The aim of this paper is to establish a systematic order for the indicative endings in Middle Mongolian.
In Middle Mongolian, especially in the language of
the Secret History of the Mongols, we can find some indicative endings which do not exist in classical written Mongolian, for example:-bi, I have previously established that these two endings are the feminine form of -ba /be, -lu'a/-lu'ec and that -la'ai/-le'ai, -lu'ai, are the plural form of -la'a/-le'e, -lu'a/lu'e.
In the process of establishing the above, it occured to me that it would be possible to systematize all of the indicative endings by reviewing them from the point view of gender and number.
This problem became the starting point for this paper, and I have attained hopeful results in systematizing all of the indicative endings by the above method. However, I have been unable to solve all of the problems concerning indicative endings by this method. For, when I examined the occurences of the endings -mui, -ju'ui etc. in
the Secret History of the Mongols, for example, in about two-thirds of the cases these endings may be regarded as being the plural forms of -mu, -ju'u etc., but in the other one-thirds of the cases they are not used as plural forms. How these endings should be regarded in the cases when they are not used as plural form thus becomes a problem.
On the one hand I have given attention to the relationship between the endings -lu'a/-lu'e and -la'a/le'e, and have felt that in some way there was a difference between them. As a result of the investigation of these endings related in this paper, I have discovered that -la'a/-le'e is used as an honorific form for -lu'a/-lu'e (§3
1). This discovery is very important, for by applying this concept of honorific forms to the other indicative endings, such as -mui, -ju'ui, -bai etc. I have been able to determine that in the previously referred to cases where these endings are not used as the plural forms of the endings -mu, -ju'u, -ba, etc. they are used as the honorific forms of these endings.
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