1996 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
The Influence of the Linguistic Situation of the North-Eastern Eurasia on the Middle Mongolian
| Project/Area Number |
07610515
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
言語学・音声学
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| Research Institution | Ehime University |
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Principal Investigator |
HIGUCHI Koichi Ehime University, Faculty of Law and Letters, Professor, 法文学部, 教授 (20156574)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1995 – 1996
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| Keywords | The Mongol Empire / Middle Mongolian / Language Contact |
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| Research Abstract |
This project aims to clarify the linguistic situation of the Mongols during the reign of the Mongol Empire, namely from the 13th to the 14th century, in view of loanwords of various origins found in the literature of this period. We can see many borrowed forms in the works of this period, especially in the Buddhist literature. Their ultimate origin is Indic and the forms have distorted shapes, which reflects the differences of introducing routes into Mongolic, so we can tell through what paths the Mongols had borrowed them. In some cases, the Mongols introduced them by way of Uighur and in turn the Uighur equivalents were loans from Tocharian ; in some cases the Mongols borrowed them from Tibetan and in other from Chinese. But seemingly loans are not always pure borrowings. Cafeful inspection on the lines of Mongolian versions of Saddharmapundarika, Ratnajali and Gosmgavyakarana shows us the presence of fabricated loanwords ; namely, based on the Tibetan form, the Mongols had produced, according to the general tendencies of the distortions, Uighur-like words which seem to have originated from Indic but are in fact far from pure Uighur loans. This phenomenon is testimony of the linguistic situation with which the Mongols faced during the period under the overwhelming influences of Indic and Uighur.
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