rest of the family sat down to lunch’ and we may diagram this sentence as in diagram 5. But in (221) (possible in North American English), Tom ate dinner means simply ‘Tom has eaten dinner before now’, as shown in diagram 6. Although traditionally the simple tenses are analyzed by grammarians as involving only two points in time, as in diagram 3, since Reichenbach (1947) the mainstream of thought has increasingly viewed the meaning of even a simple tense like the preterite (simple past tense) as involving, in principle, three points in time, as in diagram 4, though (as in diagrams 5 and 6) two of the three points may sometimes coincide. 220. Tom’s schedule was out of synch with the rest of the world. When it came noon, he been up for eleven hours and it had been six hours since his last real meal. The rest of the family sat down to lunch. Tom ate dinner. 221. Every one else is ravenous. But Tom isn’t. He [already] ate dinner.

Reference times may be rendered explicit within a particular clause or sentence by an adverbial or other expression. Some temporal adverbials always refer to the time of the eventuality itself, and others always pertain to the reference time, but many, perhaps most, adverbials may do either, and thus, out of context, they may thereby create ambiguity. Sentence adverbials typically refer to the reference time. Thus (222b) seems more normal than (222a). Verb-modifying adverbials typically modify the time of the eventuality, as in (222c). Example (222d), with its reference-time-marking already and ambiguous at noon, is confusing, and may strike one as a little odd.

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time Tom eats = REFERENCE TIME

UTTERANCE TIME (“now”)

Diagram 5

time Tom eats

REFERENCE TIME = UTTERANCE TIME (“now”) Diagram 6

222. a. b. c. d.

At noon, Tom had eaten lunch. At noon, Tom had already eaten lunch. Tom ate lunch at noon. Tom had already eaten lunch at noon.

3.2. Definite, Deictic, and Anaphoric Tenses In the case of a deictic past tense, the time of the eventuality is simply prior to the present. Temporal adverbials apply to the time of the eventuality; there is no other time for them to refer to, since the reference time is the same as the time of the eventuality, and the utterance time is a given. Negation has wider scope than any temporal expression. Thus (223) means that in the past, John never ate at noon. But in the case of an anaphoric tense the assumption is that the eventuality occurred or, obtained at, a specific reference time prior to the time of the speech act. Thus temporal adverbials can refer to the reference time as well as the time of the occurrence. And negation can have narrower scope than a temporal reference, whether explicit, as in (224a), or implicit, as in the second sentence of (224b).66 In (223) it was not the case that at noon John ate lunch, but in (224) today, it was not the case that John had time for lunch.

66 It was Barbara Hall Partee (1973) who pointed out the differing interpretations of negation with definite (that is, what is called here anaphoric) and indefinite (deictic) tenses.

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223. John didn’t use to eat lunch at noon. 224. a. Today John didn’t have time for lunch. b. Today a whole load of work landed on John’s desk. He didn’t have time for lunch.

Consequently deictic tenses have been called “indefinite,” while anaphoric tenses are “definite.” It is the definiteness of the -sen past that Tserenchunt and Luethy are referring to when they say (2000: 62) that it “is used to talk about an action that has taken place at a set time in the past (e.g., I walked home yesterday).” The preterite tenses of European languages have often been contrasted with the present perfect as definite or absolute tenses, which refer to specific times. The perfect tenses are indefinite; all that (222b) says that there was a time at which Tom ate lunch, but it neither asserts nor presupposes what time that time was. When there is no presupposed reference time, as in some modern literary fiction that (as it were) throws the reader immediately into the action, the reader must assume such a time. 222. b. At noon, Tom had already eaten lunch.

The habitual past tense of English is another example of a deictic tense (225), and the conditional (future-in-the-past, 226) an example of an anaphoric tense. Out of context, the latter invites the question “when are we talking about?,” but the former doesn’t. The simple past of English is neutral in this regard, like the imperfective past tense, the imparfait, of French, which has both deictic (227a) and anaphoric (227b) uses. But the simple, perfective, past (passé) of French is purely anaphoric, and (227c) likewise invites the question of “when?”. 225. Edmonton used to be inexpensive. 226. He would soon leave home. 227. a. Car Piaf n’était pas seulement Piaf. . . . Piaf, c’était la France. (http://www.rfimusique.com/siteFr/biographie/biographie_8864.asp) ‘For Piaf wasn’t [imparfait, imperfective] only Piaf. . . . Piaf, she was [imparfait, imperfective] France.’ b. En 1947, elle a rencontré l’amour de sa vie: le boxeur Marcel Cerdan. Le problème: il était marié. (http://www.on-luebeck.de/~swessin/paris/piaf.htm) ‘In 1947, she met [passé composé, perfective] the love of her life: the boxer Marcel Cerdan. The problem: he was [imparfait, imperfective] married.’

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c. Edith Piaf (1915–1963), chanteuse française populaire dont on parle régulièrement dans les médias, a été membre de l’A.M.O.R.C. jusqu’à sa mort. Quelques mois après être devenue Rosicrucienne, elle chantait Soudain une vallée, chanson composée par Jean Dréjac, qui lui aussi fut membre de l’A.M.O.R.C. jusqu’à son décès en 2003. (http://www.rose-croix.org/histoire/edith_piaf.html) ‘Edith Piaf, popular French singer of whom one speaks regularly in the media, was [passé composé, perfective] a member of AMORC until her death. A few months after becoming Rosicrucian, she was singing [imparfait, imperfective] Soudain une vallée, a song composed by Jean Dréjac, who also was [passé simple, perfective] a member of AMORC until his decease in 2003.’

To a great extent the interpretation of the past tense depends on the temporal properties of both the subject and the predicate of the sentence. Sentence (225), for example, implies that Edmonton is no longer inexpensive, whereas (228a), assuming as it most likely does, out of context, a past reference time, normally has no such implication, since it claims only to speak of the situation at a certain time, which is not necessarily in contrast with the present situation. (Compare 228b–c.) However, there are contexts in which the past tense receives a sort of indefinite interpretation, as in (228d); out of context, was seems to characterize Pompeii as a whole, rather than at a certain point in its history. Thus the sense of was in (228d) is closer to the imperfect tense of French (était) than it is to the simple past ( fut). Notice the ambiguity of (228e), which is interpreted out of context as indefinite, if it is understood to refer to ancient Rome, but as definite if it applies to modern Rome. To some extent the interpretation depends on the temporal properties of the predicate expression (as well as those of the topic of the sentence). Expressions that refer to permanent properties invite indefinite uses (228f); those that refer to temporary situations, definite ones (228g). That is not to say that alternative interpretations are not possible, but they require special contexts like the one in (228h), which renders was in the second sentence definite. 225. Edmonton used to be inexpensive. 228. a. b. c. d. e. f.

Edmonton was inexpensive. When she was young, Edmonton was inexpensive. Edmonton was inexpensive when we vacationed there last year. Pompeii was a popular resort. Rome was the centre of Italian life. Tom was a redhead.

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chapter two g. Tom was in a good mood. h. When Tom returned from the hairdresser’s, Sue was in for a shock. Tom was a redhead!

In summary, -lee is evidential and proximal, whereas -jee is inferential and distal. Both are deictic (indefinite), while -v and -sen, on the contrary, are anaphoric (definite). 3.3. An Implicative Hierarchy The tenses differ in evidentiality, distality, and deicity, as shown in figure 1 below. An examination of figure 1 reveals something peculiar about the way we have organized the Mongolian tense system, however. Three oppositions yield 23 = eight possibilities. In the case of the Turkish vowel system, which is defined by the distinctive features of backness, height, and rounding, all eight possibilities actually occur, while Mongolian has but seven of the eight only because back /ɨ/ merged with front /i/ in most members of the Mongolic language family. But where the Mongolian tense system is concerned, only two of the eight positions defined by the three oppositions of evidentiality, distality, and deicticness are filled by -jee and -lee, and even if we consider -v and -sen to fill four of the remaining six places, that still leaves a fair amount of redundancy in the system. To some extent this is to be expected. Distance correlates with evidentiality. The proximal is naturally evidential, and the inferential distal. How could the speaker be unaware of what has just happened, is happening, or just about to happen in the speech situation? The claim that something is proximal would generally seem to presuppose awareness. Likewise use of an inferential form presupposes a lack of awareness. In normal situations that would clearly indicate an occurrence “then,” not “now,” and “there,” not (typically) “here” (at least not lately). Given this redundancy, it would seem that figure 1 is not the most revealing way to diagram the tenses. It would seem better to represent them using a tree diagram, that is, a hierarchical structure, in which one characteristic has priority over another, and which forms, in effect, an implicative hierarchy, in the sense that features lower on the street automatically imply features higher up. One reason for this is that oppositions may be neutralized, that is, eliminated. For example, in ancient Greek, distinctions of voicing and

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evidential proximal

-lee non-evidential

distal -jee deictic

anaphoric -v/-sen Figure 1

aspiration of stem-final stops are lost in certain positions, so that /p, ph, b/ all appear as p:67 trib- ‘rub’ pemp- ‘send’ graph- ‘write’

te-trip-tai pe-pemp-tai ge-grap-tai

It is not uncommon in phonology for distinctions in the sound system to be neutralized, and the same is true, under certain conditions, where both morphology—word structure—and semantics are concerned. For an opposition to be neutralized, it must obviously be the case that there is an opposition in the first instance to be neutralized. The more members a set has, the more features are required to distinguish the members from one another. Mongolian has (in effect) only one present tense, certainly only one present tense affix, since -ne is in complementation with -x, so that they function as if variants

67

Example from http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sjoh0535/Phonology12.pdf. The forms in the righthand column are perfect passive indicative, third person singular forms ( gegraptai, for example, means ‘[it] has been written’).

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chapter two non-past

-ne

past

proximal (can only be evidential)

distal

-lee evidential

-sen

inferential

-jee

Figure 2

of one and the same affix. Since there is only one present tense, further distinctions are irrelevant to distinguishing -ne from the past tenses, and to do so we need only say that it is non-past. But the past tenses require more than one feature to uniquely identify each of them. Since proximal tenses can only be evidential, the first distinctive feature under pastness is that of proximality. That leaves inferentiality to distinguish -jee. But given the correlation of distance with modality, why not simply leave it at proximal and distal? The reason we need one more feature is that -sen, too, is distal. But it is evidential, or at least non-inferential. Figure 2 would seem then generally to capture the potential neutralizations and their implications. If a tense is inferential, it is distal. If we mark it as distal, it is past. If we don’t worry about inferentiality, -sen and -jee can interchange. If we don’t care about proximality, any of the past tenses can be used, and if we don’t care about time, any of the tenses can be used. But Figure 2 leaves -v to be accounted for. The claim that -v is anaphoric is at odds with the observation made earlier that in questions, it serves as the counterpart of (the deictic) -lee. This problem opens a Pandora’s box of questions regarding the categorization of the tenses.

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To deal with those issues, chapter III discusses the use and interpretation of the past tenses in the written language, and their relationship to use and interpretation in the spoken language, and shows that there are important differences between the two, thereby creating pitfalls for the unwary who simply refer, for example, to the past tense in -v.

CHAPTER THREE

USE AND INTERPRETATION OF THE PAST TENSES IN THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE 1. Spoken and Written Language 1.1. Competing Grammatical Systems Up to now the discussion has principally concerned the spoken language, though much of the evidence has been drawn from written sources. It has implicitly been assumed that, the inherent differences of written and spoken language apart, written language simply is the representation of speech in a visual medium, that the difference in media has no consequences for grammar, and that things like Ramstedt’s phonetic transcriptions or Poppe’s phonemic ones can freely be replaced by the transliteration of the corresponding written forms, or indeed with the equivalent written forms, whether in the Cyrillic or the vertical-Mongolian script. In other words, when Ramstedt writes (1902: 19) jawɒw (which today we would put in phonetic, square brackets) or Poppe writes (1970: 131) /medәb/, the former (‘went’) could simply be replaced by yavav or явав, and the latter (‘knew’) by medev or мэдэв. The grammatical tradition tends simply to speak of the modern Mongolian language, or the Khalkha language. If written Khalkha and written Buriat are different written languages, but may not, issues of vocabulary apart, constitute completely different spoken languages, this fact may have a number of implications where grammar is concerned, insofar as the spoken dialects underlie two different written languages, each with its own grammar. The two written languages certainly differ in their spelling conventions and in their vocabulary, though this differs less than do Khalkha in the Cyrillic script and Inner Mongolian in the old vertical script, the latter of which has many more Chinese, and many fewer Russian, borrowings than either Cyrillic Mongolian or Buriat. But while the three differ relatively little in their syntax or morphology, they do differ, while written Khalkha presumably does not differ essentially from spoken Khalkha, except insofar as written languages tend to resemble the

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higher, more formal registers of the spoken language than they do the lower, more colloquial ones.1 That is, in essence, traditional accounts assume, at the very least, that written Khalkha is simply the representation, using a version of the Cyrillic alphabet, of spoken Khalkha, which in turn is simply the modern development of older Mongolian in most of what used to be Outer Mongolia, just as Mongolian in Inner Mongolia is considered the written counterpart—using a modernized version of the old vertical script writing system—if not quite the written representation, of the corresponding spoken language that is the modern development of Mongolian in Inner Mongolia. If there are grammatical differences between these three written languages, on this view they are to be attributed largely to dialectal differences in the spoken language. Given the rather different histories of the northern, southern, and central Mongols since the break-up of Genghiz’ empire, and especially since the break-up of the Manchu empire, we should not be surprised to find some strong differences in vocabulary and syntax, if not in other aspects of language. But little consideration has been given in the Mongolistic literature to variation within a delimited linguistic community such as Khalkha. Such variation is principally on the sociolinguistic level. By now it has become a commonplace in much of the linguistic literature that a label such as “English” covers a very wide range of linguistic phenomena differentiated by all sorts of sociological variables. Not only do languages vary from place to place, producing geographic dialects, and over time, producing different stages of the language—such as Middle Mongolian and Modern Mongolian—but in one locality at one time there may be differences in the speech of different sociologically-defined groups, and sometimes there are stark differences between spoken and written language as well, as for example between spoken and written Inner Mongolian, where the written language is largely based on the spoken language of centuries ago, or between different forms of written language corresponding to the same spoken language, which is very nearly the case with Kalmuck in Cyrillic script and Oirat in vertical script. For that matter, the language of one and the same speaker 1 Although Nelson et al. (1998: 117) cite “markedness for style and register” as one of the differences between the past tenses, they seem by this simply to refer to the difference between written and spoken language, and have little or nothing more to say on the subject.

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may vary, not only between their written and spoken languages, but between more formal (higher register) forms, appropriate to more formal contexts, and less formal, more colloquial (lower register) forms appropriate to less formal contexts. In the present work, we are specifically interested in competing grammatical systems. A classic example of this sort of thing is the past tense system of French and of dialects of a number of other Western European languages, for example of Italian, German, and Spanish. In French and these dialects of other languages, the old preterite (simple and/or perfective past tense) has been replaced in colloquial speech by the present perfect, so that, as in classical Latin, the present perfect form is theoretically ambiguous, at least out of context. Thus in spoken French j’ai chanté means both ‘I sang’ and ‘I have sung’. In written French, however, the past tense continues to be represented by the historic simple past (passé simple), which (ironically) descends from the Latin perfect tense, and ‘I sang’ is je chantai. In some other languages the distinction may be one not of spoken and written language, as it is in French, but of colloquial and formal language, though generally written languages tend to be standardized and formal, while spoken language is at best a semi-tamed beast, ranging from highly informal to almost as formal as the written standard. Below we shall argue that (Khalkha) Mongolian, too, is a language with competing grammatical systems that distinguish spoken and written language, and that this is very much the case in particular where the past tenses of the verb are concerned. The claim that the past tense systems of spoken and written or colloquial and formal Mongolian differ creates a couple of complications here. First, the reader will have noticed that much of the evidence for spoken language used not only by the older grammarians, but even in this present work, is drawn from written sources. If written Mongolian really does use the tenses in a rather different way from spoken Mongolian, is this justifiable? What does it say about the validity of the written evidence used here (and elsewhere) in arguing for analyses of spoken language? The example of French is not encouraging in this regard. Written French per se can reveal little reliable information about the use of the past tenses in spoken French, and this is true not only where the two passés are concerned, but the imperfect (imparfait) as well, which has present-tense and perfective uses in the colloquial spoken language that are unknown to formal grammar.

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The second problem is that the distinction in Mongolian is only partly between spoken and written language, but is also partly between more formal, more “standard” (higher-register) and more colloquial, less “standard” (lower-register) language. For one thing, writing is used, sometimes, to represent speech, and sometimes it is not, but is independent of it. This, we shall see, is an issue particularly in regard to the relatively ephemeral language of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Thus sometimes we are justified in utilizing written data, and not only in the case of transcriptions of speech. Such things as e-mail and blogs routinely use what is essentially a written form of spoken language, and not necessarily because the writers are ignorant of the standard, written language (Mongols are, on the whole, highly educated and literate people), but rather because they specifically intend (albeit, perhaps, unconsciously) for their writing to represent speech. This, of course, raises at least two further questions: are there only two versions of Mongolian, one formal, standard, and usually written, the other colloquial, non-standard, and largely spoken? And second, no matter how many Mongolic languages there may be, how do we tell the variants apart? When is it appropriate to disregard the difference, say, of spoken and written language, and when does that difference matter? Here sociolinguistics, pragmatics, discourse structure, and philology meet in a complex consideration of just what we are claiming when we speak of this or that feature of the modern Mongolian language . . . or even just of Khalkha. 1.2. The Non-equivalence of the Written Tenses Why do we claim that there is such a wide gap between the tense systems of spoken Mongolian and written Mongolian? In the spoken language, there is no question that the past tense endings are distinct both in meaning and use. The endings -lee and -jee, as we have shown, are polar opposites. Their opposition in distance from the speech act situation and in evidentiality affects their interpretations, the contexts and genres in which they occur, and restrict elements of their co-text, such as subjects and adverbials, that they occur with. The -v past tense and that in -sen differ from both of these. They are anaphoric, not deictic. They are neutral in evidentiality, though neutrality in this case means, effectively, non-evidential. Only in distality do they truly resemble either of the two.

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But in the written language, it has long been observed that it is far from clear how, or even if, the various past tenses differ. We have seen that the early Western students such as Ramstedt commented on the difficulties of this issue. More recently the claim has been made that at least some of the written tenses are freely interchangeable. Sodnomdorj has said there there is “no difference between the endings.”2 Tserenchunt and Luethy (2006: 108) write, “The [-v] ending can be used in place of the [-lee] ending in writing, and is used for past actions only” and “[i]n many cases, [-sen] can be used in place of [-lee].” If true, this would be a striking difference between the written and spoken languages. The first question then is whether the past tense endings in the written language are differentiated or not. To test this, the “Intuition Test” was used. Sodnomdorj was given a set of written passages drawn from the Internet from which the past tense endings had been removed, and he was asked to fill them in. If the claim was correct that the past tense endings are freely interchangeable, we would expect, all other things being equal, that there would be no preference for any particular ending relative to the original one, that any ending would have a roughly equal chance of being substituted for any of the others or replaced by any of the others. This is not what the results of the Intuition Test revealed (table 5 below). Though this casual, informal test, involving a very small sample of data and only one test subject, cannot be taken as definitive, even given the limited nature of the questions it was intended to answer, it nonetheless is strikingly suggestive. Table 5. Summary of Intuition Test results 3 Original\Replacement

-jee

-jee 11/12 (92%) -lee 3/11 (27%)3 -sen 2/5 (40%) -v 2/3 (67%)

11 2

-lee 3 1 1

-sen

-v

-ne

1 6

3

2 2

2 I am not certain about precisely what he meant by this, for example whether it referred to all the past tenses being interchangeable. 3 Sodnomdorj found -lee and -v equally possible in one case, so the example was counted towards each, explaining the total of 12.

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Most notably, -jee was replaced by -jee in 11 of 12 examples in the text (i.e., 92% of the time). Clearly this ending is distinctive and likely cannot simply be substituted for by one of the other endings. The other ending in which a majority of examples were replaced by the original ending was -v. However, the number of examples was too small in and of itself (only 3) to draw a conclusion from this result. But other evidence suggests that it was no accident (a) that 2 out of 3 examples (67%) were correctly identified, and (b) that in the one case in which it was not, the replacement was -lee, whereas the one nonoriginal replacement of -jee was by -v. The endings -sen and -lee were replaced by themselves only in a minority of cases. But if replacement were truly random, we would expect the correct ending in about 25% of cases, and the remainder would be distributed roughly equally over the remaining choices. But while -lee does occur for itself very close to this 25% of the time (in fact, constituting precisely 25% of the 12 choices), -sen was correctly filled in 40% of the time (i.e., in 2 of the 5 cases). To be sure, the test involved too few samples to reach any statistically significant results, but these numbers are interesting, especially as -jee was filled in for -sen as often as the original -sen was, but -lee was used only once, and -v not at all. Even more interesting are the results for -lee: in 4 of the 11 cases (36%), -v was substituted for -lee, whereas -lee itself was the sole choice in only 2 of the 11 examples (18%)—half as frequently. And in one case, -jee and -v were stated to be equally possible. Fascinatingly enough, -lee was substituted for by the non-past ending -ne 3/11 (27%) of the time, the only one of the endings to be so replaced. These results would seem to call into question the claim that the endings are freely interchangeable. Also supporting non-equivalence of the endings is the following observation by Tserenchunt Legden (p.c., May 26, 2008) regarding the Mongolian Wikipedia article on the Second World War (http:// mn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Дэлхийн_хоёрдугаар_дайн).4

4

The version of the article that I solicited, and received, her opinion on was not the same as the version at the time of writing ( July 27, 2008), but some of the content, including such sentences as (i–ii), has been preserved. These both have -lee-form main verbs, despite the distal, factual context. (In the version of the article current on May 18, 2011, there were a total of 17 sentences ending in -lee.) i. 1939 on.ii 9 sar.iin 1–n.d, Adol’f Gitler ba Natsist nam.aar 1939 year-gen 9 month-gen 1st-dat Adolf Hitler and Nazi party-instr

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I just took a look at the Wikipedia article. . . . In my opinion, if a Mongolian language teacher takes a look at this article, it would have quite many red marks. This article kind of shows a tendency of some languages that pragmatics and grammatics (not semantics) might not coincide. In other words, if a native speaker reads this article, he/she will get the information about the World War II, given that everyone has some kind of background about the World War II. However, many of the [tense] usages are not correct.

If the choice of a past tense were truly random, it would be impossible to declare such tense usages incorrect. As Tserenchunt says in her comments, the problem lies with what is meant by “acceptable,” “grammatical,” or “correct,” or any other term of approbation by which linguists save a sentence from being marked by an asterisk and teachers withhold their “red marks.” The Wikipedia article contains sentences that while informative and hence not semantically ill-formed, strike the native speaker as incorrect on the pragmatic level. And Sodnomdorj’s view that the tenses are interchangeable must be taken as referring to their semantics—after all, they are all past tenses, more or less—since he often commented on the (in)correctness of example sentences, usually from a pragmatic point of view. Hence there is not necessarily a contradiction between, on the one hand, Sodnomdorj’s comment, his intuition that the various past tenses are pretty much the same as one another, and are largely freely interchangeable, and on the other, the results of the “intuition test,” Tserenchunt’s comments on the tenses

udirduul.san Germančuud lead-pfvn Germans nutg.t.aa homeland-dat-rp

Delxii world

negdügeer dain.d ald.san gazar first war-dat lose-pfvn land

erg.üül.j turn-caus-impfc

ava.x take-ifvn

ge.j ... intend-impfc . . .

Pol’š ruu dovtol.loo. Poland towards attack-past ‘On the 1st of September of the year 1939, the Germans, directed by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, invaded Poland . . . with the intention of taking back the land lost in the First World War.’ ii. Yag ene üye.d Gitler gazar doorx Precisely this period-dat Hitler land under 1945 1945

on.ii year-gen

4 4

bairan.d.aa residence-dat-rp

sar.iin 30-n.d šineer month-gen 30th-dat newly

suu.san marry-pfvn

exner Eva Braun.taig.aa xamt amia xorlo.loo. wife E v a Braun-com-rp together with suicide commit-past ‘At precisely this time, Hitler in his underground bunker on the 30th of April in the year 1945 committed suicide with his new bride, Eva Braun.’

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of the Wikipedia article,5 and such comments by Sodnomdorj himself as that in (229a) baijee is used because the places named in the subject of the sentence are “new things,” not previously introduced into the text (in fact, this is the first sentence of the story), while in the sentence following it, (229b), baiv is used because the author “[has] been talking about them.” 229. a. Ter tsagt Dos, Donsar, Lin gurvan otog uls bai.jee. That time-dat Dos Dongor Lin three nation be-past ‘At that time there were three nations, Dos, Donsar, and Lin.’ (http:// www.biirbeh.com/modelues_php?name=News&file=print&sid= 1131; at the present time no longer available.) b. Dos.iin noyon Senlon bai.v. Dos-gen prince Senlon be-past ‘The prince of Dos was Senlon.’

Interesting in light of the results of the Intuition Test reported above are the results of a second test, which appears to tend to support Sodnomdorj’s claim, at least in part. This is the “Reversal Test.” In this test, the endings -jee and -lee were replaced (in a series of short passages extracted from Web pages) by each other, and the speaker was asked to check the passage for unacceptable forms. In the Appendix, the original forms are in parentheses following the underlined changed forms. Sodnomdorj accepted all of the altered forms, failing to note any unacceptable sentences. What the Reversal Test seems to show is that at the very least, the two endings can occur in the same contexts. This in turn suggests that their difference, if any, is most likely not semantic (that is, they do not mean different things), but instead is pragmatic (they are used in different ways, and interpreted differently, relative to a given context). Tense forms that differ in use and interpretation, but not in meaning as such, can compete in the same context. Thus the sentences (230a, b) are both acceptable, and mean pretty much the same thing, but (230c) is of dubious acceptability, and, whatever the grammaticality of (230c), neither (230c) nor (230d) means what (230a, b) do.

5 Many of the tenses in the article contradicted the predictions made by the present work, which is what initially prompted the query that evoked her response.

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230. a. She worked until midnight and I was in bed listening to music waiting for her. (marcusaanna.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_archive.html) b. She was working until midnight and I was in bed listening to music waiting for her. c. would work She until midnight and I was in bed listening to d. had worked music waiting for her.

