Pronominal Verbs
The pronominal system in Mongolic languages is fully parallel to the parts of speech, including also the verb. The “pronominal verb” system contains three elements: two demonstratives and an interrogative. Demonstratives are Kh. inge-, B. ii(ge)-, K. iig- ‘do/behave like this (proximal)’ and Kh. teg-, B. tii(ge)-, K. tiig- ‘do/behave like that (distal)’, e.g. in Buryat: Yüün deere iige-be-š ‘Why did you do it?’; Bü tiige! ‘Don't you do that!’ An interrogative is Kh. jaa-, B. yaa-, K. ja- ‘what to do?’, e.g in Buryat: Yaa-gaab-ši? ‘What happened to you / What did you do / How are you?’
The non-finite forms of demonstrative verbs are widely used anaphorically, as discourse connectors, and they reflect the whole set of adverbial non-finite predicates. To name only the most frequent: Kh. ing-eed, B. ii-geed, K. iig-äd ‘after doing this’, Kh. teg-eed, B. tiig-eed, K. tiig-äd ‘after doing that’ (with the perfect converb in -AAd), Kh. teg-tel, B. iige-ter-ee ‘in the meantime, lit. until the same subject does this’ (with the terminal converb in -tAl/-tAr), Kh. teg-vel, B. tii-bel ‘if so, if it has happened’ (with the conditional converb in -bAl/-vAl), Kh. tege-xe-d, B. tii-xe-de ‘then, lit. when that happened’ (with a temporal form ‘future participle + dative-locative case’), B. tii-gee-güi-de ‘because it did not happen / he did not do that’, Kh. tege-x zuur-aa, B. tii-xe zuur-aa ‘in between, lit. while the same subject was doing that’, etc. About 95% of their usage is on the textual level (summary linkage), but they occur also between two clauses. Their possessive affixes express same-subjectness/ different-subjectness of corresponding textual segments or clauses.
Khalkha:
| (1) | - Tan-yg | xülee-sn-ij | xereg-güj | ge-lee. | - Za | teg-vel | jav’-ja | daa.
|
| you.hon-acc | wait-pc.pst-gen | need-neg | say.so-prf | OK | do.that-cv.cond | go-hort | prt
|
| ‘They said you don’t need to wait. - Ok, if so (lit. if it so happened), (I) will go.’ [MNC] |
Buryat:
| (2) | Hain | le | gazar-ta, | berx-eer | le | aduul-aarai-gtii, | tii-xe-de-tnai | targal-xa, | hü-tei | bolo-xo-bšo | bi | daa
|
| good | prt | place-dloc | care-instr | prt | pasture-imp-2pl | do.that-pc.fut-dloc-2pl | fatten-fut | milk-com | get-fut-ptl | ptl | ptl.3sg
|
| ‘Pasture in good places, with care, in this case (lit. when you do that) (cattle) will surely get fat and give more milk.’ |
| (3) | Morin-iiny | šuh-aa | goožuul-haar | saašaa | araixan | alxal-na, | tarxy-aa | hežer-ne. | Tiige-že | yaba-tar-aa | naiga-dag, | bai-n | alda-dag | bolo-no
|
| horse-poss.3sg | blood-refl | spill-cv | farther | barely | step-prs.3sg | head-rfl | shake-prs.3sg | do.that-cv | aux-cv-rfl | sway-pc.hab | stop-cv | aux-pc.hab | become-prs.3sg
|
| ‘His horse, spilling blood, barely moves forward, shaking its head. Soon (lit.: after the same subject does this for some time before changing its activity) it begins to sway and to stop.’ |
The most frequent such constructions are already grammaticalized as conjunctions, e.g. B.
tyeed ‘but’ < ‘that having ended (and something different being expected)’ and Kalmyk
tegäd ‘therefore’ < ‘after doing that/being like this’ as in (4):
Kalmyk:
| (4) | Nam-ag | ger | uga-g | ta | med-nä-t, | teg-äd | bi | taan-la | küünd-xär | sed-lä-v
|
| I-acc | house | neg-acc | you | know-prs-2.pl | do.that-cv.disj | I | you-cop | speak-cv-fin | want-pst-1.sg
|
| ‘You know I do not have a house, so I wanted to talk to you’ [BA-256] |
