Категория числа имен существительных старописьменного калмыцкого языка

Abstract

The article examines the grammatical category of number (forms of the plural) in Old Written Kalmyk. In Old Written Kalmyk the category was represented by two grammatical meanings: 1) the singular and 2) the plural. Nouns in the singular have a zero ending while in the plural there are a number of grammatical forms constituted by means of special formants. Nouns of Old Written Kalmyk have the categories of case, number and may also contain indicators of the possessive. Indicators of the categories get joined to the noun stem in strict order: an indicator of the plural comes first and is followed by a case suffix which, in turn, is followed by a possessive suffix that sometimes makes an integral unit with the case suffix. Ever since the emergence of Mongol studies, the category of number has been dealt with according to the ‘the singular — the plural’ scheme inherent to the Indo-European languages. In Old Mongolian, the category of number (the plural) was widely developed and, thus, was regular enough. The ‘contingent of nouns’ that could take plural forms was far larger than in present-day languages. G. Sanzheev noted that ‘in Mongolian languages those were special suffixes determined by corresponding ending phonemes of singular noun stems that served to express the category of the plural’. In Old Written Kalmyk, the indicators of the plural are as follows: -d, -s, -muud / -müüd / -muus, -noγoud / -nögüüd, -nar / -ner, -oud / -uud / -üüd, -coud / -coud / -cuud / -cüüd / -čiud, -tan / -ten. In most cases noun stems coincide with singular nominative forms, except for nouns with the ending ‘unstable –n’ in the singular. The latter form the plural by means of the suffix –d and –n disappears. Thus, the choice of an indicator of the plural in Old Written Kalmyk largely depends upon the stem ending and the semantics of the noun. E. g., plural forms of nouns ending in vowels develop by means of the suffix –s. The semantic factor proves crucial for application of the suffix –nar / -ner since it can join only stems of nouns denoting people and professions. In Old Written Kalmyk, there was a trend of adding explicit indicators of the plural which signifies quite a low level of grammatization for the category of number. Weakening of the meaning of the plural resulted in the emergence of compound plural formants –doud (-d and –oud put together) or -s and –noγoud.