{

}

A comment is in order at this point on the terms “semantic” and “pragmatic.” Here semantic has been being implicitly identified with tense/aspect and pragmatic with modality. This is of course not necessary. A difference of tenses or aspects could be either semantic or pragmatic, and the same is true where evidential modality is concerned. Semantics has to do with the representation of non-linguistic phenomena, to the applicability of linguistic expressions to aspects of reality, while pragmatics has to do with the use and interpretation of linguistic expressions by a speaker and a listener, or writer and reader, in particular contexts. The difference between the French passé simple and the passé composé in its past tense use is not one of meaning; they are both preterites, that is, past in tense and perfective in aspect. The difference is essentially stylistic, between the spoken and the written language, and the choice of one or the other is determined by factors that belong to sociolinguistics, to stylistics, and to pragmatics, but not to semantics, that is, there is no difference where the two are concerned between their representations of extra-linguistic phenomena. If je chantai is a true sentence, then so is j’ai chanté, and vice-versa. But each is appropriate in its own range of contexts. In a sense, the past tenses of Mongolian differ in their semantics, in that the speaker cannot say bi irjee, if he or she just arrived, without (potentially) triggering false inferences. (In the same way an Englishspeaker who says I have read the newspaper when they mean I read the newspaper is likely, in most contexts, to lead the listener to the false inference that they have just or recently read the newspaper.) But it is not the fact of the speaker having come that is at issue, it is their attitude towards that occurrence, reflected in the modality of that statement. There is a big difference between saying bi irjee when one should say bi irlee, and saying bi irjee when one means bi irne, the meaning of which latter sentence really does bear a semantic difference from that of the former sentence. Since we are principally concerned with intentions, uses, interpretations, and the like, and not with differing

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real-world situations, our account of the tenses belongs in the realm of pragmatics, not that of semantics. So long as that is borne in mind, the “abuse of language” (abus de langage) involved in equating semantics with distinctions of tense and/or aspect and pragmatics with distinctions of modality should occasion no confusion. 1.3. The Language of the Internet and Levels of Usage Because we are claiming that Mongolian is a language with distinct spoken and written grammars, at least where the past tense system is concerned, we must be careful to specify what we mean by “spoken” and “written” in this context, and a bit of elaboration and explanation is in order. First, sometimes speech represents written language, as in public addresses and other scripted speech in various media, and conversely, writing may be the representation or transcription of spoken language, as in dialogue or quotations. Further, writing may employ informal, colloquial language approximating spoken language, either for the purposes of seeming to be speaking, or because there is no concern with formality or the rigid conventionalities of written language. This last case is frequently exhibited by the writing that appears on the Internet. While there are pages, such as Wikipedia articles, news items, and pages of information posted by organizations (government agencies, corporations, non-governmental organizations, etc.) that approximate written documents and may incorporate or even consist of previously written and edited material, there are also pages that incorporate or consist largely or entirely of more or less spontaneous, unedited speech. For all intents and purposes the former are as much examples of written language as are print materials, while the latter are essentially examples of spoken language. We have sampled here numerous examples of both. But especially interesting from this point of view are the impromptu texts, written with little or no planning, organizing, editing or re-writing, and more or less as spontaneous as speech, which are e-mailed, text-messaged, or otherwise communicated, and sometimes posted on the World Wide Web in blogs (especially their associated “comments” sections), forums, chat-room dialogues, and the like. Such texts tend to be characterized by the lower, more informal and colloquial, more “spoken,” registers. The speech of the individual speaker in theory contains different levels of usage, more or less like

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the standard, formal language, and appropriate to different contexts. For example, chatting casually with an intimate tends to discourage use of highly formal language and encourage that of colloquial language, and addressing a public group on a formal occasion has just the opposite effect. In general, the written language tends to be similar to the higher, more formal registers of speech, while casual writing is more like the lower, more informal registers. In extreme cases the higher and lower registers are literally different languages or different dialects. International languages such as English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, etc., are fairly uniform as standard, written languages, but their colloquial spoken dialects are not necessarily mutually intelligible, especially where the lower registers are concerned. For example, some Scots speakers speak a dialect of English in formal settings (perhaps at work or in school ) that is mutually intelligible with English English dialects, but in informal settings speak a dialect which is not mutually intelligible with them. Swiss German uses standard German as its written language, but Swiss German is in general not mutually intelligible with Standard German as spoken in Germany. A quick, informal note or message in Swiss German is possibly written in a very different language from Standard German. Thus when we speak of the written and spoken languages we must be careful to bear two points in mind. First, what we really mean by “written language” is the formal, standard language generally characteristic of written texts and spoken discourses in the higher registers, and by “spoken language” the informal, possibly “ungrammatical” (from the point of view of the standard language) language characteristic of the representation of colloquial speech in writing, and of colloquial, lower-register, speech in actuality, and of quick, spontaneous communications via e-mail, text-messaging, blog-commentating, and the like, and which also may characterize informal, spontaneous writing such as hasty notes. Second, we should also bear in mind that just as the language of one and the same individual, even if a monolingual—a speaker of one dialect of one language—contains a range of different usages, reflecting different registers (so that the same person might say cannot on one occasion and can’t on another), a particular text or discourse may not represent a “pure” type of language, but may combine features of both higher and lower registers, or written and spoken language. The gradient from spontaneous, oral language to graphic, non-spontaneous language is most apparent in Web-based materials, but it exists in

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print materials and recorded materials as well. Characters in a play or film can speak a decidedly non-colloquial language, and characters in a novel are capable of speaking a very colloquial language. The neutral, omniscient narrator (as in Wells’ Invisible Man) writes a rather different language than is “spoken” by Stevenson’s narrators, or written by the children in Aldridge’s epistolary novel The Magnificent Mongolian. The only really distinct feature of the Net is the ability to publish— and to respond to published—materials more or less instantly, even in real time. It allows the immediacy of speech to be approximated in writing. It is interesting to observe the language of the Internet. In some regards it is a third type of language, unlike both speech and writing. This is not surprising, for Web pages mix characteristics of both writing and speech. They may allow for conversation, for dialogue in realtime, that is, instantaneously, but they also allow for the recording and preservation of speech. They allow for both spontaneous, on-the-fly publication, but also for preparatory or remedial editing. And the purposes of their authors, indeed the population forming their authors, is representative neither of the population-as-a-whole, nor of writers-ingeneral, and this is especially the case where Mongolian is concerned, though Internet use is much more widely distributed amongst the Mongolian population than in most other Asian countries, indeed, most countries, period. Expatriates have naturally been active in using the Internet and in creating a new Mongolian language for electronic communication, but even in Mongolia itself foreign languages, principally English, have had a considerable impact on the language used on the Web and to a lesser extent in printed materials. Many of the peculiarities of Internet language do not touch on grammar. The language situation on the Internet, and not only where Mongolian is concerned, is as chaotic and anarchic as the Internet itself, and quite as rich and creative. Most noticeably where Mongolian is concerned, orthography is innovative and informal. The Mongolian version of Cyrillic contains two letters found in few if any other Cyrillic alphabets, namely (ö) and (ü). These are not always readily available in hardware (such as keyboards) or software (such as fonts), so as a result is often replaced by , not normally used in Mongolian, or even by or , which are; is generally replaced by Latin , or by , or very occasionally by Cyrillic , which is also already used in Mongolian. For a language standardly written in a Cyrillic alphabet, the Latin alphabet is surprisingly common in Mongolian Internet usage,

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particularly in blogs, chat rooms, forums, and the like. The transcriptions used are quite different from standard transliterations (such as the one used in this book): for example, where we would represent Cyrillic by x, some might transcribe it as kh, representing IPA /x/, but it is also often represented as h, based presumably on the phonetics (IPA [h]). Umlauts and other diacritics are generally not used—, here č, becomes ch; , here š, becomes sh; , as here, is j, but sometimes zh; , our ü, becomes u or ue; , our ö, is oe, u, or ue; but, as here, both and generally become ii, and both and are i. The letters that combine the yod sound with a vowel—, and are represented usually (as in the present work) as y + vowel. However, e is often simply represented as e.6 These adaptations are natural, given the unschooled and ad hoc nature of the representations chosen, though over time we should expect such representations to converge on an emerging standard and there is some evidence that that is indeed in the process of developing. Nonetheless, to the literate Mongolian eye such passages must appear somewhat uncouth, especially those that follow the practices of textmessages, including extensive use of abbreviations (like bna for baina and blaa for bailaa). On the whole they represent a valiant effort to adapt the Latin alphabet (sans diacritics) to a language with a somewhat different phonemic inventory from English, the major current influence today on language in Mongolia (the Mongolian republic, the former MPR). One obvious effect of the influence of English and other European languages is the use of European and American words and names, phrases, or even fuller expressions, in either the Latin or Cyrillic alphabet. It is hard to find a Web page in Mongolian with any contemporary reference that fails to contain at least some English—whatever language or script the rest of the page may be in. Common words are those from computer jargon (computer, компютер—also компьютер or компъютер; IP; world wide web; Internet or Интернэт), the terminology of the entertainment (film and music) world (alternative, Best Original Song, low angle shot, and the partial loan-translation поп од ‘pop star’),7 commercial business terminology (ATM and banking or

6 For texts in the Latin alphabet with non-standard orthography (i.e., transliteration), see especially examples (231b), (231c), (231g), and (248) below. 7 Od originally meant ‘star’ in the literal, astronomical sense.

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банкинг), and abbreviations for international organizations, corporations, and countries such as UNESCO, RKO, and US. In addition, the names of foreign publications (e.g., Billboard), films and other works of art (Citizen Kane), individuals (Liv Tyler), and companies (Credit Suisse) are often presented in the Latin alphabet, though sometimes transliterated or transcribed into Cyrillic (Лив Тайлор ‘Liv Tyler’, Макс Вебер ‘Max Weber’, Нью-Йорк Таймз ‘New York Times’). Many of these have Mongolian equivalents, and computer, for example, is more likely to occur in a text in Latin alphabet (often written and posted by an expatriate Mongolian in an English-speaking country or a country where English influence is great, such as Korea or Japan) than in a text written in Cyrillic (and in Mongolia), which is more likely to use компьютер. Sometimes both versions appear on the same page, as алтернатив appears, as well as alternative, on the page http://musicstreamnsongs.wordpress.com/2008/02/03/ alternative-rock-music/. And sometimes the foreign term is glossed— or vice-versa: томьёо appears alongside term on that same page. Many Web pages are deliberately written in a colloquial-seeming style intended to read as if the writer were speaking to the reader, and consequently may approximate speech closely, especially as regards its deictic quality. One genre in which this kind of pseudo-oral language prevails is the blog. Commonly written in the first person, blogs generally adopt a spoken style, and even where the blog itself has some pretensions to a literary style, the associated section of comments rarely does. Apart from first-person-centred references such as bi ‘I’, bid ‘we’, minii ‘my’, end ‘here’, ene ‘this’, etc., as well as second-person ta ‘you’, tanii ‘your’, and the like, and deictic temporal references such as önöödör ‘today’ and odoo ‘now’, the language adopts features of speech such as interjections (e.g., za in 231a–b, sometimes, as in 231c, repeated), and pragmatic particles like dee (231d–e), šüü (Cyrillic in 231f, Latin shuu in 231b), and šüü dee (231g). Texts may also include emphatic forms, such as bolnoo in (231h) and tiimee (231i). Such features serve to lend lend a personal, rather than impersonal, quality to texts.8

8 The translations in (231) are those of Tserenchunt Legden, showing the interpretations of the passages by a native speaker. The glosses are mine.

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231. a. За асуулт.ууд.ад чинь хариул.ъя Дѳлѳѳ. OK question-pl-dat your answer-vol Dölöö (http://bolorcms.com/badaa/index.php?/archives/31–OpenOffice .html) ‘Dölöö! Let me answer your questions.’ b. Za nuguu [nögöö] Choinom guai.n OK that Choinam Mr.-gen Teneg.uud.iin [Teneg.üüd.iin] fool-pl-gen dund among

... ...

ge.deg say-habvn

shig [šig] like

sana.gda.j think-pass-impfc

bai.na shuu [šüü]. be-pres modp (http://bolorcms.com/badaa/index.php?/archives/31–OpenOffice .html) ‘It seems like Choinyam’s “Among the fools”.’ c. Za za iim balai myyxai [muuxai] um [yum] OK OK such stupid bad thing bai.x.gvi [bai.x.güi] be-ifvn-neg bi I

bailgvidee [bailgüi dee] likely-modp

byyryych [buruu č] wrong-modp

xerbee [xervee] in case

oilgo.j grasp-impfc

byryy [buruu] wrong

tvi tvi9 phooey phooey

bai.j be-impfc

oilgo.j grasp-impfc

magadgvi possibly

bai.bal [bai.val] be-condc

uuchilal xvc.ie [xüs.’e]. pardon request- [‘request pardon’ = ‘apologize’] (http://mglclub.com/data/view.php?id=zaluus&page=59&sn1= &divpage=1 &sn=off&ss=on&sc=on&select_arrange=hit&desc= asc&no=21) ‘All right, I hope there is no such thing. Maybe I am misunderstanding. I am sorry if I am misunderstanding.’ d. Ингэ.ж бич.жээ манай сайт.аар ч Do like this-impfc write-past our site-instr modp ор.ж ир.дэг.гүй л дээ. enter-impfc come-habvn-neg modp modp (http://blogmn.net/xvv/2008/1/10956/Санал%20нэг%20байна.html) ‘It was written like this. It does not come through our website.’

9 The on-line English/Mongolian dictionary www.bolor-toli.com glosses tüi as ‘faugh’ or ‘pshaw’ (= phooey or phui).

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chapter three e. Бугдээрээ хамтр.аад all unite-pfc

энэ this

нэг a

томоохон big

тѳслийг project-acc

дуусга.чих.вал бидний ирээдүй.д мѳн finish-čix-condc our future-dat very10

ч их modp very

хэрэгтэй дээ. necessary modp (http://bolorcms.com/badaa/index.php?/archives/31–OpenOffice .html) ‘If we work together and finish this project then it will be really beneficial for our future.’ f. Тийм11 шуу. So modp (http://bolorcms.com/badaa/index.php?/archives/31–OpenOffice .html) ‘I agree.’ g. Тэгээд ч манайхан нэг юм гарга.чих.аад Do thus-pfc modp our people a thing bring out-čix-pfc сайжруул.аад improve-pfc

явдаг running

тохиолдол ч бай.х.гуй шуу occasion modp be-ifvn-neg modp

дээ. modp (http://bolorcms.com/badaa/index.php?/archives/31–OpenOffice .html) ‘Our people also do not improve and develop further when they invent something.’ h. тэгээ тэг. бусда.д хэрэг бол.ж бай.вал really do so-imp other-dat useful become-impfc be-conc ашигла.ж бол.н.оо.12 use-impfc become-pres-emphp (http://oluul.blogspot.com/2007/04/blog-post.html) ‘Yes, go ahead. You can use it if it is useful to other people.’

10 Mön is difficulty to interpret (and to translate) here. It usually means ‘also’ or ‘the same’. Here the intended meaning is perhaps the sense of ‘the very thing, the heart of the matter’ that it has in the expression mön čanar ‘anima, being, essence, kernel, marrow, nature, oneself, pith, point, self, soul, spirit’. 11 Tiim and tiimee are often used simply to mean ‘yes.’ 12 ‘Become’ also means ‘be becoming, be proper, be all right’.

past tenses in the written language i.

129

Тийм.ээ. So-emphp (http://bolorcms.com/badaa/index.php?/archives/31OpenOffice .html)13 ‘Yes! Yes!’

In the following example (232), the emphatic vee, the postposed pronoun, the laconic, verbless style, all mimic speech. 232. Юу в.ээ чи!!!!!! What qp-emphp you ‘Who do you think you are!’

(http://enhbaatar.dot.mn/)

While the language of Web pages does exhibit some grammatical— specifically, syntactic—peculiarities, to some extent these simply follow from characteristics inherited from speech. Thus on the one hand we find sometimes a sequence of short, somewhat disjointed, sentences, as in example (i) in note 18 on p. 71, or (231c) above, a characteristically spoken style, or the equivalent of a run-on sentence. In a generally paratactic language like English, a run-on sentence consists of sentences and/or sentence fragments loosely glued together in some way, for example: And, just as Apple blew it with the word ‘book’ (Powerbook led to Macbook because they didn’t own the word power—IBM made them change it when the processor was changed—which led others using netbook, which they don’t own at all), they can’t own the word Pad either. (http:// sethgodin.typepad.com/all_marketers_are_liars/)

In a largely hypotactic language like Mongolian, the tendency is to create long sentences by use of embedded subordinate clauses headed by a converb, or transformed into verbal nominals headed by a verbal noun. These can achieve considerable length in speech, so long as the structuring is not too complex. Probably an example of this sort of sentence is this sequence from example (320), here with a rough translation: Bagšiin surguul’d xuviarlagdaad1 baij2 baital3 ter üyed Bügd Nairamdax odoo Mongol Ulsiin said nariin tušaal garč4, ofitsyeriin surguul’ gedgiig, surguuliig šineer baiguulan5 1943 onii 9 saraas exlen6 xičelüülexeer bolson iim üye baisan7. Bi ter üyed, bagšiin surguul’d orox xuviar aa . . . yosoor 13 This particular source is no longer available, but examples with this utterance are readily available on the Web—for example (as of May 20, 2011), on http://www.ehealth.mn/index.php?task=read_content&content_id=1129.

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chapter three bagšiin surguul’d očilgüigeer šüüd ofitsyeriin surguul’d očij8 suraltsaxaar bolj9, tend očij10 bürtgüülj11 bailaa12. Meanwhile2–3, having been assigned1 to the teachers’ school, at that time a decree came out4 from the People’s Republic—present-day Mongolian Republic—ministry, establishing5 a new school, the officers’ school, which was7 to offer classes, starting6 in September 1943. I at that time, the teachers’ school entrance quota, uh . . . so I did not go to the teachers’ school and going8 straight to the officers’ school, went there10 and was12 enrolled11 and started9 studying.

Here the converbs have been underlined, and the sentence-heading verbs underlined and put in italics. The seven independent clauses of the English translation accompanying (320) translate just two structures headed by finite verbs (here numbered 12 and 7, the latter formed with -sen). But what about the past tense system? Specifically, do we simply find written usage, similar to that in print materials, when the medium is used to reproduce or publish what are essentially written materials, and correspondingly, find spoken usage, similar to that in spontaneous speech, when the medium is used to reproduce or publish unpolished, unedited utterances, as if visual tape-recordings? Or is there a distinct style that is evolving, or has evolved, on the Internet? In the first chapter of this book, the issue of the distinct characters of spoken, written, and “media” languages barely arose, because the grammatical tradition takes a rather unsophisticated view of what is a language as rich and complicated as any—Mongolian. But, as noted earlier, it is naïve to speak of the Mongolian, even of the Khalkha, language. Recent grammars such as the one by Kullmann and Tserenpil and textbooks such as the set by Tserenchunt and Luethy have gone a long way towards recognizing and noting differences between varieties of the language, and limitations on uses of forms in one style or another. The second chapter of the present book largely ignored the issue and assumed that one could use print materials to reveal things about speech, and that there was no difference between asking a native speaker of Mongolian to perform tasks involving written language and asking him or her to perform ones involving speech. It should be clear by now that there are dangers in that approach. It obscures the linguistic realities, for not only do the past tenses not work in written Mongolian the way the traditional grammars claim, or imply, that they do, but they don’t work in written Mongolian the way they do in Mongiolian speech, either. Notice, for example, that

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-lee, can, and does, freely occur in sentences like (235–236), neither of which provides a context that supports a proximal or an evidential reading. There have been presented here examples in which -jee can hardly be inferential or mirative and in which it is clear that the writer is presenting the statement as factual and presumably is confident of its veracity (16). As well, the apparent evidentiality of -sen in speech (146) contrasts with its rather different, non-evidential, uses in writing (233–234). 16. Dašdorjiin Natsagdorj 1906 on.d tör.jee. (Yatskovskaya 1976: 8) Dashdorjiin Natsagdorj 1906 year-dat be born-past ‘Dashdorjiin Natsagdorj was born in 1906.’ 146. Bi Xyatad.iin Šandun muj.iin Čefü I China-gen Shandong province-gen Chefu xotn.oo city-rp

1897 on.ii 1897 year-gen

8 8

sar.iin month-gen

8-n.d 8th-dat

tör.j, be born-impfc

tendx.iin Angli of there-gen English

süm.d zagalmailuul.san. church-dat baptize-past (Нэрт монголч эрдэмтэн Николас Поппегийн дурадгал [1–4–р бγлэг],14 http://www.maranata.mn/index.php?option=com_ content&task=view &id=2533&Itemid=127) ‘I was born in Chefu city in Shantung province of China on the 8th of August of [the year] 1897 and was baptized in the English church.’ 233. Šyekspir 1564 on.d tör.sön. (Altangerel 1998: 40, column a) Shakespeare 1564 year-dat be born-past ‘Shakespeare was born in 1564.’ 234. 1886–1894 1886–1894

on.d year-dat

(17–25 nas) 17–25 age

Setsenxan Setsenkhan

aimg.iin aimag-gen

Erdenedalai Erdenedalai

xošuun.ii banner-gen

tamgiin gazar.t office-dat

Xalx.iin Khalkha-gen vang-iin prince-gen

büten 8 full 8

jil year

jinxene bičeeč.eer ajilla.san. true clerk-instr work-past (http://www.mongolinternet.com/famous/MagsarHurts.htm)

14

‘Memoires of the famous Mongolist scholar, Nicholas Poppe (chapters 1–4)’.

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chapter three ‘From 1886 to 1894 (ages 17–25) he worked for a full 8 years as a clerk in the office of the banner of Prince Erdenedalai of the Setsenxan aimag of Khalkha.’

235. Dašdorj Dashdorj

Avtonomit Autonomous

mongol.iin tserg.iin Mongolia-gen army-gen

yaaman.d bičeeč.eer ajilla.j bai.laa. Department-dat clerk-instr work-impfc be-past (Yatskovskaya1976: 13) ‘Dashdorj was working as a clerk in the War Department of Autonomous Mongolia.’ 236. Dün Čan boomt xüre.xe.d Xyatad.iin tsereg Dun Chan port reach-ifvn-dat China-gen soldier uul.iig bürxe.j bai.laa. mountain-acc cover-impfc be-past ‘When he came to the port of Dun Chan, the mountains were covered with Chinese soldiers.’ (Saruul-Erdene 2004: 102)

2. The Past Tenses in Writing 2.1. Written -v The most apparent difference between the past tenses in speech and those in writing concerns the use of -v, which in speech is largely restricted to “normal” questions, and there generally functions as the equivalent of -lee. It is quite otherwise in writing, where -v is quite common in statements. It is the tense of the main verb in 11 of the first 50 sentences of the text in Saruul-Erdene (2004). Of the first 50 sentences (outside of dialogue) in Sengee’s story Ayuuš (1961) 10 have a main verb in -v. All three sentences in reading #5 (from the newspaper Ünen) in Montgomery’s Reader (1969) end in -v. Furthermore, in questions in written texts, -v does not necessarily presuppose proximality, and the answer or response is, unlike the response to -v questions in speech, not necessarily in the -lee tense. However, some published examples in which the reply to a -v question uses -v in the answer are questionable. China Radio International posted a Web page containing the dialogue in (237). Likewise Bosson’s Modern Mongolian contains the dialogues in (238–239), and a page intended for Russian speakers translates as in (240).

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237. Ene buuz.iig xen xii.v? Bid xii.sen yum. This buuz-acc who make-past we make-pfvn copp (mongol.cri.cn/21/2004/11/04/[email protected]) ‘Who made this dumpling?—We did.’ 238. Ta You (plural)

xaan.aas where-abl

ire.v? come-past

Bid We

surguuli.as school-abl

ire.v. (Bosson 1964: 51) come-past ‘Where did you come from?—We came from school.’ 239. Ta You (plural) Bid We

tsöm all

xaan.aas where-abl

ire.v? come-past

Amyerikiin Negdsen Uls.aas United States of America-abl

ire.v. (Bosson 1964: 51) come-past ‘Where did you come from?—We all came from the usa.’ 240. a. Xen ire.v? Dulmaa ire.v. who come-past Dulmaa come-past « Kto prijexal? Dulma prijexal. » (http://predistoria.org/index.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p =7871) ‘Who came? Dulmaa came.’ b. Bat xezee ire.v? Bat önöödör ire.v. Bata when come-past Bata today come-past « Kogda prijexal Bat? Segodnja Bat prijexal. » (http://predistoria.org/index.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p =7871) ‘When did Bata come? Bata came today.’

In archaic or quasi-archaic language, a -v question may also evoke an answer in -v, as in (241), part of a story about the legendary Geser Khan. 241. Šamba Meruz (Xar gert xaan) oxin.d.oo Shamba Meruz (Black yurted khan) daughter-dat-rp uurla.j flare up-impfc yavdl.iig act-acc id.tel eat-termc

dongodo.v: rebuke-past

sura.v learn-past xaana where

či? you

“Yaasan never Öglöön.ii Morning

yava.v či?” go-past you

alia naidangui wanton envy gurvan idee three meal

ge.v. Čoimson gua say-past Choimson gua

134

chapter three xele.v: say-past bilee. copp

“Bulag.t fountain-dat Bulag fountain

udgan fortune-teller

min’ my

una.j fall-impfc

naada.j oči.j play-impfc go-impfc [genet] üyerle.j suddenly overflow-impfc üxev. Tüün.ii yas.iig see-past that-gen bone-acc

er.j search for-impfc uda.v bid” ge.v. stay-past we say-past (http://www.asuult.net/ihtuuh/geser/5021.html) “Shamba Meruz (Black yurted khan) flared up and rebuked his daughter; he said: ‘Where did you learn such a wanton act of envy? Where did you go during the three morning meals?” Choimson gua said, “I went to play by the fountain; my fountain suddenly overflowed and the fortune-teller fell down and looked. We stayed searching for the bones.”

But even in more colloquial, non-literary language, there are signs that a question in this form may not be restricted to the proximal. In (242), ta yuu xiiv ‘what did you do?’ seems to parallel yuu xiij čadsan ve ‘what could you [= were you able to] do?’. 242. ex Mother bi I

neg a

orn.ii country-gen

xii.v? do-past

ix ex oron č xün biš great mother country modp person not

ge.x.d.ee say-ifvn-dat-rp neeltei openly

tölöö! ta yuu for the good you (plural) what

tav’.ya. put-vol15

bi neg asuult ta büxn.ii dund I a question you (plural) all-gen amongst ta ex bolson Mongol orn.iix.oo you (plural) original Mongol country-gen-rp

tölöö yuu xii.j čad.san ve? for the good what do-impfc can-pfvn qp (http://ask.banjig.net/question.php?q_id=1998) ‘For the good of the mother country! What did you do? When you say, “I am not a person from a great mother country,” I have a question to openly put to you. What could you do for the good of the mother country you came from originally?’

15

Also called the first person imperative. The sense is roughly ‘I want to’ or ‘let me’.

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Questions in -v, other than in quotations and dialogue, are quite uncommon in writing. But this ending is by no means uncommon in written statements. It is common in narratives (243). When used in statements, it apparently functions like -sen, either occurring in contexts where elsewhere -sen occurs, or alternating with -sen in one and the same context. For example, there are chronologies in -sen (e.g., 244), others in -v (245), and ones that alternate between the two (246). The meanings of -sen and -v in such contexts seem to be much the same, if not precisely the same. And it is clear from these and other examples (such as 145, 247) that -v in texts is by no means limited to the recent past or to evidential statements. 145. Baigal’ orčin, xödöögiin xögjliin baingiin xoroonii 2003 onii 1 dügeer sariin 7-nii ödriin (Myagmar garig) xuraldaan 10 tsag 10 minutad Töriin ordnii V tanximd exlev. Xuraldaaniig baingiin xoroonii darga Š. Gungaadorj neej, irts, xeleltsex asuudliig taniltsuulav. Xuraldaand irvel zoxix 18 gišüün.ees 17 gišüün ir.j, 94.4 xuviin irtstei baiv. ‘The January 7th, 2003 (Tuesday) meeting of the Standing Committee on Nature, Environment, and Rural Development began at 10:10 in Hall “B” of the State House. Š. Gungaadorj, chairperson of the Standing Committee, opened the meeting and presented attendance and the agenda. 17 of the 18 members attending, attendance was 94.4%.’ 243. Tsagaan Sum’yaa white Monday

ödr.iin öglöo üür.eer, day-gen morning dawn-instr

Mill.iig bos.oo.güi Milly-acc get up-impfvn-neg Xoll Hall Ter that

boso.j get up-impfc

bai.xa.d be-ifvn-dat

zoorin.d.oo cellar-dat-rp

er male

sem quietly

öröön.öös room-abl

Tiišee Towards there lonx.oo bottle-rp

mart.san.aa forget-pfvn-rp

Xoll Hall avgai Mrs.

or.son enter-pfvn

avčra.x.iig bring-ifvn-acc avgai Mrs.

xeregt business

Xoll Hall

bai.san be-pfvn

bolo.x.oor become-ifvn-instr

nuuts ajil.tai secret work-com

xoin.oo after-rp

untlag.iinx.aa sleeping-gen-rp

xoyoul the two together

sana.v. think-past

dadamgai familiar

em xoër female two

oro.v. enter-past

xoër pivon.iix.oo čanar.iig üze.x two beer-gen-rp quality-acc see-ifvn

bai.laa. be-past

šivegčin servant

gol main

lonxon.d bottle-dat

Ug root

zor’.son aim-pfvn

xün person nöxör n’ companion her

136

chapter three yava.x go-ifvn

bolo.v. Tüün.iig šatn.ii become-past That-acc stairs-gen

oč.tol go-termc yal’güi ajar

nögöö other

giičn.ii guest-gen

ongorxoi open-ifvn

gaix.jee. be surprised-past öröön.d room-dat šile.n select-modc Butsa.j return-impfc xaalgan.ii door-gen

or.j; enter-impfc lonx.oo bottle-rp yav.tal go-termc tügjee bolt

öröön.ii room-gen

bai.x.iig be-ifvn-acc Xoll Hall

talbai place

deer in

üüd door

xar.aad look at-pfc

tsašaa further

untlag.iinx.aa sleeping-gen-rp

bii there is

ge.sen say-pfvn

gazr.aas n’ place-abl his

ol.j ava.v. find-impfc take-past n’ the

gadaa outside

tailaastai unfastened

zövxön only

on’slootoi latched

baig.aa.g xara.v. (Vells 1979: 28f.) be-impfvn-acc see-past Now it happened that in the early hours of Whit-Monday, before Millie was hunted out for the day, Mr. Hall and Mrs. Hall both rose and went noiselessly down into the cellar. Their business there was of a private nature, and had something to do with the specific gravity of their beer. They had hardly entered the cellar when Mrs. Hall found she had forgotten to bring down a bottle of sarsparilla from their joint-room. As she was the expert and principal operator in this affair, Hall very properly went upstairs for it. On the landing he was surprised to see that the stranger’s door was ajar. He went on into his own room and found the bottle as he had been directed. But returning with the bottle, he noticed that the bolts of the front door had been shot back, that the door was in fact simply on the latch. (H. G. Wells, The Invisible Man, chapter 6) 244. 8 sar.iin 31-n.d 8 month-gen 31st-dat

bol.son üil yavdal happen-pfvn event

‘Events which took place on the 31st of August’ 1302 on.d: Frants ba Sitsilüüd xoorondoo 1302 year-dat France and Sicilians between šašn.ii dain.iig zogso.x.oor toxirolts.son. religion-gen war-acc stop-ifvn-instr agree-past ‘1302: France and the Sicilians agreed to stop their war of religion.’ 1674 1674

on.d: year-dat

Rod-Ailenda.d Rhode Island-dat

/ANU/ Indiančuuda.d (USA) Indian people-dat

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137

arxi xudalda.x.iig xoriglo.son. liquor sell-ifvn-acc prohibit-past ‘1674: In Rhode Island (usa) they prohibited selling liquor to Indians.’ (a portion of the chronology at http://edu.olloo.mn/modules.php?name= Todaynews&mm=08)16 245. 710 Niislel xot.iig Nara ruu šiljüüle.v. 710 capital city-acc Nara to move-past ‘710. They moved the capital to Nara.’ 752 752

Todaiji Tadaiji

süm temple

dex of

Ix Great

Budda.g Buddha-acc

bütee.j duusa.v. erect-impfc finish-past ‘752. They finished erecting the Great Buddha of the Todaiji Temple.’ 794 Niislel xot.iig Kioto ruu šiljüüle.v. 794 capital city-acc Kyoto to move-past ‘794. They moved the capital to Kyoto.’ (A portion of a chronology of Japanese history at http://www.mn.embjapan.go.jp/mn/japan_info/explore_japan/history.htm). 246. 1206 on — Činggis xaan Mongol.iin tal xeer.iig 1206 year Genghiz khan Mongolia-gen steppes-acc negtge.j, Mongol.iin ezent gürn.iig bai.guula.v. unite-impfc Mongolia-gen imperial power-acc be-caus-past ‘1206—Uniting the Mongolian steppelands, Chinggis Khan founded the Mongolian empire.’ 1240 on — Mongol.iin nuuts tovč.oo biči.gd.sen. 1240 year Mongolia-gen secret history-rp write-pass-past ‘1240—The Secret History of the Mongols was written.’ 1368 on 1368 year

— Yuan’ Yuan

mongolčuud Mongolian people

güren möxö.j empire collapse-impfc

uuguul native

nutag.t.aa homeland-dat-rp

butsa.j return-impfc

ire.v. come-past ‘1368—The Yuan dynasty collapsed and the Mongols returned to their native land.’ 1691 on — Ar Mongol Čin güren.d dagaar or.son. 1691 year Outer Mongolia Qing empire-dat capitulate to-past ‘1691—Outer Mongolia capitulated to the Ching empire.’

16

The translations are mine.

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chapter three (A portion of the chronology [On toolol] from the article http://mn .wikipedia.org/wiki/Монгол_γндэстэн.)17

247. Tomas Al’va Edison Thomas Alva Edison 11 11

— 1931 — 1931

n’ the

am’dral.iig life-acc

neeltüüld.iig discoveries-acc

(1847 1847

on.ii year-gen

on.ii 10 year-gen 10 xamgiin most

2 sar.iin 2 month-gen

sar.iin 18) month-gen 18)

ixeer xyalbarčil.san greatly simplify-pfvn

xii.sen make-pfvn

anu-iin USA-gen

zoxion büteegč, biznismen bai.v. inventor businessman be-past (“Tomas Al’va Edison”, http://mn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Томас_Альва_ Эдисон) ‘Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847—October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life. . . .’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison)

2.2. -sen and -sen baina So far little has been said here concerning combinations such as -sen yum and -sen baina. The pragmatics of these complexes has to date received little attention by grammarians and linguistic scholars, and consequently are bound to be poorly understood by the non-native speaker. For a long time, I assumed that predicative -sen was either an optional short form of -sen bai-, or that the two differed in regard to aspect. This misapprehension on my part was due to three causes. First, participles used as predicates co-occur with a copula in many languages (as in French: il est venu ‘he has come’, literally ‘he is come’), and in some of those languages a copula is either optionally or obligatorily deleted, at least in the present tense. Since Mongolian readily deletes copulas and allows verb-less sentences like (248), it seemed natural to assume that -sen is a short form of -sen baina.

