Middle Mongolian past-tense-BA in the Secret History.

AuthorStreet, John C.
  1. INTRODUCTION

    Middle Mongolian has seven indicative endings: suffixal elements that close a predicate and can be used freely with subjects of all three persons. Like other suffixes, these participate in vowel harmony, having in each syllable--except those containing the non-harmonic i--an alternation between either a high vowel (u~u; symbolized by U) or a low one (a~e; symbolized by A). (1) Unlike other endings, however, these seven also have alternative shapes whose usage seem to correlate with the sex or number of the individual(s) referred to by the subject of the clause. But this correlation is far from perfect, and since sex-and number-marking of the sort proposed for these indicative endings is unknown in later stages of Mongolian, the whole matter remains something of a puzzle--despite discussion by scholars such as Doerfer, Ozawa, and Weiers. (2)

    Each of the indicative endings has three of these sex-and number-marking alternants, tentatively referred to as feminine, singular, and plural forms. Feminine forms are relatively infrequent even in the Secret History, and rare in other Middle Mongolian documents. (3) The singular and plural forms are much more common, and several of them--though not the semantic contrast between alternants--survived into much later stages of the language. Because of the rarity of many of the forms in other Middle Mongolian documents, it is only through detailed investigation of the Secret History text that one can hope to reach a fuller understanding of the semantics and usage of these alternants. But it remains to be seen whether the number of attestations in that text is sufficient to permit a fully satisfying analysis of whatever marking-system was present in the spoken language underlying the earliest written texts.

    The present article focuses on just one of the indicative endings: the ending represented here as-BA. (4) This ending is singled out for two reasons. First, it is by far the most common of the indicative endings, attested in all but the briefest of MM texts, and of very high text-frequency in the SH. (5) Hence it may be hoped that a fuller understanding of the variants of-BA will clarify the usage of analogous alternants of the other, less frequent indicative endings. This particular ending is interesting for a second reason as well: transcription of its variants apparently caused some disagreement among the scholars in China who, around 1400, transcribed the hypothetical original text of the Secret History--written in the vertical Mongol script--into Chinese characters. Examination of their different transcriptions of variants of-BA may somewhat elucidate editorial procedures underlying our present SH text.

  2. ALTERNANTS OF -BA

    On the basis of everything we know about the system of syllabic transcription utilized in the elaborately edited SH text known as the Yuan-ch'ao pi-shih it is clear that-BA had the following alternate shapes: (6)

    -bi, the feminine form. Since /i/ was neutral to vowel harmony, there is only a single phonological shape: /-bi/ E.g., /bos-bi/ '[she] got up' (2428); (7) /kee-bi/ '[she] said' (1144); /tore-ul-bi/ 'gave birth to' (1071). -bA, the singular form. The notation represents two vowel-harmonic shapes: /-ba/ after a back-vowel verb stem: e.g., /a-ba/ '[he] was' (1324); /jolqa-ba/ '[he] met' (1424); /tuu-ba/ '[a bird] alighted' (1435). /-be/ after a front-vowel verb stem: e.g., /kee-be/ '[he] said' (1214); /og-be/ '[I] gave' (4227); /gur-be/ '[he] reached' (8193). -bAy, the plural form. Again, two vowel-harmonic shapes: -/bay/ after a back-vowel verb stem: e.g., /a-bay/ 'were' (9017); /qono-bay/ '[they] spent the night' (4470); /yabu-bay/ '[our soldiers] moved away' (Y072). /-bey/ after a front-vowel verb stem (e.g., /ire-bey/ '[we] came' (5048); /og-bey/ '[they] gave' (3242); /kee-ldu-bey/ '[the two men] agreed' (3260). Two further points must be raised about alternate shapes of this ending. First, regular vowel harmony is assumed for the masculine and plural forms, though actual writings (discussed below) sometimes show a back-harmony ending after a front-harmony stem. Second, while it is clear that this ending did not take the sort of linking vowel u~u found in many other seemingly consonant-initial endings, (8) there are forms in which such a vowel breaks up a bb cluster: scattered through the text are six occurrences of apparent abubA [degrees] and abubay, (9) past tense of ab- 'take', as against only two of abbA [degrees] and abbay (5225, Y161). It is not certain which of these alternate spellings more nearly represented the actual pronunciation. Other MM documents are of no help in this matter, since-BA apparently never occurs after ab- in any of them. (10) The Altan Tobci (a related text known only from a late manuscript of ca. 1700) has always abuba and abubai for these forms. (11)

    At this point the reader might like to see a few of the examples that have led scholars to believe that the alternants of -BA reflect sex- and number-marking. Minimally contrasting forms and their translations are shown in boldface type in the passages cited just below. (It might be mentioned, in passing, that in Mongolian a subject may be optionally deleted; hence in many translations, such as those below, an implied subject is placed within square brackets.) More extensive exemplification is supplied in [section]5 below.

