Sechenbaatar B. 2013. The plural forms of the Xinjiang Chakhar dialect: Based on the materials of Bortala subdialect. Altai hakpo 23. 99-110. The Altaic Society of Korea.

It has been traditionally assumed that nouns in Mongolian have a basic opposition between an unmarked singular and a marked plural. However, some scholars consider that nouns unmarked for the plural are indefinite. Although there are such different observations, many researchers have the identical view that the plural forms of the Mongolian nouns are mainly indicated by several special suffixes. For instance, the written Mongolian has 8 special suffixes for the plurality. Dialectal plural suffixes in Mongolian are even more abundant than those in the written Mongolian. It is a case in point that Bortala subdialect (also named as Shine Anggi “new team” subdialect) has as many as 12 different suffixal markers for the nominal plurality, of which, one is only used for personal pronouns. Of the plural suffixes observed from Bortala subdialect, some are simple structurally while others are with complex structure (double plural). All of the plural suffixes are used to denote people while only three are added to nouns irrespective of whether they denote people, animals or objects. As already attested in many other Mongolian dialects, the plural suffixes in Bortala subdialect are also used in a derivational function in addition to their inflexional use. At the same time, the function of nominal plurality in Bortala subdialect can also be expressed by repetitive forms. This phenomenon is mainly observed in adjectival attributes, which confer the notion of plurality to the following noun. Overall, the nominal plural forms in Bortala subdialect keep characteristics of those plural forms in both Oirat and Inner Mongolian dialects.

Keywords: Xinjiang Chakhar dialect, Bortala subdialect, simple plura
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