• 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



Number

All three Mongolic languages have heterogeneous sets of plural markers whose distribution depends on both lexical and phonological factors:

• Kh.-UUd, B.-UUd, Kl.-Ud after most consonants, e.g. Kh. zurag ‘picture’ zurg-uud, B. zurag-uud, Kl. zurg-ud
• Kh. -nUUd, B. -nUUd, and Kl.-s after vowels, e.g. Kh. taxia ‘hen’, taxia-nuud, B. taxia-nuud, Kl. taka-s
• Kh. -nUUd, B. -nUUd, and Kl.-mUd/-d after the liquids l and r, e.g. Kh. gol ‘river’, gol-nuud, B. hol-nuud, Kl. hol-mud
• -d in all three languages after stems ending in an unstable -n as well as after actor noun suffixes, e.g. šovun ‘bird’, Kh. šuvuu-d, B. šubuu-d, Kl. šovu-d
• Kh. nar, B.-nAr, Kl.-nr after stems denoting social categories (profession, kinship, also pronouns), e.g. Kh. bagš ‘teacher’, bagš nar, B. bagša-nar, Kl. bagš-nr

Plural marking is not obligatory; it is absent if the NP includes numerals and quantifiers: e.g. ‘three years’: Kh. gurvan žil, B. gurban žel, Kl. hurvn žil.