17

The translations are mine.

past tenses in the written language

139

248. Tiimee BI MONGOL xvn. Yes I Mongolian person (http://mglclub.com/-data/view.php?id=Yaruu_nairag&page=9 &sn1=&divpage=1 &sn=off&ss=on&sc=on&select_arrange=hit& desc=desc&no=1553)18 ‘Yes! I [am a] MONGOLIAN person.’

The second cause was that in many languages a participle combined with some form of ‘be’ (or ‘have’) forms a periphrastic (complex) tense marker. Thus if -sen and -sen baina differ, it might be similar to the difference between the perfect tenses formed with ‘have’ and a perfect participle, as opposed to the simple past, which is a difference of tense, but also of aspect. There is also the example of what used to be called Black English:19 “The most distinguishing feature of [Afro-American Vernacular English] is the use of forms of be to mark aspect in verb phrases. The use or lack of a form of be can indicate whether the performance of the verb is of a habitual nature.” (Wikipedia, “African American Vernacular English,” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ African_American_Vernacular_English) Compare the sentences in (249). 249. a. He workin’. ‘He is working (currently).’ He be workin’. ‘He works frequently or habitually.’ [“Better illustrated with ‘He be workin’ Tuesdays.’”]

The final reason for my false assumption is that predicative -sen and the -sen bai- construction have often been linked in textbooks and grammars. Street (1963: 155) explicitly treats -sen as the result of copula deletion: “When [baina] occurs immediately after an adjectival complement ending in one of the participial particles [i.e., suffixes] [-x, -sen, -deg, or -ee] . . ., the omission of [baina] is virtually obligatory” and he offers the example (250), for which he also offers the literal gloss ‘he [is] having gone to his own work.” Poppe (1955: 174) invites the same conclusion where the written language in vertical script is concerned when he writes of the perfect participle, the nomen perfecti, 18 Latin alphabet in the original, spelt as given here. Capitalization is as in the original. This page is no longer available, but (in Cyrillic) Tiimee, bi mongol xün is quite common, e.g., at http://aminayalguu.blog.gogo.mn/read/entry28753 (retrieved May 20, 2011). 19 “. . . Black English Vernacular is characterised by the absence of the copula: You sure ugly, He gone.” (http://www.planetpapers.com/Assets/4757.php)

140

chapter three

that it “occurs with the finite forms of the verbs a- ‘to be’ and bayi‘to be’ and the defective verbs bui ‘is’, bolai ‘is’, and bülüge ‘was’,” and offers the examples in (251). 250. Ter ajildaa javsan. ‘He has gone to work.’ 251. a. iregsen amui ‘He has come.’ b. ükügsen bui ‘He has died.’ c. törögsen bülüge ‘He was born.’

Kullmann and Tserenpil (1996: 195) say that “[u]sually aspects are built with aspect suffixes. . . . But aspects can be built using analytical verb forms [which are] built using the auxiliary verb [bai-].” They gloss both Ter untčixsan baina and Ter untčixaad baina, this latter constructed with the perfect converb, as ‘He [sic] has slept.’ 2.3. -jee and -sen baina One of the earliest accounts to clearly differentiate the -sen bai- construction from predicative -sen is that of Tserenchunt and Luethy (2005: 92), who say that the “Unknown [inferential]20 Past Tense has two forms of expression,” one of which is -sen baina. Of -jee, they say there that “[i]t is used much like [-sen baina]. The [-sen] carries the feeling of ‘finished’, and [baina] of ‘now’; together they create the sense of just now finding out about a past action.” Sodnomdorj observed of (252) that “-san baina is better, but [provides the] same information;21 -san baina [is] better than -san.” 252. Anx beginning

1920 1920

on.d ax düü year-dat brothers

xоёr two

“Dasser broters” ge.deg püüs baiguulјee.22 “Dasser brothers” call-habvn store be-caus-past ‘The “Dasser Brothers” store was established at the beginning of 1920.’

Sodnomdorj also said of (253) that oruuljee in this example equals, and could be replaced by, oruuulsan bajna, but not by *oruuulsan.

20

Contrasted by Tserenchunt with the “Known” (evidential) past tense in -lee. The same information as -jee, that is. 22 Example from the Internet, but the source is unknown and is no longer available on-line, though it continues to appear in search results. 21

past tenses in the written language 253. Tereer He tednii their xamtaar jointly

ard irged.ee folk-rp xool food

gar hand

xüns food

aravt, tenth,

141

tereg, cart

bolo.x become-ifvn

zuut, hundredth,

mal sürg.iin livestock herd-gen

myangat.iin thousandth-gen

tserg.iin zoxion baiguulaltan.d or.uul.jee. army-gen control-dat enter-caus-past ‘He put the people’s hand carts and food herds jointly under the control of the army.’

Sodnomdorj commented of unšsan baina that it had “almost the same meaning as” unšjee in (148), and Tserenchunt has confirmed that “the [-jee] ending is interchangeable with [-sen baina]” (Tserenchunt, personal communication, June 1, 2007). But according to Sodnomdorj, there are some differences between the two. 148. Bi bagadaa ene nomiig {unš.laa/unš.jee/unš.san}. ‘I read this book when I was small.’

One important difference claimed by Sodnomdorj for the two is that -sen baina is a written form, whereas -jee is better in speech, and he suggests that the spoken equivalent of -sen baina is -čixsen. Of course, -čixjee also occurs in speech. In regard to Poppe’s example (15), he says that “nar garčixsan is better when speaking; nar garsan [is] better when writing.” 15. nar garč ‘the sun rose’ (Poppe 1970: 131)

Tserenchunt, on the contrary, claims that “-jee/chee is [the] more formal and written form” (p.c., June 1, 2007), “[s]o I would say the best way of [translating ‘Shakespeare was born in Stratford’] is ‘Shakespeare Stratford hotod tuerjee’.”23 If there are differences in the status of the two as regards register or media of use, they require further research to determine. Not only do both -sen baina (258) and -sen yum (254)24 occur in writing, but 23

In my transcription, xotod törjee. Although this example is from a Web page, there are numerous examples in print sources, for example in Austin’s Reader. 24

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so does -jee (255–256). The -jee past, of course, occurs in speech. But so do -sen baina (3b) and -sen yum (237, 259). In written non-fiction, -jee may well be the most frequently used of these forms. In the first three pages of the text of Gongor’s book (1970), for example, 9 of the 21 full sentences (exclusive of those in quotations) end in -jee, none end in -sen, -v, or -lee at all, and only one ends in -sengüi. Similarly, in the first three text pages of Sandag (1967), 5 of the 39 sentences end in -jee, one ends in -sen, and two in -sen baina. None of -v, -lee, or -sen yum are used there. Obviously the choice of endings is sensitive to genre: in the last reading of unit 18 of Austin et al. (1963), taken from the newspaper Ünen, of the 14 sentences, one ends in -sen baina, one in -sen yum, and two in -v; but none end in -jee. 3b. Xugarsan baina. ‘It’s broken.’ (Sanders and Ireedüi 1999: 191) 237. Ene buuz.iig xen xii.v? Bid xii.sen This buuz-acc who make-past We make-pfvn (mongol.cri.cn/21/2004/11/04/[email protected]) ‘Who made this dumpling?—We did.’ 254. Edgeer These

programm.uud n’ mergejiltn.üüd.iin program-pl topic professional-pl-gen

yum. copp

züg.ees direction-abl

öndör ünelelt av.san yum. appreciation take-pfvn copp (www.stormpages.com/speaker/about_mon.html) ‘These programmes are appreciated by professionals.’ 255. Etseg Jon Šyekspir n’ Father John Shakespeare his

fyermyer farmer

ge.gč call-agvn

angl.iin English-gen

tariačin xün bai.jee. (Sandag 1967: 68) farmer person be-past ‘His father John Shakespeare was a “farmer.” ’ 256. Tavxan Just five

xonog.iin day-gen

tserg.iin soldier-gen

zövxön just

dotor within

daisn.ii enemy-gen

Byeloruss.iin Belorussia-gen

77 77

myangan thousand

3-dugaar third

front front

ba Baltiin negdügeer front.iin tsereg sönöö.jee. and Baltic first front-gen army destroy-past (Austin et al. 1963: 126, from Ünen, July 3, 1944) ‘Within just five days they destroyed 77,000 enemy soldiers just on the Belorussian third front and the Baltic first front.’ 257. “. . . Üun.ees this-abl

üze.xe.d see-ifvn-dat

zarim some

neg a

ryestoran.ii restaurant-gen

past tenses in the written language ajil work

č modp

autsorsing outsourcing

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xii.j do-impfc

boloxoorgüi züil biš bololtoi” . . . . (Friidman 2007: 49) impossible thing not apparently . . . Even some restaurant jobs, it seems, are not immune to outsourcing. (Friedman 2007: 40) 258. V. Barimt V. fact negen one

n’ topic

üye time

Xereid.iin Van Khereid-gen king

Mergede.d Merged-dat

xan khan

Tooril Tooril

olzlo.gdo.j capture-pass-impfc

budaa grain

nüde.j yav.san bai.na. (Gongor 1970: 97) beat-impfc go-pfvn be-pres ‘V. Khereid’s khan, King Tooril, one time went beating grain and was captured by the Merged.’ 259. Sue Sue

az jargal.güi happiness-without

bai.v. be-past

Tereer aimšigt She terrible

osol accident

bolo.x.iig nüd.eer.ee xar.san yum. occur-ifvn-acc eye-instr-rp watch-pfvn copp ‘Sue was unhappy. She witnessed a terrible accident.’

The ending -jee is used both in speech and in writing, and is interchangeable, and nearly synonymous, if not completely synonymous, with the complex -sen baina. But as we suggested above, Sodnomdorj claimed another difference between -sen baina and -jee, namely that -sen baina has a sense of something someone was told (hearsay), whereas -jee could either convey hearsay or something that one “figured out” (inference). Thus if Dr. Watson concluded that “the butler did it”, he would more appropriately use xiijee than xiisen baina. In regard to (260) as a response to the question “Excuse me, when was the meeting?,” too, Sodnomdorj commented that the speaker “[heard] from someone else.” 260. Öčigdör bol.son Yesterday become-pfvn ‘It was yesterday.’

bai.na. be-pres

In the case of -čixsen, to express hearsay, gene is required (as in 261), inviting the inference that -čixsen by itself does not express hearsay.

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261. Gar.čix.san ge.ne. “someone told you” Go away-čix-pfvn say-pres ‘They say he/she/they went.’

These examples raise a number of questions. Are -jee and -sen baina freely interchangeable, or do they differ somewhat in either meaning or use? What is the meaning of -čix, when may (or must) it be used, and does the difference between bolčixson bajna/bolčixjee on the one hand, and bolson baina on the other, turn only on the absence or presence of -čix?25 There are two further questions regarding -jee as well. First, why is it commonly found in at least some historical accounts, but not in at least some journalism? That is, why and how is its use sensitive to genre? And what is the relationship of written -jee to spoken -jee: are they used in the same way, or do they, like written and spoken -v, differ in some way? There are several clues that in fact they do differ. In speech, -jee is inferential (148) or mirative (114: the speaker had just found Bill dead). In writing, it seems, rather, to present a fact, an “objective” statement about a state of affairs, much as we have seen -sen acting in spoken sentences such as (115). Where a sentence in -v could perhaps often be characterized as about an occurrence, a sentence in -jee would seem to be about a state or situation. It seems appropriate in the former case to use an anaphoric tense and in the latter a deictic one. But in writing, there is a difference between present-oriented sentences (114, 118, 148), which essentially state what is a fact and relate a past occurrence to the present as something which happened, and those oriented to a reference time other than the utterance time (150, 255), which present a circumstance that relates to another eventuality; for example, in (150), at the time that the speaker or writer came, the brother was gone, had already gone, as the English translation indicates.

25

Tserenchunt comments (p.c., October, 2008) that -čix “is an aspect[ual] suffix which adds the meaning of completeness or unexpectedness. Its function is expressive.” Useful as this observation is, it leaves open a number of questions. Can it always add either of these two meanings, and if not, under which circumstances does it add the one and under which does it add the other? I suspect that both completeness and unexpectedness here require further explication, but even if they don’t, what, precisely, does expressive mean? It is also clear that the suffix has interactions with a number of other affixes, as regards meaning. Nelson et al. (1998: 127), in contrast to Tserenchunt, and almost all other sources, “analyse this morpheme as a resultative marker.” (They also discuss its relationship to tense and aspect.) Further study is clearly indicated.

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114. Bill üxčixjee. ‘Bill’s dead.’ (Stivenson 1975: 45). 115. Flint üxčixsen. ‘Flint is dead.’ (Stivenson 1975: 85). 118. Tuxain üjed bi guravdugaar angid baijee. ‘At that time, I was in the third grade.’ (http://mongol.cri.cn/21/2007/04/20/[email protected]) 148. Bi bagadaa ene nomiig unšǰee. ‘I read this book when I was small.’ 150. Aimgaas namaig irexed Bold ax baisangüi, töv rüü yavjee. (www.biirbeh.com/modules.php?name=news&file=article&sid=182; at the present time no longer available.) ‘When I came from the aimag, my older brother Bold wasn’t there; he had gone to the centre.’ 255. Etseg Jon Šyekspir n’ fyermyer gegc angliin tariacin xün baijee. (Sandag 1967: 68) ‘His father John Shakespeare was a “farmer.” ’

2.4. Distal -lee Another difference between the spoken and written languages has to do with proximality. In speech, all the past tenses, with the exception of -lee, are distal. But in writing, -lee is not restricted in this way, and in fact, except where it is representing speech, written forms in -lee may always be distal, too, at least relative to the present time, though they may be proximal to a reference time distinct from the utterance time. One piece of evidence for this is the co-occurrence of -lee with distal adverbials. In speech, we find it associated with adverbs like saya(xan) ‘just now’ and odoo ‘now’, but in writing it freely co-occurs not only with adverbials of fairly recent time like önöö öglöö ‘this morning’ (262) and önöödör ‘today’ (263), but with ones for distant times such as ter jil ‘that year’ (264). What this reflects, amongst other things, is that in writing the proximal/distal opposition for deictic tenses is neutralized by the lack of a real deictic centre. In speech, there is a definitive speech situation, which automatically defines here and now. But in writing, there is no situation shared by a speaker (writer) and addressee (reader): they are, in principle as well as in practice, separated in time and space. 262. MIAT kompan.ii Olon uls.iin nisleg.iin ingots MIAT company-gen many country-gen flying-gen boat önöö this

öglöö morning

osl.iin emergency-gen

buult landing

xii.lee. make-past

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chapter three (http://www.tv9.mn/medee_uzuulch.php?medeenii_dugaar=1237 &medeenii_torol=4&medee_ali=1; at the present time no longer available.) ‘MIAT Company’s International airplane made an emergency landing this morning.’

263. Yörönxii said Prime minister

önöödör nam.iin darg.iin üürg.ee today party-gen leader-gen duties-rp

güitsetge.lee. take on-past (http://www.tv5.mn/tv5/index.php?page=news&nid=3430) ‘The prime minister today took on the duties of the party’s leader.’ 264. Mön Same

ter that

jil, year

Robyert Koats Robert Coats

Aleutiin Aleutian

arl.uud dax’ island-pl of

subdukts, arlan num.iig todorxoil.loo. subduction island arc-gen describe-past (shttp://mn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Плит_тектоник) In the same year, Robert R. Coats . . . described the main features of island arc subduction in the Aleutian Islands. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics)

In chapter IV, we explore the roles and functions of the various past tenses in spoken discourse and written text.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE DISCOURSE FUNCTIONS OF THE TENSES 1. The Functions of the Tenses in Discourse and Text 1.1. The Functions of Utterances The use of an ending depends on the specific functions that the clause containing it is to perform in the discourse. There are several types of functions, including the metalinguistic, the textual, and the expressive. We have noted the differing character of the tenses typical of various genres. A side-effect of this is the metalinguistic function of grammatical features such as verb endings, namely to signal, amongst other things, a genre or type of discourse, or a form of language. In regard to forms of language, for example, the French perfective past tense is expressed using the simplex passé simple in writing (e.g., elle chanta ‘she sang’) but the complex passé composé in speech (elle a chanté). Moreover, there are French tenses—the surcomposé tenses— that are considered informal and normally do not appear in writing, just as there are tenses, including the passé anterieur, that are literary and less likely to occur, if at all, in colloquial speech. Furthermore, the same tense may have different uses in written and spoken French. The imparfait, for example, can sometimes serve as a present tense in speech, at least in certain special contexts. In Mongolian, too, the sets of available tenses, and their uses, vary between different forms— principally, but not exclusively written vs. spoken—of the language. Another class of function is the textual. The textual function is to create and maintain the coherence of the discourse. Discourses are not merely strings of clauses, but display a hierarchical structure of subunits that cohere both globally (between units), and locally (within a unit). A conversation, for example, might contain quotations, descriptions, narratives, or jokes. Longer written genres such as novels contain a rich set of sub-structures that includes dialogue, description, narration, and sometimes reportage by the authorial voice. Extended dialogue in a novel, for example, must not only be coherent within itself, but must cohere with the rest of the story surrounding it. And

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should that dialogue itself contain narration, that narration must likewise cohere both within itself and with the rest of that dialogue. What is meant by “coherence” in this context is the logical construction of clauses in forming larger linguistic units. But it is important to note that almost any apparently incoherent string of grammatical sentences can be rendered coherent by further context. The examples in (265–266) seem incoherent, for various reasons. But within the contexts in (267), they are rendered coherent. What this reveals is that coherence, like grammaticality, is not an absolute property, but must be defined relative to the context and/or the intended purpose of the utterance. 265. Max is tall for a midget. He had been vacationing in Aruba. 266. a. In 1904 there was a great fire in Toronto. Well, I like ice cream, too. b. Sam eats lunch alone. His car is painted 28 different colours. 267. a. They wanted Max for a special role in their new movie, but he was hard to contact. Max is surprisingly tall for a midget. He had been vacationing in Aruba. b. All Tom is interested in is disasters. The other day he was eating an ice cream cone and going on and on about stuff that happened a hundred years ago. In 1904 there was a great fire in Toronto. Well, I like ice cream, too. But I hate bores, and I hate hearing about horrible things. c. Sam is pretty eccentric. Sam eats lunch alone. His car is painted 28 different colours. He named his daughter, his dog, and his boat—all of them—“Jessica.”

Finally, a further factor in the choice and interpretation of endings is the expressive function, which is to convey personal attitudes towards the discourse. Narrative sentences lack the immediacy of factual discourse and offer a distanced, objective perspective on the events they describe. Tenses such as the (historical) present fulfill an expressive function in narrative discourse precisely because they are proximal and hence characterized by involvement of the speech act participants in the context of the discourse. In a language such as Mongolian, in which evidentiality is part of the grammatical system, and hence an obligatory category, even the use of a supposedly neutral tense such as the -sen past conveys information about the speaker’s attitude towards the content of the utterance. In (147), notice that the backgrounded material is in a tense form normally used for foregrounding. Here the ending is likely chosen precisely to avoid the attitudes conveyed by -lee and -jee. This of course

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suggests that the uses of the past tense endings to serve their sundry discourse functions follow from their meanings, rather than the reverse. (This is in fact the traditional view of the relationship between meaning—semantics—and use—pragmatics—and so should occasion no surprise, but research on pragmatics in recent decades has at the very least called this perhaps overly simplistic view into question, and certainly where Mongolian is concerned, further research is indicated.) 147. Ingeed 8 sariin 23-d, 1943 onii 8 sariin 23-d Süxbaatariin neremjit “Ofitseriin surguul’ ” deer očson. Ter surguul’ n’ odoogiin Gandan deer, aa . . . odoogoor Barilgiin Texnikum gej aa . . . Barilgiin Texnikum gej, gej baigaa. Baruun tal n’ xoër davxar, züün tal n’ xoër, dörvön davxar, iim xoër yagaan baišin tend baisan. Tüünii zaxiral xurandaa Erdendamba gej xün baisan. (http://www.mongolianoralhistory.org/samples/ transcriptions/TR060101B.xml) ‘On 23 August, 1942 I went to the School of Officers. That school was situated in recent-time Gandan, aa . . . there is the Construction College now. There was a two-story building on its right and there were two-story and four-story pinkish buildings on its left. Its director was [a man named] Colonel Erdenedamba.’ (http://www.mongolianoralhistory.org/samples/translations/EN060101B.xml)

1.2. The Three Levels of Discourse Coherence Maintaining coherence is one of the functions of the tenses. But there are different types or “levels” of coherence in discourse and text. There are, in fact, at least these three levels of discourse coherence: linguistic, intentional, and attentional. On the linguistic level, coherence consists of the proper anchoring of the tenses. Anchoring means the binding of temporal anaphors by antecedents. Much as the isolated sentence She went home does not reveal who “she” is, because there is no antecedent for the pronoun, it does not tell when “she” went home; the tense has no temporal antecedent, no reference time. The context provided in (268) allows one at least to say that she went home when she was fed up with work, just as we can say that “she” was Jane. 268. Jane was fed up with work. She went home.

Such binding serves to anchor the utterance in the sense of connecting it with some segment of the preceding discourse or text and thereby rendering the utterance coherent within that larger unit. Example

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(269) is incoherent precisely because the first, past-tense, sentence cannot serve as anchor for the second one, whose reference time is the present. 269. John was distraught. He has witnessed a terrible accident.

As far as temporal binding is concerned, almost any expression in the context can serve to anchor (i.e., bind) the tense of a clause. A tense ending may anchor another (as the tense of tusav in 270 is bound by that of očiv), so may temporal adverbials (the tense of očiv in 270 is in turn bound by neg udaa), even nominal expressions (the tense of missed in 271 is bound by the expression the war years). 270. Neg One

udaa bi aldsan xoër occasion I blunder off-past two

er.j, hunt-impfc

aduu horse

gov.iin desert-gen

yerdiin normal

am’d am’tan existence

belč.deg graze-habvn uuln.aas mountain-abl

bai.maar.güi be-optative1-neg

gün deep

xavtsl.iin gorge-gen

bor dark

šarga tawny

derged near

züsn.ii motley-gen

mori.o horse-rp

bai.san be-past xeter.č, exceed.impfc

asga pinnacle

xad.tai rock-com

oči.v. Gev genet go-past all of a sudden xoyor two

sonin aduu nüden.d tusa.v. (Oldrij 1980: 12) strange horse eye-dat strike-past ‘But one day I was hunting for two of our lost horses further than usual into the empty mountains, where there are many deep little rocky valleys and where nobody ever goes anymore, and I saw two strange, dark, reddish horses.’ (Aldridge 1976: 5; chapter 1) 271. The war years were difficult ones for Tom’s family. They missed him a lot.

The initial utterance in a discourse receives its binding, if any, from just such an adverbial or nominal expression explicitly contained in the sentence. In the absence of such a reference, the reader must assume some such temporal reference point.

1

Expressive of a wish: bi . . . baimaar baina ‘I would like to be . . .’.

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In a discourse, an adverbial such as a couple of minutes after (272) or a nominal such as successor states (273) may serve to shift the reference time; the time at which “successor states fought each other and outside forces” is understood to follow the breakup of the Islamic unity not only because of the immediately preceding and, but the modifier successor as well. 272. There he stood on the dark little landing, wondering what it might be that he had seen. A couple of minutes after, he joined the little group that had formed outside the Coach and Horses. (Wells, The Invisible Man, chapter 3) 273. Within a century of Muhammad’s first recitations of the Qur’an, an Islamic empire stretched from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to Central Asia in the east. This new polity soon broke into civil war, and successor states fought each other and outside forces. (“Islam”, Wikipedia; http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam)

In the absence of such expressions, tenses are bound by other tenses. In a narrative sequence, the reference time for the verb ending of each clause is temporally located just after that of the immediately preceding clause. The result is narrative advance or narrative progression— the feeling that time is passing with each successive event. The possibility of narrative advance is sensitive to the nature of the eventuality recounted. Normally events trigger advance, but unbounded eventualities—states, activities, and the like—do not. In (274a), Sue held the newspaper up just after Tom came in, but in (274b), Sue was already holding it. Compare diagrams 7, 8. 274. a. Tom came in. Sue held up the newspaper. b. Tom came in. Sue was holding up the newspaper. Sue holds up the newspaper

time

Tom comes in Diagram 7

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chapter four Sue holds up the newspaper

time

Tom comes in Diagram 8 Sue is hungry ... time Diagram 9

In Mongolian there is a greater tendency than in English to render temporal relationships explicit through the use not only of adverbial expressions like later and subordinating conjunctions such as after, but through converbal endings marking finely distinguished temporal relationships—yavmagts and yavanguut both mean something like ‘as soon as (they) went’, yavtal ‘until (they) went’, and yavangaa ‘while going’. Finite tense forms play a relatively smaller role in Mongolian than in English, as do implicit temporal relationships holding between them. Binding depends to a great extent on the structure of eventualities, and the various types of predicate expressions have rather different temporal profiles. States are uniform, unchanging occurrences; as in diagram 9, at any given point within the period over which the state holds, it is possible to truthfully say that it is the case (here, that Sue is hungry). But events typically consist of various parts or phases. An achievement like spotting something is a momentary event that simply happens at a point in time (as in diagram 10). An accomplishment combines an activity or process such as running or falling with a culminative change of state, in effect an achievement. Thus climbing a mountain consists of the action of climbing

the discourse functions of the tenses

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Sue spots a coin on the pavement

time Diagram 10 Sue climbs the mountain

Sue has climbed the mountain .... ..

time

Sue reaches the peak Diagram 11

followed by a culmination: the point at which the peak is finally, actually reached (diagram 11). Unlike English, which has only the verb climb, German distinguishes the activity of climbing, das Steigen, from the accomplishment of climbing to the top, das Ersteigen. But even an activity like running or the activity phase of an accomplishment like running across the street (or running a marathon) consists of separate phases, to the extent that the beginning, middle, and end of an activity may be referred to as such. “Running,” for example, generally refers to the medial phase of an episode of running, so that when we hear that someone is running, we infer that they have been running and will, presumably, continue to do so. Neither “they’re starting to run” nor “they’re finishing running” refers to the medial phase in the same way and so neither leads to quite the same inferences. After the eventuality proper has ended, the world is left in a result state. For an activity, process, or an episode (a state or process obtaining over a delimited period time, such as being ill for three days or feeling hungry for a few minutes), this is simply the sheer historical fact; as shown in diagram 11, at any point subsequent to the termination

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chapter four preparatory phase

event proper

initial state

result state

time

Diagram 12

of the eventuality in question, it is possible truthfully to say that it has happened (here that Sue has climbed the mountain). The result state of an event, however, can be the consequence of the occurrence, or may simply be its sequence. If Tom has come home, he is at home. And he is at home because, not merely after, he came home. But after Tom comes home many things may be the case that are not due to his coming home, but merely obtain at the time when he has come home. In addition to the result state following the eventuality itself, the eventuality is preceded by an initial state and a preparatory phase (diagram 12). The initial state is the character of the world before the occurrence. The preparatory phase is the transition from the initial state to the eventuality itself. Both ontologically and linguistically—that is, in the nature of the phase as well as in how it is referred to—there is a difference between the preparatory state of an achivement and of an accomplishment. An accomplishment like climbing a mountain is actually a complex, consisting both of an activity or process that must be gone through to reach the culmination, the achievement that ends the accomplishment. An accomplishment expression such as climb a mountain subsumes the activity phase within the event-complex itself. Thus at any point in the climb you can claim to be climbing the mountain, though you cannot claim to have climbed it till the end. German makes a nice distinction that English lacks, between the activity, the Steigen, and the accomplishment, the Ersteigen. Achievements are, properly speaking, momentary events, all cumlmination and no activity. Thus there is something a little odd—or ought to be—about saying things like “the train is arriving at the station” or “he’s dying.” One difference is that the preparatory phase, the phase prior to the achievement itself, is only rendered a preparatory

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phase after the culmination. The train was arriving only if it in fact did arrive, and someone can be said to have been dying only if in fact they had died. But you can be climbing the mountain even if you never reach the top, building a boat even if you never finish it. In the case of an achievement, however, the preparatory phase depends on the eventual culmination. The waker who says “bi bosloo” ‘I’m getting up’ is only proven correct if they do get up. Many eventualities can be viewed either as achievements or accomplishments, depending on the scale. For example, pulling the trigger of a gun actually takes time; it is like an accomplishment in that you need to be drawing the trigger back for a fraction of a second before the mechanism is triggered—the culmination. But we generally perceive, and talk about, pulling the trigger of a gun, or a process like the bursting of a balloon, as instantaneous. Hence normally “pulling the trigger” refers to the preparatory phase, not the activity, and you can only be said to be pulling the trigger if and only if you do in fact pull it. The initial state in an event—events inherently involve a change from an initial state to a result state—is often implicated or implied by the sentence, rather than rendered explicit. If Tom goes home, he must initially not have been at home; if Sue falls ill, she must originally have been well. The perfective aspect, unlike the perfect and progressive, introduces the entire structure of the event into the discourse: a succeeding sentence or clause may use any phase of the event as its anchor point, that is, the time of the eventuality may serve as its reference time, and a succeeding event may occur within the result state (275a) or the preparatory phase (275b) of its preceding event. In the former case discourse time advances because the result state of an event follows the time of the event proper, and in the latter it regresses because the preparatory phase precedes the culmination of the event. 275. a. ‘John went into the flower shop. He picked out three red roses, two white ones and one pale pink.’ (Webber 1988: 69). John tsetsg.iin delgüür.t yav.j oro.v. John flower-gen store-dat go-impfc enter-past Tereer he

gurvan ulaan, three red

yagaan pink

sarnai rose

xoër two

songo.j select-impfc

tsagaan, neg white one av.laa. take-past

tsaivar pale pink

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chapter four b. ‘John bought Mary some flowers. He picked out three red roses, two white ones and one pale pink.’ (Webber 1988: 69). John Mary-d tsetseg xudalda.j ava.v. John Mary-dat flower buy-impfc take-past Tereer He

gurvan three

ulaan, red

xoër two

tsagaan, white

neg tsaivar one pale

songo.j av.čee. select-impfc take-past

The time of the event as a whole may also serve as the binder. Thus in (276), the state of John’s having twisted his ankle is bound by the time of his going to the hospital and thus is simultaneous with it. (The result state of his twisting his ankle extends beyond his going to the hospital, but during the period of time in which he is going to the hospital, the two—his having twisted his ankle and his going to the hospitral—coincide.) 276. John went to the hospital. He had twisted his ankle on a patch of ice.

