Book Reviews 235

Field, Fredric. 2002. Linguistic borrowing in bilingual contexts. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John
Benjamins.
Matras, Yaron. 2000. How predictable is contact-induced change in grammar. In Colin Renfrew,
April McMahon & Larry Trask (eds.), Time depth in historical linguistics, volume 2,
563583. Cambridge: Oxbow Books.

Binnick, Robert. The Past Tenses of the Mongolian Verb: Meaning and Use
(Empirical Approaches to Linguistic Theory I). Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012.
xxii+236 pp. ISBN 978 90 04 21429 3.

Khalkha Mongolian has four past tense suffixes, -v, -san, -laa and -jee, and their
semantic difference has been the subject of considerable disagreement in the lit-
erature. Robert Binnick discussed these suffixes in two earlier papers (1979, 1990).
With The past tenses of the Mongolian verb (henceforth PTMV) he has now dedi-
cated a full monograph to solving this problem.

1Summary
In Chapter I, Binnick reviews previous studies. He compares semantic theories
that assume aspecto-temporal differences including remoteness distinctions be-
tween the four suffixes with more recent pragmatic explanations involving evi-
dentiality. Binnick himself comes to the following conclusion:
-jee marks deictic distant inferential past
laa marks deictic firsthand1 recent past/near future
san, used mostly in spoken/informal language, marks anaphoric distant
past and possibly firsthand
v corresponds to -san (i.e., an anaphoric past marker) in written/formal
language and to -laa in questions

In Chapter II, mostly informal registers are discussed. -jee is not usable by
witnesses, but it can be used for newly discovered past facts; the 1st person co-
occurs with verbs of little subject control such as mart- forget. -laa is not used

1Binnick uses the label evidential instead of firsthand or possibly visual. This use is
somewhat misleading as this term is more commonly used as an adjective for things related to
evidentiality. To avoid confusion, I will substitute it with the term firsthand throughout this
review.
236 Book Reviews

with 2nd person subjects unless the addressee didnt have proper knowledge of
her actions. Questions involving -jee/-laa are always requests for confirmation
(answered by particles), while questions in -san/-v are neutral questions (an-
swered by verb plus -san/-laa). -san is used in long sentence chains including
autobiographical accounts. It tends to be preferred for more distant events, but
without clear cut-off points (cf. Song 1997). In its future use, -laa contrasts with
-na, which as a generic marker without reference to the actual present functions
as distant future. Arguing that [s]ince proximal tenses [in Mongolian] can only be
evidential [=firsthand], the first distinctive feature under pastness is that of prox-
imality (110), Binnick arranges the suffixes in the following semantic hierarchy:

[non-past -na] [past (proximal -laa) (distal [firsthand san] [inferential -jee])]

Chapter III is mostly devoted to the conventions of the written language in gen-
eral and to some related markers. In Chapter IV, the uses of the past suffixes in
more formal text genres are discussed. Depending on genre, there are texts where
-v is used instead of -san. -san/-v are labeled anaphoric tenses, i.e. they are local-
ized in the resulting state of the preceding eventuality. In contrast, -jee and -laa
(which in writing is no longer proximal) are deictic, which means that they can
establish absolute time reference independently, e.g. they occur at the beginning
of a story in the absence of a time adverbial that specifies an identifiable point in
time. Due to its deictic capacity, -laa is often used to mark unbounded states and
activities in the background of a story, while -v is used for telic eventualities in the
storyline. -san is suitable to conclude a topic of discussion, while native speakers
would expect additional information after -laa. -jee is neutral in this respect,
and indeed it occurs in paragraph-initial position as often as in paragraph-
medialor paragraph-final position. Suggestive observations are also made for the
paragraph-internal position of other suffixes.
As Binnick seems to have invested much effort into making his book accessi-
ble to a broad audience, there are very detailed, easy-to-understand explanations
of theoretical concepts of tense and aspect. Maybe due to such concerns, refer-
ences to current research are kept at a minimum.

2Evaluation

PTMV presents a fair sketch of the Mongolian past tenses that is more detailed
than all predecessors. A hypothesis on the meaning of the past suffixes is created
that can be tested in the future, apparent exceptions are contextualized and mo-
 Book Reviews 237

