The Nominal Group in Khorchin Mongolian: A Systemic Functional Perspective

Abstract

The main focus on nominals in traditional descriptions of Mongolian is in terms of word class. Their combinations are described either with respect to their role as clause constituents or in terms of a simple modifier-modified relationship. This paper, on the other hand, recognizes the Khorchin Mongolian nominal group as a unit, whose structural configuration is realized mainly through nominals, as well as embedded nominal groups and clauses. The paper describes the relationship between nominal group systems and structures, focusing on the major systems of thing type, classification, title, experiential marking, determination, orientation, qualification, theme marking, numeration, and epithesis. These systems are interpreted in terms of the division of labor between textual, interpersonal, and experiential meaning in SFL. The systemic functional description presented in this paper provides a functionally motivated interpretation of the ordering of elements in Khorchin Mongolian nominal group and the interactions between systems.

Keywords:

• Khorchin Mongolian
• nominal group
• noun phrase
• case
• clitic

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the teachers who allowed me to record their conversations. Without their help, this project would not have been possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Halliday (1994) recognizes a fourth kind of meaning – logical. The logical and experiential metafunction constitute the ideational metafunction. Nominal groups in Khorchin Mongolian also involve logical meaning; this will however be set aside in this paper.

2 The term used in Bayancogtu (2002) is holboga ʉge ‘connected words’. The term ‘group’ will be maintained throughout this paper. The more widely used term ‘phrase’ will be reserved for units comprising two distinct word classes, such as prepositional phrase in English. Halliday (1994, 180) argues that “whereas a group is an expansion of a word, a phrase is a contraction of a clause.” In Bloomfield’s terms (1933, 194–195), a group is an ‘endocentric construction’ and a phrase is an ‘exocentric construction’.

3 The clause is translated in English as a clause complex because of the different occurrences realized in the verbal group. The converbs (cvb) – one kind of ‘non-finite’ verb – ‘serialized’ in (56) realize ‘manner’ (ŋə-tʃ do.this-cvb) and an occurrence preceding that realized by the ‘finite’ verb (tʃʰɐŋɐ-tʃ pull-cvb).

Additional information

Funding

The project is supported by ‘the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities’ in UIBE (20QD21).