Where more than one temporal structure is available as binder, ambiguity results, as in (277). This could be read as simultaneous (Jane played the piano while Bill sang), taking the totality of the time Bill sang as binding the ending of the second clause; or it could be read as successive, taking only the result state of Bill’s singing the song as its reference time. This same ambiguity may be triggered by the imperfect converb of Mongolian. At times it marks co-temporal occurrences (278a), at times successive occurrences (278b), but sometimes the larger, extra-sentential context is required to indicate which is intended. 277. Bill sang a song. Jane played the piano. 278. a. Eej xool xii.j Mother meal make-impfc

aav tsai father tea

uu.j drink-impfc

bai.na. be-pres ‘Mother is cooking, Father is drinking tea.’ (Kullmann and Tserenpil 1996: 157) b. Bat öglöö ert ir.j angi.a tseverle.jee. Bat morning early come-impfc classroom-rp clean-past ‘Bat came early in the morning and cleaned the classroom.’ (Kullmann and Tserenpil 1996: 157)

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An activity sentence may be interpreted as either a bounded event with a result state or as purely a preparatory phase for some achievement. In the latter case (279) a successive reading for the last two sentences is impossible, but in the former, the same type of ambiguity appears as that exhibited by (277). 279. Bill and Jane found things to do while waiting. Bill read Hamlet. Jane did a crossword puzzle.

Since states have a homogeneous phasic structure, the time at which the state obtains is taken (as a whole) to be the anchor time for a state (280a) or event (280b) expression following in the discourse. In (280a), the states temporally overlap: Max was ecstatic at the time Sue was unhappy. In (280b), the event occurs within the time of the state: Max decided to help Sue while she was unhappy. 280. a. ‘Sue was unhappy. Max however was ecstatic.’ Sue az jargal.güi bai.v. Ge.sen xedii Sue happiness-without be-past say-pfvn although

č modp

Max az jargal.tai bai.v. Max happiness-com be-past b. ‘Sue was unhappy. Max decided to help her.’ Sue az jargal.güi bai.v. Max tüün.d Sue happiness-without be-past Max that-dat tusl.ax.aar help-ifvn-instr

šiid.lee. decide-past

On the intentional level, coherence requires that each clause serve some function in the discourse or text and hence be related by a rhetorical or coherence relation such as “elaboration” or “explanation” to its anchor. In (281a), for example, the second sentence reports the cause of the state reported in the first; it provides an explanation for it. There is, however, no rhetorical relation that allows the temporal pattern of (281b), which, on the intentional level, is incoherent because its second sentence cannot fulfill any discourse function relative to the first sentence. 281. a. Sue was unhappy. She had witnessed a terrible accident. b. Sue az jargal.güi bai.v. Tereer aimšigt osol Sue happiness-without be-past She terrible accident

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chapter four bolo.x.iig nüd.eer.ee xar.san yum. occur-ifvn-acc eye-instr-rp watch-pfvn copp c. Sue was unhappy. She has witnessed a terrible accident.

Even if the particular temporal pattern is permitted by some rhetorical relation, our knowledge of the real-world may preclude, or at least render highly unlikely, two sentences being related by such a rhetorical relation. For example, out of context, (282) strikes one as incoherent, and it is hard to think of a context that would render it coherent. The reason is that on the attentional level, coherence requires that each clause belong to a thread defined by a common topic or focus of interest. On this level, (282) is incoherent because its first sentence is about Sue’s state of mind, but the second clause cannot easily be interpreted as being either about, or related to, that state. Her preference in desserts doesn’t seem to have anything to do with her having witnessed an accident. A larger context might, however, provide a connection that would render the sequence coherent. 282. Sue preferred ice cream to cake. She had witnessed a terrible accident.

In terms of either sentence production or interpretation, the three levels function simultaneously. The clauses of (281c) cannot be interpreted as having a common topic because they cannot be interpreted as linked by a rhetorical relation, given their unrelated reference times, while those of (282) simply lack (or seem to lack) a common topic. It should be obvious by now that implicit rhetorical relations serve to render units of discourse such as threads or narrative lines coherent as much as do explicit ones. Successive statements may be connected thematically by implicit connections drawn from our knowledge of the world. Someone who didn’t know that Ulaanbaatar is in Mongolia and was unfamiliar with both Mongolia and Finland might well find (284a) no different from (284b). Such an addressee might infer from (284a) that Ulaanbaatar is in Mongolia, but equally might infer from (284b) that it is in Finland. But often enough a speaker uses explicit connections, especially when the addressee may require background information to properly interpret statements. Compare (284c), which makes it explicit that Ulaanbaatar is in Mongolia. 281. c. Sue was unhappy. She has witnessed a terrible accident. 283. Sue preferred ice cream to cake. She had witnessed a terrible accident.

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284. a. I love Ulaanbaatar. Mongolia is such an interesting place! b. I love Ulaanbaatar. Finland is such an interesting place! c. I love Ulaanbaatar. Like the rest of Mongolia, it’s such an interesting place!

The rhetorical relationship, if any, between a pair of clauses is marked by, and constrained by, their tenses. In narrative, the past tense of one sentence generally refers to a slightly later time than that of the immediately preceding clause. Hence where a temporal regression is indicated, as in (285a), this cannot be a narrative sequence. A consequence can be expressed as a relatively later event (285b), and the reverse is true of a cause (285c). Sentences such as those in (286) are rather odd, at least out of context, and the sequences in (287) likewise seem, at least out of context, simply incoherent. 285. a. A munitions ship exploded. It had been hit by another vessel. Thousands of people were killed. The explosion would be felt b. A munitions ship exploded. hundreds of miles away. Another ship collided with it. Its cargo had been set ablaze c. A munitions ship exploded. by a collision. 286. a. A munitions ship exploded and it was hit by another ship. b. The explosion being felt hundreds of miles away, the munitions ship exploded. 287. a. A munitions ship exploded. The explosion had been felt hundreds of miles away. b. A munitions ship exploded. Another ship would collide with it.

But often enough the temporal relations depend on the rhetorical relations; (288) and (289) have the same tense endings but different temporal relations because of their different rhetorical relations. Example (288, translated in 290) involves temporal advance, since the relation of the second sentence to the first is presumably that of consequence: Max’s standing up naturally follows Max’s spotting John, since this latter event caused the former. In (289, translated in 291), however, there is a temporal regression due to the relation of explanation that the second sentence bears to the first: as the cause of the event recounted in the first sentence, John’s pushing Max, recounted in the second sentence, naturally precedes it. Without our knowledge of the world, however, it would be impossible to interpret sequences like these,

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at least out of context. Compare (292); its nonsense verbs preclude interpretation based on real-world knowledge. It could be similar to (289), with Max’s “globulation” the consequence of John’s “orballing” him. But it could equally well be similar to (293), in which case John’s “orballing” him is the consequence of Max’s “globulating.” 288. Max saw John approach. He stood up. 289. Max fell. John pushed him. 290. Max Max Tereer He 291. Max Max

John.ii ir.j yava.x.iig xara.v. John-gen come-impfc go-ifvn-acc see-past boso.j get up-impfc una.jee. fall-past

zogs.loo. stand-past

John John

tüün.iig that-acc

tülx.sen push-pfvn

bai.na. be-pres

292. Max globulated. John orballed him. 293. Max won. John envied him.

Discourse coherence and temporal coherence go hand in hand. Discourse structure affects the interpretation of endings and endings in turn contribute to structuring discourse, principally on the local level, and specifically between pairs of clauses. Example (281a) is rendered temporally coherent by its set of endings, which share a past reference time, whereas (281c) is incoherent. The structuring of both sentences and larger units of discourse and text in a language such as Mongolian, in which hypotactic structures predominate over the paratactic structures typical of a language like English, is such that intrasentential relations (between sentences) play perhaps no greater role than do intrasentential ones (within them).2 The implicit relationships between

2 Hypotaxis ‘putting-under’ refers to the syntactic subordination of one unit to another. In languages of the Altaic type, including Mongolian, there is a tendency for parallel structures not to be treated syntactically as units of equal rank. For example, a series of events can be reported in a single sentence with but one clause, marked by a finite verb-ending. All the rest are converbal or participial phrases subordinated to the (single) independent clause. Parataxis ‘putting alongside’ refers to the syntactic coordination of units. In languages like English and Chinese there is a tendency for parallel structures to be treated as units of the same rank. A series of events is typically reported using independent clauses (i, iii) or sentences (ii, iv), each with a finite verb. i. I came, I saw, I conquered. ii. I came. I saw. I conquered. iii. I drove home and found the front door wide open. iv. I drove home. I found the front door wide open.

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events or events and states stated in independent clauses or sentences in parataxis are typically rendered more explicit in hypotaxis through the subordination of one to the other. Some forms of English do, however, allow hypotaxis, in which case a passage such as (281a) can be rendered as a single sentence (294). 281. a. Sue was unhappy. She had witnessed a terrible accident. c. Sue was unhappy. She has witnessed a terrible accident. 294. Sue, having witnessed a terrible accident, was unhappy.

Tense endings contribute to the interpretation of discourse, but their own interpretation depends on their co-text as well as on the speech act participants’ knowledge of language and knowledge about the world. The speaker, in producing a sentence, must therefore take these various factors into consideration when choosing an ending for each clause. 2. The Functions of the Past Tenses 2.1. Past Tenses and Temporal Reference The significance of the facts presented in these last sections is that tenses with different temporal properties differ in their uses and interpretations. One respect in which they clearly do is in their definiteness, in how they relate to presupposed reference times. A deictic tense requires no reference time, no assumed contextual time. It can, therefore, be freely used in a position where there is no presupposed reference time, such as in headlines or in the first sentence (or independent clause, rather) of a text or discourse. Traditionally, for example, -jee is used at the beginning of folk tales.3 Baijee ‘[there] was’ often occurs with expressions like ert urid tsagt ‘once upon a time’, as in (295). Of the eight traditional tales in Poppe’s (1955a) collection, five have an initial sentence ending in -jee, mainly baij or baijee (some, like examples 295, 296, with appended gene ‘[they] say’). But two of the eight end instead in -v, and one in -sen. If we examine the initial sentences of these three exceptional tales, we

3 Nelson et al. (1998: 117) already noted that -jee is “particularly prevalent in spoken storytelling, particularly when setting the scene or introducing a new event in the discourse.”

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notice that they, and only they of the eight tales, contain temporal references other than the vague “once upon a time.” Thus the story of “Bogdo Nojin Dschagar Khan” (p. 170f.) begins as in (296). While the temporal specifications in (296) strike one as equally mythic as those in (295), they are sufficiently specific to justify the use of an anaphoric tense requiring a specific reference point. 295. Erte urda Early former

tsag.ta negeŋ jixe xān.ī time-dat a great khan-gen

uraŋ guā dagin bai.dž ge.n.ē.4 Uran Gua Dagina be-past say-pres-emphp (Poppe 1955a: 188, “uraŋ guā dagin”) ‘Es lebte in alten Zeiten, wie man erzählt, Uran Gua Dagina, [die Tochter] eines großen Königs.’ (Poppe 1955a: 189, “Uran Gua Dagina”) ‘Once upon a time there was a great king’s [daughter] Uran Gua Dagina.’ 296. Ert urda Early former

saiŋ tsag.ta, saiŋ good time-dat good

tsag.īŋ time-gen

exin.d, beginning-dat

sar saji manda.xa.d, šadžiŋ saji delgerxe.d, moon just rise-ifvn-dat religion just expand-ifvn-dat manǟ galw.īŋ exin.d, mandži xān.ī our kalpa period-gen beginning-dat Manchu khan-gen ̄ tüxen.d, ene l galw.īŋ exin.d, history-dat this modp kalpa period-gen beginning-dat ̄ ertīŋ xān.ī tüxen.d dzǖŋ urda tewīg early khan-gen history-dat east south part of the world edzel.seŋ rule-pfvn

tör.söŋ umar umar oron.d be born-pfvn most northerly country-dat umaŋ dalai xān.ī xǖ bogdo nojiŋ džagar xāŋ umaŋ dalai khan-gen son bogdo nojiŋ džagar khan

bai.dag be-habvn ge.dž say-impfc

bai.w ge.nē. be-past say-pres-emphatic (Poppe 1955a: 170, “bogdo nojiŋ džagar xāŋ”) ‘In früheren guten Zeiten, zu Beginn einter guten Zeit, als der Mond soeben aufging, als die Religion sich verbreitete, am Anfang unserer Kalpa-Periode, in der Geschichte des Mandschurenkaisers, am Anfang dieser Kalpa-Periode, in der Geschichte der früheren Khane, lebte, wird erzählt, Bogdo Nojin Dschagar Khan, der Sohn des Uman Dalai

4

Poppe’s phonetic rendering.

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Khan, welcher in der allernördlichsten Gegend hauste und über den sudöstlichen Weltteil zu herrschen geboren war.’ (Poppe 1955a: 171, “Bogdo Nojin Dschagar Khan”) ‘In early good times, at the beginning of a good time, as the moon had just risen, as the religion was spreading, at the beginning of our kalpaperiod, in the history of the Manchu emperors, at the beginning of this kalpa-period, in the history of the early khans, there lived, as they say, Bogdo Nojin Dschagar Khan, the son of Uman Dalai Khan, who lived in the northernmost land, and was born to rule over the southeasternly part of the world.’

In the absence of a temporal reference, modern stories, that is, fictional narratives, can make use of the ending -jee to open a tale as well. Thus the beginning of H. G. Wells’ The Invisible Man was translated using -jee (297). Although the English makes one wintry day and early in February overt adverbial modifiers and thus provides a definite, if somewhat vague, reference time, the Mongolian translation builds the temporal reference into the description of the weather and hence emphasizes not that the stranger came on a day early in February, but that he came in a wintry, early-February storm, thereby rendering the explicit temporal reference a mere inference and allowing (or requiring?) the use of -jee, rather than of -v. 297. The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a bitter wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down, walking as it seemed from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand. (H. G. Wells, The Invisible Man, ch. 1) Övl.iin süül.iin tsas or.dog xoërdugaar Winter-gen tail-gen snow fall-habvn second sar.iin month-gen budra.n, fall-modc

ter that salxi wind

tömör zam.iin railroad-gen

negen one

süüge.j growl-impfc

Bremblxerst Bramblehurst

beelii.tei glove-com

gar.t.aa hand-dat-rp

bar’.san carry-pfvn

neg a

xür.č arrive-impfc

ödr.iin day-gen

tsas snow

bai.xa.d be-ifvn-dat örtöön station

jijigxen little

tani.x.güi know-ifvn-neg

ir.jee. come-past

öglöö morning

deer.ees on-abl

zuzaan thick

xööxön xairtsag black case xün javgan person afoot

(Vells 1979: 5)

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Stories or articles that contain explicit temporal references at the beginning can use -v (or -sen), and do not require the use of a deictic tense. However this is limited to genres that are essentially narrative: autobiography (146), biography (247), and fiction. 146. Bi Xyatadiin Šandun mujiin Čefü xotnoo 1897 onii 8 sariin 8-nd törj, tendxiin Angli sümd zagalmailuulsan. (Nert mongolč erdemten Nikolas Poppegiin duradxal [1-4-r büleg],5 http://www.maranata.mn/index .php?option=com_content&task=view &id=2533&Itemid=127) ‘I was born in Chefu city of Shantung province of China on the 8th of August of [the year] 1897 and was baptized in the English church.’ 247. Tomas Al’va Edison (1847 onii 2 sariin 11–1931 onii 10 sariin 18) n’ am’draliig xamgiin ixeer xyalbarčilsan neeltüüldiig xiisen АNU-iin zoxion büteegč, biznismen bai.v. (“Tomas Al’va Edison”, http://mn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Томас_Альва_ Эдисон) ‘Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847–October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life . . . .’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison)

Where the co-text or an expression within the sentence forces a definite reading, an anaphoric tense may occur in contexts in which deictic tenses are more to be expected. Journalistic articles, for example, tend not to use -v (viz., the articles in Montgomery’s Reader). To be sure, the on-line newspaper Dayaar Mongol does use an -v form, davtagdav, in the headline of a news article (http://dayarmongol.com/index .php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1752&Itemid=45). But in the body of the article, the forms used are garčee, üildjee, xorooson baina, todorxoi baigaa yum baina, üregdsen, and buudallasan baijee. In a brief item about the same occurrence, the on-line daily news, Ödriin Sonin (http://www.dailynews.mn/modules.php? name=News &file=article&catid=20&sid=14370) uses buuduuljee in the headline, and in the text neejee, šarxdaad baina, yegüütgejee, baisan gene, baijee, a non-verbal predicate followed by gene, and ögsöngüi. Articles in the Mongolian Wikipedia also tend to avoid the -v form. As with most reference works, an article such as the Wikipedia article about stars (mn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Од) is written entirely in the non-past tense, using verb forms such as baidag ‘is’, baina ‘is’, bolno 5

‘Memoires of the famous Mongolist scholar, Nicholas Poppe (chapters 1–4)’.

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‘becomes’, copulas like yum ‘is’, and predicates without copulas, e.g., bolomžtoi ‘possible’, etc. Use of -v in Wikipedia articles is quite exceptional, and generally limited to pages of biographical or historical matter. Typical is the example (298), one of only three uses of -v in “Tomas Al’va Edison” and (299), the sole example of -v in the article “Mongol uls” (‘The Mongolian nation’); note the temporal expressions fonografiin daraa ‘after the phonograph” in (298) and 1919 ond ‘in the year 1919’ in (299). 298. Fonograf.iin daraa Edison Phonograph-gen after Edison

tsaxilgaan electric

gerel light

xii.x.eer maxran oroldo.j exle.v. make-ifvn-instr experiment-impfc begin-past (http://mn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Томас_Эдисон) ‘After the phonograph, Edison began trying to make electric lighting.’ 299. 1919 on.d 1919 year-dat

Xyatad.iin tserg.iin China-gen army-gen

erxten organ

Аr Mongol.iig ezel.j, avtonom.iig ustga.v. Back Mongolia-acc seize-impfc Autonomy-acc destroy-past (mn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Монгол_улс) ‘In [the year] 1919, the army organs of China seized Outer Mongolia and destroyed its autonomy.’

In Web pages, headlines (the first utterance, in absolute position, separated from the main text) are often in either the -jee or the -lee form, especially on pages reporting some form of news. There follows (300–304) a selection of headlines from articles on various Web sites: 300. Mongolčuud Mongol people

Olimp üze.x Olympics see-ifvn

4000 4000 ticket

bilyet book-past

zaxial.jee reserve-past (http://www.bugdeeree.mn/?p=2754) ‘Mongols have reserved 4000 tickets to see the Olympics.’ 301. Mongol.d komp’yutyer üildverle.lee Mongolia-dat computer develop-past (http://www.mongolnews.mn/unuudur.php?n=18173) ‘A computer is developed in Mongolia.’

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302. “Mgl Academy”6 Mongol Surguul’ Nee.gd.lee “Mgl Academy” Mongolian School open-pass-past (http://dayarmongol.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view &id=1682) ‘The Mongolian school “Mgl Academy” is opened.’

On the site http://www.openmn.org/, the list under “Süüliin 5 medee” (‘latest 5 news items’) contains, at the time of writing this, (303): 303. a. Bolor crystal

tol.iin turšilt.iin exn.ii xuvilbar mirror-gen test-gen origin-gen version

šinečle.gd.lee remake-pass-past [2008/02/04 02:02:04] ‘A new version of the original trial crystal mirror.’ b. Sun MySQL AB7-g terbum dollar.aar Sun MySQL AB-acc billion dollar-instr xudalda.n av.laa [2008/01/21 09:14:57] buy-modc take-past ‘Sun MySQL AB is bought for 1,000 million dollars.’ c. OpenOfis.iin “Mongol ex xel” OpenOffice-gen “Mongolian mother tongue” töslöö exlüül.lee [2008/01/10 10:32:00] project start-past ‘OpenOffice’s “Mongolian Mother Tongue” project has started.’ d. GNOME-n orčluulg.iin fail.uud onlain GNOME-gen translation-gen file-pl on-line orčluulg.iin sistyem.d or.loo [2008/01/05 23:12:34] translation-gen system-dat enter-past ‘GNOME’s translation files enter on-line translation system.’8 e. OpenMN xolboon.ii šine veb xuudas OpenMN communication-gen new Web page mendel.lee. [2008/01/03 20:53:42] greet-past ‘The new OpenMN communication Web page says hello.’

6

The name is in English and in the Latin alphabet in the original. In the Latin alphabet in the original. 8 This headline, like many headlines in any language, is, out of context, multiply ambiguous. From the sentence itself, there is no way of telling which of ‘the system’, ‘a system’, ‘its system’, etc., is intended. Someone familiar with the background probably could correctly interpret it, however. 7

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Blogs, in contrast, tend to have noun-based titles, without verbs (304–306), though some do have headlines ending with a verb, sometimes -lee (179, 307), often some non-past form, including (explicit or implicit) copulas, as in (308–309): 179 a. 43 dax’ uls Guinea Bissau.d xöl 43rd country Guinea Bissau-dat foot (http://www.amai.mn/archives/1877) ‘We set foot in [our] 43rd country.’

tav’.laa. set-past

179 b. “ГОЁЛ 2008” naadam exlexe.d belen bol.loo fashion 2008 show begin-dat ready become-past (http://www.suuder.com/?p=658) ‘The “Fashion 2008” show is ready to begin.’ 304. Mongol ba Komp’juter ‘Mongolia and [the] Computer’ (http://nasmgl.blogspot.com/2007/06/blog-post_15.html) 305. Mongol mayag.iin bolovsrol Mongolian style-gen education (http://erkhembayar.blogspot.com/2007/02/blog-post_22.html) ‘Mongolian-style education’ 306. Stiven Sigal-iin Mongol Tusla.x Steven Seagal-gen Mongolian help-ifvn (http://goojuur.com/archives/175) ‘Steven Seagal’s Mongolian Help’ 307. Naadam saixan bol.loo. Naadam (games) fine become-past (http://seniorexpert.blogspot.com/2008/07/blog-post_13.html) ‘The Naadam was fine.’ 308. Blog ge.j yuu be? Blog say-impfc what QP (http://oluul.blogspot.com/2007/04/blog-post.html) ‘What is a “blog” ’? 309. Bi aminč xün I selfish person (http://duluu.blogspot.com/2006/09/blog-post_7557.html) ‘I’m a selfish person.’

In this, blogs and many other Web pages are rather more like journalism than they are like, for example, history texts. In Montgomery’s reader we find that the readings (all from the newspaper Ünen) mainly have noun-based (310a, b) headlines or ones in some form of

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the present tense (310c, d). One has an -v ending (310e), but surprisingly, none has -lee. 310. a. Namr.iin otor (reading #6, p. 19) fall-gen encampment ‘Autumn pasturing’ b. montsameg.iin medegdel montsame-gen statement ‘A communiqué of montsame’ (reading #8, p. 22) c. Latin Amyerik.iin ard tümen Kub.iin Latin Amerika-gen masses Cuba-gen tal.d bai.na (reading #2, p. 11) side-dat be-pres ‘The masses of Latin America are on the side of Cuba.’ d. Xyatad.iin udirdagč.d.iin öngölzö.x China-gen leader-pl-gen impinge-ifvn bodlog.iig jigši.j bai.na (reading #24, p. 24) policy-acc condemn-impfc be-pres ‘The Chinese leaders’ policy of impingement is condemned.’ e. Bolgar.iin jüjigč.d.iin toglolt.iig Bulgaria-gen actor-pl-gen performance-acc nam zasg.iin udirdagči.d üze.v (reading #5, p. 18) party government-gen leader-pl see-past ‘Party and government leaders saw the performance of the Bulgarian actors.’

The first lines of paragraphs, or even of whole texts, also tend to contain deictic tenses, and for the same reason as headlines: deictic tenses do not require any presupposed reference time. The example (311) is both the headline and the first line of an item on a Web page. Another page similarly begins with a -lee sentence (312); four -lee-less paragraphs follow it. A further example from the Internet: the page http:// www.mongolnews.mn/unuudur.php?n=18173 opens with (313); there is no other -lee in the story. In published, print texts the same is often the case. For example, in quite a few short stories the first sentence ends with a -lee form, and there are no further -lee forms in the first paragraph, nor do subsequent paragraphs start with sentences ending in -lee. That is the case, for example, with Baast’s stories “Xaltarxüü” (pp. 9–20), “Xyaruu unasan tsagaar” (pp. 40–50) (314), and others of those that do not start with a non-past tense (though it is true that almost all the initial sentences of the paragraphs in the story “Šine baišin” [pp. 51–56] end in a -lee form!).

the discourse functions of the tenses 311. “Avilg.iin tol’ ” “Corruption-gen dictionary”

169

nom xevle.gde.n. book publish-pass-modc

gar.laa come out-past (http://www.demparty.mn/modules.php?name=News&file=categories& op=newindex&catid=1&pg=17; at the present time no longer available.) ‘The book “A Dictionary of Corruption” has been published.’ 312. “MGL Academy”9 “MGL Academy”

Mongol Mongol

Mongol Mongol

xüüxd.üüd.ee child-pl-rp

bagš, teacher

suragč.d.iin student-pl-gen

surguul’ balčir.xan school baby-diminutive

bürtge.j, register-impfc uuzalt, meeting

aav, father

yariltslaga discussion

eej.üüd, mother-pl xii.j make-impfc

. . . Los Anjeles xotn.oo üüd xaalgaa nee.lee. . . . Los Angeles city-rp door gate-rp open-past (http://dayarmongol.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view &id=1682) ‘The Mongolian school “MGL Academy” is registering small children, and holding a meeting and discussion of parents and teachers and students, held an open house . . . in Los Angeles.’ 313. “Migma elektoniks” XXK Mongold anx “Migma Electronics” XXK Mongolia-dat first

udaa occasion

MGM10 sine komp’yuter üildverle.j ex.lee. MGM new computer produce-impfc start-past (http://www.mongolnews.mn/unuudur.php?n=18173) ‘Migma Electronics” XXK has started producing the new MGM computer for the first time in Mongolia.’ 314. Eej.ees.ee neg zaxia xüleej av.laa. Mother-abl-rp a letter receive-past ‘I received a letter from my mother.’

(Baast 1962: 40)

There are, however, quite a few initial -jee’s to be found on Web pages. Examples include (315–316): 315. Pop od Pop star

9 10 11

Britney Spears sayaxan Britney Spears11 just

Los Anjeles dax’ Los Angeles in

In English in the Latin alphabet in the original. “MGM” in Latin alphabet in the original. The name is in the Latin alphabet in the original passage.

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chapter four jiriin humble gazar place

xyamd cheap

üne.tei price-com

or.j enter-impfc

üsč.nii hair-gen

ire.n come-modc

salon.ii salon-gen

salon.ii salon-gen

ajilčn.aas worker-abl

üs.iig n’ xus.č ögö.x.iig gui.jee. hair-acc her shave-impfc give12-ifvn-acc ask-past (http://news.banjig.net/news-5363.html) ‘Pop star Britney Spears recently came into an ordinary inexpensive Los Angeles hair-dressing salon and asked the staff to shave her hair for her.’ 316. 200 garui 200 over

oxi.d.iig xüč.eer girl-pl-acc forcibly

biye.iig n’ body-acc their

ünelüül.j bai.jee. set a price on-impfc be-past (http://www.ecpat.mn/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id= 52&Itemid=43) ‘More than 200 girls are forced to put a price on their bodies.’

Biographies naturally begin with sentences like (16). Essays and articles, however, often use the present tense in opening with a factual statement. Thus Sodov’s preface to the section on Boccaccio in his anthology begins with (317). The Wikipedia article on France (“Франц улс”) begins likewise with a present-tense factual statement (318). 16. Dašdorjiin Natsagdorj Dashdorjiin Natsagdorj

1906 on.d 1906 year-dat

tör.jee. be born-past (Yatskovskaya 1976: 8) ‘Dashdorjiin Natsagdorj was born in 1906.’ 317. Jovanni Giovanni

Bokkaččo Boccaccio

bol topic marker

Ital.iin Italy-gen

ix great

xünleg üzelten zoxiolč yum. (Sodov 1967: 51) humanist author copp ‘Giovanni Boccaccio is a great Italian humanist author.’ 318. Frants France Baruun Western

12

(Bügd Nairamdax Frants Uls) n’ (The French Republic) topic Yevrop.d Europe-dat

‘To do for someone else.’

orši.x, be located-ifvn

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171

Yevrop.iin xolboon.ii gišüün oron yum. Europe-gen union-gen member country copp. (http://mn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Франц_улс) ‘France (the French Republic) is located in Western Europe and is a member of the European Union.’

In published, hard-copy non-fiction, the various past tense endings are distributed rather differently from one another, both in regard to position in the paragraph, but also in the text as a whole. For example, of the twenty readings in Montgomery’s (1969) collection of articles from the newspaper Ünen, five (25%) have initial sentences using the ending -jee and three (15%) the ending -lee. Five (25%) have -v, none have -sen, and the rest (seven, or 35%) have various present-tense constructions. In the Mongol Reader edited by Austin et al. (1963), there are some 60 readings taken from various sources. Of these, 27, almost half (45%), have initial sentences in -v, 13 (22%) in -jee, but only two in -lee, two in -sen yum, one in -sengüi, and one in -sengüi yum. The rest—9, or 15%—have some kind of present-tense sentence. Of course, these are very small samples, and I have made no effort to match the tenses to the specific genres in question. A large number of factors play a role in determining tense suffix choice, only one of which is the specific function assigned the opening sentence of an article (or chapter of a book). 2.2. Past Tenses and Grounding One type of textual function is foregrounding material (placing it in the main sequence of narrative events) or backgrounding it, making it subordinate in some way to those events. In summarizing a story the body of the narrative is stripped down to the skeleton of the story, the basic events. The material stripped out is largely the subordinate background. When Caesar utters (7b) (in Suetonius’ account, anyway, and in Latin), we aren’t told the when, where, why, how, with whom, etc., of each event, just the events and their order. Caesar’s purpose in uttering (7b) is simply to present the events; his account is all foreground, without background. 7.

b. I came, I saw, I conquered.

