SAITÔ, Y. (2011). The Consonant System of West Middle Mongol. Altai Hakpo 21: 51-67. The Altaic Society of Korea.

A quadrilingual manuscript of the Muqaddimat al-Adab created in Central Asia in the fifteenth century AD contains many West Middle Mongolian words in Arabic transcription. Taking consonantal differences and implicational universals into consideration, the author posited in Saitô (2009) eight phonemic vowels /i, e, a, o, u, ü, ö, ï/ for the Mongolian language recorded in the Muqaddimat al-Adab. In the present paper, he investigates the consonant system of the same language and sets up the following seventeen consonant phonemes through analysis of the use of Arabic characters in the document: /t, k, b, d, g, č, ǰ, s, š, h, r, l, m, n, ŋ, w, y/.

Keywords: West Middle Mongol, consonant system, Muqaddimat al-Adab, Arabic transcription