• INTRODUCTION
  • About the project
  • Participating researchers
• ENCYCLOPEDIC SECTION
  • Mongolic languages
  • Khalkha
  • Buryat
  • Kalmyk
  • Useful links
• LINGUISTIC SECTION
  • Adverbial Corpus
  • Concordance
  • Transliteration
  • Grammar Notes
  • Noun
  • Verb
  • Negation
  • Particles
  • Differential object and subject marking
  • Mirativity
  • Bibliography
  • Downloads

Mirativity

Mirative meanings in Mongolic languages were first mentioned by Bobrovnikov (1849: 135, 154–6) in his description of several simple and complex verbal forms in his grammar of Kalmyk.

In addition to the verbal indirective marker -ž that can have a mirative extension, Kalmyk has a special mirative particle -ž which is homonymous with the indirective marker and etymologically related to it: historically it is an indirective form of the old copula verb *a- (Middle Mongolian a-juɣu, cf. Sanžeev 1983:290). These two markers are in complementary distribution: the mirative marker accompanies nominal predicates, existential negation and participles functioning as finite predicates.

Unspecialized indirectivity forms covering inference or hearsay as well as uncontrolled events or dreams – simple past in -ž, negated, habitual past in -dg bääž, and pluperfect indirectivity in -sn bääž – have a mirative extension (cf. Pyurbeev 2010: 97); as already mentioned, the Middle Mongolian indirect past auxiliary a-juɣu was actually grammaticalized into a mirative particle ž for nominal predicates.

Mirativity is a structuring feature in the system of Mongolic adverbial constructions. For instance, mirativity is a differentiating parameter for quasi synonymic temporal constructions: there are postpositional constructions’ pairs with some structural differences expressing the same temporal relation, but opposed by mirativity values: neutral vs. unexpected, expected vs. unexpected and similar. Also in constructions of manner mirativity is a differentiating parameter increasing the number of (quasi synonymic) units, e.g. the Buryat construction with the specialized converb of unusual manner in -nxAAr or the Khalkha construction with the postposition čigeer signalling surprise of the speaker regarding an unexpected/unusual way of acting:

Bibliography for more information:

• Skribnik, Elena and Olga Seesing (2014): Evidentiality in Kalmyk. In: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, R.M.W. Dixon (eds.) Grammar of Knowledge: A Cross-Linguistic Typology. [Explorations in Linguistic Typology 7.] Oxford: Oxford University Press. 148-170.
• Skribnik, Elena and Olga Seesing (2012): Kalmückische analytische Verbalkonstruktionen mit dem Perfektpartizip: Evidentialis und Mirativ. In: Per Urales ad Orientem. Iter polyphonicum multilingue. Festskrift tillägnad Juha Janhunen på hans sextioårsdag den 12 februar 2012. [Mémoires de la Société Finno-Ougrienne 264.] Helsinki: Suomalais-ugrilainen Seura, 409-424
• Skribnik, Elena and Olga Seesing (2012): K opisaniju evidenzial'nosti i mirativnosti v kalmyckom jazyke. [Towards a description of evidentiality and mirativity in Kalmyk]. Voprosy jazykoznanija 4: 39-72.