At the beginning of chapter 2 of The Invisible Man, while Mrs. Hall is “screwing up her courage to go in and ask her visitor if he would

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take some tea,” Mr. Henfrey, the clock-jobber, comes into the bar and complains about the weather (or his boots). Wells writes at this point example (319a), which appears in Mongolian translation as (319b). The Mongolian past progressive is a close translation of the corresponding English tense, and, like it, serves to background the material. The question, though, is whether, as in the case of English, it is the imperfective aspect, marked by the -ing form (roughly equivalent to the Mongolian imperfective converb in -j), or whether it is the ending -lee, that is crucial here. 319. a. The snow outside was falling faster. b. Tsas ulam širüüse.j bai.laa. snow more rage-impfc be-past

(Vells 1979: 10)

In either case, the said of the English original is translated with -v, marking Mr. Henfrey’s advent and complaint as the first event-complex of the chapter. Strictly speaking, it consists of two events, Mr. Henfrey’s entrance into the bar and his comment on the defeat of his boots by the weather. In English these are separate events marked by the main verbs came and said of their respective sentences. But in Mongolian came is translated by the perfect converb ireed and thereby syntactically subsumed into an event-complex: he came into the bar and complained. The initial hypothesis would be that choice of the perfective converb serves merely to syntactically subordinate his entrance to his complaining; the imperfective converb would render the event semantically subordinate as well,13 a mere aspect of the event of complaining. One might say that ireed here is not unlike “came and . . .” in English, indicating a closer connection between the two events than separate sentences would, though the English original does have separate sentences, unlinked by the conjunction. In a spoken narrative sequence, we may find a series of -sen’s, and in writing, a series of -v’s. For example, the following fragment of an interview contains an autobiographical recounting which consists largely of a sequence of statements in -sen (320):14

13

This is a hypothesis obviously requiring both further refinement and future testing. For one thing, what does it mean, precisely, to be semantically subordinate, in the sense used here? 14 I have underlined the verbs with -sen endings, and the corresponding verbs in the translation.

the discourse functions of the tenses 320. manai Our anx first

surguul’ school xoyor two

tegexed xoyor angi.tai, then two class-com

angi.taig.aar, class-com-instr

angi.taig.aar class-com-instr

Tegeed then

tögs.ööd, finish-pfc

namaig me-acc

surguul’ school

20-iod 20-ish

aa . . . ah . . .

bagš.tai teacher-com

barilga building

bar’.san build-past

Tegeed Then

bi I

aa . . . 6 uh . . . 6

surguuli.a school-rp

surguuli.a school-rp

1943 1943

ingej thus

xögj.sön. develop-past

on.d year-dat

tögs.ööd finished-pfc

surguul’.d school-dat

xuviarla.gd.san assign-pass-pfvn

Bagš.iin teacher-gen

surguul’.d school-dat

xuviarla.gd.aad assign-pass-pfc

odoo now

ter that

Mongol Uls.iin Mongolia-gen

ofitsyer.iin officer-gen

surguul’ school

baig.uula.n be-caus-modc

1943 1943

üye.d time-dat

said nar.iin minister pl-gen

tušaal command

ge.dg.iig, say-habvn-acc

surguul.iig school-acc

on.ii year-gen

9 9

xičel.üüle.x.eer pursue-caus-ifvn-instr

iim such

bai.san. be-past

surguul’.d school-dat

oro.x enter-ifvn

bai.san. be-past

Bügd Nairamdax Republic

exle.n begin-modc üye time

on, year

bol.son. become-past

1943 1943

ontssain excellently

baital while

xoyordugaar second

angi.tai, class-com

bagš.iin teacher-gen

bai.j be-impfc

angi, class

tögs.xö.d finish-ifvn-dat

manai our

Šine New

negdügeer first

Dörvön bagš.tai, neg zaxiral.tai. Ingej four teacher-com a principal-com thus

bai.guula.gd.san. be-caus-pass-past on.d year-dat

173

Bi I

ter that

gar.č, go out-impfc šineer newly

sar.aas month-abl bol.son become-past

üye.d, time-dat

bagš.iin teacher-gen

xuviar aa . . . yosoor bagš.iin quota uh . . . accordingly teacher-gen

174

chapter four surguul’.d school-dat

očil.güi.geer going-neg-instr

surguul’.d school-dat

oči.j go-impfc

tend there Ingeed Then

oči.j go-impfc

“Ofitsyer.iin “Officer-gen

bürtgüül.j enlist-impfc

surguul’ ” school” Gandan deer, Gandan on

Texnikum college

ge.j, say-impfc

ge.j , say-impfc

ge.j say-impfc tal side

xoyor, two

dörvön four

n’ its

1943 1943

on.ii year-gen

Süxbaatar.iin Süxbaatar-gen

neremjit named

deer to

odoog.iin today-gen

oč.son. go-past

aa . . . uh . . .

aa . . . uh . . .

Ter That

surguul’ school

n’ topic

odoog.oor Barilg.iin today-instr construction-gen

Barilg.iin construction-gen

Texnikum college

baig.aa. be-impvn

xoyor two

davxar, story

bol.j, become-impfc

bai.laa. be-past

23-d, 23rd-dat,

23-d 23rd-dat

Baruun Right

ofitsyer.iin officer-gen

suraltsa.x.aar train-ifvn-instr

8 sar.iin 8 month-gen

8 sar.iin 8 month-gen

šüüd straight

davxar, züün tal story left side iim thus

xoyor two

n’ its

yagaan rosy

baišin tend bai.san. building there be-past (http://www.mongolianoralhistory.org/samples/transcriptions/TR060101B .xml) My school was established with two classes-the first and the second, 4 teachers and director. When I graduated from the school in 1943 it had . . . 6 classes, . . . about 20 teachers. A new building was built and developed. In 1943 I graduated from my school I was assigned to the teachers’ school. At that time a decree of the Ministries of the Mongolian People’s Republic (MPR) was issued and the school of Officers was established to launch its classes in September 1943. I’d decided to study there. I did not go Teachers’ school and was registered as a student of the school of Officers. On 23 August, 1942 I went to the School of Officers. That school was situated in recent-time Gandan, aa. . . . there is the Construction College now. There was a two-story building on its right and there were two-story and four-story pinkish buildings on its left. (http://www.mongolianoralhistory.org/samples/ translations/EN060101B.xml)

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Similarly, the minutes of meetings typically consist of a series of statements in -v, as in this fragment of the minutes of the 2003/01/07 meeting of the Standing Committee on Nature, Environment, Food, and Agriculture of the Mongolian national Parliament (321):15 321. Baigal’ Nature

orčin, xödöö.giin environment country-genitive

baingiin standing

xoroon.ii committee-gen

1 dügeer 1st

sar.iin month-gen

(Myagmar garig) (Tuesday) Töri.in State-gen

7-nii 7-gen

tsag hour

tanxim.d hall-dat

10 minuta.d 10 minute-dat exle.v. begin-past

xoroon.ii committee-gen

Š. Gungaadorj nee.j, Š. Gungaadorj open-impfc

irts, attendance

darga chairperson xeleltsex asuudl.iig agenda-acc

taniltsuula.v. present-past

Xuraldaan.d Meeting-dat

ir.vel come-condc

gišüün.ees member-abl

17 gišüün 17 member

ir.j, come-impfc

94.4 94.4

xuviin percent

Üünd: Herein: Neg. One.

irts.tei attendance-com

Tasalsan: absent:

xii.j do-impfc Tailan.tai Report-com

zoxix belonging

bai.v. be-past

D. Arvin D. Arvin

Ulsiin Ix Xural.iin Parliament-gen

namr.iin fall-gen

15

10 10

V “B”

baingiin standing

on.ii year-gen ödr.iin day-gen

xuraldaan meeting

ord.nii house-gen

Xuraldaan.iig Meeting-acc

2003 2003

xögjl.iin development-genitive

čuulgan.ii assembly-gen güitsetge.sen perform-pfvn

2002 2002

on.ii year-gen

xugatsaand during ajl.iin work-gen

xolbogd.uul.j agree-caus-impfc

Part of this passage is in example (145) above.

tailan report

18 18

176

chapter four Ulsiin Ix Xural.iin Parliament-gen sanal opinion

gar.san.güi. go out-past-neg

12 minuta.d 12 minute-dat Xoyor. Two.

gišüü.d.ees member-pl-abl Ug principal

xeleltse.j discuss-impfc

Ulsiin Ix Xural.iin Parliament-gen

namr.iin fall-gen

čuulgan.ii assembly-gen

xii.x do-ifvn

ajl.iin work-gen

Tölövlegöön.ii plan-gen

asuudl.iig question-acc

10 tsag 10 hour

duusa.v. finish-past

2002 2002

on.ii year-gen

xugatsaand during

tölövlegöön.ii plan-gen

tösöl.töi draft-com

Uls.iin Ix Xural.iin parliament-gen

asuult, question,

tösöl draft

xolbogd.uul.j agree-caus-impfc

gišüün member

L. Davaadtsedev,

Ts. Šiirevdamba, O. Nigamyet, Ts. Ööld, R. Tsogtbaatar, Ts. Šaravdorj, G. Nyamdavaa, Ts. Nyam-Osor

nar pl16

sanal opinion

xele.v. speak-past

Xuraldaan 10 tsag 45 minuta.d öndörlö.v. Meeting 10 hour 45 minute-dat wind up-past ‘The January 7th, 2003 (Tuesday) meeting of the Standing Committee on Nature, Environment, and Rural Development began at 10:10 in Hall “B” of the State House. Š. Gungaadorj, chairperson of the Standing Committee, opened the meeting and presented attendance and the agenda. 17 of the 18 members attending, attendance was 94.4%; absent: D. Arvin. One. Report of the work performed during the Fall 2002 assembly of the National Parliament. Accepting the report, the members of Parliament did not raise questions or express opinions. The discussion of the principal question concluded at 10:12. Two. Draft plan during the Fall 2002 assembly of the National Parliament for work to do. Accepting the draft plan, members of Parliament [names] gave their opinions. The meeting wound up at 10:45.’

16 The plural marker nar is used here to “sum up” the list of members. That is, it marks it as a group of people.

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177

Confronted with the task of translating (322), Sodnomdorj spontaneously wrote down (323), using -v (except in the third sentence). In other translations of narrative sequences, he likewise used this form, except in the occasional sentence. 322. The chairman opened the meeting with a Tibetan prayer. Then several people asked questions. Finally the mayor spoke to us. He said the city was in financial trouble. 323. Xurl.iig dargalagč tövd.iin mörgölčn.ii Assembly-acc president Tibet-gen prayer-gen xamt.aar together with-instr17 Tegeed Then xot.iin city-gen

xed xeden several darga leader

sanxüü.giin finance-gen

ulzalt.iig meeting-acc xün person

nee.v. open-past

asuudal question

tavi.v. Etses.t n’ put-past end-dat the18

biden.tei yarilts.laa. Tereer xot us-com converse-past he city

xünd difficult

baidal.d state-dat

bai.na be-pres

gej that

maan’ our

yari.v. say-past

The question is whether -sen (-v) is the only form that is available for narrative sequence and, if it is, under what conditions a narrative sequence is appropriate in discourse, and, if it is not, what factors, if any, determine the choices of form. As yet, complete and definitive answers cannot be given for these questions, because little investigation has been made of the structures and functions of discourse, conversation, and text in the Altaic languages, especially where Mongolian is concerned. The importance of narrative sequence is that past tenses in narrative typically are non-deictic. A deictic tense normally takes its reference point, the time to which it relates the time of the occurrence recounted, from an adverbial expression or some other temporal expression. For example, in (324), the past tense in and of itself only indicates that the discovery of America by Columbus precedes the present time. When, precisely, it occurred, is specified by the adverbial prepositional phrase

17 Xamtaar ‘together with’ here seems to be a misunderstanding of the instrumental with in the English passage. 18 Literally ‘his, her, their’, this possessive form is used as a marker of definiteness, roughly equivalent to ‘the’.

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in 1492. Similarly, in (325), the adverbial subordinate clause provides the reference for the utterer’s state of hating school. Out of context (326) seems incomplete, because it fails to provide a reference point for the tense, though the reader may assume, through a process of accommodation, a contextual time such as “when I was a child” or “when I was in school.” In (327), however, it is the previous sentence, that is, part of the context, which provides the reference; we understand that it is during the war years that the utterer’s family never had enough to eat. 324. Columbus discovered America in 1492. 325. When I was a child, I hated school. 326. I hated school. 327. The war years were hard on our family. We never had enough to eat.

In narrative sequences it is the so-called event time (the time of the occurrence or eventuality) of one clause that provides the reference time for the next statement in sequence. Or, more precisely, a time immediately following the state resulting from the occurrence in the preceding clause serves as the reference time for the tense of the next statement of the next occurrence in sequence. In (328), the narrator’s getting up results in a state of affairs wherein they had gotten up. It was at this time, that is, when they had gotten up, that they got dressed. Their getting dressed, in turn, creates a state of having gotten dressed, and it is while this state of having gotten dressed obtains, that they went downstairs. 328. I got up. I got dressed. I went downstairs.

Of course, some states are permanent or endure over long periods of time. From (328) we infer that the narrator got dressed as soon as, that is, immediately after, they got up, and they went downstairs immediately after getting dressed. What “immediate” in this context is, is pragmatically determined, that is, in light of the context, including the speaker’s world knowledge. Thus we know that if (328) recounts all the essential events that transpired (so that “getting up,” for example, does not include more than getting out of bed and the events which occur between getting out of bed and getting dressed are merely incidental and can be subsumed under the terms get up or get dressed), perhaps only a few minutes, or even less, elapsed between the two events. But

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in the case of Caesar’s boast (7b), we know that a long period of time must have separated each pair of events. 7. b. I came, I saw, I conquered.

For example, in the passage from The Marvelous Mongolian in (329), the verbal complex began to bark takes as its reference time the time expressed by the adverbial complex then one night, at about two am, while the next predicate, woke up, takes as its reference time the time when Skip had begun to bark. That is, the narrator (who is Kitty Jameson) woke up when Skip had begun to bark, that is, in sequence with his beginning to bark (and presumably in consequence of it). That the narrator’s telling him to be quiet follows his waking up is doubly indicated; since normally she would not have been talking in his sleep, telling the dog something must have followed waking up, but also, the use of and to conjoin actions idiomatically implicates sequentiality: the reverse order, I told him to be quiet and woke up would be odd, to say the least. The next but one and has the same effect: Skip kept barking—despite what Kitty said to him—after the narrator got up and saw that it was Peep. Another sequence occurs in the second paragraph. Skip ran off after Peep wouldn’t let Kitty touch her, and it was when he had run off that his barking woke up Grandfather. The time when he had woken Grandfather becomes the time at which Grandfather came outside, asking his questions of the narrator. 329. Then one night, at about two am, Skip began to bark under my bed, as if he was afraid of something. I woke up and told him to be quiet. But I thought I saw something outside. I got up to look out, and it was Peep. And though I said, “Shhh,” to Skip, “it’s Peep come back,” Skip kept barking, and I had to crawl out of the window to see what was wrong. Peep was muddy and untidy and very restless, and she wouldn’t let me touch her at first. Then Skip ran off into the darkness barking at something, which woke Grandfather. He came outside with a torch asking me what on earth I was doing in the cold in my dressing gown and with no shoes on. (Aldridge 1974, chapter 5)

Non-narrative statements, that is, statements that form part of the narrative background and not the foreground (the main line of the narrative, the sequence of events forming the “story”), do not advance narrative time. That is, they do not occur at a time immediately

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after the onset of the state resulting from the previous event or occurrence, but rather the time of the occurrence itself. For example, Peep’s being muddy and so on, at the beginning of the second paragraph, holds at the time of the preceding action, naming the narrator’s looking out. Finally, this passage illustrates another way in which sequentiality can be implicated. It’s being Peep is a state obtaining at the time that the narrator looked out; but that time is later than the time at which she got up. This ordering follows from the use of the infinitive: if you get up to look out, then you naturally look out after getting up. A similar ordering defined by the use of the infinitive occurs in I had to crawl out of the window to see what was wrong. Whether a past tense verb functions sequentially to advance narrative time, or not, or functions deictically to merely state a fact (as in the second sentence of example (330), the past tense of which does not take its reference point from the time of conquest, but rather is simply a time preceding the speech act time), depends on the Aktionsart of the predicate, the kind of occurrence it denotes, but also on other contextual factors, including discourse functions. For example, in (331) and (332), the temporal relations between the pairs of sentences differ because the rhetorical relations between them differ. In (331), Tom’s being seriously injured is the consequence of his being hit by a truck, but in (332) his being hit by a truck is the consequence of his not properly looking to see if there was traffic. The ordering of the sentences differs because the second sentence in (332) expresses the cause of the event in the first, and hence an event occurring at an earlier time, whereas in (331), the second sentence does express a consequence and hence a later event in sequence. How a sentence relates functionally to the sentences around it is pragmatically determined, and in the absence of context can be ambiguous. Thus in the case of (333), we don’t know in which order the events occurred; if this is a narrative sequence, Tom was shot before stepping out; if the second sentence is a statement of the conditions under which he was shot, of course his being shot came after his stepping out. 330. The Romans conquered Britain. It was the westernmost of their conquests. 331. ‘Tom was hit by a truck. He was seriously injured.’ Tom truckan.d dajruul.jee. Tereer xünd šarxad.san Tom truck-dat knock down-past He heavy wound-pfvn

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bai.na.19 be-pres 332. ‘Tom was hit by a truck. He didn’t properly look to see if there was traffic.’ Tom truckan.d dajruul.jee. Tereer Tom truck-dat knock down-past He traffic traffic

bai.sn.iig be-pfvn-acc

xar.aa.güi look-impfvn-neg

bai.na. be-pres

333. Tom was hit by a bullet. He stepped out just as a second fighter made its strafing run.

In (334), from Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi, it is most likely, out of context, as this passage is, that the ship made the burping sound as or after, and because, it sank. In contrast, in (335), the state of the aircraft reported in the second sentence is the state at or before, not after, the crash. Nothing about the tenses used reveals this; we infer it because of our knowledge that a crashed airplane cannot prepare for landing, whereas the reverse is, unfortunately, possible. 334. The ship sank. It made a sound like a giant metallic burp. (http://www .oxonianreview.org/issues/2-2/2-2-1.htm) 335. The plane crashed in a rural residential area about 200 or 300 feet from a house, Stables said. The aircraft’s landing gear and flaps were down, seemingly in preparation to land. (http://www.newarkadvocate.com/ apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080112/UP-DATES01/80112011; at the present time no longer available.)

19 I wondered if the Mongolian should contain an indefinite neg ‘a’. I also wondered about the English word truck. As to the latter, I found on a Web page (www .mongoliadc.us/News/AD/JOB.htm) the example (i) below, given as in the original. In regard to the former, a Web page (http://tuurug.banjig.net/zuud/index.php?b_ type=as) included (ii) (again, given as in the original). i. TRUCK bari.j chad.dag [čad.dag] bai.h [bai.x] hereg.tei. Truck drive-impfc be able-habvn be-ifvn necessity-com ‘Being able to drive a truck is necessary.’ ii. zam gara.h [gara.x] ge.j bg.aad [baig.aad] road exit-ifvn intend-impfc be-pfc

mashin.d [mašin.d] dairuul.j car-dat run into-impfc ‘exiting, [they’re? I’m?] hit by a car’

bn [bai.na] be-pres

gj [ge.j] say-impfc

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Although English does have different past tenses that could be used to differentiate a narrative sequence from a passage containing both a foregrounded and a backgrounded occurrence, namely the simple past tense, the past progressive, and the past perfect, it cannot use these to disambiguate the discourse structures of strings of sentences because the simple past tense can be used in the same contexts as the other two tenses: compare (336a–b) and (337a–b). In (337b), the simple past tense seems more colloquial than the past perfect, but otherwise there is no difference between the two passages (337a, b). 336. a. Six people have died after a cargo plane crashed in Cameroon after failing to land at an airport in Ndjamena, capital of neighbouring Chad. The Ukrainian aircraft had been chartered by Libya to fly food and medical aid to Chad. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4936912 .stm) b. Six people have died after a cargo plane crashed in Cameroon after failing to land at an airport in Ndjamena, capital of neighbouring Chad. The Ukrainian aircraft was chartered by Libya to fly food and medical aid to Chad. 337. a. The military investigation confirmed what had been obvious from the moment the tragedy occurred. The plane, which severed the ski lift cable in the Italian resort of Cabalasi, was flying far too low. (http:// www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/jan-june98/cablecar_3-12.html) b. The military investigation confirmed what had been obvious from the moment the tragedy occurred. The plane, which severed the ski lift cable in the Italian resort of Cabalasi, flew far too low. c. The military investigation confirmed what had been obvious from the moment the tragedy occurred. The plane, which severed the ski lift cable in the Italian resort of Cabalasi, had flown far too low. d. The military investigation confirmed what had been obvious from the moment the tragedy occurred. The plane, which severed the ski lift cable in the Italian resort of Cabalasi, had been flying far too low.

In many languages an imperfect or imperfective past verb form contrasts with a perfect or perfective one and does serve to disambiguate such strings. The simple past (perfective) and the imperfect of the Romance languages, for example, functions this way. For example, it would be impossible to change (338) as indicated—replacing the perfective passé tense with the imperfective imparfait, without changing both the meaning and the function of the sentence in question, unlike in the case of the the English examples above. (Hence those linguists who use “!” to mean “unacceptable with the assumed meaning” would likely replace the asterisks below with exclamation marks.)

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338. L’enquête menée par les autorités canadiennes The-inquiry conducted by the authorities Canadian révèlent [passé simple ≠ *révèlait, imparfait] revealed d’Air France of-Air France

avait abordé had approached

altitude et une altitude and a

vitesse speed

trop too

la the

que that

l’avion the-plane

piste d’aterrissage avec une runway with an

élevées. Le high The

2 août 2 august

2005, l’Airbus A340 d’Air France 2005, the-Airbus A340 of-Air France s’est écrasé [passé composé ≠ *écrasait, imparfait] à itself-is crashed on son atterrissage à its landing at avait had

glissé slid

Toronto. Sous Toronto. Under

le long de along

piste runway

avant before

ravin ravine

et and

Selon According to

la the

de finir of finishing de of

sa its

prendre catching

l’enquête the-inquiry

la tempête, l’avion the storm the-plane

course run

dan un in a

petit small

feu. fire.

des of-the

autorités authorities

canadiennes, Canadian

l’Airbus volait [imparfait ≠ *a volé, passé composé] trop vite. the-Airbus was flying too fast. “L’appareil est arrivé [passé composé ≠ *arrivait, imparfait] The-machine arrived à Toronto au at Toronto in-the d’une of-a

violente violent

milieu middle tempête, storm

dont of which

les the

vents winds

changeaient [imparfait ≠ *a changé, passé composé] were changing de in et and

direction direction avec with

peu de little of

visibilité,” visibility

a expliqué [passé composee ≠ *expliquait, imparfait] explained

rapidement rapidly

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chapter four Wendy Tadros, Wendy Tadros du of-the

directrice director

Bureau bureau

Canada (BST). Canada (BST)

de la of the

sécurité safety

des transports of-the transporation

du of-the

“Il It

est arrivé [passé composé ≠ *arrivait, imparfait] trop haut et arrived too high and trop too

vite. fast

posant ses putting its mouillée wet

En In roues wheels et and

presque almost

à in

la the

moitié de la middle of the

piste, runway

glissante, slippery

il n’a tout simplement pas eu [passé composé ≠ *avait, imparfait] it neg-has entirely simply not had assez de place.” enough room (http://www.francesoir.fr/actualite/societe/avion-l-airbus-accidentetoronto-volait-trop-vite-22374.html) “The inquiry conducted by the Canadian authorities reveals that the Air France plane had approached the runway with too elevated an altitude and speed. On August 2, 2005, the Air France Airbus A340 crashed during its landing in Toronto. Under the storm, the plane had slid along the runway before finishing its run in a small ravine and catching fire. According to the inquiry of the Canadian authorities, the Airbus was flying too fast. ‘The plane arrived at Toronto in the middle of a violent storm whose winds were changing rapidly, and with little visibility,’ explained Wendy Tadros, director of the Transport Safety Board (TSB) of Canada. ‘[It] came in too high and too fast, touching down almost halfway along the wet and slippery runway. It simply ran out of room.”20

In Mongolian, aspect need not take on this burden: modality is available to mark the same function. Consider again the passage (329) from The Marvelous Mongolian:

20 For the original English of the quotation, see http://urbantoronto.ca/forum/ showthread.php/5567-PearsonCanada-should-expand-runway-safety-zones-tointernational-code-says-Air-France?p=122935.

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329. Then one night, at about two am, Skip began to bark under my bed, as if he was afraid of something. I woke up and told him to be quiet. But I thought I saw something outside. I got up to look out, and it was Peep. And though I said, “Shhh,” to Skip, “it’s Peep come back,” Skip kept barking, and I had to crawl out of the window to see what was wrong. Peep was muddy and untidy and very restless, and she wouldn’t let me touch her at first. Then Skip ran off into the darkness barking at something, which woke Grandfather. He came outside with a torch asking me what on earth I was doing in the cold in my dressing gown and with no shoes on. (Aldridge 1974, chapter 5)

We saw that there is here a sequence of events, marked mainly by the successive verbs began to bark, woke up, told, got up, kept barking, woke, came. In addition, there are a number of other predicates. He was afraid concerns a putative state at the time Skip began to bark. Thought may represent a state at the time Kitty told Skip to be quiet; it is possible, however, that it represents an occurrence subsequent to that. That “it was Peep” indicates a state discovered subsequent to looking out. Having to crawl out the window is a state of affairs holding at the time that Skip kept barking. In English both foregrounded events and backgrounded states are expressed with the simple past tense: began, woke, got, etc., but also the stative was and had. It is instructive now to consider the Mongolian translation of this passage (329M).21 As one might have expected, the narrative backbone, the foregrounded events, are all expressed using -v, with the possible exception of serjee in the second paragraph: began to bark— exlev, told—zandrav,22 got up—bosov, etc. And, interestingly enough, the states are mainly expressed with -lee: it was Peep: bailaa; Peep was muddy and untidy and very restless: bailaa. She wouldn’t let me touch her at first: bailaa. 329M. Neg udaa šöniin xoër tsagiin üyed Skip yamar negen yumnaas aisan yum šig minii oron dooguur orj, xutsaj exlev. Bi serj, tüüniig duugüi bai gej zandrav. Getel ene möčid tsonxnii tsaana yamar negen yum bürtelzex šig bolov. Bi tüüniig olj xaraxaar bosov. Getel ene n’ Davjaa bailaa. Xediigeer bi Skip noxoidoo “čimeegüi”, “ene cin’ Davjaa

21

I have underlined the -v forms and both underlined the non-v finite verbs in and put them in italics. For the detailed gloss of the first paragraph, see (329) in its place above; that of the second paragraph is presented below. 22 ‘Got up and told him to be quiet’ is rendered using the modal converb: roughly, ‘Getting up, I told him to be quiet.’

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chapter four ergej irsen baina šüü dee gej xelsen bolovč Skip xutssaar l bailaa. Yuu bolsniig medexiin told bi tsonxoor garav. Davjaag.iin Davjaa-gen

xamag whole

bol.sn.oos become-pfvn-abl tevdsen panicky

Daraa n’ After that xaranxui dark

šavar šavxai muddy dirty

učirgüi mindlessly

bai.laa. be-past

ai.j fear-impfc

Exl.eed Begin-pfc

ogt completely

terbeer off

xürge.x.güi reach-ifvn-neg

namaig me bai.laa. be-past

ruu towards davxi.xa.d run-ifvn-dat

üüdn.ii door-gen

bar’.saar carry-contc dan only

č modp

n’ her

Skip yamar neg yum ol.j üz.sen met Skip what a thing find-impfc see-past as if

xutsa.j bark-impfc

či you

gadna beside

baidal.tai state-com

biyen.d.ee body-dat-rp

Terveer Out

biye body

šatan steps

gar.č go out-impfc bošinz.toi, housecoat-com

baig.aa yum be-impfvn thing

be qp

n’ his

övöö grand-dad

deer on

gar čiiden flashlight

ire.n, come-modc xöl foot

ge.j say-impfc

ser.jee. awake-past

nütsgen naked

ene this

xüiten.d cold-dat

yuu what

xii.j do-impfc

asuu.v. (Oldrij 1980: 70f.) ask-past

Two verbs in this passage require special comment. Bolov in the third sentence (which translates But I thought I saw something outside) marks that this is not a state, but rather a “psychological” event, in two ways, first by using the verb bolox ‘become, come to be, come about’ rather than the purely stative baix ‘be’, and secondly through the use of the narrative ending -v. The sense is that then (getel) the narrator had a sensation of seeing something outside. The second verb is that serjee in the second paragraph. This sentence is the translation of Then Skip ran off into the darkness barking at something, which woke Grandfather. The English original makes explicit that Skip’s barking woke Grandfather, that it was the cause of his waking. Nonetheless, his waking is not an event in the narrative, as shown by its being presented in a relative clause, subordinate to barking at something. The Mongolian makes his (Skip’s) running barking

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the context of Grandfather’s waking by putting xaranxui ruu xutsaj davxix n’ ‘his running barking towards the darkness’ into the dative case. Hence in the Mongolian, although övöö serjee ‘grand-dad awoke’ is not syntactically subordinate, it is still not an independent event, but a circumstance, as marked by the deictic verb. Where the fore- and backgrounding in a discourse is concerned, there is a correlation between aspect, Aktionsart, and grounding. The foregrounded material normally consists of expressions referring to bounded activities and events, that is, which have well-defined endpoints (beginning and end), while the background material consists usually of unbounded states and processes. For example, in (320), the event of going to the school is recounted, and then a description of the school follows. We don’t know—and don’t care, in this context— when these facts came to be true or how long they endured. The passage simply states that this was the situation at the time that the event (going to the school) occurred. Even in cases where the reader infers an initial and/or final bound, such a passage in and of itself states only that such-and-such a situation obtained at the time of the event. 320. Manai surguul’ tegexed xoyor angitai, anx xoyor angitaigaar, negdügeer angi, xoyordugaar angitaigaar. Dörvön bagštai, neg zaxiraltai. Ingej baiguulagdsan. Tegeed namaig 1943 on, ond tögsööd, tögsxöd manai surguul’ aa . . . 6 angitai, 20-iod aa . . . bagštai bolson. Šine barilga bar’san ingej xögjsön. Tegeed bi surguulia 1943 ond surguulia ontssain tögsööd bagšiin surguul’d xuviarlagdsan baisan. Bagšiin surguul’d xuviarlagdaad baij baital ter üyed Bügd Nairamdax odoo Mongol Ulsiin said nariin tušaal garč, ofitsyeriin surguul’ gedgiig, surguuliig šineer baiguulan 1943 onii 9 saraas exlen xiceellüülexeer bolson iim üye baisan. Bi ter üyed, bagšiin surguul’d orox xuviar aa . . . yosoor bagšiin surguul’d očilgüigeeršüüd ofitsyeriin surguul’d očijsuraltsaxaar bolj, tend očij bürtgüülj bailaa. Ingeed 8 sariin 23-d, 1943 onii 8 sariin 23-d Süxbaatariin neremjit “Ofitsyeriin surguul’ ” deer očson. Ter surguul’ n’ odoogiin Gandan deer, aa . . . odoogoor Barilgiin Texnikum gej, aa . . . Barilgiin Texnikum gej , gej baigaa. Baruun tal n’ xoyordavxar, züün tal n’ xoyor, dörvön davxar, iim xoyor yagaan baišin tend baisan. (http://www.mongolianoralhistory.org/samples/transcriptions/TR060101B .xml) My school was established with two classes—the first and the second, 4 teachers and a director. When I graduated from the school in 1943 it had . . . 6 classes, . . . about 20 teachers. A new building was built and developed. In 1943 I graduated from my school I was assigned to the teachers’ school. At that time a decree of the Ministries of the Mongolian People’s Republic (MPR) was issued and the school of Officers

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chapter four was established to launch its classes in September 1943. I’d decided to study there. I did not go Teachers’ school and was registered as a student of the school of Officers. On 23 August, 1942 I went to the School of Officers. That school was situated in recent-time Gandan, aa. . . . there is the Construction College now. There was a two-story building on its right and there were two-story and four-story pinkish buildings on its left. (http://www.mongolianoralhistory.org/samples/ translations/EN060101B.xml)

Events are strung together to form the narrative line like beads on a cord; as events they have a well-defined temporal shape, which is why they seem to be encapsulated and thus viewed from the outside as an integral whole, whereas progressive expressions turn them into quasi-states viewed from an internal perspective and as obtaining at some point in the narrative sequence. For this reason the main line of a narrative tends to use perfective aspect (for example the English simple past tense, as in example 7b), while the background uses for the most part imperfective aspect (for example the progressive past tense, which renders a putative narrative such as (339) rather odd). The foreground material therefore tends to utilize predicates that can express bounded eventualities—principally eventive expressions, accomplishments like come and conquer, and achievements like notice and arrive. Activities (processes) like run or melt, and states like exist are inherently unbounded, although episodes are bounded activities or states that function like events, so that in the right types of context the sentences in (340), which could simply be lists of temporally unrelated (or simultaneous) occurrences, could function as narrative sequences. (The context of 340b, which is the response in an interview to the question “What was the impact like?,” referring to going over a waterfall, suggests that these occurrences are in fact sequential.) 7. b. I came, I saw, I conquered. (Caesar) 339. I was coming, I was seeing, I was conquering. 340. a. I swam, I jogged, I lifted weights. b. I felt a shock wave bell ring. I saw stars and heard a loud tone. (http://www.wetdawg.com/pages/whitewater/ed_lucero/index_ww.php)

2.3. Past Tenses and The Topics of Threads The coherence of a work on the local level is maintained by rhetorical relations, sometimes called coherence relations. Where an utterance

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can be related to the preceding sentence, or a larger unit of discourse, by a rhetorical relation, the discourse is coherent. For example, the discourse fragment in (7a) is coherent because one of the sentences is relationally subordinate to the other; the second offers the reason or cause for the eventuality recounted in the first. Similarly (288) offers in the second sentence a consequence of the first. In (275b), the second sentence expands on the first, offering more detail. 7. a. The Titanic sank. It hit an iceberg. 275. b. John bought Mary some flowers. He picked out three red roses, two white ones and one pale pink. 288. Max saw John approach. He stood up.

