Mongolica Pragensia ’15 Ethnolinguistics, Sociolinguistics, Religion and Culture
Volume 8, No. 2 (2015)
Special Issue On the Occasion of the 65th Anniversary of Diplomatic Relations between Czechoslovakia and Mongolia
This special issue was prepared by Alena Oberfalzerova, Veronika Kapišovska and Veronika Zikmundova
Editors
Editors-in-chief: Jaroslav Vacek and Alena Oberfalzerova
Editorial Board:
Daniel Berounsky (Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic)
Agata Bareja-Starzyńska (University of Warsaw, Poland)
Katia Buffetrille (Ecole pratique des Hautes-Etudes, Paris, France)
J. Lubsangdorji (Charles University Prague, Czech Republic)
Marie-Dominique Even (Centre National des Recherches Scientifiques, Paris, France)
Veronika Kapišovska (Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic)
Marek Mejor (University of Warsaw, Poland)
Tsevel Shagdarsurung (National University of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia)
Domiin Tomortogoo (National University of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia)
Veronika Zikmundova (Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic)
English correction: Dr. Mark Corner (HUB University, Brussels),
Rachel Mikos (Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic)
Institute of South and Central Asia, Seminar of Mongolian and Tibetan Studies
Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague
Celetna 20, 116 42 Praha 1, Czech Republic
http://ujca.ff.cuni.cz/UJCA-134.html
Publisher: Stanislav Juhaňak – TRITON
Vykaňska 5, 100 00 Praha 10
Registration number of MK ČR E 18436
ISSN 1803-5647
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CONTENTS
Mongolic personal pronouns: Survey and internal reconstruction of paradigms
Václav Blažek (Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic)
E-mail:
Postal address:
Department of Linguistics and Baltic Languages
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University
Arna Nováka 1/1, 602 00 Brno, Czech Republic
Michal Schwarz (Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic)
E-mail:
Postal address:
Department of Linguistics and Baltic Languages
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University
Arna Nováka 1/1, 602 00 Brno, Czech Republic
In the contribution the systems of personal pronouns in all described Mongolic languages are summarized and analyzed, applying the comparative method. The concrete forms in individual languages are arranged into paradigms, compared and finally projected into the reconstructed Common Mongolic protolanguage.
The Turkic peoples of Central Asia and Buddhism
Tibor Porció (University of Szeged, Hungary)
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Postal address:
Department for the Study of Religions, University of Szeged
H-6722 Szeged, Egyetem u. 2., Hungary
This essay surveys the history of Turkic/Old Uyghur Buddhism which is not very well-known outside the circles of specialists. Historically we can rightly state that since the establishment of the First Turkic Khanate in the middle of the 6th century C.E., in the territory of modern Mongolia, Turkic peoples have remained highly susceptible to the culture and religions of peoples with whom they lived or with whom they had regular contact. Thus they adopted traditions such as Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, so-called “Nestorian” Christianity and Islam. Among these religions, in the pre-Islamic period, it was undoubtedly Turkic (Uyg) Buddhism which developed at the most colourful and fruitful stage. While, for example, Manichaeism and “Nestorianism” were transmitted to the Turks practically only by the Sogdians, Turkic Buddhism was influenced by several sources including Sogdian, Tokharian, Chinese and Tibetan.
Ruined Words, Evasive Referents, and Emic Phonemes in Mongolian Riddles: Part 2
Rachel Mikos (Charles University in Prague)
E-mail:
Postal address:
Institute of South and Central Asia,
Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague,
nám. J. Palacha 2, 116 38 Prague 1, Czech Republic
Examining two major corpuses of Mongolian riddles, references continually arose to a particular word category. Termed evdersen u’g (literally: ‘ruined words’), these words were semantically evasive, their meaning far from obvious, particularly joined to the other ‘obfuscating techniques’ of Mongolian riddles, such as ellipsis. This paper, presented in two parts, examines these ‘ruined words’ from several different viewpoints. The relatively high frequency of such words in the Mongolian riddle corpus also seems related to a degree of phonetic lability in these riddles – and perhaps in spoken Mongolian as a whole – resulting in variations of riddles that are phonetically very close, yet nonetheless manifesting subtle shifts of meaning. In addition, frequent occurrence of the words known as iconopoeia (du’rsleh u’g, literally, ‘image-making words’, ‘depicting words’) is found, as these words are also subject to distortion in riddles. In the first part of this paper, a preliminary attempt is made at categorizing these ‘ruined’ words, and distorted loan words were examined. In the second part, I examine phonetically modified words, modified iconopoeia, iconopoeia with inserted zero phoneme, possibly ‘lost’ words, words that are semantically evasive or indiscernible, and emic phonemes in the context of Mongolian riddles. Some preliminary conclusions as to the possible phonic, semantic and cosmological functions of these distortions, omissions, and ‘obsfucations’ are drawn.
Grammaticalization paths of the verb gi- ‘say’ in Kalmyk
Vlada Baranova (National Research University "Higher School of Economics", St. Petersburg; Institute for Linguistic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia)
E-mail :
Postal address:
ul. Sedova 55/2, Room 217,
St. Petersburg, 192171 Russia
The paper focuses on the pathways of grammaticalization of the verb of speech gi- in Kalmyk. Analyzing the similarities and the differences between pathways of grammaticalization forms with verb gi- ‘say’, this paper is an attempt to shed some light on the network of constructions that synchronically co-exist in Kalmyk. I argue that Kalmyk gi- is the source for the development of multiple grammatical markers (polygrammaticalization). There are three chains of development of gi- in Kalmyk with special semantic and syntactic properties: 1) in the field of reported speech, 2) as an appositive construction which includes names and adverbials within the clause and 3) as an auxiliary with prospective semantics.
The Khorchin Dialect
Sainzaya Caidengduoerji (INALCO, Paris, France)
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Postal address:
26 avenue de Lowendal
75015 Paris, France
The article deals with the phenomenon of language contact in the case of the Khorchin dialect of Mongolian. The Khorchins have been in intense contact with Tungusic languages (Manchu, Sibe and others) and, especially in recent times, with Chinese. I argue that the language contact between Khorchin Mongol and Chinese resulted in a state which may be interpreted as a “mixed language”.
The Development of the Orthography of Russian Loanwords in Mongolian Script
Veronika Kapišovská (Charles University in Prague)
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Postal address:
Institute of South and Central Asia,
Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague,
nám. J. Palacha 2, 116 38 Prague 1, Czech Republic
This paper examines early Russian borrowings in Mongolian from the point of view of the development of their orthography in Mongolian script. It covers only a period of two or three decades up to the end of the 1930s, during which various approaches were applied to their orthographic adaptation. The material for the research was taken from handwritten and printed documents, taking into consideration the time of their appearance, form and other details. Based on the information available some aspects of this adaptation are put into social and historical context. By the end of the given period the orthography of Russian borrowings became more or less unified and acquired the forms used till the present day, but its natural development has been discontinued since the process of implementing a new script, first based on Latin, then Cyrillic, has been launched.
Review Section
Ondřej Srba, Michal Schwarz, Dějiny Mongolska [History of Mongolia]. Series Dějiny států [Histories of States]. Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, Prague 2015, 484 pp. – Annotated by V. Zikmundova
E-mail:
Postal address:
Institute of South and Central Asia,
Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague,
nám. J. Palacha 2, 116 38 Prague 1, Czech Republic
Mongolica Pragensia ´15 Vol. 8, No. 2 (2015)