Two Mongolian Compound Suffixes from the Middle–Mongolian Period
(45th Meeting of the PIAC, Budapest 2002)
The etymological mapping of the Mongolian vocabulary is a desideratum up to now. It belongs to the further duties of the researchers of Mongolian, to specify the original Mongolian vocabulary, and to etymologize it. The first step to carry out this work, is to become acquainted with the Mongolian historical word-formation.
Although some works on this field were carried out, this topic was never worked up in a monographic way.
In a larger work I examined the suffixes which form verbs from nouns (denominal verbs), using the vocabulary of the Secret History of the Mongols, which is one of the largest sources from the Middle-Mongolian period. There I discussed 36 suffixes and classified them according to their productivity, transitivity and compoundness.
In that corpus I found several suffixes, which according to their structure seem to be compounds. The aim of this paper, is to find out, what moral can we draw from this corpus in connection with the development of the compound suffixes.
I will pick out two compound suffixes which form verbs from nouns, namely the +cilA– and the +siyA– suffixes, and I will try to show those problems which come up during their investigation.