We can easily alter such examples to render them incoherent. All we need do is change the topic (341a) or the theme (341b), or both (341c).23 341. a. The Titanic sank. The Explorer hit an iceberg. b. The Titanic sank. At the time, it was the most luxurious liner in the world. c. The Titanic sank. In its day, the Vasa was the greatest warship in Europe.

Even these sequences could be rendered coherent by further context, as (341b) is in (341d), and (341a), at least, could be read as coherent if

23 The term “topic” has a somewhat different meaning in discourse pragmatics than in syntax and semantics, and confusingly enough, both are used in the present work. The particle bol marks a “topic” in the semantic sense. It is the thing the speaker or writer is talking about. The topic may or may not coincide with the grammatical subject. In Japanese, for example, there are distinct topic (wa) and subject (ga) markers. In English, it is possible to have both topic and subject in one sentence: As for Ontario, the climate is humid all year round. Here the topic, what is being talked about, is Ontario, but the subject, what something is being predicated of, is the climate. (It does not reduce the terminological confusion that “subject” has a meaning in grammar distinct from its ordinary meaning of ‘topic’.) In discourse pragmatics the term “topic” is roughly a synonym of “theme”; as one source (http://www.thefreedictionary .com/topic) puts it, a “topic” in this sense is “A word or phrase in a sentence, usually providing information from previous discourse or shared knowledge, that the rest of the sentence elaborates or comments on.” While the specific interpretation of this definition varies considerably in various linguistic theories, the concept approximates the everyday concept of “topic” much more than the meaning of the term in semantics does.

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it is taken as part of a list of statements, possibly exemplifying newsworthy maritime accidents or the like. 341. d. Marine safety is not guaranteed by the modernity or the size or the classiness of a vessel. The Titanic sank. At the time, it was the most luxurious liner in the world. And the most modern, and the largest.

Threads are strings of sentences with a common theme. They often commence with a new topic. Some rhetorical relations function to maintain the thread by coordinating material with the preceding cotext. Others may start a subordinate thread by subordinating new material. A subordinate thread concerns a new theme, but that theme is within the larger context of the theme of the superordinate thread, so that while opening up a new thread, it does not close the superordinate thread. Once the subordinate thread is closed, the superordinate thread may be resumed. In structural terms, the relationship is rather like that of a subordinate clause embedded within a sentence; the end of the subordinate clause does not necessarily conclude the sentence as a whole. Compare, for example, (342a), in which the second sentence simply fills out details of the statement in the first sentence and thereby maintains the thread, with (342b), which introduces a potential new topic for a subordinate thread. In (342c) that topic is actually exploited to create a subordinate thread, but in (342d) the same thread is simply continued. 342. a. Martha was in a bad mood. She felt crummy and irritable. b. Martha was in a bad mood. She felt crummy and irritable, and couldn’t help frowning and grumbling at everything, and everyone. c. Martha was in a bad mood. She felt crummy and irritable, and couldn’t help frowning and grumbling at everything, and everyone. Her husband in particular was a source of great irritation and an unfortunate victim of this irritability. d. Martha was in a bad mood. She felt crummy and irritable, and couldn’t help frowning and grumbling at everything, and everyone. She hoped that taking some anti-depressant tablets would put her in a better mood.

But the third sentence in (342c) and in (342d) introduces yet another source of a potential new subordinate string. At every point in a discourse or text the speaker has the choice of starting a new thread, of continuing the current one, or of returning to a yet earlier, superordinate

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thread. The relations between topics, threads (attentional structure), rhetorical relations, and the like, have only become the subjects of intense study in the last decade and a half or so, and much remains to be discovered regarding the structure of discourses and texts, and its relationship to tense and aspect. Where the present work is concerned, one issue in this regard is the paragraphic structure of texts. While the available scholarship can as yet hardly offer a serious theory of the paragraph, it has long been clear that the paragraph is a unit on the level of the structure of discourse and text, that is, a rhetorical structure. As the24 Wikipedia article on the paragraph says, “A paragraph (from the Greek paragraphos, “to write beside” or “written beside”) is a self-contained unit of a discourse in writing or dealing with a particular point or idea,” that is, what has been called here a theme. Consequently it seems only natural that a new paragraph marks a new thread, the end of a paragraph signals the end of a thread, and the middle of a paragraph marks the continuation of a thread.25 This hypothesis is likely in time to turn out to be more or less incorrect, but it is a good first approximation to understanding the functioning of the paragraph. And insofar as threads are structured by rhetorical relations, which in turn have consequences for tense-marking, we would expect to find a correlation between tense choice and position in the paragraph. One property of utterances in context that native speakers intuit is “conclusiveness.” Certain utterances seem to have as their purpose to initiate or to solicit discussion, while yet others seem intended to end it. There has been much investigation of the role of utterances in structuring conversation, but for present purposes we need only note that the conversational functioning of utterances is closely related to discourse structure. For example, an open thread may be an invitation to a conversational partner to continue it, or to start a subordinate thread. On the other hand, the closure of a thread may be intended to end dialogue regarding that topic. Some rhetorical relations are what we are calling conclusive. They draw the particular thread of discourse to an end (and thus are likely

24

Current version at the time of writing. Of course, this is purely on the local level. A thread may be spread over many paragraphs, or even separate texts. A paragraph which contains an entire thread may be embedded within a superordinate thread spread over several paragraphs. 25

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to close out a paragraph). The following (343) is an example of a paragraph with such a conclusive final sentence. The reference in the first sentence to “the most authentic event,” and the absence of any initial introduction of topics or themes, reveals this to be a non-initial paragraph and subordinates it to earlier co-text. The last sentence, with its reference to “the final rider,” apparently closes this particular thread. 343. What is shaping up to be the most authentic event is a horse relay from Chingis Khan’s homeland, Khentii Province, to the ancient capital of Karakorum. The relay harks back to the days of the great Mongol empire, when horse messengers carried documents across the Asian landmass at lightning speeds. This summer’s relay will cover 600km in just 48 hours. Festivities begin 2 August in Dadal Soum, Chingis’ birthplace, where the first rider will accept a sample of soil and water from the homeland. The final rider will gallop into the ruins of Karakorum, and even more festivities, on 4 August. (http://www.lonelyplanet.com/ travelstories/article/ghengiskhan_0606)

On the other hand, some rhetorical relations are non-conclusive, and invite further material; they naturally tend to start threads and often appear, therefore, at the beginning of paragraphs. For example, Saruul-Erdene (2004) breaks the Secret History of the Mongols down into a series of one-paragraph stories. Most open with a verb-form in -jee marking the beginning of a new topic. Section 2 begins with (344a); Alun Gua has not previously been mentioned. Section 3 (beginning with [344b]) shifts attention to her son Bodsonchar, who again has not previously been mentioned. Section 5 (344c) concerns Temüjin’s betrothal at age nine, a whole new topic. Section 6 (344d) contains an episode about Temüjin’s father. 344. a. Čingis Xaan.ii Genghiz khan-gen

udam.d ancestry-dat

Alun Gua ge.deg Alun Gua call-habvn

uxaan.tai emegtei bai.jee. cleverness-com woman be-past ‘One of the Chinggis Khaan’s ancestors, Alun Gua (beautiful Alun), was a clever woman.’ (Saruul-Erdene 2004: 8) b. Alun Guag.iin neg xüü.g Bodončar Alun Gua-gen one son-acc Bodončar ge.deg bai.jee. call-habvn be-past ‘One of Alun Gua’s sons was Bodonchar.’ (Saruul-Erdene 2004: 10)

the discourse functions of the tenses c. Temüjin.iig Temujin-acc

yösön nine

193

nas.tai bai.xa.d age-com be-ifvn-dat

Yesüxei Baatar Olxunud Yesukhei Baatar Olkhunud

aimg.iin aimag-gen

Dei Setsen Dei Setsen

ge.deg xün.ii oxin.toi süi tav’.jee. call-habvn person-gen daughter-com betroth-past ‘When Temujin was nine years old Yesukhei Baatar arranged his betrothal to the daughter of Dei Setsen (Wise Dei) of Olkhunud aimag.’ (Saruul-Erdene 2004: 14) d. Temüjin.iig Börte.tei süi tav’.sn.ii Temujin-acc Borte-com betroth-pfvn-gen daraa following

Yesüxei Baatar Yesukhei Baatar

xurim wedding feast

xii.j make-impfc

butsa.j return-impfc bai.x.tai be-ifvn-comitative

taarald.jee. come upon-past ‘As he was traveling home from arranging the betrothal, Yesukhei came upon a wedding feast in Tataar aimag.’ (Saruul-Erdene 2004: 16)

Often -lee is non-conclusive, inviting further material. Indeed it may function like a verbal colon; the reader expects what follows to fulfill the function opened up the sentence in -lee. Thus in regard to the sentence in (345), “then something follows; [it] sounds like more is coming.” What follows might be a report of what was read; and the point of uttering (349) might be simply to introduce the topic into the conversation. 345. Bi avtobus xülee.j bai.x.d.aa, I bus wait-impfc be-ifvn-dat-rp

bi I

sonin newspaper

unš.laa. read-past ‘While I was waiting for the bus, I read the newspaper.’

An ending such as -sen does not function in this way. Sodnomdorj commented in regard to (346) that xellee would be acceptable in this sentence, indeed better than xelsen. He noted that if the addressee knew what the speaker was about to say, the speaker could use xelsen, but otherwise xellee functioned like a colon to prepare the addressee for what he was going to say.

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346. Teg.eed bagš.d.aa neg ödör xel.sen. do so-pfc teacher-dat-rp One day say-past (The Oral History of Twentieth Century Mongolia, Choijamts; TR060101A—History of Ulaanbaatar 1; Interview 1; http://www. mongolianoralhistory.org/ samples/transcriptions/TR060101A.xml) Then one day I told the teacher. (EN060101A—History of Ulaanbaatar 1; Interview 1—English; http://www.mongolianoralhistory.org/samples/ translations/EN060101A.xml)

Similarly, the -sen-form törsön in (347) “does not lead [to] further information.” Presumably, a -lee-form, törlöö, would indicate further information is to come. The form törsön simply states a fact, Sodnomdorj indicated, as in answer to the question “when was he born?” 347. Ix zoxiolč Dašdorjiin Natsagdorj Great writer Dashdorjiin Natsagdorj 1906 1906

on.d year-dat

Gün Galuutai Gün Galuutai

odoog.iin now-gen (zarimdaa sometime

Baganuur Baganuur Melzei) Melzei

orčim near

ge.deg call-habvn

gazar place

tör.sön. (http://www.mongolinternet.com/famous/DNatsagdorj.htm) be born-past ‘The great writer Dashdorjiin Natsagdorj was born in the place called Gün Galuutai (sometime Melzei) near present-day Baganuur in the year 1906.’

In commenting on an utterance such as (152a), Sodnomdorj said that one cannot use -sen to open a passage; that uulzsan marks the statement as “finished”, as the “end of [the] statement.” 152. a. Öčigdör bi tüün.tei uulz.san. Yesterdsay I that-com meet-past ‘Yesterday I met with him/her.’

While -lee may be non-conclusive, -jee may be conclusive, and tends in a discussion to “[close] the whole thing,” as in (348). Here one “could use [the -v form], but -jee [is] better.” 348. Tegeed daxin Then again nam.iin party-genitive

ava.x film-ifvn üür.iin cell-gen

ge.j ire.x.d.ee, call-impfc come-ifvn-dat-rp nar.iin pl-gen

bičgiin darga.d secretary-dat

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iim ilerxiilelt ög.čee. (Luvsantseren 1972: 100) such demonstration give-past ‘Then, when again we [they?] came with the intention of filming, we [they?] gave such a demonstration to the secretary of the party cell.’

Given the close relationship of the -sen yum construction to the ending -jee, we should not be surprised to find that -sen yum, too, has a distinct functional role to play in discourse. Unlike -sen, which “disconnects” the statement from the thread, and specifically the opening sentence of the thread, -sen yum serves to “connect” the utterance with that opening. Thus in (349), the -lee of the first sentence leads to the second sentence, but the -san yum of the second sentence does not lead anywhere. It coincides with the end of the paragraph. 349. Ene šönö bid This night we neg an

xerg.iig issue-acc

bai.j be-impfc xayaa edge

unta.x.iin ömnö sleep-ifvn-gen before tun very

šiid.lee. decide-past

ruu towards

ix marga.j greatly contest-impfc Šönö Night

xaruula.x show-ifvn

uu, qp

unta.x.d.aa sleep-ifvn-dat-rp

tolgoi.goo head-rp

golomt ruu centre towards

xaruula.x uu ge.j bid marga.san yum. show-ifvn qp say-impfc we contest-pfvn copp (Luvsantseren 1972: 13) ‘This night, before we went to sleep, we decided an issue, debating very greatly. [“We decided our problem after long discussion.”] We debated whether to show our heads towards the outside or towards the inside while we slept.’

The question then is how to relate this particular type of function of the tenses with their meanings and their other functions. In particular, can we generalize regarding the difference in discourse functioning on the attentional level between deictic and anaphoric tenses? These are complicated issues, which require further study. 2.4. The Paragraph As well as position—and hence discourse-function—in a whole written work such as an article, one determinant of ending choice is position (and hence function) in the paragraph.

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There are a number of problems involved in testing this hypothesis. A paragraph is not quite the same thing in a hypotactic language like Mongolian as in a paratactic language like English. There are different definitions of these terms, according to some of which both English and Chinese are paratactic languages, and according to others of which, Chinese is paratactic, but English hypotactic. Complicating matters is the fact that few if any languages are purely of one type or the other, and English in particular is quite capable of producing classic examples of sentences of either type. For present purposes, these terms are used as follows. Paratactic languages tend to associate structures by coordinating them. For example, to turn three sentences into one, a paratactic language simply throws them together, a process called asyndeton or asyndetic coordination. Caesar’s boast in the form of (7b) is the classic paratactic sentence; it turns three independent structures into one by simple concatenation (chaining-together). Here, however, we do not distinguish such simple, unmarked concatenation from conjunction through the use of coordinating conjunctions. Consequently we regard both I came, I saw, and I conquered and I came and I saw and I conquered as equally paratactic as (7b). 7. b. I came, I saw, I conquered. (Caesar)

Latin is notoriously hypotatic, however, and noted for few laconic utterances. Mongolian, likewise, can build quite short sentences, of which we have seen such examples as (16) and (309). But it is also quite capable of readily producing even more lengthy and complex sentences like the one below from (243). In this case, both the English and the Mongolian exhibit hypotactic structure, in which a structure is subordinated to, not coordinated with, another structure. Here the Mongolian translation follows the English structure closely. In both cases, a sentence contains another sentence, which contains a further sentence, but both of those included structures are subordinate to, rather than coordinate with, the clause they are attached to. In English, this is accomplished here by use of the complementizer that and by the subordinating conjunction before. In Mongolian, the verb bai- is nominalized, turning it into the infinitive or non-past verbal noun, to which is then added the dative case, which in effect functions as a subordinator meaning ‘when’ or ‘at the time that’; and bos- ‘rise’, which in English is coordinated with went by means of and, is subordinated to orov through use of the imperfective converbial form in -j (bosoj).

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16. Dasdorjiin Natsagdorj 1906 ond törjee. (“Am’dralyn zam,” p. 8, in Yakovskaya 1976) ‘Dashdorjiin Natsagdorj was born in [the year] 1906.’ 243. Now it happened that in the early hours of Whit-Monday, before Millie was hunted out for the day, Mr. Hall and Mrs. Hall both rose and went noiselessly down into the cellar. (H. G. Wells, The Invisible Man, chapter 6) Tsagaan Sum’yaa ödriin öglöo üüreer, šivegčin Milliig bosoogüi baixad er em xoër Xoll bosoj zoorindoo sem orov. (Vells 1979: 28) 309. Bi aminč xün (http://duluu.blogspot.com/2006/09/blog-post_7557.html) ‘I’m a selfish person.’

Accordingly, in Mongolian, what in languages like English would be independent sentences are often partly subsumed in other sentences. Nor is it obvious how to count the sentence in a one-sentence paragraph. Arguably such a sentence is as much a final sentence as an initial one. It is also difficult to know whether to consider solely the last verb, or to treat complexes as distinct from their component final verbs. While some complexes are clearly not the same as their final member without the preceding elements (for example, a -sen yum form is clearly not the same thing as a yum when it is not preceded by -sen, nor is a -sen baina form the same as baina), it is far from clear that all such combinations form syntactic or semantic units distinct from their final verbs. The value of the following figures is reduced by the lack of answers to such questions, as well as by the small sizes of samples involved. Nonetheless the numbers are suggestive. They point in the direction of two conclusions: first, that genre and subject matter affect the choice of tense markers, and second that position in the paragraph does as well. Accordingly, we would expect to find differences in affix usage relative to position in the paragraph, assuming that the paragraph reflects discourse structure and the various endings differ functionally from one another. And that is indeed what we do find. For example, a series of readings in the reader by Austin et al. are historical, and are minibiographies of the khans of the period of, and preceding, the Mongolian Yuan dynasty. The first, appropriately enough, concerns Genghiz, and is 18 paragraphs long. Of these 18 paragraphs, seven (39%) have initial sentences ending in -v, three (16%) in -jee, four (21%) in -sen yum, and just two (11%) in -sen. None have -lee. But consider the comparable numbers for the final sentences of the paragraphs. Of the 18, 9, or half, have -v; five, or 26%, end in -sen yum (and one more in -sen baina); two in -jee; and only one in -sen. Again, none ended in

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chapter four Table 6 initial sentence of paragraph

final sentence of paragraph

16% 0% 11% 21% 39% 14%

11% 0% 6% 26% 50% 7%

-jee -lee -sen -sen yum -v other

-lee. (These figures are set out in table 6 below for ease in comparison.) This is vastly too small and non-representative a sample to draw any definitive conclusions from, because we cannot evaluate its statistical significance, but these variations, while not spectacular, are suggestive and invite further inquiry.26 3. The Functions of the Past Tenses in Various Genres 3.1. Meaning, Use and Genre Consider, for example, chapter 2, “BNMAU-d soyol-gegeerliin šine baiguullaga bui bolson niigem ediin zasgiin nöxtsöl övörmöts ontslog (1921–1940)”, of Davaasambuu’s BNMAU-iin soël gegeerliin ajiliin tüüxen zamnal. This chapter concerns development and contains many statements about the situation at various dates in the past. Here (table 7) are the figures for the first twenty pages or so of the chapter. The percentages are based on the totals in the last column, and rounded to the nearest integer. Table 7 -v

-jee

-lee

initial 8 (9%) 25 (29%) 4 (5%) medial 6 (32%) 6 (32%) 4 (21%) final 1 (4%) 9 (33%) 0 (0%) TOTAL 15 (11%) 40 (30%) 8 (6%)

-sen

-sen yum

other

0 (0%) 26 (30%) 24 (28%) 0 (0%) 3 (16%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 5 (19%) 12 (44%) 0 (0%) 34 (26%) 36 (27%)

TOTAL 87 19 27 133

26 Nelson et al. (1998: 118) note that in newspaper articles, “the concluding sentence of each paragraph almost invariably contained” the past tense form in -v.

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A number of things are to be observed about these numbers: • • • • • •

•

• •

-sen does not occur at all -jee is five times as frequent as -lee and three times as frequent as -v -jee and -sen yum are about equally frequent “other”, mainly non-past sentences, occur in more than a third of the cases -jee is about equal in all positions, and each closely matches its overall share -v occurs in 11% of all sentences • but 32% of middle ones • 40% of -v’s occur in mid-paragraph -lee likewise, occurring in 6% of all cases • but 21% of mid-paragraph ones • 50% of its examples are mid-paragraph -sen yum is radically reduced in mid-paragraph and final sentences “other” (mainly pres) is 27% over-all • but makes up 44% of finals • and 0% of mid-paragraph sentences

How, precisely, we are to interpret these fairly informal statistics is a good, and unanswered, question, but at the very least these numbers raise questions about what factors give rise to these results and what they have to say about the meaning and use of the tense markers. Interesting as these results are on their own, however, they take on more significance when we compare them to a small sample of yet another non-fiction work, Gongor’s (1970) Xalx tovčoon. This sample covers the first dozen or so pages (pp. 43–55) of the section, “Yazguuriin mongol aimguud: Darligin, Nirun xoyor”. Here (table 8) are the numbers for this selection: Table 8 -v initial medial final TOTAL

-jee

-lee

0 (0%) 17 (37%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 13 (46%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 9 (38%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 39 (39%) 0 (0%)

-sen

-sen yum

other

TOTAL

0 (0%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%)

3 (6%) 3 (12%) 2 (8%) 8 (8%)

29 (59%) 12 (43%) 13 (54%) 54 (53%)

49 28 24 101

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Once again, these numbers are interesting. Notice: • not only does -sen does not occur at all, but neither do -v or -lee • -jee is almost four times as frequent as -sen yum • “other”, mainly pres sentences, occur in more than half of the cases • -jee once again is about equal in all positions • and each closely matches its over-all share There are significant differences from the Davaasambuu sample: • • • •

neither -v (11% in Davaasambuu) nor -lee (6%) occurs at all -sen yum is radically reduced (from 26% to 8%) “other” is increased (from 27% to 53%) “other” is fairly evenly distributed through the paragraph here • which was not the case in the earlier sample

Given these differences, it might be argued that differences in individual style or some other extrinsic factor plays a role in marker choice significant enough to account for, and thereby render insignificant, these differences. But the figures for -jee suggest this is incorrect. In both samples the over-all usage of this form is about a third, and it is fairly equally distributed over the three positions, forming about a third in each position. It is highly unlikely that this similarity is just chance or accidental concord in style. And if that is true of -jee, it is likely true of the other endings as well. The pattern that emerges from these two samples, however, is not the end of the story. The first ten pages or so of the section “Am’draliin zam” of the translation of the biography of Natsagdorj by Yatskovskaya shows the following results (table 9): Table 9 -v

-jee

initial 3 (13%) 4 (17%) medial 7 (10%) 11 (16%) final 2 (10%) 2 (10%) TOTAL 12 (11%) 17 (15%)

-lee

-sen

3 (13%) 3 (13%) 6 (7%) 10 (15%) 1 (5%) 2 (10%) 10 (9%) 15 (13%)

-sen yum

other

TOTAL

0 (0%) 0 (0%) 1 (5%) 1 (1%)

10 (43%) 35 (51%) 12 (60%) 57 (51%)

23 69 20 112

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There are several comparisons that could be made with the earlier samples. The following are the most noteworthy results, however: • all the past tense forms appear, including -sen • -sen yum only appears once (1%), compared with 26% and 8% of the earlier samples • -jee is about halved in over-all share, but is once again about equally distributed • “other” (again, mainly pres) forms make up just over half this sample • -lee is about twice as frequent in initial as in other positions The effect of genre can be seen in the following (table 10) results from a short story, “Badraa” by Baast, in the volume “Xyaruu unasan tsagaar” (1962): Table 10 -v

-jee

-lee

initial 10 (53%) 2 (11%) 2 (11%) medial 19 (48%) 3 (8%) 5 (13%) final 1 (10%) 3 (30%) 4 (40%) TOTAL 30 (43%) 8 (12%) 11 (16%)

-sen

-sen yum

other

TOTAL

0 (0%) 3 (8%) 0 (0%) 3 (4%)

0 (0%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%)

5 (26%) 10 (25%) 2 (20%) 17 (25%)

19 40 10 69

Here we see quite different patterns from the earlier samples, and especially the Davaasambuu one. There -v formed 11% of all examples; here it is 43%. On the other hand, -sen yum, which constituted 26% of all sentences there, does not occur at all here. The -jee marker forms the smallest percentage of sentences of all the samples. However, the small numbers render the statistical significance dubious at best. While much, much more research is required to make these numbers useful, this exercise has hopefully convinced the reader of three things, if the earlier discussion in this book has not: • the past tense markers as used in spoken Mongolian differ from those in written Mongolian; • the past tense markers differ in their meanings and/or uses; • discourse functions of various kinds are correlated with the meaning and/or use of the markers

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chapter four 3.2. Diegetic and Mimetic Genres

To understand the uses of deictic and non-deictic tenses we need to know something of the functions of the two types of tenses in discourse, for the two kinds of tenses correlate with different discourse functions, and ultimately with different types of genres.27 Plato (Republic, book 3) distinguishes mimesis, the imitation or representation of reality in genres such as drama, from diegesis, the narrative recounting of events. The distinction relates to time in that in diegesis the events recounted are in the past and narrative time moves forwards, but never reaches the present, while in mimesis it is (nominally) always the present, just as in real life. Hence diegetic genres such as the novel and the short story are typified by the past tense, but mimetic works such as plays by the present tense. A related, but somewhat dissimilar, distinction is made by Benveniste (1959) and by Weinrich (1964, ch. 2). Benveniste distinguishes histoire (‘story’) from discours (‘discourse’). In histoire, the events recounted are divorced from the situation of the speech act, of the act of utterance; there is no reference to the situation that the utterer and addressee find themselves in. Hence there is a tendency to use the third person and non-deictic adverbial expressions like there. Temporal adverbials are anaphoric, for example, then, at that time, in the afternoon, the following day. In discours, on the other hand, the speaker has the intention of affecting the addressee in some way, and depends on the fact that they are both in the same situation. Naturally references to aspects of that situation are possible. The first (referring to the speaker) and second (referring to the addressee(s)) persons readily occur. Adverbials may refer to the immediate situation of utterance: here, now, today. And the tenses differ. Narrative tenses are past, distal, removed from the present: the past, the pluperfect, the future-inthe-past. Tenses in discours are present-based tenses: the present, the future, the present perfect. Weinrich similarly distinguishes, as the subtitle of his book indicates, “Besprochene und erzählte Welt”—the ‘discussed’ and the ‘recounted’ worlds, defined in somewhat different terms than are Benveniste’s discours and histoire, but effectively pretty much the same. Like Benveniste, Weinrich counts amongst the “Tempora der besprochenen 27 This section draws heavily on Binnick (2003). For the sources of the concepts and theories presented here, see that article.

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Welt” (‘tenses of the described world’) the present-based tenses, and amongst those of the “recounted” world, past-based ones. Benveniste and Weinrich associate diegesis with past tenses, and the contrasting, non-diegetic genres with non-past tenses. Both the choice and the interpretation of an ending are sensitive to the purpose of the utterance, and hence in the first place to the genre of the discourse containing it. For example, stories—which concern events and are about what happened—are normally recounted in the past tense, while reports—which concern facts, what is the case—in general tend to use non-past tenses. As a result, in Mongolian, autobiography has a higher percentage of sentences in -sen (e.g., 146, 346) than many other genres, and fiction (243, 350) has many more sentences in -v—and sequences of sentences in -v—than genres that do not in some sense tell a story. (I have underlined the -v-forms in (243, 350).) For similar reasons, journalism has more non-past sentences (e.g., (351)) than does fiction, as has non-fiction in general (352–353).28 146. Bi Xyatadiin Šandun mujiin Čefü xotnoo 1897 onii 8 sariin 8-nd törj, tendxiin Angli sümd zagalmailuulsan. (Нэрт монголч эрдэмтэн Николас Поппегийн дурдатгал [1-4-р булэг], http://www.maranata.mn/index.php?option=com_content &task=view &id=2533&Itemid=127) ‘I was born in Chefu city in Shantung province of China on the 8th of August of [thyear] 1897 and was baptized in the English church.’ 243. Tsagaan white

Sum’yaa ödr.iin öglöo üür.eer, Monday day-gen morning dawn-instr

Mill.iig Milly-acc xoyor two Ter the

bos.oo.güi get up-imperfect-neg

Xoll Hall xoër two

ajil.tai work-com Tiišee Towards there

28

bai.xa.d be-ifvn-dat

boso.j zoorin.d.oo get up-impfc cellar-dat-rp pivon.ii.xoo beer-acc-rp

čanar.iig quality-acc

šivegčin servant

er male

sem quietly

üz.ex see-ifvn

em female oro.v. enter-past

nuuts secret

baj.laa. be-past or.son enter-pfvn

Note the verblessness of (352–353); (353) does not even have an explicit copula.

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chapter four xoin.oo after-rp

untlag.iin.xaa sleeping-gen-rp

öröön.öös room-abl

lonx.oo bottle-rp

avčr.ax.iig bring-ifvn-acc

xoyoul the two together

mart.san.aa forget-pfvn-rp

Xoll Hall

avgai Mrs.