tivated, especially with regard to the principal dichotomy between informal and
formal language that, while not entirely overlooked, has previously not been in-
vestigated in sufficient detail. Still, the book is haunted by a number of problems
that I am going to address in the following:
The discussion of literature is somewhat incomplete as it excludes some
Japanese and German and all Mongolian sources. In the discussion of the rather
peripheral participle -aa (29-33), Binnick ignores Song (1997), whom he does cite
on the past tenses. When criticizing Chuluus claim (1998) that the Mongolian
past suffixes have no clear basic or core feature (59), Binnick fails to understand
that Chuluus data is different from Khalkha because Chuluu attempted a unified
description of Southern Mongolian, a standard language that tries to mediate
between two very distinct dialects, the more prestigious Chakhar (similar to
Khalkha) and the more widespread, divergent Khorchin. For instance, Khorchin
-jee is evidentially neutral. Unaware of this, Chuluu as a well-educated Khorchin
speaker of the standard couldnt make sense of his introspective judgments his
data was as fuzzy as he described it. It is therefore necessary to revise Binnicks
claim (2) that the verbal systems of Khalkha, Buriat and Southern Mongolian are
for the most part essentially the same and accept that the scope of PTMV is
Khalkha, not Mongolian.
The most serious problem of PTMV is its data basis: it is mostly based on a
single native speaker and a small, sometimes biased set of texts. This is aggra-
vated in cases where contextualization is lacking, e.g. an example sentence
Dashdorj was working [ajillaj bai-laa] as a clerk in the War Department of
Autonomous Mongolia (132) might or might not be firsthand information de-
pending on who the undisclosed author was. In some cases, the examples are not
relevant: the status of -laa as backgrounding marker instead of aspectual markers
(such as the Progressive) is argued for on the basis of a sequence containing verbs
in -v and stative nominal predicates with the copula in -laa. It might indeed be the
case that -laa is preferred when marking events that dont belong to the storyline,
but this would have to be demonstrated on the basis of backgrounded activities
and not of states that in many languages can disperse with overt marking for
backgrounding. With activities or accomplishments, one would still expect pro-
gressive forms (-j bai-laa, -j bai-v) instead of perfectives (-laa, -v) rather than back-
grounding -laa vs. foregrounding -v.
Claiming a future use of -ne (86) in duu-tai boroo oro-x ge-j bai-na noise-com
rain enter-ifvn say-impfc be-pres There is going to be a thunderstorm is an out-
right mistake; it is -x ge- that expresses imminence, while -na here is present:
currently, a thunderstorm is about to arise. Replacing -na with -san would yield
was about to arise. Due to such problems, several more detailed claims through-
out the book are less well motivated than desirable.
238 Book Reviews

PTMV doesnt take up any newer research on evidentiality. Distinctions as

basic as inference vs. hearsay are not explored in detail. The evidentiality distinc-
tion itself is taken as pragmatic by Binnick, because what is expressed are not
differing real-world situations (121-2). The overall problem gets aggravated when
even the distinction between firsthand and inferential is neglected in later chap-
ters by overemphasizing the differences between formal and less formal uses:
while evidentiality distinctions might get lost in some contexts, claiming that tr-
jee was born can hardly be inferential or mirative in a biography of a person
born in 1907 written in 1976 because the writer is presenting the statement as
factual and presumably is confident of its veracity (131) mixes up evidentiality
and epistemic modality and overlooks that a hearsay interpretation might do the
trick. When PTMV contributes to our understanding of evidentiality, it does so
implicitly: as the speaker isnt asking for new information, but is merely seeking
confirmation when asking with -laa/-jee, -v replaces -laa in information-seeking
questions. However, though -v may be proximal in presupposing an eventuality
closely linked to the speech act situation, spoken -v cannot be accounted eviden-
tial, since its restricted to questions. (102) Clearly, as Binnick has demonstrated
so well, even -laa and -jee in questions exactly reflect their evidential value, as
the evidence that the speaker relies on while presupposing something is just the
firsthand evidence corresponding to -laa or the secondhand evidence corre-
sponding to -jee! Consequently, -v might even be a strategy to ask for firsthand
information, or Binnick might be right that it focuses on recency.
Alongside his very unlikely claim that -jee can express mirativity, Binnick
fails to mention the actual mirative past use of -v, its preventive counterpart in the
future and the rare use of -jee for inferred future necessity:

(1) Negen saihan nar-tai dr bi naiz-uud-tai(g)-aa

one nice sun-poss day 1sg friend-pl-com-refl.poss
cug bai-j bai-laa, genet minii shd una-vaa
together cop-cvb cop-LAA suddenly 1sg.gen tooth fall-VAA
At a nice, sunny day I was being together with my friends. Suddenly, one of
my teeth fell out!

(2) Bolgoomj-toi bai(g)-aarai, doo-sh halitar-ch una-vaa!

care-poss cop-imp below-all slip-cvb fall-VAA
Careful, you might slip and fall!