    Female vs. male subject. Tende Alan Qoa eke in-u ugule-bi 'Then Alan the Fair, their [lit. 'his'] mother, spoke' (1125). Cf. Arqay ire-ju ede uge-s Cingis Qahan-a ugule-be 'Arqay [a man] came and spoke these words to Chinggis Qaan' (6427-28).

    Likewise: Qoaqcin emegen ugule-run 'Ger ci oyira bu-yu; Temujin-i bu-kuy-i ugey ese uqa-bi; qoyina-ca bos-uad ire-bi bi' kee-bi 'Old woman Qoaqchin spoke: "The tent is nearby, of course," [she] said; "[But] whether Temujin is there or not I didn't notice, [for] I got up and came [away] from the back [of the tent]."' (2453-55). Cf. 'Bi ene uge in-u uqa-n yada-ju qariu in-u yau-ba ese ugule-be bi; eke-dece asaq-su kee-n ire-be bi' kee-be '[Temujin (later Chinggis Qan)] said "I was unable to understand what he said and didn't give him any answer; I came to ask [you, my] mother"' (3309-11).

    Singular vs. plural. Olos-cu turu-ju ire-be '[Ong Qan] arrived, starved and worn out' (5120-21). Cf. Kou d deu-ner in-u ugule-ldu-run '"Ecige-yin amin in-u abura-ya" kee-n ire-bAy bida ...' kee-ldu-ju qari-bAy 'His sons and younger brothers conferred, saying "We came to save father's life; ...," and turned back' (5047-48).

  3. TRANSCRIPTIONS OF -BA

    The writing of alternants of -BA in the YCPS is rather complicated; to understand the problem it is necessary to consider the historical process by which the Uighur-script original of the Mongolian text (12) was transformed into the version in the Yuan-ch'ao pi-shih. The history of our present text of the Secret History was discussed in detail by William Hung in a 1951 article, and has recently been clarified and summarized by Igor de Rachewiltz (2004: xl--liii). Many of the ideas mentioned in [section][section]3.1-3.23 below derive from these two works; but all statistics here presented are my own, and are based on the Commercial Press edition of 1936, now conveniently reproduced, with full word- and suffix-indexes, in Kuribayashi 2001.

    3.1 Characters used for shapes of-BA

    The Chinese syllabic transcription represents different shapes of -BA in a variety of ways. Sometimes, as is normal in the YCPS, a single Chinese character is used to represent whatever single Mongolian syllable is involved: (13)

    [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] ([ba.sup.2]) occurs only twice (1212, 1324), as a representation of the MM syllable /-ba/; [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] ([be.sup.1]) occurs eleven times, as a representation of MM /-be/; (14) [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] ([bi.sup.2]) occurs thirty-two times, representing MM /-bi/; [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] ([bay.sup.2]) occurs only once (9017), as a representation of MM /-bay/; [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] ([ba.sup.5]) occurs hundreds of times, and may apparently represent any of the variant shapes of -BA (except perhaps /-bi/). Very often, however, shapes of this ending are represented by a sequence of characters: 15-stroke ([ba.sup.5]) plus an editorial note, usually consisting of three characters, which tells us that this ([ba.sup.5]) was a later substitution for some earlier character. Such notes--unique in the YCPS text--accompany 510 of the 1114 occurrences of ([ba.sup.5]), and usually read as follows:

    [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] 'originally written ([ba.sup.1])' (occurs only once, in X146) [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] 'originally written ([ba.sup.2])' (two occurrences: 3444, 4037) (15) [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] 'originally written ([be.sup.1])' (217 occurrences covering 220 forms; see below) [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] 'originally written ([bay.sup.2])' (287 occurrences; = /-bay/ or /-bey/) Three exceptional cases may be mentioned. (1) Sometimes a three-character note is shortened by omission of the second character; this was apparently done (e.g., in lines X237, Y233, Z578) to save space in an already crowded text-column. (2) Normally a note immediately follows the character ([ba.sup.5]). But if the latter is followed by an enclitic particle (gu, je; e.g., 3349, 6272) and hence is not word-final, the note is usually placed after the particle rather than before, and reads [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or the like: '[the character] ([ba.sup.5]) [was] originally written be (1)'. (3) In one sole instance (X264) we find a still longer note after the last of four instances of /tusi-be/ occurring in three successive columns: 'the above [instances of] ([ba.sup.5]) [were] all originally written be (1)'.

    It is noteworthy that of the 604 occurrences of ([ba.sup.5]) that are not covered by an editorial note (and which are here romanized as -bA [degrees]), 201 occur in chapters 1 and 2...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT