Postpositions
The postpositions of the Mongolic languages are traditionally characterized as auxiliary words which semantically specify a syntactic function of a clause constituent. They are often considered as functional analogue to case; some postpositions are grammaticalized as case markers, e.g., the problematic marker ruu in Buryat that was defined both as a postposition (Zydypov 1972: 247) or as a directive case marker (Bertagaev 1964: 193-195). The functional similarity of the Mongolic postpositions with the case markers was the reason why the early grammars of Schmidt (1832:82) and Kovalevskiy (1835) also classified as postpositions the dative, ablative, and instrumental case affixes.
The postpositions are different in their origin; most of them have originated from nouns with case markers. Some stems are grammaticalized to postpositions with different case affixes: e.g., in Kalmyk there are three temporal postpositions – cagla, cagt and cagar – which are morphologically frozen case forms (comitative, dative-locative and instrumental) of the noun cag ‘time’. There are also postpositions grammaticalized from adverbs, e.g., deere in Buryat, deer in Kalmyk, deer in Khalkha-Mongolian with the meaning ‘on/above,’ or from non-finite verbal forms, e.g., xüreter in Buryat, kürtl in Kalmyk, xürtel in Khalkha-Mongolian with the meaning ‘till/until’ (grammaticalized from the terminative converb of the verb xüre-/ kür-/ xür- ‘reach’).
Postpositions can be combined not only with nouns but also with participles (and very seldom with converbs), building adverbial clauses in complex constructions. In contrast to nouns that in combination with postpositions mainly express spatial meanings, combinations of participles and postpositions express different adverbial relations, mostly temporal and causal, but not spatial.
Not all postpositions build participial constructions, e.g., the Kalmyk postpositon turšart ‘during’ occurs only in combination with nouns (1) and never with participles (2), whereas the Buryat and Khalkha variants turšada (3) and turšid can be used in special temporal constructions with the future participle:
| (1) | xoir | žil-in | turšart | |
| two | year-gen | during | ||
| ‘two years long’ | ||||
| (2) | *xoir | žil | ködl-x-in | turšart | amr-sn | uga-v |
| two | year | work-pc.prf-gen | during | rest-pc.prf | neg-1sg | |
| ‘In two years that I have been working, I have not had a holiday (rest)’ | ||||||
| (3) | xoröod | žil | soo | xüdel-xe | turšada-m … |
| twenty | year | in | work-pc.fut | during-1sg | |
| ‘While I have been working for twenty years, …’ | |||||
Not all participial forms can be combined with postpositions. The majority of postpositional constructions have a fixed participial form. Some postpositions require a case unmarked form of the participle, others govern one or two specific cases depending on semantics.
The personal (DS) and reflexive (SS) possessive markers are added either to the postposition (when the participle carries no case) or a participial case form. The majority of postpositional constructions are subject-varying, i.e., can be both DS and SS.