(3)Chi=ch ene temceen-d (Byambasan et al. 1987: 168)

2sg=foc dem.prox competition-dat
trl-jee.
lead-JEE
You will definitely win that competition!
 Book Reviews 239

Whether remoteness outranks evidentiality is also a tricky question. As spoken

-laa is always firsthand and any positive evidential value of -san is doubtful, the
system might collapse if it could be shown that recent past facts were inferred
using -jee.
These weaknesses render a number of analyses problematic, yet no less stim-
ulating. An important advance for our understanding of the past markers might
be the distinction that Binnick draws between deictic and anaphoric tenses.
While the cross-linguistic discussion of non-focal postterminality by Johanson
(2000) already pointed in a similar direction, Binnicks analysis is less abstract
and accounts both for the conclusiveness of -san and its use in the storyline. Yet,
Binnicks claim that both -v and -san are anaphoric pasts is somewhat puzzling.
While -san was probably a perfect in Middle Mongol and just retained a very weak
version of perfect meaning that helps building up coherent texts, -v was a past
form already in the oldest texts and (in writing) would then have preserved this
weak anaphoricity for 800 years. This question merits further research, for while
Street (2009) recently investigated the evidential properties of Middle Mongolian
-ba, -luga and -jugu in some detail, he failed to describe their discourse prop-
erties. Still, as -v is not used to conclude a statement, a semantic property that
accounts for this difference between -v and -san still has to be identified.

3Editorial aspects
In many editorial respects, PTMV is severely lacking. Transcriptions from the
Mongolian script are sometimes faulty. In the translations of Mongolian exam-
ples, mistakes are not infrequent. For example, the last word in Stiven Sigaliin
[genitive] Mongol tuslah (167) was (synchronically incorrectly) segmented into the
verbal stem tusla- and the participle -h and translated as help instead of assis-
tant. In (4) we find a number of shortcomings both in glossing and translation:

(4) 200 garui oxi.d.iig x.eer biye.iig n nell.j

200 over girl-pl-acc forcibly body-acc their set a price on-impfc
bai.jee
be-past
More than 200 girls are forced to put a price on their bodies.
(170)

Thus, the word x-eer force-ins is segmented, but glossed with one word.
Glossing =n, which indicates a third person possessor without number reference,
as their is not strictly wrong, but not helpful to a linguistically educated reader.
240 Book Reviews

set a price (glossing) and put a price (translation) appear like fitting equiva-
lents, but girls in the original is a causee. The sentence meaning would become
clear if nell- was segmented into nel- price (as biye nel- prostitute oneself
is hard to gloss here) plus the causative -l-. Literally translated, this sentence
might read Somebody forcibly had more than 200 girls put a price on their bod-
ies, while a free translation might well use the English Passive, but should then
also translate biye-iig=n nel- idiomatically: More than 200 girls were forced to
prostitute themselves. Finally, are instead of were in the English translation is a
confusing slip of the pen. The reader will also be confused by on page 172 reading
an extensive discussion about an example sentence that just didnt make it into the
book. Finding a qualified speaker of Khalkha to correct the examples in this book
would have been neither difficult nor expensive and could have substantially
raised its quality. But even the hand of an English copyeditor is hard to detect.
With this book as with others, there is a conflict between having it published
by a renowned international publisher and the wish to make it widely available.
In this case, the choice of the former option is likely to prevent most of the many
competent scholars from Mongolia and Inner Mongolia to ever read the book.
Given that the editorial and scientific shortcomings of this book were left un-
touched to be published, it is obvious that Brill neither guaranteed nor added any
value, and the linguistic community loses.

4Conclusion
PTMV substantially advances our understanding of tense, aspect and evidential-
ity in Mongolian and enables the reader to ask a number of questions that have
not been asked before. It also answers some of these questions. However, to know
which questions were answered satisfactorily and which were not, a general lin-
guist will have a hard time separating the wheat from the chaff. This also holds for
learners of Mongolian who would have benefitted from Binnicks detailed expla-
nations of linguistic terminology.

Stockholm University Benjamin Brosig

E-mail: benjamin@ling.su.se

References
Binnick, Robert. 1979. Past and perfect in Modern Mongolian. In Henry Schwarz (ed.), Studies
on Mongolia Proceedings of the first North American conference on Mongolian studies,
113. Washington: Western Washington University.
 Book Reviews 241

Binnick, Robert. 1990. On the pragmatic differentiation of the Mongolian past tenses.
Mongolian studies XIII. 4756.
Byambasan, P.; C. nrbayan; B. Prev-Ochir; J. Sanjaa; C. Janchivdorj. 1987. Orchin cagiin
mongol helnii gzin baiguulalt [The morphological system of Modern Mongolian].
Ulaanbaatar: Shinjleh uhaanii akadyemi.
Chuluu, jiyediin. 1998. Studies on Mongolian verb morphology. Toronto: University of Toronto
doctoral dissertation. https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/handle/1807/12389
Johanson, Lars. 2000. Viewpoint operators in European languages. In sten Dahl (ed.), Tense
and aspect in the languages of Europe, 27187. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Song, Jae-mog. 1997. Tense, aspect and modality in Khalkha Mongolian. London: SOAS
doctoral dissertation.
Street, John. 2009. On the three past tense endings of early Middle Mongolian. Ural-Altaische
Jahrbcher 23, 126159.
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