Ug root

xeregt business

avgai Mrs.

dadamgai gol familiar main

zor’.son aim-pfvn

xün person

Xoll Hall

sana.v. think-past

bai.san be-pfvn

bol.ox.oor become-ifvn-instr

lonxon.d bottle-dat

nöxör companion

n’ her

yava.x go-ifvn

bolo.v. become-past Tüüniig That-acc

šatn.ii stairs-gen

talbai place

giičn.ii öröön.ii üüd guest-gen room-gen door

deer on

oč.tol go-termc

yal’güi ongorxoi ajar open-ifvn

nögöö other bai.x.iig be-ifvn-acc

xar.aad. gaix.jee Xoll look at-pfc be surprised-past Hall

tsašaa untlag.iin.xaa further sleeping-genitive-rp

öröön.d room-dat

ge.sen say-pfvn

gazr.aas place-abl

or.j; enter-impfc n’ his

Butsa.j return-impfc

bii there is

šile.n select-modc

yav.tal go-termc

n’ the

lonx.oo bottle-rp gadaa outside

ol.j find-impfc xaalgan.ii door-gen

ava.v. take-past tügjee bolt

tailaastai unfastened zövxön on’slootoi bai.gaa.g xara.v. (Vells 1979: 28f.) only latched be-impfvn-acc see-past Now it happened that in the early hours of Whit-Monday, before Millie was hunted out for the day, Mr. Hall and Mrs. Hall both rose and went noiselessly down into the cellar. Their business there was of a private nature, and had something to do with the specific gravity of their beer. They had hardly entered the cellar when Mrs. Hall found she had forgotten to bring down a bottle of sarsparilla from their joint-room. As she was the expert and principal operator in this affair, Hall very properly went upstairs for it. On the landing he was surprised to see that the stranger’s door was ajar. He went on into his own room and found the bottle as he had been directed. But returning with the bottle, he noticed that the bolts of the front door had been shot back, that the door was in fact simply on the latch. (H. G. Wells, The Invisible Man, chapter 6)

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346. Teg.eed bagš.d.aa neg ödör xel.sen. Do so-pfc teacher-dat-rp One day say-past (The Oral History of Twentieth Century Mongolia, Choijamts; TR060101A—History of Ulaanbaatar 1; Interview 1; http://www .mongolianoralhistory.org/ samples/transcriptions/TR060101A.xml) Then one day I told the teacher. (EN060101A—History of Ulaanbaatar 1; Interview 1—English; http://www.mongolianoralhistory.org/ samples/translations/EN060101A.xml) 350. Neg One

udaa occasion

šön.iin xoër night-gen two

Skip Skip

yamar which

negen a

minii my

oron place

dooguur under

exle.v begin-past ge.j say-impfc

Bi I

yumn.aas ai.san thing-abl fear-pfvn or.j, enter-impfc

ser.j, wake up-impfc

yum copp

šig like

xutsa.j bark-impfc

tüüniig that-acc

duugüi silent

bai be

zandra.v. rebuke-past

Getel but

ene this

yum thing

bürtelzex glimpse

šig like

tsag.iin üye.d hour-gen time-dat

möčid hasty

bolo.v. become-past

xara.x.aar look-ifvn-instr

tsonx.nii window-gen

Bi I

tsaana yamar negen outside which a

tüüniig him (accusative)

boso.v. get up-past

Getel but

ene this

ol.j find-impfc n’ Davjaa the Davjaa

bailaa. be-past Xediigeer then

bi I

Skip Skip

noxoi.d.oo dog-dat-rp

“čimeegüi”, quiet

“ene this

cin’ your

Davjaa Davjaa erge.j ir.sen return-impfc come-pfvn xel.sen say-pfvn

bai.na be-pres

šüü modp

dee” modp

ge.j say-impfc

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chapter four bolovč although

Skip Skip

xuts.saar bark-contc

l modp29

bai.laa. be-past

Yuu what

bol.sn.iig become-pfvn-acc mede.x.iin know-ifvn-gen

tuld on account of

bi I

tsonx.oor window-instr

gara.v. (Oldrij 1980: 70f.) go out-past But one night, at about two a.m., Skip began to bark under my bed, as if he were afraid of something. I woke up and told him to be quiet. But I thought I saw something outside. I got up to look out, and it was Peep. And though I said, “Shhhh” to Skip, “it’s Peep come back,” Skip kept barking, and I had to crawl out of the window to see what was wrong. (Aldridge 1976: 55; chapter 5) 351. Brazil.iin ard tümen Brazil-gen masses

Kub.iin esreg Cuba-gen against

alivaa any

türemgiill.iig buruušaa.j bai.na. aggression-acc condemn-impfc be-pres ‘The Brazilian people condemn any aggression against Cuba.’ (Montgomery 1969: 11, 123; reading #2) 352. Manai our

üil work

xerg.iig udirda.x gol cause-acc lead-ifvn main

xücin bol Xyatad.iin Kommunist Nam mön. force topic marker China-gen Communist Party copp (Mao Tsedong 1972: 1) ‘The force at the core leading our cause forward is the Chinese Communist Party.’ (Mao Tsedong 1966: 1) 353. Niislel n’ Paris xot. Capital its Paris city (http://mn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Франц) ‘Its capital [is] the city of Paris.’

In diegetic (narrative) genres there is a perspective or point of view from which the author chooses to narrate the event, and the use of endings is sensitive to this focalization. Narration may be non-focalized, in which case the narrator adopts the objective voice of a historian, or it may adopt the perspective of an internal focalizer, that 29 Sanders and Bat-Ireedüi (1999) call l a modal particle, but Kullmann and Tserenpil (1998:348f.) treat it as a “restrictive focus” particle. (Cf. note 3 on p. xxi on č.)

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is, a character within the narrative (as Treasure Island is constructed as the memoirs of Jim Hawkins and The Marvelous Mongolian is an epistolary novel consisting almost exclusively of the letters exchanged by Kitty Jamieson and her friend, Mönxiin Bayart). In (354), is represents the present-time perspective of the speaker, while was reflects the past-time perspective of the subject, Columbus. The temporal perspective of the focalizing agent has sometimes been identified with the reference time. In diegetic genres, however, there can be a conflict between the reference time in the sense of the consciousness filtering events and the reference time as the point reached in the narrative progression, since the latter generally advances through the course of the story, but the former does not. 354. Columbus was well aware that the earth {is, was} round.

3.3. Genre and Tenses The various factors mentioned in this section result in the tenses having distinctive uses, and hence, distinctive distributions in discourse. This provides a set of properties that serve to categorize the various tense endings. In general: deictic tenses should be: • • • • •

preferred in genres of “discourse” and in mimesis (e.g., in plays) preferred for factual (as opposed to eventive) statements backgrounded in narrative text preferred for stative expressions (that cannot refer to events per se) preferred in contexts in which there is, or can be, no explicit reference time apart from the time of the eventuality or the time of the utterance

and correspondingly anaphoric tenses should be: • • • •

preferred in diegetic, narrative genres (e.g., novels and short stories) preferred for occurrences in narrative sequences foregrounded in narrative text preferred for non-stative (eventive) expressions (such as accomplishments and achievements, or episodes of states and activities)

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chapter four Table 11

Source

Dialogue in Am’draliin ödör (p. 10) The Oral History of Twentieth Century Mongolia: Divasambuu (TR060402—Gandan Interview, Person 1) (http://www.mongolianoralhistory.org/samples/ transcriptions/TR060402.xml) Dialogue in the story “Toogiid öngörüülsen negen ödör” (Erdene 1969: 15f.) Non-dialogue in the story “Altai” (Erdene 1969: 9–12) “Činggis Xaan” (unit 21, Austin et al. 1963: 174f.), excluding quotations

Number of non-past tenses in first 25 sentences 22 20

15 7 1

• preferred in contexts in which there is, or must be, an explicit reference time apart from the time of the eventuality or the time of the utterance The non-past tense, for example, whether marked by -ne or by a present-tense copula such as yum or mön, is a classic example of a deictic tense, since it relates the time of the eventuality directly to the speech act time. It refers directly to the present, to “now.” If we examine plays and film scripts (e.g., Am’draliin ödör in Lodoi 1967), interviews (such as the Divaasambuu Gandan interview), or even the dialogue in novels and stories, the present (or some other tense of discours) is overwhelmingly the tense utilized. Equally natural is the use of the present tense in the fictional correspondence in The Marvelous Mongolian and its Mongolian translation, Gaixamšigt mongol mor’. The figures above (in table 11) are for the first 25 sentences in each of the listed discourses, and the last two are given to provide contrast with the first three. These facts establish clearly that the non-past is principally, if not exclusively, a deictic tense.30 In the next section we apply these criteria 30 The historical present and certain other uses of the present allow it to act like an anaphoric tense, as in (i), but it is usually deictic. i. Then I wake up on one of my days off . . .which was Sunday . . .and I come downstairs and my moms [sic] boyfriend is freaking out and yelling at me. He has such a short temper. (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/vine/journal_view .php?s=&journalid=317231)

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to the various past tenses of Mongolian, partly to justify the claim at the beginning of this section that the two kinds of tenses correlate with different discourse functions, and ultimately with different types of genres, and partly to explore the functioning of the various tenses in discourse. 3.4. Past Tenses in the Various Genres We have seen that anaphoric tenses require (or at least allow) reference times distinct from both the time of the eventuality and the time of utterance, while deictic tenses do not. Consequently, in narrative genres, anaphoric tenses foreground an eventuality, presenting it as an event in a narrative sequence, whereas deictic tenses background an eventuality as a circumstance outside of that sequence. Moreover, anaphoric tenses are typical of diegetic genres such as fiction and autobiography, and deictic tenses are typical of non-diegetic genres such as factual non-fiction, journalism, and reference works. We take these properties as criteria to be applied to the past tenses of Mongolian in order (1) to justify our classification of -jee and -lee as deictic, and -v and -sen as anaphoric, and (2) to explore the use and interpretation of the various past tenses in differing contexts. We saw earlier that one of the properties distinguishing anaphoric (definite) tenses from deictic (indefinite) ones that the former require a presupposed reference time different in principle from both the time of utterance and that of the eventuality. In practice this means that contexts lacking such presupposed times, for example initial position and absolute position, are biased towards deictic tenses, and anaphoric tenses are more likely to occur in mid-discourse. And that is precisely what we have found, where the past tenses of Mongolian are concerned. Both -jee and -lee occur in initial and absolute position, while -sen and -v do not. We have also seen that there is a correlation between rhetorical function and genre. Narrative is defined by narrative sequence, narrative advance, and we have seen that where there is a temporal sequence, as in chronology or narrative, -v and -sen are the tenses used. On the other hand, where facts, as opposed to events, are in question, as in reportage, the tenses used are -jee and -lee. Which past tenses appear, for example, in diegesis, and which in nondiegetic genres? The foreground of written narratives such as novels and short stories is characterized by the use of -v. For example, successive segments of dialogue in fiction are regularly marked by gev ‘said’.

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Chapter 6 of The Invisible Man opens with the Halls getting up; they go into the cellar (355a). There follows a background comment on their business there (b). Mrs. Hall realizes she has forgotten something (c) and Mr. Hall goes back upstairs for it (d). He is surprised to see that the strange guest’s door is ajar (e). He goes into his own room and finds what he had come for (f ). Returning downstairs, he notices something amiss (g), which arouses some thoughts (h), and recalls something (i). Then he stops and turns back (j), knocks at the stranger’s door (k), and when there was no response (l), enters (m). 355. a. Now it happened that in the early hours of Whit-Monday, before Millie was hunted out for the day, Mr. Hall and Mrs. Hall both rose and went noiselessly down into the cellar. b. Their business there was of a private nature, and had something to do with the specific gravity of their beer. c. They had hardly entered the cellar when Mrs. Hall found she had forgotten to bring down a bottle of sarsparilla froim their joint-room. d. As she was the expert and principal operator in this affair, Hall very properly went upstairs for it. e. On the landing he was surprised to see that the stranger’s door was ajar. f. He went on into his own room and found the bottle as he had been directed. g. But returning with the bottle, he noticed that the bolts of the front door had been shot back, that the door was in fact simply on the latch. h. And with a flash of inspiration he connected this with the stranger’s room upstairs and the suggestions of Mr. Thomas Henfrey. i. He distinctly remembered holding the candle while Mrs. Hall shot these bolts overnight. j. At the sight he stopped, gaping, then with the bottle still in his hand went upstairs again. k. He rapped at the stranger’s door. l. There was no answer. m. He rapped again; then pushed the door wide open and entered.

In the Mongolian translation,31 ‘entered’ (356a = 355a) is an -v form (orov). The backgrounded sentence that follows (b = b) ends in bajlaa, a -lee form. The report of Mrs. Hall’s realization (c = c) ends in an -v

31 The detailed glosses for (h–m) have been added here. The passage in (355–356) was originally example (243) above, and the detailed glosses for (a–g) can be found there.

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form, sanav ‘thought’. Mr. Hall had to go (yavax bolov in d); an -v form is used here, probably because this necessity arose only after the sudden realization in (c). The next sentence (e = e) reports his mental state and thus ends in -jee: gijxjee ‘(he) was surprised’. Entering his own room, he found (olj avav, with an -v form) the bottle (f = f ). He noticed (xarav, again -v) something odd (g = g); then comes another mental occurrence: he connected this observation with past events— (h = h) ends with the -jee form bodjee ‘thought’. He remembered . . . (i = i) ends with a -laa form, sanalaa. Then he knocked at the door, but there was no answer ( j = j, k, l). So he pushed the door open and entered (orov) (k = m). 356. a. Tsagaan Sum’yaa ödriin öglöo üüreer, šivegčin Milliig bosoogüi baixad er em xoër Xoll bosoj zoorindoo sem orov. b. Ter xoër pivoniixoo čanariig üzex nuuts ajiltai bailaa. c. Tiišee orson xoinoo untlagiinxaa öröönöös lonxoo avčraxiig xoyoul martsanaa Xoll avgai sanav. d. Ug zor’son xeregt Xoll avgaj dadamgai, gol xün bai.san boloxoor lonxon.d nöxör n’ javax bolov. e. Tüüniig šatnii talbai deer očtol nögöö giičnii öröönii üüd yal’güi ongorox baixiig xaraad gaixjee. f. Xoll tsašaa untlagiinxaa öröönd orj; bii gesen gazraas n’ šilen lonxoo olj avav. g. Butsaj yavtal n’ gadaa xaalganii tügjee tailaastai zövxön on’slootoi baigaag xarav. h. Xoll genet uxaar.č ene baidl.iig Hall suddenly realize-impfc this situation-acc önööx tonight’s bas also

giič.iin guest-gen

Teddi Teddy

xaalga, door

Xenfr.iin Henfrey-gen

yaligüi insignificant taavar guess

bodjee. think-past i. Ur’d oroi gergii n’ earlier evening wife his laan.ii candle-gen

gerel.d light-dat

xaalga door

ongorxoi opening

xoyor.toi two-com

bai.san, be-past

xolbon together

tüünii bar’.j bai.san that-gen carry-impfc be-pfvn tügjsen.iig Xoll bolt-acc Hall

sana.laa. think-past j. Xoll xeseg zuur yaa.x učr.aa Hall a while do what-ifvn happen-impfvn

todorxoi distinctly

olo.x.güi find-ifvn-neg

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chapter four zogso.j bai.sn.aa lonx stand-impfc be-pfvn-rp bottle

bar’.saar butsa.j carry-contc return-impfc

ög.sön, do for someone else-past

xün.ii person-gen

nögöö other

togš.vol xariu alga. knock-condc reply none k. Daxin togš.ood üüd.ii n’ Again knock-pfc door-acc the

üüd.iig door-acc

tele.n nee.n widen-modc open-modc

oro.v. enter-past

If this passage is typical, there is very nearly, if not completely, a correlation between foregrounding and the use of -v on the one hand, and backgrounding and the use of -jee and -lee on the other, just what we would expect if the former is an anaphoric tense and the latter two deictic, in the senses in which we have been using these terms. In non-fiction, again as one would expect, factual statements tend to use -lee and -jee, while past events in sequence are recounted using -v. Chronologies, for example, often use -v. Thus most of Činges xaany tüüxen on daraalal (http://www.maranata.mn/index.php?option=com_ content&task=view&id+1305&Itemid=125) consists of a list of events in chronological order, identified by year, and expressed in sentences which use -v; some of the early entries are given in (357): 357. 1164 on 1164 year

(xöx bičin (blue monkey

jil): Temüjin year) Temüjin

gurvan nas.tai three age-com

bai.v. be-past ‘1164 (blue monkey year): Temüjin was three years of age.’ Temüjin .ii ix düü Joči Xasar törö.v. Tamüjin-gen big younger brother Jochi Xasar be born-past ‘Temüjin’s older younger brother Jochi Xasar was born.’ 1165 on 1165 year

(xöxögčin taxia jil): (bluish-grey chicken year)

Temüjin Temüjin

dörvön four

nas.tai bai.v. age-com be-past ‘1165 (bluish-grey chicken year): Temüjin was four years old.’ 1166 1166

on year

(ulaan noxoi jil): Temüjin tavan (red dog year) Temüjin five

nas.tai age-com

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bai.v. be-past Temüjin.ii Temüjin-gen

xoyordugaar second

düü younger brother

Xačigun Xachigun

törö.v. be born-past ‘1166 (red dog year): Temüjin was five years of age. His second younger brother Xachigun was born.’

A chronology of Japanese history at http://www.mn.emb-japan.go.jp/ mn/japan_info/explore_japan/history.htm likewise uses -v forms (a sample was given in 245). 245. 710 Niislel xotiig Nara ruu šiljüülev. ‘710. They moved the capital to Nara.’ 752 Todaiji süm dex Ix Buddag büteej duusav. ‘752. They finished erecting the Great Buddha of the Todaiji Temple.’ 794 Niislel xotiig Kioto ruu šiljüülev. ‘794. They moved the capital to Kyoto.’

The -sen form is sometimes similarly used, as in this portion (244) of the chronology at http://edu.olloo.mn/modules.php?name=Today news&mm=08: 244. 8 sar.iin 31-n.d bol.son üil yavdal 8 month-gen 31st-dat happen-pfvn event ‘Events which took place on the 31st of August’ 1302 on.d: Frants 1302 year-dat France

ba Sitsilüüd xoorondoo and Sicilians between

šašn.ii dain.iig zogso.x.oor toxirolts.son. religion-gen war-acc stop-ifvn-instr agree-past ‘1302: France and the Sicilians agreed to stop their war of religion.’ 1674 on.d: Rod-Ailenda.d 1674 year-dat Rhode Island-dat

/ANU/ Indian.čuuda.d (USA) Indian-people-dat

arxi xudalda.x.iig xoriglo.son. liquor sell-ifvn-acc prohibit-past ‘1674: In Rhode Island (USA) they prohibited selling liquor to Indians.’

The study of the pragmatics of tense in written text and spoken discourse in Mongolian is just beginning, however, and much more research is required before a comprehensive account can be achieved.

REMARKS IN LIEU OF A CONCLUSION The present work set out specifically to justify the claim that at the heart of the past tense system of Khalkha Mongolian and of other closely allied Mongolian dialects and languages is an opposition of evidential and inferential past tenses similar in general to that found in such Turkic languages as Turkish. More generally, it sought to investigate the relationship between the various past tense markers, and, incidentally, adjudicate between the conflicting claims that the endings can optionally be exchanged for one another at the discretion of the speaker or writer, and that they do indeed differ from one another and are not freely interchangeable. Where the spoken language is concerned, in addition to the opposition of evidential (-lee) and inferential (-jee), two other distinctions between this pair of endings were found. (The inferential ending, by the way, is also mirative, i.e., used to report something newly discovered; what the relationship of inferentiality is to mirativity in Mongolian was not investigated.) The first of these is that of proximality and distality. The evidential ending is proximal; it serves to connect the eventuality (event or state) referred to in the sentence to the immediate speech act situation. Where it is used for distant past events, removed in time from the present, it is nonetheless linked to the present situation in some way. For example, if the speaker says that he or she “read this book” when they were young, the book is within the speech act situation, it is here, and the fact that the speaker read the book in the past is in some way relevant to what is the case at the present time. The other endings, with the exception of -v in questions (where it functions as a version of -lee, which cannot itself appear in “real,” information-seeking questions), are all distal, and concern matters separated in time from the present. The proximal ending may also be used as a present or future, that is, as a non-past, but once again it serves to link the situation referred to in the sentence to the present situation, unlike the non-past ending -ne, which, in its “actual present” use, is distal, concerning a situation separated in time from the present, and not especially linked to the present situation.

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The second additional distinction is that between anaphoric and deictic tenses. Deictic tenses simply relate an eventuality to the deictic centre (roughly, the time of the speech act). In regard to this distinction, the endings -jee and -lee do not contrast, as both are deictic. Anaphoric tenses are like anaphoric pronouns in requiring antecedents, specifically what are called reference times. In narration, the reference time for a clause or sentence may be provided by the time of the eventuality reported in the preceding clause or sentence. Each event in a narrative sequence follows immediately on the preceding one. (What “immediate” means in this context is, however, dependent on the context and a number of other pragmatic factors. Thus in the case of Caesar’s boast Veni, vidi, vici ‘I came, I saw, I conquered’, a considerable amount of time presumably passed between each pair of these events. If I say “I went home, I changed into casual clothes, I had dinner,” the pace of events is clearly much more rapid.) Because anaphoric tenses depend on some contextual time, they are called definite. Barbara Hall Partee (1973) famously observed that I didn’t turn off the stove does not mean ‘I never turned off the stove’, only that at a certain given time I failed to do so. Deictic tenses are indefinite, since they neither require nor point to a certain time. The present perfect of European languages, for this reason, has sometimes been called the “indefinite past tense,” the regular preterite tense being definite. The perfective participial ending -sen, often (but probably erroneously, in light of what has been said here about its relationship to the imperfective participle) reported to replace the other endings under negation, in fact functions, when used without a copula as the main predicate of the sentence, as an alternative past tense to all the others, with its own character. Although it can be used to recount one’s own experiences, as in autobiographical accounts, and to that extent is evidential, it is distal, and so contrasts (in this use) with both -jee (which is inferential or mirative) and -lee (which is proximal). It has traditionally been noted that the -v past is largely restricted in the modern spoken language to questions, but in the case of writing is regarded as the major tense marker. This characterization is not completely correct, but is important as the most obvious difference between spoken and written Mongolian tense usage. It became obvious in the course of the research for the present book that the tense system of spoken Mongolian is not the same as that of written Mon-

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217

golian. (These labels of “spoken” and “written” should not be taken too seriously, for “spoken” Mongolian can be represented in writing, and informal writing approximates to speech in many ways, while “written” Mongolian can be spoken, and formal speech may approximate to the written language. Furthermore, a mixture of features of both styles can be observed in electronic communications such as text messaging and Web pages on the Internet.) In fact, the kinds of uses and interpretations which characterize any of the various past tenses in conversational speech differ from those the ending in question shows in writing, not just -v. It is true that the evidential/inferential distinction is maintained in writing (though -jee may be replaced with -sen baina, and other complex forms, both evidential and inferential, also are used, for example -sen yum—the use and interpretation of these complexes has not been investigated as part of the current study), but although the proximal/distal opposition of -jee and -lee is maintained, the deictic centre is not a given, as it is in oral communication, and often these endings are defined as proximal or distal relative to a time which is not the actual present, the time of utterance or (in the case of writing) the time of interpretation. In such usage, these tenses function like anaphoric tenses rather than deictic ones. It is this usage which led some grammarians to equate -jee to the pluperfect. This usage is found, for example, in the background of narration. Circumstances taking place at the same time as, or in some way linked to, the associated foregrounded event, use -lee, while those which are in the history of that event use -jee. Foregrounded events are recounted using anaphoric tenses, and they require definite tenses and are naturally distal as well. Especially in “objective”, “factual”, third person, historical accounts, writing uses the “neutral”, “colourless” -v. But speech uses -sen in this role. Thus these two endings contrast as non-evidential, non-inferential, and definite (anaphoric) tenses with the deictic tenses, but also as distal with the proximal -lee, though admittedly -sen must in some cases be characterized as evidential. In general, however, it can be said that spoken -v is a form of -lee, but written -v a form of -sen. (And despite what has sometimes been written, the sometimes-evidential, often-neutral -sen is not just the inferential -sen baina with the copula omitted.) The discussion in chapter I had already demonstrated the problems with the traditional “semantic” theory of the tenses, which distinguished them according to temporal (tense) and aspectual differences

218

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of meaning. Chapters II and III explored, justified, and illustrated the distinctions of use and interpretation outlined above in these “remarks.” Sodnomdorj, my native-speaker guide through the thickets of the Mongolian tense system, set out a challenge with his claim that the endings all mean the same thing and are optionally interchangeable. This sort of suggestion is to be found in Ramstedt’s work (1902) as well. When put to the “Intuition Test,” however, the distribution of the tenses was shown to be neither whimsical nor optional, but dependent in some way on the context. This fact was reconciled with Ramstedt’s and Sodnomdorj’s observations thus: the endings do mean the same thing, they are, after all, all just past tense endings. But though that, in and of itself, means that they are freely interchangeable, and as regards their contributions to the meanings of the sentences containing them they therefore differ in no way, they differ pragmatically, that is, how they are used by the speaker or writer and interpreted by the listener or reader. Crucial to their use and interpretation is context, which at the narrowest means the immediate situation of utterance (at least in the case of speech), and the co-text—the speech preceding the utterance in question, and the writing surrounding the passage of text in question. But at its broadest, context includes everything the speaker knows, and all that he or she presumes that the addressee knows. A separate set of factors in tense choice (or interpretation) is the function of the utterance. For example, neither -jee nor -lee can occur in “real” questions. The questions they occur in are employed with other purposes in mind than seeking a “yes” or “no”, or the answer to a WH question like yamar ‘which?’ or xen ‘who?’. Facts and background information require precisely these deictic tenses, while the recounting of events (as in foregrounded narrative) can no more use these tenses than can “real” questions. The functions of utterances involve a number of interrelated categories and levels. For example, temporal relations provide cues to rhetorical functions. The sequence The ship grommed. It vlurped. reveals the role that real-world knowledge plays in interpretation. The use of the nonsense words grom and vlurp prevents us from employing the kind of common sense that tells us that in The Titanic sank. It hit an iceberg, the second sentence recounts a previous occurrence to that in the first sentence, and therefore is some kind of background informa-

remarks in lieu of a conclusion

219

tion such as the cause of that subsequent (and consequent) occurrence. In contrast, The Titanic hit an iceberg. It sank, our sense tells us that if the second sentence is non-narrative, it must represent one of the types of rhetorical relations in which the accessory information concerns a following, rather than a preceding, time. Where ambiguity is possible, we can use an explicit marker of precedence, such as the pluperfect: The ship grommed. It had vlurped. Or an expcit marker of subsequence, such as the conditional tense: The ship grommed. It would vlurp. In a given context, the apparent rhetorical function may indicate the temporal relationship, or vice-versa. Temporal relations and rhetorical relations are important because they function to construct discourses and texts. Here there are three different, but concurrent and mutually-interactive levels of structural coherence. Temporal relations yield linguistic coherence. Deictic tenses require an appropriate deictic centre, anaphoric tenses an appropriate reference time. Tenses can also serve to create temporal references which can serve as reference times. Rhetorical relations yield intentional coherence. The sequence The Titanic sank. It had vlurped is temporally coherent, since the pluperfect takes as its reference time a time immediately following the past time denoted by the past tense in the preceding sentence. But since we have no idea what “vlurping” is, we can only assume that vlurping is the kind of thing that can cause a ship to sink. And finally, well-formed language requires attentional coherence. To change the subject, for example, there are certain rules of the conversational “game” which must be followed. In addition to these “textual” functions, there are others. But in each case, there is a rich, complex interplay of purpose, context, and meaning to construct larger units (for example, conversations) from smaller ones (such as utterances). Markers such as tense endings must interact with the meanings of content words like verbs and nouns to establish the appropriate meaning relationships in each context, as the conversation, discourse, text, etc., develops. Needless to say, the investigation of the use and interpretation of such markers as tense endings is as complicated as it is interesting and revealing, and where the Mongolian tense system is concerned, it is not surprising, given how little attention has been paid by linguists to (both structural and functional) units of language larger than the sentence, that the present work has raised many more questions than it has answered. But one can hope that it has made grammarians,

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linguistic scholars, teachers, and students of the language aware of how inadequate the traditional grammars have been on the subject of the tenses, and has pointed the way towards future research for those who may wish to pursue the questions raised here. One may also hope that it may help the non-native-speaker to more correctly use and interpret the past tenses of the language. Many of the nuances of this rich language are simply lost to those who know only the -v past.

APPENDIX The passages used in the “Reversal Test” Тэр уед би Шилийн гол аймгийн Авга хошууны Гэгээний хийд дээр голдуу амьдарч байсан. Хошуу ноён нь 6–7 настай жаахан хихэд байсан бѳгѳѳд ноёны туслах Насанбат гэдэг хш хошууны ажлыг мэддэг байжээ (bajlaa). Тэр хїн 5 хатантай, 60 орчим зэрэгтэй, 500-аад адуутай их баян хш байжээ. Би тэр їед Тшэнжаргал гэдэг Монгол нэртэй байв. Энэ хугацаанд Свер Монголын олон ч газраар ажлын шугамаар явсан даа. Залуу байхдаа би зураг авах маш дуртай байжээ (bajlaa). (no longer available) – Тэгэхээр та Маршалыг Зевлелтийн армид бэлэг хургэхэд хамт явалцсан байх? – 1942 онд Зевлелтийн армид бэлэг хургэхэд Монголын Ардын армийг телеелж оролцсон. Германыг Москвагаас ухраагаад серег давшилтад орсон Ѵе нь байжээ (bajlaa). (www.olloo.mn/modules .php?name=News&file=print&sid=43454) 2005 оны хувьд тээвэр, холбооны салбар, мал аж ахуйн салбар эдийн засгийн еселтед жинтэй хувь нэмэр орууллаа (-jee). Темер замын тээврээр дамжин енгерех ачаа эргэлт харьцангуй нэмэгдэж байгаа, уурэн телефоны салбарт гуравдагч оператор гарч ирэх гэж байгаа зэрэг нь уунд нелеелсен байна. Мен 2004–2005 оны евел, хавар харьцангуй таатай байсан нь малый тоо толгой есехед нелееллее (-jee). (no longer available) Гадаад эдийн засаг дахь нефтийн унийн еселт, экспортлогч орны татварын еерчлелтеес шалтгаалан шатах, тослох материалын унэ ессен болон 2000–2002 онд болсон зудын уршгаар малын тоо цеерч, махны нийлуулэлт багассан зэргээс шалтгаалж инфляцийн тувшин 2004 онд 11.0 хувь болсон байна. (Зураг 1.8) Оны эцсийн байдлаар инфляцийн тувшин 9.5 хувь гарч емнех оноос бууржээ (-lee). (www.nso.mn/v3/download_data.php%3Ftype%3Dreview%26year %3D2005%26file%3Drep_dec_2005.pdf )

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appendix

Унэндээ, авилгалын асуудал улам даамжирч, дийлдэхээ болихоос нь емне Монголчууд еерсдее ч, олон улсын хамтын нийгэмлэг ч эдгээр хучин чармайлтыг дэмжиж, цаапщьш арга хэмжээг авах цаг боллоо (-ˇee). Еренхийдее, Монгол улсын хувьд гол нь захиргааны болоод улс терийн тувшний аль алинд нь байгаа авилгач байдлыг хазаарлах талаар ур ашигтай арга хэмжээнуудийг хамгийн туруунд авах шаардлагатай байна.1 Энэтхэгийн БХЯ-ны дэргэдэх Спорт хорооны удирдах албаны ХУМУУСТЭЙ уулзаж, зарим ЗУЙЛ дээрхамтран ажиллахаар болжээ (-lee). Дашрамд дуулгах таатай мэдээ бол Цэргийн дэлхийн аварга шалгаруулахтэмцээнд баг тамирчдаа оролцуулах урилгыг авч иржээ (-lee). (origo.mn/24tsag/2007/02/17/5451) 1876 онд “Нээлтийн уйлдвэр” нэртэй хувийн лаборатороо байгууллаа (-jee). Энд еерийн сонирхсон салбар бурт судалгаа, туршилт хийж байжээ (bajlaa). Нью-Жерси дэх Менло паркт дэлхийн анхны уйлдвэрлэлийн лаборатори байгуулж шинэ нээлтууд хийсээр байжээ (-lee). Тэр жилдээ бас нэг чухал нээлт хийсэн нь, урд нь Александр Грахам Беллийн зохион бутээсэн харилцуур утсанд дууны енгийг илуу тод болгодог есгегч нэмж хийсэн юм. Ууний дараа 1877 онд фонографыг зохион бутээсэн нь анхны авиа тэмдэглуур боллоо (-jee). (mn.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Томас_Альва_Эдисон)

1 The passage with this spelling is no longer available, but the same passage with a similar, non-standard spelling can be found at http://www.olloo.mn/modules.php?na me=News&file=print&sid=16776 and in standard spelling at http://www.forum.mn/ res_mat/MongoliaCorruptionAssessmentFinalReportCompleteMN.pdf.

