Characterizing Speech Sounds: a Perspective from Traditional Mongolian Grammar

Abstract

The paper analyzes the explanation of language sounds in The Lotus Sutra, a traditional grammatical writing of the Mongolian language, viewed from the perspectives of the theory of the Five Elements (‘Five Wind Branches’) – and compares the former with the sound producing ways and positions in modern Mongolian. As is shown in The Lotus Sutra, the vowel sounds used to be classified into ‘masculine’ <a, o, u>; ‘feminine’ <e, ö, ü>; and ‘neutral’ <i>, however, a strong masculine sound <i> lost its fundamental phonetic role and turned into a neutral one. Analyzing the ways and positions of sound production properly prescribed in the ancient grammar, it can be concluded that there were several ways and positions to produce consonant sounds, for instance, the labial sounds ― ones resulting from lip-to-teeth contact; labiodental sounds ― ones resulting from lip-to-teeth contact; dental sounds – front ones articulated with the tongue touching the front teeth; and finally, alveolar sounds – ones made with the tongue touching the alveoles. The comparative study basically concludes as follows: observing some special features of the sounds <a, ŋ, q, g, g> in Indian and Sanskrit languages it has properly classified the ways of sound production as those typical for ‘wind element’. For example, the vowel <e> in Modern Mongolian has been clustered with velar (guttural) vowels, such as <a, ŋ, q, g, g>. This classification, in turn, is based on the natural evolution and production of the sound <e>. According to Sh. Luvsanvandan and U. Mandakh, the sound <e> could have been pronounced as a mediolingual and post-mediolingual sound. Also, the scholar Phagpa Lama clarified how the sound was pronounced in his Square Script: as Nicholas N. Poppe defined clearly, there had existed two different types of the sound <e> – long (open) and short (narrow) ones.