2025 Volume Supplement.5 Pages 29-55
The Khitan language is a dead language attested in inscriptions written in the Khitan Small Script from the 11th to the 12th centuries and is genetically related to the Mongolic languages. This paper examines the orthographic distinction of vowel length in the Khitan Small Script. Through comparison of cognates, interpretation of distribution characteristics in the texts and analysis of suffixal allomorphs and spelling alternations, this paper argues that: (1) vowels in open syllable graphemes like Vs and CVs are long (V = vowel, C = consonant including semivowel); (2) vowels in closed syllable graphemes like VCs are basically short but a series of graphemes represent a long ē plus a consonant. From a comparative linguistic viewpoint, the following two points are further argued for: (3) some long vowels in Khitan correspond to the secondary long vowels in Modern Mongolian (which resulted from vowel contraction due to the loss of intervocalic consonants); (4) other long vowels may correspond to the primary long vowels which once existed in Proto-Mongolic and Proto-Turkic.