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INDEX -be, see -v -bei 8 n. 6 -čei 8 n. 6 -čix- xviii, 51, 141, 144, 144 n. 25 -čixsen 141, 143f. -cüküi 11 n. 13 -deg 5, 29 -dg 37f. -ee 4f., 9, 9 n. 10, 10 ex. 3b, 26f., 29f., see also -eegüi replaces -v 92–102 -eed 5 -eegüi 31–33, 31 n. 51, 32 n. 52, 45, 92, 97 vs. –sengüi 31, 31 n. 51, 45, 97 -eegüi baina 32 n. 52 -ge 9, 29 n. 48 -gsen 29 n. 48 -güi ‘not’ 4f., 31f., 45, 92 -j (converb) 4f., 5 ex. 2c, 172 -j (Kalmuck) 7 n. 5, 38 -j (= -jee) 8, 51, 93f. -jei 8 n. 6 -jana 37f., 37 n. 57 -jee xii, 6, 7 n. 5, 8f., 11 n. 15, 12 n. 16, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21f., 33–37, 40, 55f., 61, 63f., 141–144, 163, 165, 209, 212 as indirect past tense 56, 66, 143 as inferential past tense 40, 50–54, 62–70, 77, 102, 144 as present perfect 16, 35, 62 conclusive 194 in folk tales 161, 161 n. 3 in paragraphs 169, 171, 192, 197–200 in questions 51, 93–95, 97 in the first person 52f., 65–69, 70 n. 18 in the second person 51–53, 65, 67 marks a profound regress 15, 38, 40 marks the distant past 15, 33, 36 ex. 16, 36 ex. 61, 41 n. 62, 81 marks the recent past 15, 34f., 63 metric theory of 33–37 mirative 144 modal accounts of 54–59 synonymous with -sen baina 140–145 vs. -lee 41, 46, 81, 102, 116, 120

vs. -sen 10 n. 11, 65, 77 vs. -v 19, 47, 163 -ǰükü 8 n. 6 -ǰüküi 11 n. 13 -l (= -lee) 8, 46, 73 n. 20, 93 -la (Kalmuck) 7 n. 5, 37f. -le 8 n. 6, 23 n. 39 -lee xii, 6f., 7 n. 5, 9, 11 n. 15, 12 n. 16, 13, 13 n. 17, 15, 17, 19, 22f., 25, 33–38, 45, 45 n. 70, 54f., 61, 81, 97, 142, 145f., 165, 172, 185, 209, 212 as a non-past tense 12, 19, 22, 43 as direct past tense 56, 66 as evidential past tense 15, 23 n. 35, 40–47, 64, 70–74, 76, 88, 102 as future tense 34, 43 n. 65, 82–88 as present perfect 16, 19, 22, 63 in paragraphs 168, 171, 193, 197–200 in questions 45, 73, 93–95, 97 in responses 73, 73 n. 20 in the first person 71, 73, 76 in the second person 70 n. 18, 71–73 marks a distant past 36 marks a shallow regress 15, 38, 40 marks the imminent/near future 24f., 85 marks the immediate/recent past 24, 33, 63, 80f., 86, 88f., 91 metric theory of 33–37 modal accounts of 54–59 non-conclusive 193f. vs. -jee 41, 46, 81, 102, 116, 120 vs. -ne 82, 85 vs. -v 47, 70 n. 17, 73, 99–101 vs. -sen 73 n. 20, 79, 97 -legei 8 n. 6 -lüge 11 n. 13, 33 n. 55, 36 -lügei 8 n. 6 -luqa, -luqai 8 n. 6 -ne xviii, 17–19, 21 n. 34, 37f., 48, 208 as future tense 82, 85–87 as general present tense 37 n. 57 vs. -lee 82, 85 -seer xxi, 1, 3f.

230

index

-sen (= asan) 28, 93 -sen baina 62, 74 n. 22, 138–142 in paragraphs 197 synonymous with -jee 61 n. 2, 68 n. 14, 140–145 -sen xii, xvii, 5, 6 ex. 3a-b, 7, 9, 12 n. 16, 13, 26f., 32, 56, 61f., 74–79, 81, 95, 102, 116, 142, 161, 164, 203, 209, 213, see also -sengüi as short form of -sen bai- 138f. as spoken form 93n. 45 conclusive 194 disconnects from thread 195 evidential 77, 79 in paragraphs 197–200 in questions 46, 50 n. 74, 73 n. 20, 74, 93–99, 101f. in response to -sen question 101f. in response to -v question 100f. in speech 74–79, 144 in the first person 76 in writing 74–79 modal neutrality of 61 negated 31f., 61, 74, 92, 142 neutral in evidentiality 102, 116, 148 vs. -ee 26 vs. -jee 10 n. 11, 65, 77 vs. -lee 73 n. 20, 79 vs. -sen baina 138–140 vs. -v 26, 49, 61, 74, 92–102, 95 n. 49, 99, 102, 116, 135 -sen yum 138, 141f., 171, 195, 197–200 -sengüi 31f., 61, 74, 92, 97, 142, 171 vs. -eegüi 31, 31 n. 51, 45, 97 -sengüi yum 171 -sn (Kalmuck) 7 n. 5, 37f. -tel 6 ex. 3d -v xii, 6, 7 n. 5, 9, 11 n. 13, 12 n. 16, 13, 15, 17, 25, 37, 46f., 101 n. 64, 95, 102, 116, 142, 161, 164f., 168, 203, 209, 212f. as a written form 93n. 45 “colourless” 46, 50, 102 evidential 47, 70 n. 17 in narrative 57, 164, 177, 185, 212 in paragraphs 171, 197–200 in questions 50 n. 74, 70 n. 17, 73, 73 n. 20, 94f., 99–102, 132–135 in response to -sen question 97 in response to -v question 101, 132–134 in speech 74–79, 92–102, 132, 144 in statements 132–146 in writing 74–79, 132–138, 144

marks distant (remote) past 34 marks future time 48 marks recent past 15, 95 n. 49, 102 marks hypothetical suppositions 17, 48 modal neutrality of 46, 61, 66 modality of 46–50 neutral in evidentiality 102, 116 non-past uses of 48 not negated 92–102 vs. -jee 19, 47, 163 vs. -lee 47, 70 n. 17, 73, 99, 101 vs. -sen 26, 49, 61, 74, 93, 95 n. 49, 99, 102, 116, 135 -v (Kalmuck) 7 n. 5, 93 -x xvii, 5, 6 ex. 3c, 85, 93 -yü 18 n. 24 a- ‘be’ 28, 140 accidental form 56 accommodation 178 actio 18 actio imperfecta 17f. actio perfecta 17 addressee 72f. adverbials 35, 81 converbs as 5 Afro-American Vernacular English 139, 139 n. 19 ajee ‘was’ 28 Aktionsart 24, 180 Aldridge, J., see Magnificent Mongolian, The “Altai” 208 Altaic languages 3–4, 41 Altangerel, D. 10 n. 11 Am’draliin ödör 208 amnesia 65, 68 anaphoric tenses 13, 102–111, 144, 162, 164, 207, 209 anaphors, binding of temporal 149 anchoring 149f. answers to questions 95, 97, 98 n. 56, 99 anteriority, relative 37f. aorist 21 n. 32 Aristotle 24 n. 42 asan 28, 93 aspect 14–20 aspectual class 24 asterisk 53 n. 77, 67 n. 13 attentional coherence 158, 191, 219 Austin, W. et al. 141f., 171, 197, 208 autobiography 164, 203

index awareness, coming into Ayuuš 132

50f., 53f., 63

Baast, B. 168, 201 background(ing), see grounding “Badraa” 201 bai-, bayi- ‘be’ xxi n. 1, 4–5, 140 baij(ee) ‘(there) was’ 120, 161 bailaa contrasts with baiv 47 Baoan 3 Bat-Ireedüi, J., see Sanders, A. and Bat-Ireedüi, J. be going to 85–87 be/ve xvii, 46, 95 Beffa, M.-L. and Hayamon, R. 19 n. 26, 19 n. 31, 21, 21 n. 32, 26 n. 44, 33 n. 55, 45, 63, 63 n. 5, 80, 92 Benveniste, E. 202f. besprochene Welt 202 bi- 45n. 70 bii xxi n. 2 bilee ‘is, was’ 45, 45 n. 70–71, 94 n. 47 binding of temporal anaphors 149–152 Binnick, R. xi, 24 n. 42, 40f., 44, 54 biography 164f., 170, 200 biz 41, 87 Bläsing, U. 2, 7 n. 5, 17f., 17 n. 23, 37, 37 n. 57 BNMAU-iin soël gegeerliin ajiliin tüüxen zamnal 198 bol- ‘become’ 6 bolai ‘is’ 140 bolon ‘as well’ 6, 6 ex. 3g Bonan 3 Bosson, J. 19, 63, 132 bounded occurrences 187 bounding point 23 bui ‘is’ 140 Bulchuluu 48 Buriat 2, 12, 48, 113 bögööd ‘and’ 5, 6 ex. 3f bü- 5 bülüge ‘is, was’ 45 n. 70, 140 č (particle) xxi n. 3 Caesar 16, 171, 179, 196, 216 certainty of past occurrence 15 Chakhar 2 Chenggeltei 23, 23 n. 39, 36, 57, 89 China Radio International 132 Chinese 196 Chinese/Mongolian phrase-book 99 chronologies 212

231

Chuluu, U. xii, 1, 7 ex. 4, 7 n. 5, 8 n. 6, 10, 10 n. 11, 11, 16, 18 n. 24, 23–25, 23 n. 37–39, 24 n. 40, 29, 33 n. 55, 34–36, 36 n. 56, 44, 48, 49 n. 73, 51–54, 53 n. 78, 55 n. 79, 56, 56 n. 80, 57–59, 58 n. 82 critique of modal accounts 54–59 či ‘you’ xviii Činges xaany tüüxen on daraalal 212 “Činggis Xaan” 208 Clauson, G. 3 n. 1 coherence 147–161, 188, 202 coherence relation 157–159, 188–190, 192, 219 commenting on one’s own experience 68, 72 completed past action or occurrence 15, 20, 22, 25, 27, 34 Comrie, B. 13 n. 17 conclusiveness 191–194 consequence 159 contextual time 30 contingency 87 continuative converb xxi, 1, 3f. converbs 5, 152 as adverbials 5 copula deletion 139 copular particle xxi n. 2, 5, 165 copula, verbal noun as predicate with(out) 9, 27f., 30, 138, 165 Dagur (Daur) 3, 12, 48 Davaasambuu, P. 198, 200f. Dayaar Mongol 164 decisive form 55 dee 126 definite past tense 19 definite tenses 13, 105–111 degrees of remoteness 13, 33, 37 deictic centre 80, 126, 145 deictic tenses 13, 102–111, 144, 161, 164, 168, 177, 202, 207–209 diegesis, diegetic genres 202f., 206f. direct past tense 56, 66 discours 202, 207f. discourse, types of 37f. discourse coherence 147–161, 202 discourse functions 37–40, 57, 79 n. 29, 147–213, 147–161, 195, 201f. distality 12, 15, 34, 79–82, 91, 145f. Divaasambuu 208 Dobu 23 n. 37–39 Doerfer, G. 3 n. 1 Dongxiang 3

232

index

Dugarov, G. S. xii, xv, xvi, 15, 38, 39 n. 60, 40 durative Aktionsart 37 n. 57 duus- ‘finish’ xviii

grounding 16, 38, 148f., 171–188, 207, 209, 212 Grønbech, K. and Krueger, J. xvii n. 1, 63, 89

echo question 93f., 93 n. 46 edüge/odu-a čaγ ziγaqu khelber 19 n. 31 effectif non passé 19 n. 31 emphatic forms 126, 129 Engkebatu 48 epistemic modality 87 Erdene, S. 208 Erdene bulsan aral, see Treasure Island ert urid tsagt ‘once upon a time’ 161 erzählte Welt 202 es, ese ‘not’ 45 evidential past tense xii, 40–46, 70–74 evidentiality/inferentiality, opposition of 61–80 explanation (rhetorical relation) 158f. expressive function 147f. extended past tense 15, 21

habitual verbal noun 29 Hangin, J. 19f., 33f., 33 n. 55, 43, 50f., 54, 63f., 80, 92, 95 Hashimoto, K. xvi, 34–36 headlines 161, 164–168 histoire 202 historical matter 165, 197 historical present tense 208 n. 30 hypotactic language, hypotaxis 129, 160f., 160 n. 2, 196 hypothetical fact 47

fiction 164, 203 finite indicative verbs 18, 20–25, 31 firmness of the statement 22 first person in questions 74 focalization 206f. focus 57 focus particle xxi n. 3, 57 folk tales 38, 161 foreground(ing), see grounding Foreign Literature Reader 10 n. 11, 170 frequentative verbal noun 29 futurate constructions, English 85, 85 n. 38 future hypothetical 48 future participle 21 n. 34, 83 future tense 87, 202 ga (subject marker) 189 n. 23 Galsang, S. 53f. ge- ‘say, think’, quotative auxiliary 46, 51 gej, geǰü ‘that’ 55 n. 7 gene ‘says, they say’ 143f., 161 general present tense 37 n. 57, 82 genre 13, 144, 198–213, 164, 201–207, 209 gev ‘said’ 209 Gongor, D. 142, 199 Gongor, S., see Sodnomdorj Gongor

immediate future tense 82 immediate past tense 34, 80 imminent future 24 imparfait 106f., 115, 147, 182–184 imperfect aspect 5, 11, 18f., 18 n. 25, 22, 26 imperfect present tense 19 n. 28 imperfect tense(s) 25, 115, 182 imperfective aspect 5 n. 4, 23, 27, 172, 188 imperfective converb 4f., 5 ex. 2c, 172 imperfective participle 29, see also -ee imperfective past tense 182 imperfective present tense 18 imperfective verbal noun, see -ee imperfectivisches präsens 18, 19 n. 30 imperfectivisches präteritum 19 n. 27 imperfektnyi preterit 19 n. 27 imperfektnyi prezens 19 n. 28 indefinite tenses 13 indicative tenses 18, 20–25, 31 indirect past tense 44, 56, 66 indirect quotation 54 inferential, biz as 41 inferential past tense xii, 40, 41, 46, 50–54, 62–70 infinitive(/future verbal noun) 21 n. 34, 82 Inner Mongolian dialects 2, 12 intention(ality) 86, 93 intentional coherence 157f., 219 interjections 126 internal focalizer 206 Internet, language of the 14, 116, 122–132 Intuition Test 117–120, 218 Invisible Man, The 124, 163, 171f., 210

index ireedüin tsagt üilt ner is going to 85–87

83

James, D. 48 Jančivdorj, C. and Ragčaa, B. 15, 19 n. 31, 23 n. 35 Japanese 3, 42, 189 n. 23 Jiriin xümüüs 95, 99 Johanson, L. 41 Johanson, L. and Utas, B. 41 journalistic language 132, 142, 164, 167, 170f., 198 n. 26, 203 Kalmuck 2, 7 n. 5, 12, 48, 113 Kara, G. xix n. 3 Kas’yanenko, Z. S. 15, 21 n. 32, 34, 63, 80, 83, 92 keeps on xxi n. 1 Khalkha 1f., 3, 7, 113f. Known Past Tense 44, 140 n. 20 Konverbum abtemporale xxi n. 1 Korean 3, 41f. Koschmieder, E. 15 Krueger, J. xvii n. 1, 63, 89 Kullmann, R. and Tserenpil, D. xii, xviii n. 2, xix, xxi n. 1–3, 11, 11 n. 13, 14, 14 n. 19, 32, 44–46, 44 n. 68, 45 n. 69, 51, 73 n. 20, 75, 86, 93, 95, 97, 101, 130, 140, 206 l (particle) 206 Legden, T., see Tserenchunt, L. Leuthy, S., see Tserenchunt, L., and Leuthy, S. levels of usage 113–116, 114 n. 1, 122–132, 141 Life of Pi 181 linguistic coherence 149–157, 219 linking consonant xvii, 5 n. 3, 9 n. 9 linking vowel 8 n. 7 Lodoi, J. 208 Lonely Planet Mongolian phrasebook 11 n. 15 Luvsanjav et al. 32 n. 52, 93, 97, 99 Manchu 3 markedness 25, 25 n. 43, 114 n. 1 mart- ‘forget’ 52, 66, 69 Martel, Y. 181 Marvelous Mongolian, The 124, 179f., 184f., 207f. Menges, K. 3 n. 1 metalinguistic function 147 metric tense system 33 n. 54

233

metric tenses 13, 13 n. 18, 33, 79 n. 30 metric theories of the tenses 33–37, 79 n. 30 Miller, R. 3 n. 1 mimesis, mimetic genres 202f., 207 mirativity 12, 144, 215 modal account of the tenses 40, 66 modal distinctions 11, 41 modal particle xxi n. 2–3, 206 modal uses 17 modality 87, 184 modi, modus 17f., 40 Moghol 3 Mongolian language 2, 62, 196f. Mongolic languages 1–10, 12, 13 n. 18, 61 Monguor 3 Montgomery, D. 132–146, 164, 167, 171 mön xxi n. 2, 128 n. 10, 208 narration, narrative 13, 16, 37f., 57, 163f., 177f., 188, 202, 207, 209 narrative advance 151, 159, 179f. narrative tenses 19, 202 narrator, omniscient 124 Nasunbayar et al. 33 n. 55, 34 nedavno zaveršivšeesja prošedšee vremja 80 negation 27, 30f., 45, 105 Nelson, D. et al. xii, xiii, 11 n. 14, 12 n. 16, 13 n. 17, 41, 55 n. 79, 58, 58 n. 82, 70 n. 17, 79 n. 30, 93 n. 45, 114 n. 1, 144 n. 25, 161 n. 3, 198 n. 26 neutral past tenses xii, 12 neutralization 108–110, 145 nidonon ‘last year’ 34 ex. 56b nom verbal du passé fini 26 nomen futuri 83 nomen imperfecti, see -ee nomen perfecti, see -sen nominalization 5 non-focalized narrative 206 non-narration 13 non-neutral (past) tenses xii non-past tenses 164, 208 not yet 33 novels 37f., 209 odoo ‘now’ 43 n. 65, 126, 145 odoo ba ireedüi tsagiin dagavar 19 n. 31 odoo tögssön tsag 80 odoo tsag zaax xelber 19 n. 31

234

index

Oirat 2, 12, 113 öčigdör, öcögedür ‘yesterday’ 24, 81 Ödriin Sonin 164 ög- ‘give; do for someone else’ 4 ex. 1c önggeren tegüsegsen caγ 19 n. 26 önggeren tegüsegsen caγ-tur üiletü ner-e 26 n. 44 önggeren ürgülzilegsen caγ 21 n. 32 öngörön tögssön tsag 19 n. 26 öngörön tögsson tsagt üilt ner 26 n. 44 öngörön ürgeljilsen tsag 21 n. 32, 63 önöö öglöö ‘this morning’ 145 önöödör ‘today’ 81, 126, 145 paragraph 168, 171, 191f., 191 n. 25, 195–198 paratactic language, parataxis 160f., 160 n. 2, 196 parfait immédiat 33, 80 Partee, B. H. 105 n. 66, 216 participles 5, 8, 25–37 passé antérieur 147, 182 passé compose, passé simple 62, 115, 121, 147 passé prolongé 21 n. 32 “past” 23 n. 36 past assertive tense 44 past imperfect tense 19f., 19 n. 27, 63 past participle 27, see also -sen past perfect tense 19f., 19 n. 26, 19 n. 28 past progressive tense 172, 188 past tense 19, 56, 202 forms xi, 1, 7 in -jee, see -jee in -lee, see -lee in -sen, see -sen in -v, see -v past tenses 58, 171, 201f. and grounding 171–188 and temporal reference 161–171 and topical threads 188–195 in questions 92–102 in the spoken language 61–111 in the written language 113–146 in various genres 198–213 the problem of the 10–14, 19 n. 28 past-based tenses 202f. perfect aspect 18 n. 25, see also perfective aspect perfect participle, see perfective verbal noun perfect tense(s) 15, 25 perfect verbal noun, see perfective verbal noun perfective aspect 5 n. 4, 27, 188

perfective converb 24 n. 41 perfective participle 29 perfective past tense 182 perfective present tense 18 perfective verbal noun xvii, 8, 8 n. 8, 27, 139f. perfectivisches präsens 18, 19 n. 29 perfectivisches präteritum 18, 19 n. 26 perfectum 11 perfektnyi preterit 19 n. 26 perfektnyi prezens 19 n. 28, 89 performative utterances 82 n. 31 perspective 79 n. 29, 206f. phases 152f. Plato 202 pluperfect 15, 79 n. 29, 102, 202 Poppe, N. xviii, xxi n. 1, 3 n. 1, 7 n. 5, 8 n. 6, 14–17, 18 n. 24, 19 n. 26–30, 21, 21 n. 33, 23, 23 n. 35, 26 n. 44, 28 n. 45, 33 n. 53, 43, 48, 56, 63, 78, 82 n. 32, 83, 89, 92f., 139, 161 post-terminal viewpoint 38 praesens imperfecti 19 n. 28 praesens perfecti 19 n. 28, 89 praeteritum imperfecti 19 n. 27 praeteritum perfecti 19 n. 26 pragmatic particle 126 pragmatic theory of the tenses 11, 37–59, 120, 213 pragmatics identified with modality 121 present imperfect tense 19f. present participle 27 present perfect tense 15, 16, 19 n. 28–29, 20, 23, 35, 62, 89–93, 95, 202 -eegüi as 32 -lee as 19, 23 French 62 German 11, 16 present progressive tense, English 37 n. 57 present result 16 present tense 18 n. 24, 82, 168, 170, 202, 208, see also -ne -jana as 37 n. 57 -lee as 13 n. 17, 18 historical 208 n. 30 present-based tenses 202f. present-future tense, see -ne present-future verbal noun xvii, 5, 6 ex. 3c, 83, 85, 93 preterite tense(s) 22, 26, 47 pričastnaya forma nastoyaščegobuduščego vremeni 83 progressive construction, English 4, 5 n. 4

index prolongation in time 20f., 21 n. 32, 63, 63 n. 5 pronoun, second person xviii prošedsee dlitel’noe vremya 21 n. 32, 63 proximal past tense(s) 34, 80 proximality 12, 79–82, 91 proximity, relative 13, 13 n. 17 präsens imperfecti 18, 19 n. 30 präsens perfecti 18, 19 n. 29, 22 präteritum imperfectum 11 n. 13 präteritum imperfecti 19 n. 27, 63 präteritum perfecti 18, 19 n. 26 question particle 8, 46, 93, 95 questions 45f., 50 n. 74, 74, 74 n. 21, 92–102 Ramstedt, G. 3 n. 1, 10, 11 n. 13, 16–20, 17 n. 22, 19 n. 26–27, 19 n. 29–30, 22f., 23 n. 35, 25, 26 n. 44, 33, 37, 43, 63, 82f., 89, 117, 218 and modal account 37, 40, 42, 47 warns against his labels 20 recall 53, 94 n. 47 recency of discovery 64f. recent past tense 15, 33 n. 55, 63 recent past time 24, 31, 34 reference time 13, 102–105, 144, 149–151, 158, 161–163, 177–180, 207, 209 registers 113–116, 114 n. 1, 122–132, 141 regress 15 Reichenbach, H. 104 relative past meaning 8, 26 reminders 70, 72 remoteness, degrees of 13, 33, 33 n. 54, 37 responses to questions 95, 97, 98 n. 56, 99 repetition 63 n. 5 repetition of the verb 97, 99 Republic, The 202 restrictive focus particle 206 result state 153 Reversal Test 120, 221f. rhetorical function 209 rhetorical relation 157–159, 188–190, 192, 219 Rudnev, A. D. 55 Sandag, Ts. 142 Sanders, A. and Bat-Ireedüi, J. xii, xviii, xix, xxi n. 1, xxi n. 3, 8 n. 8, 9

235

n. 10, 11 n. 15, 14, 19 n. 29, 31 n. 51, 32 n. 52, 83, 93, 97, 206 n. 29 Sanžeev, G. D. 10 n. 11, 16, 19 n. 26–27, 19 n. 29–30, 89 saya, sayaxan, sayi ‘just (now)’ 24, 43 n. 65, 44, 90f., 145f. sayaxan öngörsön tsag 80 sayaxan tögssön tsag 33 n. 55 sayiqan önggeregsen caγ 33 n. 55 Schlepp, W. 15, 41 n. 62, 44, 89 Schmidt, I. 11, 11 n. 13 scope 29f., 29 n. 46, 34, 46, 105 Secret History of the Mongols, The 192 seit ‘since’ xxi semantic theories of the tenses 11, 14–37 semantics identified with tense/ aspect 121 Sengee, D. 132–146 sentence adverbials 104 short stories 37f., 209 simple past tense 15, 182, 185, 188 since xxi Sodnomdorj Gongor xii, xvii, 11 n. 14, 30 n. 49, 43 n. 65, 47, 64 n. 9, 65, 68, 68 n. 14, 71, 73f., 74 n. 21, 77–79, 81, 85, 96 n. 50, 97 n. 51, 120, 140f., 143, 193f. written tenses do not differ from one another 117, 117 n. 2–3, 119, 218 Sodov, D. 10 n. 11, 170 Song, J. xii, 11, 41, 46, 66f., 102 spoken and written language 113–132, 201 Sprachbund 3 Stevenson, R. L., see Treasure Island still not 33 story 202 Street, J. xviii, xix n. 2, 15, 16, 26, 35f., 41, 41 n. 61, 43–46, 43 n. 66, 45 n. 70–71, 56f., 62, 82 n. 32, 92f., 95, 102, 139 style, stylistic features 12 n. 16, 47, 114 n. 1, 126, 129 surcomposé tenses 147 Svantesson, J.-O. xii, 36, 44, 56 Ševernina, Z. V. 15, 17 “Šine baišin” 168 šüü (dee) 126 ta ‘you’ xviii taar- ‘match’ 4 ex. 1b Tamiriin ber 95, 99 tempora (indicativi) 17f.

236

index

temporal adverbials 202 temporal coherence 160 temporal reference 161–171 temporal relations 219 tense 13–20, 24 tenses xi, 19, 202f. Tserenpil, D., see Kullmann, R. and Tserenpil, D. terminal converb 5 text 147–161 textual functions 147f., 219 theme 13, 189f., 189 n. 23 thread, see topical thread tiim(ee) ‘yes’ 94, 126f., 128 n. 11 “Toogiid öngörüülsen negen ödör” 208 topic 189 n. 23 topical thread 13, 158, 188–195, 191 n. 25 transliteration 65 n. 10, 100 n. 61, 124f. Treasure Island xi, 65, 124, 207 Tserenchunt, L. xix n. 3, 11, 31, 61 n. 1, 64, 69, 70 n. 18, 73, 73 n. 20, 74 n. 23, 75 n. 24, 94 n. 47, 95 n. 49, 98 n. 55–56, 118f., 126 n. 8, 140 n. 20, 141, 144 n. 25 Tserenchunt, L., and Leuthy, X xii, xiii, 11, 11 n. 14, 14, 14 n. 19, 31, 41, 44–46, 50–52, 62 n. 4, 69, 117, 130, 140 Tu 3 Tunghsiang 3 Tungusic languages 3, 42 Turkic languages 3, 41 Turkish 3f. evidential/inferential in 41, 45, 50, 61, 64 udaqu ‘soon’ 24 Ujeyediin Chuluu, see Chuluu, U. unbounded occurrences 187 Unknown Past Tense 44, 51, 140 unt- ‘fall asleep, sleep’ 52, 66, 69

usages, varieties of 14 Utas, B. 41 uu/üü 8, 46, 93, 95 uxaan ald- ‘lose consciousness’ 66 ügüi ‘without, not, no’ 31f., 92, 94f. ül, ülü ‘not’ 45 Ünen 132–146, 167, 171 Vangan, L. 70, 95 variation 114, 123f. Vendler, Z. 24 n. 42 Vendlerian class 24 verbal nouns 5, 8, 26 in questions 30 predicative 5, 9, 27, 27f. verbs of motion 25 verification questions 74 n. 21, 93 vertical script written Mongolian 2 Vietze, H.-P. xix, xxi n. 1, 26 n. 44, 33, 43 n. 67, 63f., 63 n. 6–7, 80, 83, 92, 95 Vovin, A. X. 3 n. 1 wa (topic marker) 189 n. 23 warnings 48 Weiers, M. 8 n. 6, 18 n. 24 Weinrich, H. 202f. Wells, H. G., see Invisible Man, the WH questions 101 n. 64, 218 will 87 witnessed occurrence 15 written tenses 116–122, 132–146 Wu, C., see Chuluu, U. “Xaltarxüü” 168 Xalx tovčoon 199 Xuvia Bodogčid 70, 99 “Xyaruu unasan tsagaar” Yatkovskaya, K. N. 200 Yellow Uygur 48 yum xxi n. 2, 164, 208

168, 201